[Article] Boarding Out Force of Will?

[frogboy]

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/21058_Ideas_Unbound_Boarding_out_Force_of_Will.html

I wanted to contribute to the thread about boarding out Force of Will beyond pithy one-liners, but proper responses ended up morphing into article length. Enjoy!

[SpikeyMikey]

*golf clap*

Well done sir. Short(ish) but sweet and very poignant. People have a tendency to view certain cards as sacrosanct and don't take other factors into account when rating card power. As you pointed out there are decks that need Force; CB simply cannot let Vial resolve, but many decks keep it in simply because FoW is known to be the backbone of the format and they can't see where sometimes it's a weak play.

[Pastorofmuppets]

I thought every Merfolk player dropped Force against Zoo when on the play.

[DragoFireheart]

Something to consider that having force for games 2 and 3 can be a way to stop aggro decks nasty sideboard cards like Choke.

[GGoober]

Thanks for the article, sometimes you need someone to write an article about opinions since forum-mashing gets nowhere without consolidated thoughts.

Boarding out FoW against aggro decks like Zoo isn't a black and white thing. It really has to depend what variant of aggro they are running, and what are the capabilities of your deck (in terms of removal/permission etc). People sometimes make their comments based solely on their opinions on their deck e.g. a Countertop or Dreadstill player with limited removal starts claiming that FoW can never be boarded out because it's the spell that does something that nothing else does in Legacy, i.e. protecting bombs or answering bombs. But these people don't step out and see that variants of such control decks with perhaps a more directed removal suite, can afford to not run FoW and still be fine. Against an aggro deck like Zoo where you cannot pinpoint bomby cards/strategy (e.g. Natural Order, Countertop), FoW does not translate impressively on paper.

And once again, I rarely board out FoW (about 5-10%of all games I play), but that doesn't mean that in the right situation, boarding out FoW is a wrong call.

[Kuma]

Pretty much sums up how I feel about the situation. Nice job.

[voltron00x]

Great article, Max, really enjoyed it.

[Rico Suave]

Well written article. It's nice to see material on a subject not often discussed.

[Shawon]

Great article. I think it's neat to use forum discussions to inspire an article as opposed to the usual tournament article, set expansion, brainstorming in general.

The assumption in this article is that when you board out FoWs you board them all out, but are there any matchups where would you ever consider reducing any number of FoWs but still running them post-board? Where you would or not, I can tell that you wanted to keep the article just focused on keeping 4 FoWs or 0, but I was just curious if you ever considered keeping a reduced count of FoWs.

[frogboy]

Great article. I think it's neat to use forum discussions to inspire an article as opposed to the usual tournament article, set expansion, brainstorming in general.

The assumption in this article is that when you board out FoWs you board them all out, but are there any matchups where would you ever consider reducing any number of FoWs but still running them post-board? Where you would or not, I can tell that you wanted to keep the article just focused on keeping 4 FoWs or 0, but I was just curious if you ever considered keeping a reduced count of FoWs.

I sometimes leave like two in, usually because I don't have enough sideboard slots to have everything I want against every deck and need to cut some corners. Two Forces and two or three Counterspells can usually handle two Elspeths or whatever your opponent is trying to do to go bigger.

[Michael Keller]

I sometimes leave like two in, usually because I don't have enough sideboard slots to have everything I want against every deck and need to cut some corners. Two Forces and two or three Counterspells can usually handle two Elspeths or whatever your opponent is trying to do to go bigger.

While it certainly isn't the ideal approach for most people, Force of Will can still be hard-cast as a rock-solid counter. Cutting back is certainly not a bad thing if you're experienced and familiar with your (boarding) strategy. I've seen far too many people stick to Force because, well, it's just Force, only to subsequently lose a round after the fact.