I think sideboarding is the main skill that separates pro level players from the players stuggling to make it. This is most apparent at comments on articles and mentions on Twitter from players asking the pros for sideboarding guides. As the saying goes, give a man a SB guide and he'll have some success with that deck, but teach a man how to sideboard and he'll have success with all decks in the future.
Sideboarding and Preparation
With my limited time to actually play games these days, developing a coherent sideboard and sideboarding plan is one of the best ways to prepare. You can do it in small increments and spend idle time thinking about it. My success has almost always come when I've been very well prepared in my sideboard strategy. In this way, I'm much more Caruana than Carlsen (perhaps the delusion that I could do what Fabiano does but could never do what Magnus does made me root for the Norwegian).
One tool to do this is something called the Elephant Method (I have no idea where this originated or why it's called this.) Since Modern has so many possible sideboard cards and possible matchups, this can be quite more involved that a block constructed deck. I use it to get an idea of how many cards I could realistically cut and bring in for each matchup I'm concerned about, choosing cards with multiple use cases when appropriate. The last few times I've done this in Modern I've ended up with about 90 cards that I would like to have access to. The hard part is narrowing down to the final 75.
The most important part of this process is knowing which cards are good and which cards are bad in a certain matchup. To do this I like to think of a ranked list of cards I want to have most often to cards I'd rather not see. It's easy to cut the dead cards, but a majority of the sideboard cuts won't be dead cards, just whatever is at the bottom of the list.
For example, when thinking about Bant Spirits vs UW control decks, coming up with cards you don't want starts easy. Path to Exile and / or Reflector Mage are both largely dead in the matchup. But the next cards down are somewhat harder to figure out. Working in reverse from cards we want most, you want to see Collected Company, Mausoleum Wanderer, Spell Queller, Drogskol Captain, Selfless Spirit, Rattlechains, Aether Vial and Noble Hierarch in some numbers. What you then see is that Supreme Phantom and Phantasmal Image are not that important in this particular matchup. While still being useful, they don't do much on their own and will largely be win-more type cards. If I had more cards to bring in that just removing dead cards, I would look to cut some of these.
Sideboarding in Modern
As I said before, sideboarding in Modern has way more possibilities than other formats. There are many cards that when played in the right matchup will effectively win you the game on the spot. If you can afford to play these cards, you probably should. This is one of the stregnths of Bant Spirits.
Since a deck can be thought of as 75 cards that is "pre-boarded" vs a specific matchup or archetype, what do you choose to pre-board against? Modern has so many possible opponents, so you want to play cards that have the most utility across all matchups (they are dead less often than narrower cards). An additional incentive to play the most flexible cards in the main deck comes from the nature of the way many games play out. Against most of the combo decks in the format, having the correct card is more important than having more card advantage. You can win while still drawing a dead card or two, as long as the cards that do something do it well. However in a matchup like a midrange mirror, drawing a dead card in the mid to late game will have an outsized negative effect than drawing the dead card vs combo (or control). This is why you should be mainly preboarded for matchups that will come down to attrition. Including a large number of Good Cards in your main deck is one good way to do this.
The Spirits Sideboard
Spirits is the first deck in a long time where I felt that the different maindeck configurations could have drastically different sideboards. It truly has been a whole-75 process. I think this is because so many of the cards in the maindeck are filler-type cards.
I haven't quite finalized my list, but I will be playing 3-4 Rest in Peace, 3-4 Stony Silence, and 2-3 Damping Sphere. I will also most likely have 2-4 Unified Will and probably a couple of Knight of Autumn. The exact numbers will depend on how many Path to Exile and Reflector Mage are played in the maindeck, as well as how many dead cards I perceive for the matchups I am expecting. The metagame I'm expecting will consist of KCI, Storm, Hardened Scales, Humans, Spirits, UWx control, Tron, Dredge, and BGx decks. There may be some new Phoenix decks that people will play, but the information I have makes me think the deck isn't quite good enough yet.
The Final Push
I have two days to get the deck locked down to something I'm happy with. I feel further away than I'd like to be, but I also feel like I have some good ideas I'm leaning toward that could be an advantage. I promise to write regardless of the result, at least to share my decklist.
Until then,
Ty
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