Understanding how to build a sideboard part 1

Sideboarding is much more art than science. So when talking about todays topic remember there is a lot of room for innovation and experimentation and rule breaking, however the type of sideboarding philosophy we will cover today are good outlines and guiding premises to keep in mind.

Haymakers (high impact cards)
Band-Aid (versatile cards)

Haymaker cards are ones that often lead to solving the problem on their own but are often hyper focused in their utility. For example, Stoney Silence and  Rest in Peace are two great examples of this philosophy. If you resolve those cards in the matchups they are for, your opponent's deck often does not function and you will be able to take over the game.

There is a subset of Haymakers that are often very strong in a matchup but not as polarizing in effectiveness as a card like Stoney Silence. I call these “Soft Haymakers” A great example of this kind of haymaker is Mystical Dispute. It's only great versus blue cards and is a high impact play when it resolves, but doesn't always mean lights out. Instead acting as a one time high impact play versus

Band-Aid cards tend to come in for lots of matchups and are good in lots of spots but often not game ending on their own. A good example of this is Spell Pierce. While often not the card that will fix any one matchup it can be part of a plan in multiple matchups, and help prevent your opponent from quickly executing their game plan. Band-Aid can also be in reference to the way they have built their sideboard. Meaning they have a few cards that are maybe some of those softer haymakers we talked about, in low numbers to cover a wide range of matchups. Making it so you're not solving any singular matchup with these cards but instead having a little game in a lot of places.


As with every rule there are exceptions. The most common one in Modern is Engineered Explosives. A card that is great in lots of matchups and can be a haymaker at the same time. This card is seen in lots of sideboards due to this and is something you can have to really cover a wide range of problems with one or two spots in your sideboard.

Lots of sideboards will often have a mixture of these two types of cards. Take Izzet Murktide for example https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-murktide-regent#online


This deck has a mixture of the two types of cards. Cards like Bloodmoon, Orvar, Mystical Dispute, subtly, and unlicensed hearse. These cards when resolved will often solve the problem for a good period of time. The deck however also has cards like Season Pyromancer, brotherhoods end, abrade and Dress down. All cards that can be high impact but cover a much wider range of problems.

That doesn't mean you have to have a good mix. You can also succeed with decks that have just all haymakers. While more limited in sidboarding these decks often fix the problems they are trying to solve. Temur Rhinos is a great example of this. Look at its sideboard. Its just a bunch of haymakers trying to solve certain problematic strategies. This makes sense for a deck like rhinos which has both strict deck building restrictions and is very linier in what its trying to do.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/5311742#_=_

The Rhino’s deck is leaning on its powerful proactive gameplan in game one to go the distance against players and looks to just try and knock them out with one of their singularly powerful hate cards. Often it just takes one Force of Vigor or one Blood Moon to really beat those decks, given that this deck presents a fast clock so they don't have time to rebuild through these cards.

This style of all in sideboarding is often best done by linear decks, which can't afford to sideboard too many cards and typically have some proactive gameplan to win the game. It could be a combo, it could also just be a fast combat kill like the rhino deck does.

When looking at Band-Aid decks the current Jeskai Breach decks do this in spades. Where they have a few cards for a lot of matchups while also just having some cards to soften the blow in some matchups. For example, look at Ross’s deck here.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-grinding-station#online


You will see that cards like spell pierce and prismatic ending are here to disrupt what the opponent is doing a little bit, then when you look at the haymakers they are all 1 and 2 of’s. So the deck has a little bit of everything for every matchup. So while they might not always be the most effective cards you will have one or two cards that are good in the matchup then you will have a few cards that will soften the blow.


This style of sideboarding makes a lot of sense in a deck like Breach which looks to be mostly singular in how it wins games, and wants to best make sure they have some answer to the opponents hate they will have and have something to slow the opponent down. Breach is also in a unique place where thanks to the card breach they can re-use some of these cards in the mid game to answer a second wave of problems from the opponent.

Understanding these two types of philosophy and roles cards can take is a great first step to truly start mastering sideboarding. It takes a lot of time and effort to really get good at both sideboarding but also building sideboards and having a good outline like this is a great way to get your balance on your own.

This is part one of building a sideboard, and in the coming weeks. I will cover not only part two of this article but everything else I layed out about understanding and doing when it comes to sideboarding. However if today's concept is new to you I implore you to take some serious time and think about how the decks you currently play use this philosophy and if you should adapt your deck or sideboard to use one of these to better reach and end goal for the deck.

Sideboarding is incredibly hard and daunting but the journey can be taken one step at a time.