Wyatt's Writing

Sideboarding in Magic is one of the hardest things to master, but it is extremely important to understand when playing competitively. In fact, the second and third games depend on how your sideboard is prepared and how well you use the tools you gave yourself before the match even started; it can be the difference between a decisive victory or a complete blowout of a defeat. In order to understand sideboarding, it is crucial to comprehend the best strategies of Magic, along with examples one will see in the game of Magic, and in standard playing format.

Hand Hate:
Hand Hate is a common theme in magic which occurs commonly in black. It is a spell which allows you to take stock of your opponent’s hand and make them discard key cards to their strategy. Discard effects also fall into this category, but are generally more unreliable as your opponent is usually the one discarding. This type of hate is super prevalent against all archetypes, but mostly with combo and control. Allowing you to take a key part of their strategy can be extremely backbreaking to the point where it could even buy you enough turns to win the game, or remove a powerful kill spell or counter-spell, allowing your threat to resolve uncontested.

Duress is the most commonly reprinted black hand disruption spell and is most commonly brought in against controlling and combo oriented decks to attack their gameplan. Thoughtseize is widely considered the best black spell ever printed and for good reason, hitting whatever your opponent has with minimal downside gives the player such great power not to mention the hand information received after casting the spell.

Duress is the most commonly reprinted black hand disruption spell and is most commonly brought in against controlling and combo oriented decks to attack their gameplan. Thoughtseize is widely considered the best black spell ever printed and for good reason, hitting whatever your opponent has with minimal downside gives the player such great power not to mention the hand information received after casting the spell.

Removal:

Removal is the backbone of Magic. Thus, your sideboard should always contain a few. Creatures will always see play in Magic, and being able to remove them from your opponent’s board is vital to advance your game plan and stall theirs. Whether it is a removal spell or a 1 for 1 or a board wipe, the ability to clear everything is dependent on the archetype you are playing. The archetypes aggro and mid-range will typically look for removal spells which affect only their opponent’s board state and not their own. On the other hand, control players will usually play big sweepers with their payoffs out of harm’s way or in their hand for the next turn.

Legion's End — Cheap removal spells like Legion’s End are very good for fighting low to the ground aggro decks which can give you time to find and cast your big board sweepers like Time Wipe. Counterspells also fall under the category of removal, which, in my book, is getting rid of threats before they even have the chance of hitting the board.

Cheap removal spells like Legion’s End are very good for fighting low to the ground aggro decks which can give you time to find and cast your big board sweepers like Time Wipe. Counterspells also fall under the category of removal, which, in my book, is getting rid of threats before they even have the chance of hitting the board.

Value:

Sometimes, the best way to beat your opponent is to just straight up out-value them. It is most prevalent in matches against mid-range and control decks where games will last longer. Further, you are more likely to end up in top deck wars or board stalls. Planeswalkers and creatures have activated abilities which affect the board state thrive, in this situation, as well as removal spells that efficiently do two or more things all in one. Always put a card in your board which generates value, or is a huge bomb that, if resolving, can swing the game in your favor dramatically.

Murderous Rider does two things. It acts as removal and then as a body on the board leaving your opponent having to clean up a body after you use it as a removal spell. Chandra, Awakened Inferno is a huge Planeswalker bomb that almost always will hit the table and either clean up or put your opponent on a clock and is a must kill threat. Biogenic Ooze does relatively the same thing. It recurs value every turn and is a good mana sink if you’re flooding out or just have some mana to spare.

Murderous Rider does two things. It acts as removal and then as a body on the board leaving your opponent having to clean up a body after you use it as a removal spell. Chandra, Awakened Inferno is a huge Planeswalker bomb that almost always will hit the table and either clean up or put your opponent on a clock and is a must kill threat. Biogenic Ooze does relatively the same thing. It recurs value every turn and is a good mana sink if you’re flooding out or just have some mana to spare.

Color Hate:

Color Hate is very specific hate which becomes relevant again upon the release of Core Set: 2020. These are cards which hate out certain colors which usually come from creatures with protection from certain colors or spells which are only usable against certain colors. These cards were made for the sideboard, and if the meta has enough decks of a prevalent color and the effect is good they can make a great addition to any sideboard.

All three of these spells do essentially the same thing. They hate out certain color’s strategies and are super efficient but only against those colors. These are super strong sideboard cards for very select situations and those situations are quite obvious when they come up. Veil of summer was so powerful and efficient that it’s been since been banned in Standard and Pioneer.

Strategy Hate:

Some decks rely off certain strategies to function, and some decks abuse the graveyard. Others abuse planeswalkers or certain cards which the whole deck runs off of. Being able to attack a deck with a core central strategy is sometimes hard to do, but if the deck is popular and enough of it is running around, then you might want to spare a few sideboard slots to turning off these strategies completely.

Predictive Sideboarding:

A way of life to live by as a Magic player which multiple pros will tell you about is not simply sideboarding for what your opponent played, but sideboarding for what your opponent is sideboarding for. One question to ask is whether your control player is going to bring in planeswalkers or if they will bring in a few creatures in order to have on board threats themselves? Hence, you should not put all your creature removal in the sideboard unless you want to be blown out when your opponent slams a threat you just cannot deal with. Put yourself in your opponent’s shoes. Ask yourself, if I was them what would I be running in the sideboard that I’d be bringing in, and how do I beat it? Remember, your opponent also gets the ability to sideboard, and if they’re thinking ahead of you when it comes time for the second and third games, then you’ll be starting behind, even before the first card is played.

Cards like Tibalt, Rakish Instigator are the perfect examples of preventative sideboarding. Expecting your opponent to bring in lifegain against your aggro deck? Tibalt can stop that and provide some pesky 1/1’s to the board at the same time.

Once your sideboard is built before you even play a game, do what I like to call the “meta test.” Open a website like mtggoldfish or mtgtop8 and look at all the popular decks running around in the meta. Rundown their lists and examine each one. Ask yourself, how am I siding for this matchup? If you encounter a matchup with a deck that you expect to run into and you don’t have any confident sideboard decisions, maybe change some things up. Keep notes so when it comes to sideboarding you’re not second-guessing yourself in that limited time frame you have to decide what’s in and what’s out, especially if you’re going into a high-pressure tournament setting. Also, if you find a card just isn’t making the cut for any matchups, it’s best you cut it. Graveyard hate isn’t necessary if nobody want to play a deck that uses the graveyard. If nobody’s playing artifacts, then perhaps your artifact specific hate doesn’t deserve a slot in the current meta. There are millions of ways of building your sideboard and it keeps changing. Make sure that these 15 cards are the best that you can provide for the situations you’ll find yourself in, and you’ll be more prepared to take on the Magic world than ever. Happy sideboarding!

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