Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc
From: awerner@netcom.com (Alex Werner)
Subject: Sideboarding
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 19:57:34 GMT

There's been a big thread going on about whether sideboards are
a good idea. My crappy newsreading program makes it very difficult 
to respond to posts and quote them, so I'm just writing my opinion here.

One of the most important concepts in Magic is Card Count. If you cast
a creature and I terror it, neither of us have really lost anything, because
we've both spent a card. And so on. I'm sure we all understand that basic
concept. 

So, let's say I have a deck which is built without sideboarding, and has
some cards in it that might or might not be useful against other decks. So
my deck is a prison-style deck with one COP: Red, one Karma, 3 
Plows and 3 Wraths. Now let's say I'm matched up against a turbo stasis
deck. It has no creature defense, no COP: Red, nothing but countermagic
and parts of the stasis lock. If the game lasts 10 or 15 turns, I'll most likely
draw 2 or 3 of my 8 dead cards. If the decks are relatively evenly matched
to begin with, 2 or 3 card card advantage for my opponent means I lose.

Therefore, I don't play a prison style deck with various sideboard cards
tossed in. In fact, I don't play any deck at all which depends on specifically
creature-defense cards to deal with my opponent's creatures. So I end up either
(a) Playing a fast lock deck which doesn't care if my opponent has creatures
(b) Playing heavy discard or land destruction with burn, because burn is
always useful against your opponent if nothing else
(c) Playing a fast kill deck with no defense at all (weenie or BFC)

I challenge anyone to come up with a deck which is a flexible control-oriented
deck of some sort which can consistently beat all of those deck types, or even
do well against more than maybe 2 of them. Therefore the best strategy for
a sideboardless tournament would be to figure out which of those fast kill/lock
strategies is going to be most used, and then play a different one so that no one
will be sideboarded against you.

And one other thing... some people have made the claim "if your deck is good,
you won't lose just because you drew one useless card." That's a crazy claim. Sure
if your deck is good and your opponent's deck sucks, that won't be enough to make
you lose, but if your opponent's deck is also good, and your opponent is also good,
then (presumably), you have about a 50% chance of winning, normally. Drawing
one fewer useful card will markedly decrease your chances of winning. There's a 
real difference there, and it's enough that in a sideboardless environment, good
players will almost never play with even really good cards like Wrath or Plow or
COP: Red because of the risk that they will be useful.

(So then you point out that Scott Johns played 4 tactics and 4 sand golems standard
in 1.5. So? Those cards are (a) not useless but just suboptimal if played against someone
not playing discard, and (b) he could sideboard them out if necessary, and (c) the 1.5
metagame is _very very very very_ strong in one direction right now. Sure, if 90% of
people are playing burn in a sideboardless environment, playing COP: Red standard
makes sense. But what if 30% are playing burn, 30% are playing T-Stasis and 30% are
playing white weenie? I promise that if you load up your deck with cop:red and 
enough enchantment defense to take out t-stasis and enough board sweepers to handle
white weenie, you'll end up getting your ass kicked by all of them (except possibly
the burn guy depending on his metagame choices). It's like rock paper scissors but even 
more so.)