Sideboarding: Know the Meta

For some players, building a sideboard is the last things in their mind when building a deck. Somewhere along the line, you need to stop and think what the weak aspects of your deck are. If your opponent is running flyers, can you stop them? If they are using the graveyard, do you have a way to stop them from reanimating their creatures? When it comes to building a sideboard, you need to keep two things in mind; what cannot my deck do and what decks do I need to beat?

First, you want to see what your deck cannot do, and that comes with practice. If you find your deck losing to specific things, like board wipes, spot removal, or counter spells, find what is best to alleviate that. I usually dedicate six slots of my sideboard to this. Next, you need to ask around or check out for yourself what the meta is like, either locally or on a larger scale if you’re trying to play at the competitive level. If you do not have an idea, the best thing to do is a three way split for each archetype. Three early game cards to stop agro, this can either be in the form of spot removal, cheap board wipes like sweepers, or life gain. Three mid game cards to counteract a midrange deck, this can be in the form of more generic removal or exile. Then three cards to counteract combo or control, mostly through graveyard exile or by using protection spells.

At the current time, main cards you can expect to see in a side board for aggro, dependant on color, are:
-Feeling of Dread
-Centaur Healer
-Blind Obedience
-Fog
-Tragic Slip
-Unsummon
-Pillar of Flame

Cards used against midrange are:
-Zealous Conscripts
-Vampire Nighthawk
-Abrupt Decay
-Sever the Bloodline
-Rhox Faithmender

Cards used against control and combo are:
-Deathrite Shaman
-Grafdigger’s Cage
-Rest in Peace
-Skullcrack
-Ground Seal
-Slaughter Games
-Tormod’s Crypt
("TCGPlayer," 2013)

Dillon Baca
mtgcompetitivemeta@gmail.com
Richardson, TX 75007.

Citations
SET. (n.d.). Magic The Gathering Strategy, News, Decks, Price Guide and an Online Card Store. TCGPlayer. Retrieved from http://magic.tcgplayer.com/