20 cards sideboard, not a bad idea?

[John Cox]

That wouldn't change a whole lot, every deck would have -4 worst cards and +4 burning wishes so the total deck space would be about the same.
('60-4 =56' '56+20 = 76' decks are currently 75, '60+15')

[Nessaja]

Just so I get this straight

Lets assume we're playing Merfolk now.

You prepare for a metagame and somehow managed to get positive matchups against Reanimator, Dredge, TES, ANT, TA, Tempo Thresh, Stoneblade, Goblins, Combo Elves and Zoo. A perfect metagame call when you look at the numbers.

The first round you play against Enchantress.
The second round you lose against WelderStax.

Is this a lack of "skill" that you lost against the above decks? I'm really quite curious if that is the opinion. Losing is part of the game. Even with a 60% matchup you can lose a game, that's not the issue. The issue is that in a large tournament you can make a perfect metagame call and lose the first two rounds to random you can't possibly prepare for in 75 cards.

I read that everyone is saying "transformational sideboards would rule". Fact of the matter is, you don't know that and I don't know that. I personally strongly doubt that 5 cards suddenly reach the threshold for that. But there's no point in argueing about it because we both don't know.

So perhaps, instead, discuss if the above is indeed acceptable.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Just so I get this straight

Lets assume we're playing Merfolk now.

You prepare for a metagame and somehow managed to get positive matchups against Reanimator, Dredge, TES, ANT, TA, Tempo Thresh, Stoneblade, Goblins, Combo Elves and Zoo. A perfect metagame call when you look at the numbers.

The first round you play against Enchantress.
The second round you lose against WelderStax.

Is this a lack of "skill" that you lost against the above decks? I'm really quite curious if that is the opinion. Losing is part of the game. Even with a 60% matchup you can lose a game, that's not the issue. The issue is that in a large tournament you can make a perfect metagame call and lose the first two rounds to random you can't possibly prepare for in 75 cards.

I read that everyone is saying "transformational sideboards would rule". Fact of the matter is, you don't know that and I don't know that. I personally strongly doubt that 5 cards suddenly reach the threshold for that. But there's no point in argueing about it because we both don't know.

So perhaps, instead, discuss if the above is indeed acceptable.

The above is perfectly acceptable. Part of the beauty of Legacy is that you can bring a rogue deck and crush people who didn't prepare for you. I love nothing more than bringing Loam or Stax or *insert random combo deck here* and smashing all the people who smugly thought they were prepared for everything. It warms my heart to see a deck like Enchantress or Aluren tearing up unprepared players at a SCG open (those aren't real decks right? That means I don't have to worry about them?).

[Nessaja]

The above is perfectly acceptable. Part of the beauty of Legacy is that you can bring a rogue deck and crush people who didn't prepare for you.

Then this is where we disagree.

In my above example it was statistically the right thing to prepare for 10 decks and not those 2 decks (even when you expected them). If you had prepared for those two decks you'd be making the wrong meta call statistically.

It's fine when you catch decks offguard because they didn't expect you. It's not fine when the sideboard is restrictive in the choices you can make for the decks you do expect. Why? Because it has nothing to do with skill or making the right/wrong meta call.

Your assumption that the decks aren't prepared for because "they aren't real decks" is false, they aren't prepared for because the decks aren't statistically realistic to prepare for in your sideboard.

[Richard Cheese]

There simply isn't a single deck with positive numbers against the dozens of viable Legacy decks you might see at a major event, and that's the way it should be. This is how Legacy teaches us that sometimes you're going to lose, no matter how well prepared you are. That's called humility, and it's a pretty important lesson.

[Mr. Safety]

This isn't chess. Deck choice and deck construction are fundamentals of the game. There is a reason you see the same names in the top 8-16 of a lot of tournaments. They've figured out how to manage the risk:gain ratio with their deck and sideboard choices. Then you roll the dice and try to play your best without making a lot of errors. That's magic.

[joemauer]

The twenty card sideboard would push most 1.5 & 2 tier decks out of the metagame. I like fringe decks being playable.

Outside of that, Mtg has rules like any game, when you change the rules you change the game. A format with unlimited sideboard/more sideboard space might be fun. Changing the sideboard space in any format would be about as experimental as project Modern format.

[Draener]

Oh yeah, because rock/paper/scissors/lizard/Spock is the game we'd all rather secretly be playing.

This isn't chess. Deck choice and deck construction are fundamentals of the game. There is a reason you see the same names in the top 8-16 of a lot of tournaments. They've figured out how to manage the risk:gain ratio with their deck and sideboard choices. Then you roll the dice and try to play your best without making a lot of errors. That's magic.

I think a lot of people actually want the game to be Rock, Paper, Scissors. I constantly see statements like 'Aggro should not be able to beat combo'. If aggro can't beat combo, then they better make sure they beat control. And if aggro beats control, they better make sure they beat combo.

This seems a lot like rock-paper-scissors to me.

Also, if you're deck folds to a few pieces of hate out of the sideboard and is only viable if people don't have any hate, it's not really viable anyways.

[Morningstar]

The richness and fun of the Legacy format is partially due to the fact that in addition to a lot of mainstream decks there are also a lot of fringe decks (such as Stax, Aluren, Enchantress, etc) that once in a while get a chance to shine partially because people can't afford to sideboard against them.

Seeing as one of your key reasons for increasing sideboard size is to allow mainstream decks to sideboard against fringe decks, there are only two possible outcomes. The most likely is that this makes the fringe decks completely unviable, and thus decrease format diversity to a point where only mainstream decks exist. The least likely is that said fringe decks can also take advantage of the increased sideboard space and still predate on the metagame, which would invalidate the reason for increasing sideboard space in the first place.

Likewise, if you want aggro decks to have more sideboard against combo, this is likely to make combo decks unviable, as they have a hard time fighting against disruption. Linear decks such as Dredge would likely cease to exist completely.
And again, if this turned out not to be the case, and combo decks could fight through the disruption with the increased sideboard, then there is no point in increasing sideboard space in the first place.


So, essentially, what you're proposing either has no effect on the metagame at all, which I think unlikely but in any case makes the change pointless, or has the effect you want and breaks the rock-paper-scissors balance, making combo unviable and killing off any chance of success for fringe decks. The latter would bring us essentially to where we were when Mental Misstep was legal, and most people were unhappy then.

[Admiral_Arzar]

Your assumption that the decks aren't prepared for because "they aren't real decks" is false, they aren't prepared for because the decks aren't statistically realistic to prepare for in your sideboard.

That was not an assumption. I was sarcastically mocking players who think that way, and end up losing to random decks as a result.

[TsumiBand]

I think a lot of people actually want the game to be Rock, Paper, Scissors. I constantly see statements like 'Aggro should not be able to beat combo'. If aggro can't beat combo, then they better make sure they beat control. And if aggro beats control, they better make sure they beat combo.

This seems a lot like rock-paper-scissors to me.

Also, if you're deck folds to a few pieces of hate out of the sideboard and is only viable if people don't have any hate, it's not really viable anyways.

I may have confused my metaphor a little bit. I guess I don't see how, if 20 cards enables more deck to just completely change after the sideboard, that anyone's sideboard is supposed to be reliably effective against anything.

This might be too much theorycrafting, but humor me a second. Take a deck like Spring Tide. I'm sure it's bad, but whatever. It's not like it doesn't play fetchlands, so add like 2 - 4 Tundras and just never search them up. The deck can already play a modicum of creatures like Cloud of Fairies and in certain circles Snapcaster Mage; imagine a 20-card sideboard world where you can keep a modest Wish board and the rest of the cards can just turn it into UW Aggro Control Jank - SFM + 3 good equips, Daze, some other decent beaters and you still have a robust Wish board after you side out your Tides and maybe the weird draw spells like Meditate and Ideas Unbound. I think the fact that your opponent's sideboarding strategy is now contingent on guessing whether or not you decided to side out your combo in favor of your beatdown strategy not only makes the Tide deck's secondary plan much better than it should be, but also makes the opponent's act of sideboarding way stupider. It's not even a question of rock/paper/scissors anymore, now it's just a weird shell game. What's your tech, when the player across from you can viably change gears that hard?

[Comrade]

I'm not a huge fan of the OP, but I can kind of see where he is coming from on this. I used to play legacy in a small town, and lived in an even smaller town an hour away. It took over an hour of driving, each way, to get the the tournaments. Which, were usually 3 rounds and then a cut to the top 8. More often than not, either the top 8 or the top 4 would always just split the prize pool. So if you were lucky, you got to play 4 rounds of magic that night, instead of just 3 rounds.

The turnout was always like 50% revolving regulars and 50% revolving randoms. There was not a huge legacy crowd to begin with, so a lot of the regulars had outdated decks or half-assed decks. The randoms, well, they had all types of shit. Since it was only a $5 entry fee, people would play anything just to have something to do on a Saturday night.

So as much as I'm for diversity in legacy, it was total shit having to play against the randoms and their jank ass decks the majority of the time. I'd show up with a tier one Counter/Top deck, and get paired against some dude playing a standard Vampires deck with some added Dark Rituals just to make it a legacy deck. Or I'd bring Canadian Thresh and get paired against some elf pile with Vigor in it. So it became that I could either sideboard for the shitty decks in the first 3 sounds, or sideboard for the top 8, but not effectively for both.

The solution for this became to just run Stax every week. The tons of jank creature decks from the bad players never had any answers and I could always get into the top 8. Plus it kind of shit on combo too, which was good. The problem with the top 8 then became that they had tier one decks and I was playing tier two. So unable to always lock them out fast enough, more often than not, the games would always go to time. And that fucked up my placement rating.

In retrospect, it would have been nice to have a 20 card sideboard. I could have had 10 for legacy and 10 for jank. I can totally see where having that much board room could either be a bad or a good thing. Everyone's chief complaint here seems to be about transformational sideboards. I'm kind of ambivalent about them.

They way is see it, is that it would change every game into a game one. As in game one, you sit down with your opponent and neither of you knows what the other is playing. You play a more strategic game until you can figure out what's safe. Games two and three, you know what each other is up to and what to expect already. Either from their deck or what those decks usually board in against yours.

So while it's a huge stretch to see a storm deck turn into a Canadian Thresh deck, it would at least make the games interesting. For as much as they could completely swap their deck out to something new and different, at the same time you could too. With each other's decks being able to transform into something new and back again, all in three rounds, you would never know what to expect and this could keep the game fresh.

However, in doing so, this would be a total evolution in the way people play magic, and in turn really change how the whole game itself is played. It would become even more interesting if you could start each round with your deck containing any combination of the 80 cards to begin with. Imagine if you started off with a Blue Zoo deck in the first round, but felt more like playing New Horzions or No Rug by the second. And while I doubt this will ever happen, at least it's an interesting idea to think about.

[bruizar]

I think that 80% of the players under-test their sideboarded games as it is. First, lets get people to understand their 15 card sideboards. Then, when they do, we'll see.

[wcm8]

60 card decks and 15 card sideboards are an arbitrary convention. So is the 4-of-a-card limit. If the 4-limit is based on the convention of poker cards (4 suits), then wouldn't it have made sense for decks to be made of 52 cards? I wonder what sort of impact this would have on deck evolution and the metagame.

Decks would be much more consistent -- you'd have roughly 50% chance of opening with a card that's played as a 4-of, instead of just 40%. Filter/cantrip cards would be somewhat more powerful, further solidifying blue's dominance. You could argue that decks would become more homogenous with the smaller 'wiggle room', but I wonder if actually some decks would be more viable due to an increase in consistency. Maybe a deck like Legacy MUD would be more playable since it'd be much more likely to open with Metalworker / Trinisphere or whatever. Combo would be stronger, but other decks would also be more likely to open with hate cards for it. Leyline of the Void/Sanctity would be much, much more playable as sideboard answers to problem strategies.

Just something to consider.

FWIW I think if anything, they should print more cards along the lines of Vindicate, Oblivion Ring, Maelstrom Pulse, etc... Cards that are good enough to justify running maindeck, but can answer a variety of threats. Part of the reason a card like Jace TMS was such a problem for Standard at the time was because there weren't any/many good answer cards.

[from Cairo]

My vote would definitely be against 20 card sideboards.

The concept of a sideboard to begin with allows you to mitigate your worst match ups, thus safeguarding your deck against the randomness of the format. Part of the game is deck design against an expected field, expanding sideboards cuts into that aspect of the game rather than amplifying it.

[Comrade]

60 card decks and 15 card sideboards are an arbitrary convention. So is the 4-of-a-card limit. If the 4-limit is based on the convention of poker cards (4 suits), then wouldn't it have made sense for decks to be made of 52 cards? I wonder what sort of impact this would have on deck evolution and the metagame.

Just something to consider.

That's the kind of speculation this forum needs more of. Scenarios like that are at least fun to think about, as opposed to guessing which power card of the week might get banned next. In some alternate reality, there are 52 card magic decks.

[Kich867]

My vote would definitely be against 20 card sideboards.

The concept of a sideboard to begin with allows you to mitigate your worst match ups, thus safeguarding your deck against the randomness of the format. Part of the game is deck design against an expected field, expanding sideboards cuts into that aspect of the game rather than amplifying it.

This might be a topic for another thread but, in general, this idea is something I've always had trouble wrapping my head around. How does one design against an expected field? I've read threads of people saying, "Well I expected a lot of <insert deck type> to be there!" and I never really got why they would say something like that. What tells you that's what's going on?

I'm assuming part of it could be about the recent bans, or perceived power levels of decks given new set releases, which I guess makes sense, but of the threads I've read the people saying that have almost unanimously been between fairly and heinously incorrect about their expectations.

[Tammit67]

This might be a topic for another thread but, in general, this idea is something I've always had trouble wrapping my head around. How does one design against an expected field? I've read threads of people saying, "Well I expected a lot of <insert deck type> to be there!" and I never really got why they would say something like that. What tells you that's what's going on?

I'm assuming part of it could be about the recent bans, or perceived power levels of decks given new set releases, which I guess makes sense, but of the threads I've read the people saying that have almost unanimously been between fairly and heinously incorrect about their expectations.

If you are going to a large event in the US, expect to face what did well in the last SCG event/what beats what did well in the last SCG event. Otherwise (places like vestal) people play what they have tested/experienced to be good and show up with the latest version of what they played last month, market trends not withstanding.

For instance, people flocked to combo two weeks ago, then people fought back with a lot of misstep era decks that were updated the next week. My meta always has merfolk and zoo regardless of placings, so as long as I can deal with them and still beat the deck de jour I feel prepared.

[Namida]

Honestly, I think a 20 card sideboard isn't a good idea because the logic provided for the possible benefit of doing it appears to be that the action would be righting some sort of wrong perpetrated against metagamers; basically, I think it's nothing but whining that one is somehow entitled to something for attempting to read trends enough to think they can prepare a deck that will be strong for any certain event, and as such it is somehow not fair when your deck is soundly defeated by a rogue deck that is possible given that Legacy is a format where 15000+ fucking cards are legal.

It's not a bad idea, but I'm not seeing a proper justification for doing it, either.

[Draener]

Well, let's be clear here. I'm pretty sure that none of us actually think that 20 card sideboards are actually going to happen. It's not. What we are discussing here is the theoretical impact of creating such a scenario, and whether or not that would create a better game.

Obviously, the subject matter is quite subjective and mostly useless. But this is a forum for a game, so its not 'Serious Business' all the time. If you don't want to read the thread, don't.

In other news, I really can't see a swap making transformational sideboards that much more viable. The real problem isn't that you can't swap between two decks with 20 cards, but rather that the two decks would still be very similar and likely lose to the same decks. Sure, combo decks might sidestep some hate, but then they might lose to aggro with a bunch of hate. I suppose I'm just a little bit skeptical that 5 cards is the magic number that turns the transform strategy from mediocre at best into the end-all-be-all.