Doin' It for the Boards

I’ve been thinking about sideboards lately.

Usually, my sideboards have a lot of seemingly random answers to some random threats that might pop up, depending on what my opponent’s playing. The sideboard for the Egg Deck looked something like this (try not to vomit):

3x Planar Void
2x Chainer’s Edict
2x Chain of Vapor
1x Tendrils of Agony
1x Balance
1x Builder’s Bane (!)
1x Tranquility(!!)
1x Tariff(!?!)
1x Wing Shards(!?!?)
2x Altar of Dimentia(!?!?!)

If you don’t understand, I had Burning Wish (which is restricted) in the maindeck (and Death Wish at one point), so it was sort of a silver bullet sideboard where everything had to be sorcery speed. Usually I didn’t sideboard because I wanted my deck to be as combotastic as possible all the time. I might put Balance in against an aggro deck; or Altar of Dimentia(!?!?!) (they were so I could sac Orchard tokens before they meant anything) and Chain of Vapor against Anthony who played partially powered Oath against 10 year-olds with no proxies; or Planar Void against Tony who played Dragon.

Usually of course I wished for the game-winning Tendrils, but once—just once—I wished for Tariff(!?!) for the win.

Tony was playing unpowered, janky Dragon Combo against my unpowered, janky Egg combo. His second turn, the turn before I will go off for the win, he Animates a True Believer. Now, having learned my lesson from when I sideboarded Chainer’s Edicts against True Believer, I didn’t sideboard at all. Instead, I went off anyway (Ritual, Helm, Egg, Egg, Egg, Etc.) and got enough mana to Burning Wish for Tariff(!?!), play Tariff(!?!) to make Tony sacrifice his Believer, and Tendrils for the win. It was awesome. Tony hates me, but he was none too fond of me before that, I think, so I count it as no big loss.

So maybe it was more of a plan than I thought. And I didn’t have to worry about colored mana, since 24 cards in my deck were mana fixers, 12 for each color (2 sets of Eggs and 1 set of Chromatic Sphere).

But I haven’t played in a lot of tournaments and am not very good at building sideboards as a result. Now, I’m trying to put together the sideboard for my current Vintage deck, UB Fish, and I’m not really sure how to go about it.

Right now it looks like this:

4x Duress
4x Energy Flux
1x Arcane Laboratory (2 in maindeck)
1x Rootwater Thief (2 in maindeck)
1x Waterfront Bouncer (2 in maindeck)
2x Diabolic Edict
2x Darkblast

Personally, I feel pretty good about this one. Much better about this one than the last one which had a lot more cards that really didn’t have any synergy with the rest of the deck. Now I feel like I have a plan.

From what I can tell, having a plan is important for running a sideboard. Rather than saying, “Oh, this person had a bunch of artifacts, I think. I should run Energy Flux. What do I take out?” or “My opponent used a bunch of fetchlands; I could use Stifle to keep him off his mana. What do I take out?” you should be able to say, “Oh, this person is playing Oath; that means +2 Diabolic Edict, +1 Waterfront Bouncher, +1 Rootwater Thief, +4 Duress, -3 Withered Wretch, -1 Echoing Decay, -4 Standstill.”

The way I see it, Vintage breaks down into archetypes that each run on one general principle, but that get mixed and matched as tech comes and goes:

Blue – Blue uses Mana Drain and Force of Will to keep you off your game long enough to put together a win condition, whether that’s Darksteel Colossus or Oathed up Akroma or Tendrils, it doesn’t matter. They have to be able to stop you from playing. I can stop this with Arcane Laboratory plus whatever I need to stop their win condition (Duress and Thief for combo and control and Bouncer and Edict for big creatures).

Artifact – Artifacts mean lock components either using Slaver or Smokestacks, Tanglewire, Trinisphere, Sphere of Resistance and the rest of that garbage. If it’s Stax, they can’t counter and if it’s Slaver, well, watch out. Aether Vials can come out against Stax and in goes Energy Flux. For Control Slaver, yeah, well, I don’t know really. I haven’t played against Control Slaver yet. Probably Energy Flux for Standstill, Bouncer for another Thief to remove singleton answers, and more Darkblasts because Welder needs to die.

Graveyard – The graveyard strategy looks at getting their heat into the graveyard rather than to the hand or into play like other, normal strategies. Usually that’s either for Goblin Welder (see artifact), Yawgmoth’s Will (see blue), or Dragon Combo (see a psychologist). Withered Wretch is a house against these but that’s my preferred hate anyway, so they’re already maindecked. Beyond that I can go with whatever will help against fatty creatures, combo, or Welder.

Aggro – Usually my gameplan against Aggro is to roll over and die because their creatures are huge and mine are cannon fodder. Now, depending on what kind it is, I can side in at least Waterfront Bouncer, Diabolic Edict, and Darkblast against creatures, or I can do that plus put in some Energy Flux against the Workshop Aggro variety.

Of course, most of this is speculative because I haven’t really played against most of these decks. I can pretty much wreck Dragon with or without sideboarding, and I only think that Arcane Laboratory will work against blue decks, and I’ve only heard that Waterfront Bouncer is tech against Oath, and I’ve never played against Stax or Slaver with this so who knows about them except they use some artifacts and maybe some Welders.

But part of the fun of playing Magic is learning what to do and what not to do for next time, so I’ll be happy just to chalk up winning or losing to experience and go on with my life having some idea of what to do next time.

In this case I’ll probably put in one rogue copy of Cunning Wish and just have a sideboard made up of all the random blue and black instants I can think of that might have some effect on someone playing some card at some time. That way I won’t have to sideboard, I’ll just rely on my Cunning Wish. Plus, I can splash other colors like red for Pyroblast and green for Seedtime.

In closing, Seedtime is the most underutilized card in Vintage.

Until next time, Be Prepared.