I was thinking earlier today about what I was actually planning to write about. Several things popped into my head, all competing for attention in the cramped space known as my cranial cavity. Well, I decided on something.

Something that I've noticed lately is the lack of good, solid sideboards. Not only that, but very few people can actually sideboard properly.

Sideboards are essential to any constructed deck. How do you expect to beat Blue/White control with Fires if you don't have the world of sideboard hosers at your fingertips?

Now, before you take this the wrong away, let me just establish that I'm far from the best sideboarder around. I'm not professing to be all-knowing. Hell, I've made more than my share of sideboarding mistakes, in constructed and limited events. I'm simply trying to help. Honestly!

The steps to creating a good sideboard are simple, yet corners must not be cut. To start out, you need to find out what you really are afraid of. Let's take Fires in Type 2 as an example. The deck fears much, most of which is found in Blue/White control variants (be they Counter Rebels, Angel/Djinn Control or Millstone). Counterspells, Wrath of God and large-defense creatures all are thorns in the Fires player's side. The Fires player must find a way to deal with these cards, or they will most certainly lose the match.

Just for reference, here's our typical Fires decklist:

4 Birds of Paradise
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fires of Yavimaya
4 Chimeric Idol
4 Blastoderm
4 Saproling Burst
3 Shivan Wurm
3 Ghitu Fire
3 Thornscape Battlemage
3 Flametongue Kavu

4 Rishadan Port
4 Karplusan Forest
7 Mountain
9 Forest

So we've found out what the deck is weak against - Counterspells and mass removal (and mana denial, but we'll get to that later). Now we can prepare some possibilities to counteract those weaknesses.

What's available to Fires? Well, the first thing that probably comes to mind to overcome Counterspells is Kavu Chameleon. It not only can't be countered, but also gets around Story Circle, another U/W control mainstay. Urza's Rage also helps, as it's an almost surefire way to deal some damage to the opponent. So we've got a fairly good anti-counterspell base of 4 Kavu Chameleon, 2 Urza's Rage (if we're not playing any in the maindeck).

We all know that control decks like to play lots of lands, so they can deal with threats easier. What's the best way to prey on their lands? Why, something that can't be countered. That's right, I'm talking about Obliterate. Once you hit eight mana, you can simply "blow up the world". There is almost nothing they can do about it. Since your deck needs less lands than them to recover, you should be able to muster another small offensive which should win you the game. An Idol can certainly go all the way. Also, if you were smart, you'd keep a few lands back in your hand for after the Obliterate.

I think that's a fairly good base to deal with control. Now let's move on to other weaknesses. Fires has the amazing tendency to just roll over and die when faced with a Prison-type deck. Orbosition, a very popular deck right now, can easily deal with Fires in game 1, using Glacial Wall to block most early-game attackers and small creatures to tap Fires' lands down with Opposition and not allowing them to untap with Static Orb. That can pose some problems, because Fires is a very mana-hungry deck.

There are currently some very effective Opposition deck hosers out there, one of them being Yavimaya Barbarian. Sure, it's only a 2/2 wimp, but it's a lot better than it looks. This was an amazing tech choice at the US Nationals, with every Fires deck there playing four either in their maindeck or in their sideboard. Against Orbosition decks, it almost meant certain death, because they can't block it or tap it due to its Protection from Blue ability. Since Fires has a good chance with Barbarian in the deck, I'd strongly suggest putting 4 in our sideboard.

Now that we've covered Fires' main weaknesses, we can move on to possibly the most dreaded matchup of all, for pretty much every deck, the mirror match. This is when two of the same decks play each other. The reason the Fires mirror matchup is so crazy is because it's so dependant on who gets the nuts, 4th turn kill draw, and not really on who plays best. Sometimes Fires just wins, and that possibility is just that much more important in the mirror.

To prepare for the mirror, we need to kick out the opposing deck's legs from under them. By this I mean we need ways to kill their mana creatures before they can truly accelerate their deck. For that I'd suggest, as Sean McKeown suggested on Neutral Ground, Fire/Ice. Fire will either kill a creature and poke them for one, kill two creatures, or simply slap them in the head for two.

I think now we've covered almost all bases, so without any further ado, here is the sideboard we've created:

4 Kavu Chameleon
4 Yavimaya Barbarian
3 Fire/Ice
2 Obliterate
2 Urza's Rage

Now, that's not everything. We have a fairly decent sideboard, but we don't know how to use it. That is something that is easily corrected.

A common misconception when sideboarding is that certain cards in the maindeck are so good that they should never be taken out. That is an oversight that can be devastating.

When sideboarding against a U/W Millstone deck, what would you do? Personally, I'd follow this plan:

+ 4 Kavu Chameleon
+ 2 Urza's Rage
+ 2 Obliterate

- 3 Flametongue Kavu
- 3 Ghitu Fire
- 2 Shivan Wurm

Now, a lot of people locally worship Shivan Wurm as a god. They preach on and on about how it's so good, and all that, but they fail to realize that against U/W control, it's sometimes not the best weapon. By removing it, they gained a huge tempo advantage, which is something you don't want them to get - more time.

The key to proper sideboarding is, in my opinion, to first find what you want to sideboard in. Then you look at your deck and find the cards that you think are the least uesful in that matchup, and swap them. It's really that simple.

Sometimes, however, you don't follow the conventional sideboard strategy. Soemthing that has seen some attention is what is sometimes called the "transformational sideboarding" strategy. This is when you use your sideboard as a completely new deck. You side out key aspects of the maindeck for key aspects of the deck you want to become.

An example would be several Blue/White control decks at Pro Tour: Chicago.

Justin Gary
UW Control

Main Deck

11 Island
6 Plains
4 Counterspell
4 Absorb
4 Foil
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Wrath of God

4 Blinding Angel
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Coastal Tower
3 Dismantling Blow
2 Tsabo's Web
1 Jeweled Spirit
1 Reviving Vapors

Sideboard

4 Ramosian Sergeant
3 Submerge
2 Disenchant
2 Fresh Volunteers
1 Defiant Falcon
1 Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
1 Rebel Informer
1 Nightwind Glider

As you can see, Justin has a different strategy. Against the more controllish decks, he'd pull a fast one and turn into a Counter-Rebel deck, which has been known to give other U/W control decks problems. This serves several different purposes.

First, this covers pretty much all bases. Anything you can beat as U/W control, you keep the deck the same (or make a few minor adjustments, like Submerge) for the three games. Anything you can't beat normally, you turn into a deck that can. Whether you use all the sideboarded Rebels or not, you still have many options with which to deal with other control decks.

Whether or not you use transformational sideboarding, you must, I repeat, must, know how to sideboard in order to do well (that is, unless you have unlimited quantities of luck). It is one of the most essential aspects of the game.

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quote:

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Originally posted by *Tedman*:
I'm not Zvi Moshowitz. I'm not Mike Flores. I'm certainly not Iakae, because that would just be weird. I'm not Ernest Hemingway, not William Shakespeare, and I'm definitely not L. Ron Hubbard, because that too would be weird.

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*cough* plagurism *cough*

Anyway, I only disagree with one thing. If you're not playing Fires at the moment, then you're probably playing something with Blue in it (or something with Terminate in it, but that's another rant for another day). With this in mind, I would even consider running the Barbarians maindeck. If worst comes to worst and you're not sitting down against a player with Blue in the deck, you've got yourself some even faster offense. The Barbarian is even good against Bridge decks due to the smallness of it. Just something to think about.

quote:

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Originally posted by iakae:
I only disagree with one thing. If you're not playing Fires at the moment, then you're probably playing something with Blue in it (or something with Terminate in it, but that's another rant for another day). With this in mind, I would even consider running the Barbarians maindeck. If worst comes to worst and you're not sitting down against a player with Blue in the deck, you've got yourself some even faster offense. The Barbarian is even good against Bridge decks due to the smallness of it. Just something to think about.

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I agree. The Barbarian is also very good in main deck - I hadn't even thought about the amount of decks this little creature is very good against.

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instead of the 3 fire ices, consider using simoons instead they kill off not just 2 of their elves/brds, but all of em

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