Quote Originally Posted by Rock Lee View Post
An important question when building sideboards is "why?" Too-often people want to add cards simply because they want to improve a matchup that doesn't need improving, or because they like one card in particular. In this deck that flaw is fatal, since the cardpool is enormous both in function and due to massive mana availability.

I welcome you to tell me how Devastation Tide is a good card in the current meta. I would challenge you that against decks where you would side it in over Gut Shot, it is sorely too slow, and against decks where gut shot is dead, you have solid game against with this build.
The real question that should be asked here is "When is gut shot good?"

If Gut Shot dealt 2 damage it would be MUCH better as it would have a much larger kill range. However, because it only deals 1 damage, there aren't as many creatures we can kill the deck we board it in vs. it ends up being dead quite often.

The Bad Matchups for this deck are:
Fast Combo
Jund
MUD
Loam-based decks
Merfolk Goblin Elves, Fast Aggro in general


Vs. Jund you can only kill Dark Confidant so usually it is dead, but if it can kill a Dark Confidant it's good. However you wouldn't board in a card JUST to deal with Dark Confidant.
You can't really expect to target anything vs. Fast Combo except MAYBE Xantid Swarm if you're boarding it in at all or Children of Koilos if the opponent is a Tin Fins deck and is stupid.
Obviously the creatures in MUD are too big to Gut Shot
You can kill Dark Confidant vs. Loam Based decks but that's about it.
VS. Merfolk you can only kill cursecatcher, vs. Goblins you can kill Goblin Lackey so that's decent, vs. Elves you have A LOT of targets including Heritage Druid, Quirion Ranger, Wirewood Symbiote, Elvish Visionary, etc.. You MIGHT board it in to kill Goblin Lackey and you would DEFINITELY board it in vs. elves.

Vs. the decks we are bad against, we can only kill Dark Confidant, Xantid Swarn, Goblin Lackey, and A LOT of elves. It seems the only matchup that you would really board it in vs. is Elves to help the matchup tremendously but vs. other decks it just isn't very useful.

Of course there are a lot of other creatures we could kill such as delver of secrets or phyrexian revoker but those are in decks that don't need improvement in matchups. Unless Gut Shot is in the sideboard specifically to improve the Elves matchup I'm failing to see the big idea in it.