TheAnnihilator wrote: ↑4 years ago
Amalek0 wrote: ↑4 years ago
TheAnnihilator Crib from the old MTGSalv primer. Most of the advice is still valid because it doesn't focus on specific cards, but rather on coordinated and cohesive gameplans.
The problem with doing anything else is that it doesn't address the two components everyone who wants to play this archetype NEEDS to learn:
How to address sideboarding when your meta demands preparation for different types of decks than the SCG/GP Meta, and how to develop a sideboard plan for decks when the meta changes, or when you're blindsided and boarding on the fly against something new.
At some point I put up a three post string on MTGSalv on how to sideboard blind against an archetype you've never seen before, and I used as a case study my first encounter with faeries post BB unban (not quite a perfect example because I obviously played the deck when it was in standard, but at that point in time lists were quite different), so if you want to go find it, that should give you a timeframe to hunt in the old thread.
I can also attempt a re-write on that kind of process if people have a desire for that.
While I do get where you're coming from, I must respectfully disagree. Most people coming who actually sift through the primer are probably either new to Esper and possibly control in general, or they are those like you and myself who just want to improve/elaborate on what's written. I do think that it's important that they learn to adapt sideboarding techniques and such, but I also think it's very detrimental to not have a starting point (i.e. a simple sideboard guide). I can't really say that there's much benefit to going into sideboarding completely blind, personally.
For example, let's say you (without much experience) decide not to bring in good cards in a MU because you don't realize that they're actually worth bringing in. This probably the most damaging type of experience, as you may never revisit that sideboard card if you do well or you may completely flop in the matchup (and probably many others) and decide to drop the deck entirely. This can be minimized with a guide, and then the exact functions of each sideboard card should become apparent through gameplay. One thing that I've personally always struggled with is figuring which cards to take out of the main when sideboarding, and I would be willing to bet that many early losses come from leaving in clunky cards post-board without realizing it. That's why I think I'd rather include some specifics.
I understand your point.
That being said, your counter-argument actually highlights the main argument against simple card-swap guides: "you flop a matchup because you don't realize which cards are worth bringing in" also leads directly to "you flop a match because you brought in cards that your guide listed and they sat dead in your hand as you drew multiple sideboard cards and just died". Your argument is common in cases where you have questionable decisions to not sideboard cards (maybe a player doesn't realize how good stony silence is against mono green tron?), my argument highlights matchups where sideboarding plans are a response to specific opposing sideboard plans (lots of people used to cut all their sweepers in the UW mirror until mentor was played; someone who looks at a guide now will keep in a verdict or two. If UW switches back to a different SB configuration, verdicts are going to look dumb again.)
The only solution to minimizing both problems is if you have a very up-to-date sideboard guide. This is the key complaint of pretty much every writer on SCG, TCG, Hipsters... etc. As soon as they post a sideboard guide for a matchup, that sideboard guide is already obsolete. The 75 they played last week is not the 75 they played this week, and the way their opponents sideboard against them next week will be different from this week. Why? Because magic players change in response to what wins events. If an author puts up a decklist and a sideboard guide, it's usually because they either won, or they're incredibly influential as a professional player. Ergo, as soon as they put it up, the conditions under which it was a correct guide have already begun to shift.
There are only three cases where this isn't true:
1) The format has a stable "best deck" *and* a stable "best configuration". These formats have decks like UW eldrazi, Temur energy, and Best of One Simic Nexus.
2) The deck is specifically engineered with clear weaknesses and not capable of making substantial shifts (Amulet titan). You didn't have better choices for configuration or sideboarding, your deck just either became worse as a selection in the format because they're all going to hate on it, or nothing changes because your deck isn't powerful enough to be oppressive, prevalent enough to be worth hating, or fast enough to crowd out other archetypes.
3) Your format is so broad that no single archetype has a meaningful metagame percentage, and matchup balances in the aggregate tend to hinge on player decision-making more than on specific configuration. This is legacy to a T, but has also included some block constructed formats where three or four different flavors of midrange deck were comparable in powerlevel and no other macro-archetype had any distinguishing advantage, and also certain standard environments where the majority of decks played 4+ colors (KTK block) or were tribal archetypes (Lorowyn standard, before the brutal faeries were printed).
I don't think modern is ever going to fit in one of those cases for an extended period of time, so you end up in either the position of updating the primer every 2-3 weeks, or you circle all the way around to teaching people to fish. I'm not saying a concrete example or two is bad (it's probably a great thing to do), but if anything I'd actually grab a historical esper list from 2016 or earlier and demonstrate sideboarding against other major archetypes instead, bringing the specific back around to the conceptual.
Otherwise, you're going to end up with two different UW players on consecutive weeks with like, 70/75 identical cards, radically different sideboard plans and opinions about the whirza matchup, and a bunch of sheeple wanting to know "who's right" and all of the old guard going "both of them, but I prefer X".
Philip Schonegger? at one point posted an article on one of the EU magic sites after a GP. He and his teammate both played in a legacy GP, both made top 32, played identical 75's, and had opposite sideboard plans against
abrupt decay wielding decks. Literally, like 25% of the format at that point played abrupt decay. Their identical 75's had like a difference of 8-10 cards in post-board configuration against most of the format. They did well and played 2 of the same opponents and had the same results in those matchups. The difference was "I think it's better to just make abrupt decay have no targets" vs "I just want to overload their targets for abrupt decay". Clearly neither opinion was right or wrong, and clearly both were incredibly skilled and performed quite well with their gameplans. They would also both agree that any *other* sideboard configuration was absolutely wrong, it should be one of those two configurations.
This is not an uncommon situation in the design of control decks, and it's something that anybody wanting to play control needs to be aware of--there are different ways to approach a matchup, and if you're more comfortable with one way over another, or you think one way is more effective than another, you can and should sideboard differently (even with an identical 75 at times).