A lot of the newer players in our local area have been making comments about not knowing how to sideboard for certain matchups. What to put in, what to take, how to do it….you get the picture. I decided that today I would write something about this to help them and any other player who wants to work on one of the hardest parts of magic to master.

The general consensus is that most people know what to put in but not what to take out so the article will focus more on this.

First things first:

 We need to understand our deck and how it works.

 We need to understand the matchup dynamics.

Does the deck have key cards that cannot come out (in limited this will be your bombs and top removal). What is our game plan? Survive and then bring destruction with late game bombs, cause havoc and disruption while sneaking in damage or hit fast and hit hard…….the answer to this question will help you decide what cards to side in or out.

There are two main ways to evaluate sideboard cards. Those are:

 Specific cards to tackle specific cards

 Cards that play specific roles to enhance the matchup in general

Specific Cards

These are easy to know when to side in or out. For example if they have an artefact that wins them the game that must be destroyed then artifact destruction will go in, if they don’t it will not. Likewise if you have a main deck card that is for specific threats that they don’t play, for example they don’t have plainswalker’s and you have a card that specifically kills them, you would want to take that out.

How to Evaluate the Roles CardsPlay

Another easy way to decide this is by looking at the turn the card is cast and its impact on the board out of 5 against aggro or its grindyness/ inevitability out of 5 against control. For example painful truths: can come down on turn 3 but has 0 out of 5 effect on the board (possibly even a minus if you want to count the life loss) but I would rate 4 out of 5 for grindyness (assuming 3 colours) This is the kind of card I would side out against the very fast decks but in against the very slow ones. If you use this formula to evaluate cards it should make it easier to decide what to board out in the various matchups.

Have a game plan

Going into sideboarding you should have an idea of what beat you last game and why you didn’t win. The main goal of sideboarding is to reduce the risk of whatever beat you while increasing your strengths. Some of the more common ones are listed below: (combo decks excluded because this article is aimed at beginners and true combo is very rare in standard nowadays and when it is there is always a case of specific cards to side in to beat the combo)

Aggro vs Control: These matchups are generally decent for aggro. Side out some creature removal for some disruption (eg counterspells, discard) or some hard to deal with threat that attacks the deck from a different angle (eg planeswalkers or game enders).

Aggro vs Midrange: You are faster but many of your small creatures get outclassed quickly. Potential adds include grindy threats, more removal or tempo cards. Cuts can be easily outclassed small creatures or conditional removal that doesn’t affect many of their creatures.

Aggro vs Aggro: A good game plan is to board in removal or try to go bigger with creatures, try siding out some of the disruption or inefficient creatures.

Control vs Aggro: Side in all of your early removal and tempo cards losing some of the grindy and high mana cost ones.

Control vs Midrange: Traditionally a strong matchup for control, just side in some more grindy cards and threats and/or ways to tackle their hard to beat threats (planeswalkers, artifacts, whatever it is). Some of your threats or removal will probably be more focused on aggro decks so these would be the pieces to trim.

Control vs Control: A real grind fest, so side out your bad removal, some will be needed for planeswalkers and big threats, but most control decks play removal for small creatures too. These are the cards you want to cut for your game enders and grindy card advantage engines.

Midrange vs Midrange: similar strategy to control vs control, take out your weaker creature removal and just focus on putting in game enders and cards that remove there game enders.

How many cards should I sideboard

Now this varies and depends on your deck’s game plan as well as how badly you fared mainboard. If your deck is highly synergistic and becomes increasingly worse for every extra card you side out then you will really have to evaluate closely what to bring in or out. If its limited and you got smashed by an opponent’s dragon but were winning the game until it hit then perhaps just side in a plummet effect or two taking out your worst creature or value spell. But if you are playing a deck that can bring in large amounts of cards without reducing its effectiveness and you are getting totally ruined by a deck’s strategy then you will just want the best cards for the matchup however many that may be.

Don’t over sideboard

This goes with the point above about deck effectiveness, but usually only a couple of cards are needed unless the matchup is really really bad. Just remember your game plan and follow the rough overall guide above and you should be fine.

Do you have any specific sideboarding tricks? Or any questions about any of the points i have made in the article? Let me know in the comments section below.