Originally Posted by
catmint
True, through the breach makes a lot of sense in Reanimator and the mirror.
I am testing to run 2 divert instead of 4 Leylines to free up sideboard slots. The clear advantage of divert is that you can board in as a 2 of in matchups where you would never board in leyline (i.e: esperblade). Sure Leyline is just freaking awesome versus Nic Fit, Junk and BW, but the question is how much of the meta is running it and how much of a game do we have without the Leylines. And therefore shouldnt we maybe play more sideboard slots for the mirror, reanimator, Humility decks or whatever?
It sounds like you are overusing Leyline a lot if you board it in against all the matchups you listed:
-) If you board it in against any deck running targeted discard (light discard aka just 4 thoughtseize) you are doing more damage to your deck than their discard spells would likely do.
-) you should never side it in vs. burn. They can easily killl you with creatures flame rift, price of progess,... while you are weakening your deck. 2 Divert are much better in this matchup. Invest U to 2 for 1 them and buy a ton of time. Anyway: Primary focus is keep deck clean for faster goldfish and if not counter some stuff.
-) Concerning Tendrils: Yes if they don't expect Leyline and if it's not a burning wish version. I would much rather have more counterspells and no dead cards instead of the leylines.
-) Brain Freeze: high tide "drawing its deck (including cunning wish)" generating so much mana cannot deal with 1 permanent?
So, only MUs where I think its correct to use Leyline are BW, Pox, Nic Fit, Belcher, Heavy Discard BUG control, UB ANT. The question is if you want to devote 4 SB slots for this or if you fight it of with the spell pierces/flusterstorms/misdirections/FoW + Divert.