Sideboarding in Modern
Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2014 9:56 pm
Hello,
I'd like to try to get a compendium of how to sideboard against the main stream strategies in Modern. I'm not going to pretend I have the knowledge for this myself, but I can get it started and setup the framework that I'm looking for and hopefully others with more Modern experience can help fill in the blanks.
This is an idea based on a decent SCG article I just read by Jim Davis, found here (Select side so free for all): http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28 ... Stuff.html
I'd like to get together lists of current top-tier decks (can be 1.5 or 2 also, whatever you'd expect to see at a fairly large Modern event), how they attempt to win, what their first and second strategies are, and what cards exist in all colors to counter-act those strategies. The purpose here is
to equip people with the knowledge and ability to have 15 cards that can be used in multiple matchups. For instance, some blue-based decks run some number of Hurkyl's Recall in the side board to combat Affinity. In fact, I'm currently running some in my UR Delver list. But would that card be useful in any other matchup? Maybe not. But Ancient Grudge can be brought in against a lot of decks running artifacts, including Affinity but also any other decks with troublesome artifacts. Hopefully by listing cards that work well against most of the top decks we can find ones that appear in multiple lists. Some of them will be obvious, but others maybe not.
Here's a preliminary list, but I'm going to need a lot of help fleshing this out. Feel free to add decks in the following format, or suggest changes to anything already posted. I'll just start with 1 deck but I'll come back and add more later.
Deck: Affinity
Win-Con:
Beat-down with artifact creatures
Problem Cards: Cranial Plating, Arcbound Ravager
Hosers
White: Stony Silence, Disenchant
Blue: Hurkyl's Recall, Spell Snare
Black: Drown in Sorrow
Red: Shatterstorm, Shattering Spree, Vandalblast, Ancient Grudge, burn like Pillar of Flame, Magma Spray, Lightning Bolt
Green: Naturalize
Multi-color: Destructive Revelry
Hybrid: Fracturing Gust
Colorless: Damping Matrix
I'd like to try to get a compendium of how to sideboard against the main stream strategies in Modern. I'm not going to pretend I have the knowledge for this myself, but I can get it started and setup the framework that I'm looking for and hopefully others with more Modern experience can help fill in the blanks.
This is an idea based on a decent SCG article I just read by Jim Davis, found here (Select side so free for all): http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28 ... Stuff.html
I'd like to get together lists of current top-tier decks (can be 1.5 or 2 also, whatever you'd expect to see at a fairly large Modern event), how they attempt to win, what their first and second strategies are, and what cards exist in all colors to counter-act those strategies. The purpose here is
to equip people with the knowledge and ability to have 15 cards that can be used in multiple matchups. For instance, some blue-based decks run some number of Hurkyl's Recall in the side board to combat Affinity. In fact, I'm currently running some in my UR Delver list. But would that card be useful in any other matchup? Maybe not. But Ancient Grudge can be brought in against a lot of decks running artifacts, including Affinity but also any other decks with troublesome artifacts. Hopefully by listing cards that work well against most of the top decks we can find ones that appear in multiple lists. Some of them will be obvious, but others maybe not.
Here's a preliminary list, but I'm going to need a lot of help fleshing this out. Feel free to add decks in the following format, or suggest changes to anything already posted. I'll just start with 1 deck but I'll come back and add more later.
Deck: Affinity
Win-Con:
Beat-down with artifact creatures
Problem Cards: Cranial Plating, Arcbound Ravager
Hosers
White: Stony Silence, Disenchant
Blue: Hurkyl's Recall, Spell Snare
Black: Drown in Sorrow
Red: Shatterstorm, Shattering Spree, Vandalblast, Ancient Grudge, burn like Pillar of Flame, Magma Spray, Lightning Bolt
Green: Naturalize
Multi-color: Destructive Revelry
Hybrid: Fracturing Gust
Colorless: Damping Matrix