I'm going to try to make this as clear and concise as I can because for me, this is a complex subject that has always baffled me and I think one of the main reasons I'm not a better Magic player.
We all know that every deck in Legacy, no matter how good it is, has weaknesses. For example, Lands has a tough matchup versus Storm. Because of this, Lands either ignores trying to shore up sideboards to make this matchup more winnable or goes all out to combat it like some decks do if something like Dredge is rampant in their meta and they know that sideboarding as much graveyard hate as possible into their boards is the right call.
And yes, some of these interactions (RIP, Leyline of the Void, Grafdigger's Cage vs Dredge) are so obvious that you'd have to be blind to miss them.
But then some interactions are not so obvious. A particular deck may not have any glaring weaknesses like Dredge or any graveyard based deck. A deck like DnT is a good example of a deck that, IMO, is resistant to a lot hate.
So here is my question. And again, this all depends on the deck you're playing.
What kind of thought process do you go through in order to try to get an advantage against a certain deck, in order to choose sideboard or even main board cards to play? What kind of research do you do? Is a lot of it simply trial and error? Or do you just look at the lists that are being played and copy them?
The reason I don't like the latter is because unless you're going to a large event where you pretty much know what you're going to run into, a local meta could be very unpredictable. From week to week I never know what I'm going to actually be facing. For example, this past week I was playing Grixis Tempo and ran into two burn decks which turned out to be very difficult matchups. It was an uphill battle all the way. And I'm trying to think about how I can maybe make that matchup a little better post board if burn does in fact start to dominate our meta.
Where do you even begin? It's not like Grixis has access to an obvious hoser like Leyline of Sanctity or Kor Firewalker. I guess knowing every Magic card ever printed helps, but unfortunately I don't so research would be painful at best and darned near impossible at worst. Imagine trying to go to Gatherer and do a search for every black, blue and red card ever printed.
So what do you do? Does this simply come from experience and there is no substitute for it? Are there places where you can go to get deck tech tips for certain matchups? Is there something like a cross reference list printed somewhere that shows every deck in Legacy and how it matches up against every other deck (a matrix) and how to sideboard against that deck? I can imagine that such a project, given how many decks there are in Legacy, would be mind boggling at best.
I marvel when I read something like "Card X is a great way to fight against Card Y because of..." and then there is this detailed explanation to follow. And no, I'm not talking about the obvious ones like protection from a color or indestructible or something like that. I'm talking about an interaction or ability that the average person would never think of. Certainly not me.
I would love to have the really great Magic minds weigh in on this subject and maybe offer some insight into how to become better at preparing for certain decks you expect to run into.
There are two parts to your question. The first part I will re-state as "How can I look at a deck and determine what its weaknesses are, or how to fight against it?" The second part is "How, once I know what a deck's weaknesses are, do I develop an appropriate sideboard strategy and find cards to support it?"
Part one is more art than science, as per the art of war. However, if I'm confronted with a legacy decklist that I've never seen before and isn't a clear variant of something I'm familiar with (which is EXTREMELY RARE at this point), the first question I (used to) ask myself is this: "On what axis of the game is this deck trying to beat its opponent?" For decks like Belcher and Oops all Spells, the answer is raw speed. With dredge, it's 100% non-interactivity. Miracles is trying to win with an overpowering combination of card quality and virtual card advantage (from top and counterbalance). Delver is trying to win on tempo. And so on and so forth. Learning to recognize what axis a deck is trying to win on is a function of reading all the cards in a decklist, understanding what they do, and having a solid understanding of the basic theory behind high level magic. There's more than a hundred articles from the past that are excellent, and that everyone should read. Anything on a theory basis from Zvi Mowshowitz is a must-read for example.
Once you have identified the axis or axes that a particular deck is trying to win on (where do they get their fundamental advantage, or why would I play this deck in the first place?), you understand the central strategy that they are trying to accomplish. Once you've done that, you have three options. In general, they are either to Go Big, Go Under, or Go Hard.
"Going Big" is not a reference to playing fatties, but rather compete in a backbreakingly stronger way on one or more of the axes that the target deck plays on. An example is the delver shells--they all seek to tempo out their opponents by deploying and protecting an early threat, using countermagic and card quality to protect the queen long enough to secure a win. Take Jund as an opposing deck. The Jund player has an excellent delver matchup because all of the repeatable removal quashes the card selection of delver in that the jund player is generating raw card advantage, and they back it up by playing strictly better creatures like tarmogoyf, and they have the ability to grab a reasonably wasteland-proof mana base to prevent being locked in the early game tempo stages. The Jund deck has overwhelmingly crushed the card quality axis by playing raw card advantage, coupled with strictly stronger threats that gum up the ground and grind out the game. A better illustration is perhaps the counter-example. Take Dredge. Dredge fights on one completely noninteractive axis, doing its own game plan. Nobody tries to "out dredge" a dredge deck. "Going Big" against dredge is just not a thing. DREDGE DECKS don't try to "go big" against other dredge decks, they pack their own leylines and surgical extractions.
The next option is to "Go Under". This means being faster and/or ignoring whatever your opponents do. Storm decks do this as a matter of course, as do Belcher and Oops All Spells. In general, this doesn't necessarily mean ignoring your opponent, it means shoring up your own gameplan to execute faster than theirs even in the light of interaction. Most strategies/weaknesses to control decks involve other decks going under, essentially the opposite problem of the tempo decks.
The last option is what I call "Going Hard". This is in reference to classic prison, where you hardlock your opponent. This means decks have a weakness to having their entire strategy fold. Examples would be Belcher (folds to force of will pretty hard), Dredge (leyline of the void/rest in peace/Grafdigger's Cage anyone?), and Burn (leyline of sanctity is a card). Decks that are weak to other decks "going over" typically are fairly non-interactive and fold to individual card choices, not overall strategies.
The first step to determining how to sideboard against a targeted deck is to decide which "answer" best fits the gameplan of what you're playing. If your deck generally does better trying to go under something else (you're a fast combo deck), you should approach your targeted matchup with an eye to cards that disrupt what they do for a minimal tempo investment. If your deck generally wants to trump whatever someone else is doing (say you're jund and want to drop the most grindy, efficient threats, or are Shardless BUG and want to out-draw your opponents and crush them with card advantage), then you should look for ways to trump alongside whatever axis your opponent is working under.
Essentially, this boils down to the classic issue of agro-midrange-control, where the idea is to be a little bit slower than your opponent, but not too much slower, with the goal of being slightly more powerful and able to drag the game out just a tad farther without exposing yourself to just getting run over early on. The catch with legacy is that not every deck interacts on the axis of the battlefield, and most decks can't interact on all the axes. That's why legacy has a diversity, wherein you have two stoneblade decks that all interact on the same axes and therefore have very thought intensive and skill based mirrors, and yet also have the lopsidedness of fast combo playing against tempo decks that get to sideboard into a dozen pieces of countermagic. In most matchups, you'd prefer to either try going over, if able, or going under, if that's within your strategic archetype. Truly "bad matchups" exist at the holes in this framework, where you can't necessarily do either with respect to whatever your opponent is doing. This leads to the third option of "go hard"--If you can't interact with your opponent reasonably within the confines of your strategy, then your options are to ignore it or to play cards that absolutely invalidate whatever it is they're doing.
I'll do a second post with some practical examples, but I need a snack right now. This is what I consider to be the theoretical underpinnings of constructing a sideboard strategy and executing it against a given deck.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
For the record, if you're looking for a Legacy legal U/B/R hoser for Red, I'd suggest Chill (siding out red cards yourself), or running a search for Blue cards that mention Red.
Anyways, back to your original question of Grixis Delver against Burn--Let's take a look at the burn decks and see what they're doing for starters:
Burn is a linear combo deck that choses to fight on the axis of consistency over everything else. It plays a small suite of creatures (usually goblin guide, eidolon of the great revel, and Monastery Swiftspear. On the axis of consistency, the typical shell plays 8 1-mana creatures (guide, swiftspear) and 12 1-mana burn spells (lava spike, lightning bolt, chain lightning), with the possible addition of some number of grim lavamancers over some number of guides, or even just as additional slots. This means, on average, we're looking at twenty 1 mana spells in the burn deck.
Let's compare that to Grixis Delver--You've got access to a large base of cantrips, young pyromancer, delver, Dark Confidant, Tomb Stalker, Death's Shadow, etc. You obviously can't go over them on a consistency axis as their entire deck is redundant, but you can use your high consistency to find individual pieces, so maybe going over the top is a viable option for you. As you pointed out, you don't have white so leyline of sanctity isn't necessarily the best option (although if the metagame moves to 80% burn, obviously you would just maindeck a playset of those) and kor firewalker is a definite no-go. you can't really beat their goldfish time, so your best bet is probably to go under and execute your gameplan first with moderate disruption, with the fallback option of just going hard with a playset of sideboarded leylines.
So, once we've established that we likely want to "go under" if possible. This means we still need a fast, efficient creature base that can end the game quickly, alongside disruption for relevant spells. If we start looking at options to do that, we need to establish what axes we can fight on. I've identified the following:
-life. Both decks are racing, but we can gain life to buy time
-creature quality. We have the potential to trump their creatures
-card quality. we don't have the same overall card quality as they do, but we have the ability to filter enough through our cantripping to further enable fighting on the first two axes.
Based on that, we're looking for ways to gain life that fit in the grixis shell, creatures that trump whatever the burn player has on the table, and then we get to interact on the disruption axis while they're stuck pointing burn at our face. The first thing that comes to mind for me is Jitte. This card is well-known and established as being strong in creature mirrors as it swings races with the life gain while also allowing you to trump the battlefield with your own creatures. It's not too expensive to cast in your tempo shell, and if you get to start racing with a jitte-weilding creature, you likely win.
Burn's gameplan is to chip us down as quickly as possible with creatures and follow up with spell based damage to end the game. Death's Shadow is a card that gets stronger the longer the game goes in this matchup, and it ends the game in short order if you manage to open a tempo window in which to attack back. This trumps on a strategic level as well as the creature quality axis.
our own Grim Lavamancers can do the exact same things in this matchup to them that theirs do.
Final item/thought, we have the classic red redirection spells. Likely all of them cost too much mana, but since we're fighting on a tempo axis, redirecting a fireblast back at their face could punch through to swing the race back in your favor.
Based on the analysis I just walked through, I'd suggest that you may want to look into some number of jitte as well as death's shadow in the board, and consider whether or not hydroblasts and redirection effects are warranted enough in the metagame to make them worthwhile.
Now of course, the magic step you're having trouble with here was sort of glided over here--I just randomly announce that "Jitte is a good card" and then come and drag out the johnny-build-around-me death's shadow. Where did I get these ideas? The answer is a staple list, though not the kind you may be thinking of. Every time I encounter a card I haven't seen before that seems like it has a lot of potential to trump on some kind of axis of interaction, I add it to my mental list of cards to go for. So, when I'm confronted with the "creature combat" axis, my thoughts go to True-name nemesis, Tarmogoyf, Death's Shadow, Mother of Runes, and a few others that have a history or potential to trump on that axis.
A year or two ago, stoneblade decks with stoneforge mystic, batterskull, and jitte were all the rage. Some clever people recalled that Manriki-Guisari trumps opposing equipment, and slotted it in as an easily-tutored answer in the sideboard for those matchups. I never would have come up with that card on my own. That's the beauty of the hive mind of magic players--everybody recalls different sets of "answers" for problems, and when they present their idea for an answer to a specific axis of interaction to the public at large, it becomes more widely known and accepted as part of the "list of answers for <creature combat><equipment races><countermagic mirrors>"
To break it down into simply stated steps:
1. identify what the deck you're targeting has a weakness to, both strategically (going big/going under/going hard) and on which axes (card advantage, card quality, speed, interactivity, tempo, equipment, consistency, etc).
2. Identify what strategic axis and what tactical axis you can interact on (I'm a delver deck, I can go under, and I can fight on tempo/life/card quality but not card advantage, and there are some strategies where I can go hard with rest in peace/grafdigger's cage/sulfuric vortex)
3. Identify cards in your colors that interact strongly on the identified tactical axis (lifegain and creature quality against burn) that fit inside your strategic axis (resolving a batterskull would be sweet but I can't cheat it into play, jitte is much more reasonable to find, cast, and equip; Vampire nighthawk is sweet in that it always buys me time, can just lock the game out if unanswered, and is on-color, but it costs 3 mana--death's shadow comes down on the second turn when all's said and done and interacts immediately with most of the same benefits, just not the lifegain). With these two choices--Jitte over batterskull and death's shadow over nighthawk, I would go the other way if you had a different strategic axis--In grixis control, I'd opt for the batterskull and the nighthawks as you'll likely make the land drops to support them and have the inherent ability to drag the game out until they come online.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Thank you so much. That was exactly what I was looking for. So essentially, as far as "finding" cards, look to see what other people have come up with in various matchups and possibly also go through Gatherer from time to time and see what may be there that I may have overlooked over the years?
In fact, I did this recently for my MUD deck and came up with a few artifacts that seem to be potential answers for problems that the known staples haven't addressed yet. Naturally, whether or not I use these will depend on my local meta and what I expect to run into.
Correct, a look through gatherer from time to time can be helpful, but really, the solution is to just keep up-to-date on legacy top 8's in the sense that you read them, glance quickly over the mainboard, then look carefully at the sideboards and if you don't recognize a particular sideboard card, dig into it a little bit deeper. Drop of Honey has been a significant sideboard card for some decks in the past, for example. I'm a lands pilot, so when I think of "ways to interact with utility lands" I immediately think of Tsabo's Web, wasteland, blood moon, back to basics, and pithing needle. There are other cards that interact with utility lands in various ways, but those are the ones that I've seen enough to know they are high impact in a variety of different decks/shells for the problem of dealing with utility lands, so those are my go-to's.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Well, unhelpfully, a good memory goes a long way. Being able to recall 7k of the cards off the top of your head to find odd but useful answers isn't bad.
Normally The Gatherer, used well, will reveal things within the first couple attempts/pages of searching. I often search:
-Just my colors, with a mana restriction and sorted by player rating. Sometimes removing the restriction, for instance, will help you find Pyrokinesis.
-Search for phrases that imply what you're looking for. "rather than pay" "mana cost" will help you find all of the FoW cycle and cards akin to it. This could be as simple as "Destroy damage" limited to (at least partially) Red cards and see what can get a 2-for-1 against planeswalkers or as complex as "- /- opponent NOT target" to find Orzhov Pontiff
-Searching for keywords that happen to beat something. Delve > Counterbalance. Split-Second > Counterspells. Conspire > Chalice/Counterbalance/Counterspells. For instance, Gleeful Sabotage would be grand in a stoneblade, counterbalance, Chalice/MUD kind of meta.
As mentioned above; looking within decks that share *any* of your colors can be helpful. Think (or reference) oracle wording that happens to be similar to what you think might exist.
I'm not one of the great Magic minds that you wanted to weigh in, but I really enjoy sideboarding, and there's something else that will help you have good sideboard cards against individual decks, even though it's indirect because it has to do with general sideboard construction in entirety: Grouping decks together to get versatile sideboard cards.
I'm loath to have any sideboard cards for just a deck or two. So, in terms of the thought process, it's really helpful to ruminate on any and all things that make a deck do its thing, or stop you from doing your own thing. It's often an odder grouping than something like, "Sneak & Show, Reanimator, MUD and others have huge creatures; Ensnaring Bridge is worth it", "Jund, Team America, Pox, and others will try to beat me OmniTelling with discard; Leyline of Sanctity is worth it", or even simpler combo/aggro/control type groupings.
It might be, "My Enchantress deck can struggle against fast decks with soft counters and can also struggle to slam hate cards quickly enough against fast combo decks with blue; Carpet of Flowers is worth it" or "I happen to have a hard time with decks that resolve high cost noncreatures like Miracles, Storm, Enchantress, Stax, and things like Force of Will and Treasure Cruise; Gaddock Teeg is worth it."
All of that might be obvious, but I've found that deep thought into the less obvious weakness of opposing decks and groupings can greatly help one squeeze as much into those 15 cards as possible, and also attack decks that seem impervious for whatever reason.
Although that's solid advice for building a sideboard, it's not actually the greatest advice for targeting a specific deck. I find that most often, you are correct about wanting cards that hit multiple decks or strategies from your sideboard. There are some very notable and reasonable exceptions.
Example: PV ran a Tsabo's Web in his sideboard at GP Paris. That card is an absolute house against death and taxes, but instead of running a sulfur elemental in that slot as is more typical, he chose the very narrow artifact that has applications in only three matchups--D&T, Lands, and old-school goblins. In essence, the rishadan port decks. PV made top 8 at that event. Sure, he could have had other cards that were good in other matchups besides D&T, but he made a very intentional choice to have a hard hoser for that matchup in his sideboard.
Another example--Burn often runs mindbreak trap in its SB against storm combo. Sure, they have blasts for the cantrips, straight up racing, and Eidolon of the great revel, and even Pyrostatic Pillar itself, but there's valid reasons to add the hard answer to one deck.
If you have a local legacy weekly with about a dozen people and four of them play dredge every week, you better believe everyone else should be playing 4x Leyline of the Void and a couple grafdigger's cages in their sideboards. It's worth the opportunity cost in some cases to just pack the narrow hate.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
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We all know that every deck in Legacy, no matter how good it is, has weaknesses. For example, Lands has a tough matchup versus Storm. Because of this, Lands either ignores trying to shore up sideboards to make this matchup more winnable or goes all out to combat it like some decks do if something like Dredge is rampant in their meta and they know that sideboarding as much graveyard hate as possible into their boards is the right call.
And yes, some of these interactions (RIP, Leyline of the Void, Grafdigger's Cage vs Dredge) are so obvious that you'd have to be blind to miss them.
But then some interactions are not so obvious. A particular deck may not have any glaring weaknesses like Dredge or any graveyard based deck. A deck like DnT is a good example of a deck that, IMO, is resistant to a lot hate.
So here is my question. And again, this all depends on the deck you're playing.
What kind of thought process do you go through in order to try to get an advantage against a certain deck, in order to choose sideboard or even main board cards to play? What kind of research do you do? Is a lot of it simply trial and error? Or do you just look at the lists that are being played and copy them?
The reason I don't like the latter is because unless you're going to a large event where you pretty much know what you're going to run into, a local meta could be very unpredictable. From week to week I never know what I'm going to actually be facing. For example, this past week I was playing Grixis Tempo and ran into two burn decks which turned out to be very difficult matchups. It was an uphill battle all the way. And I'm trying to think about how I can maybe make that matchup a little better post board if burn does in fact start to dominate our meta.
Where do you even begin? It's not like Grixis has access to an obvious hoser like Leyline of Sanctity or Kor Firewalker. I guess knowing every Magic card ever printed helps, but unfortunately I don't so research would be painful at best and darned near impossible at worst. Imagine trying to go to Gatherer and do a search for every black, blue and red card ever printed.
So what do you do? Does this simply come from experience and there is no substitute for it? Are there places where you can go to get deck tech tips for certain matchups? Is there something like a cross reference list printed somewhere that shows every deck in Legacy and how it matches up against every other deck (a matrix) and how to sideboard against that deck? I can imagine that such a project, given how many decks there are in Legacy, would be mind boggling at best.
I marvel when I read something like "Card X is a great way to fight against Card Y because of..." and then there is this detailed explanation to follow. And no, I'm not talking about the obvious ones like protection from a color or indestructible or something like that. I'm talking about an interaction or ability that the average person would never think of. Certainly not me.
I would love to have the really great Magic minds weigh in on this subject and maybe offer some insight into how to become better at preparing for certain decks you expect to run into.
Part one is more art than science, as per the art of war. However, if I'm confronted with a legacy decklist that I've never seen before and isn't a clear variant of something I'm familiar with (which is EXTREMELY RARE at this point), the first question I (used to) ask myself is this: "On what axis of the game is this deck trying to beat its opponent?" For decks like Belcher and Oops all Spells, the answer is raw speed. With dredge, it's 100% non-interactivity. Miracles is trying to win with an overpowering combination of card quality and virtual card advantage (from top and counterbalance). Delver is trying to win on tempo. And so on and so forth. Learning to recognize what axis a deck is trying to win on is a function of reading all the cards in a decklist, understanding what they do, and having a solid understanding of the basic theory behind high level magic. There's more than a hundred articles from the past that are excellent, and that everyone should read. Anything on a theory basis from Zvi Mowshowitz is a must-read for example.
Once you have identified the axis or axes that a particular deck is trying to win on (where do they get their fundamental advantage, or why would I play this deck in the first place?), you understand the central strategy that they are trying to accomplish. Once you've done that, you have three options. In general, they are either to Go Big, Go Under, or Go Hard.
"Going Big" is not a reference to playing fatties, but rather compete in a backbreakingly stronger way on one or more of the axes that the target deck plays on. An example is the delver shells--they all seek to tempo out their opponents by deploying and protecting an early threat, using countermagic and card quality to protect the queen long enough to secure a win. Take Jund as an opposing deck. The Jund player has an excellent delver matchup because all of the repeatable removal quashes the card selection of delver in that the jund player is generating raw card advantage, and they back it up by playing strictly better creatures like tarmogoyf, and they have the ability to grab a reasonably wasteland-proof mana base to prevent being locked in the early game tempo stages. The Jund deck has overwhelmingly crushed the card quality axis by playing raw card advantage, coupled with strictly stronger threats that gum up the ground and grind out the game. A better illustration is perhaps the counter-example. Take Dredge. Dredge fights on one completely noninteractive axis, doing its own game plan. Nobody tries to "out dredge" a dredge deck. "Going Big" against dredge is just not a thing. DREDGE DECKS don't try to "go big" against other dredge decks, they pack their own leylines and surgical extractions.
The next option is to "Go Under". This means being faster and/or ignoring whatever your opponents do. Storm decks do this as a matter of course, as do Belcher and Oops All Spells. In general, this doesn't necessarily mean ignoring your opponent, it means shoring up your own gameplan to execute faster than theirs even in the light of interaction. Most strategies/weaknesses to control decks involve other decks going under, essentially the opposite problem of the tempo decks.
The last option is what I call "Going Hard". This is in reference to classic prison, where you hardlock your opponent. This means decks have a weakness to having their entire strategy fold. Examples would be Belcher (folds to force of will pretty hard), Dredge (leyline of the void/rest in peace/Grafdigger's Cage anyone?), and Burn (leyline of sanctity is a card). Decks that are weak to other decks "going over" typically are fairly non-interactive and fold to individual card choices, not overall strategies.
The first step to determining how to sideboard against a targeted deck is to decide which "answer" best fits the gameplan of what you're playing. If your deck generally does better trying to go under something else (you're a fast combo deck), you should approach your targeted matchup with an eye to cards that disrupt what they do for a minimal tempo investment. If your deck generally wants to trump whatever someone else is doing (say you're jund and want to drop the most grindy, efficient threats, or are Shardless BUG and want to out-draw your opponents and crush them with card advantage), then you should look for ways to trump alongside whatever axis your opponent is working under.
Essentially, this boils down to the classic issue of agro-midrange-control, where the idea is to be a little bit slower than your opponent, but not too much slower, with the goal of being slightly more powerful and able to drag the game out just a tad farther without exposing yourself to just getting run over early on. The catch with legacy is that not every deck interacts on the axis of the battlefield, and most decks can't interact on all the axes. That's why legacy has a diversity, wherein you have two stoneblade decks that all interact on the same axes and therefore have very thought intensive and skill based mirrors, and yet also have the lopsidedness of fast combo playing against tempo decks that get to sideboard into a dozen pieces of countermagic. In most matchups, you'd prefer to either try going over, if able, or going under, if that's within your strategic archetype. Truly "bad matchups" exist at the holes in this framework, where you can't necessarily do either with respect to whatever your opponent is doing. This leads to the third option of "go hard"--If you can't interact with your opponent reasonably within the confines of your strategy, then your options are to ignore it or to play cards that absolutely invalidate whatever it is they're doing.
I'll do a second post with some practical examples, but I need a snack right now. This is what I consider to be the theoretical underpinnings of constructing a sideboard strategy and executing it against a given deck.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Burn is a linear combo deck that choses to fight on the axis of consistency over everything else. It plays a small suite of creatures (usually goblin guide, eidolon of the great revel, and Monastery Swiftspear. On the axis of consistency, the typical shell plays 8 1-mana creatures (guide, swiftspear) and 12 1-mana burn spells (lava spike, lightning bolt, chain lightning), with the possible addition of some number of grim lavamancers over some number of guides, or even just as additional slots. This means, on average, we're looking at twenty 1 mana spells in the burn deck.
Let's compare that to Grixis Delver--You've got access to a large base of cantrips, young pyromancer, delver, Dark Confidant, Tomb Stalker, Death's Shadow, etc. You obviously can't go over them on a consistency axis as their entire deck is redundant, but you can use your high consistency to find individual pieces, so maybe going over the top is a viable option for you. As you pointed out, you don't have white so leyline of sanctity isn't necessarily the best option (although if the metagame moves to 80% burn, obviously you would just maindeck a playset of those) and kor firewalker is a definite no-go. you can't really beat their goldfish time, so your best bet is probably to go under and execute your gameplan first with moderate disruption, with the fallback option of just going hard with a playset of sideboarded leylines.
So, once we've established that we likely want to "go under" if possible. This means we still need a fast, efficient creature base that can end the game quickly, alongside disruption for relevant spells. If we start looking at options to do that, we need to establish what axes we can fight on. I've identified the following:
-life. Both decks are racing, but we can gain life to buy time
-creature quality. We have the potential to trump their creatures
-card quality. we don't have the same overall card quality as they do, but we have the ability to filter enough through our cantripping to further enable fighting on the first two axes.
Based on that, we're looking for ways to gain life that fit in the grixis shell, creatures that trump whatever the burn player has on the table, and then we get to interact on the disruption axis while they're stuck pointing burn at our face. The first thing that comes to mind for me is Jitte. This card is well-known and established as being strong in creature mirrors as it swings races with the life gain while also allowing you to trump the battlefield with your own creatures. It's not too expensive to cast in your tempo shell, and if you get to start racing with a jitte-weilding creature, you likely win.
Burn's gameplan is to chip us down as quickly as possible with creatures and follow up with spell based damage to end the game. Death's Shadow is a card that gets stronger the longer the game goes in this matchup, and it ends the game in short order if you manage to open a tempo window in which to attack back. This trumps on a strategic level as well as the creature quality axis.
our own Grim Lavamancers can do the exact same things in this matchup to them that theirs do.
Final item/thought, we have the classic red redirection spells. Likely all of them cost too much mana, but since we're fighting on a tempo axis, redirecting a fireblast back at their face could punch through to swing the race back in your favor.
Based on the analysis I just walked through, I'd suggest that you may want to look into some number of jitte as well as death's shadow in the board, and consider whether or not hydroblasts and redirection effects are warranted enough in the metagame to make them worthwhile.
Now of course, the magic step you're having trouble with here was sort of glided over here--I just randomly announce that "Jitte is a good card" and then come and drag out the johnny-build-around-me death's shadow. Where did I get these ideas? The answer is a staple list, though not the kind you may be thinking of. Every time I encounter a card I haven't seen before that seems like it has a lot of potential to trump on some kind of axis of interaction, I add it to my mental list of cards to go for. So, when I'm confronted with the "creature combat" axis, my thoughts go to True-name nemesis, Tarmogoyf, Death's Shadow, Mother of Runes, and a few others that have a history or potential to trump on that axis.
A year or two ago, stoneblade decks with stoneforge mystic, batterskull, and jitte were all the rage. Some clever people recalled that Manriki-Guisari trumps opposing equipment, and slotted it in as an easily-tutored answer in the sideboard for those matchups. I never would have come up with that card on my own. That's the beauty of the hive mind of magic players--everybody recalls different sets of "answers" for problems, and when they present their idea for an answer to a specific axis of interaction to the public at large, it becomes more widely known and accepted as part of the "list of answers for <creature combat><equipment races><countermagic mirrors>"
To break it down into simply stated steps:
1. identify what the deck you're targeting has a weakness to, both strategically (going big/going under/going hard) and on which axes (card advantage, card quality, speed, interactivity, tempo, equipment, consistency, etc).
2. Identify what strategic axis and what tactical axis you can interact on (I'm a delver deck, I can go under, and I can fight on tempo/life/card quality but not card advantage, and there are some strategies where I can go hard with rest in peace/grafdigger's cage/sulfuric vortex)
3. Identify cards in your colors that interact strongly on the identified tactical axis (lifegain and creature quality against burn) that fit inside your strategic axis (resolving a batterskull would be sweet but I can't cheat it into play, jitte is much more reasonable to find, cast, and equip; Vampire nighthawk is sweet in that it always buys me time, can just lock the game out if unanswered, and is on-color, but it costs 3 mana--death's shadow comes down on the second turn when all's said and done and interacts immediately with most of the same benefits, just not the lifegain). With these two choices--Jitte over batterskull and death's shadow over nighthawk, I would go the other way if you had a different strategic axis--In grixis control, I'd opt for the batterskull and the nighthawks as you'll likely make the land drops to support them and have the inherent ability to drag the game out until they come online.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Thank you so much. That was exactly what I was looking for. So essentially, as far as "finding" cards, look to see what other people have come up with in various matchups and possibly also go through Gatherer from time to time and see what may be there that I may have overlooked over the years?
In fact, I did this recently for my MUD deck and came up with a few artifacts that seem to be potential answers for problems that the known staples haven't addressed yet. Naturally, whether or not I use these will depend on my local meta and what I expect to run into.
This was a big help and I really appreciate it.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Normally The Gatherer, used well, will reveal things within the first couple attempts/pages of searching. I often search:
-Just my colors, with a mana restriction and sorted by player rating. Sometimes removing the restriction, for instance, will help you find Pyrokinesis.
-Search for phrases that imply what you're looking for. "rather than pay" "mana cost" will help you find all of the FoW cycle and cards akin to it. This could be as simple as "Destroy damage" limited to (at least partially) Red cards and see what can get a 2-for-1 against planeswalkers or as complex as "- /- opponent NOT target" to find Orzhov Pontiff
-Searching for keywords that happen to beat something. Delve > Counterbalance. Split-Second > Counterspells. Conspire > Chalice/Counterbalance/Counterspells. For instance, Gleeful Sabotage would be grand in a stoneblade, counterbalance, Chalice/MUD kind of meta.
As mentioned above; looking within decks that share *any* of your colors can be helpful. Think (or reference) oracle wording that happens to be similar to what you think might exist.
Look, Fetch, Draw, Look
Draw
Fetch
Look
I'm loath to have any sideboard cards for just a deck or two. So, in terms of the thought process, it's really helpful to ruminate on any and all things that make a deck do its thing, or stop you from doing your own thing. It's often an odder grouping than something like, "Sneak & Show, Reanimator, MUD and others have huge creatures; Ensnaring Bridge is worth it", "Jund, Team America, Pox, and others will try to beat me OmniTelling with discard; Leyline of Sanctity is worth it", or even simpler combo/aggro/control type groupings.
It might be, "My Enchantress deck can struggle against fast decks with soft counters and can also struggle to slam hate cards quickly enough against fast combo decks with blue; Carpet of Flowers is worth it" or "I happen to have a hard time with decks that resolve high cost noncreatures like Miracles, Storm, Enchantress, Stax, and things like Force of Will and Treasure Cruise; Gaddock Teeg is worth it."
All of that might be obvious, but I've found that deep thought into the less obvious weakness of opposing decks and groupings can greatly help one squeeze as much into those 15 cards as possible, and also attack decks that seem impervious for whatever reason.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/661941-list-of-stores-that-support-legacy
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28892-Compilation-Of-Legacy-Streams
Example: PV ran a Tsabo's Web in his sideboard at GP Paris. That card is an absolute house against death and taxes, but instead of running a sulfur elemental in that slot as is more typical, he chose the very narrow artifact that has applications in only three matchups--D&T, Lands, and old-school goblins. In essence, the rishadan port decks. PV made top 8 at that event. Sure, he could have had other cards that were good in other matchups besides D&T, but he made a very intentional choice to have a hard hoser for that matchup in his sideboard.
Another example--Burn often runs mindbreak trap in its SB against storm combo. Sure, they have blasts for the cantrips, straight up racing, and Eidolon of the great revel, and even Pyrostatic Pillar itself, but there's valid reasons to add the hard answer to one deck.
If you have a local legacy weekly with about a dozen people and four of them play dredge every week, you better believe everyone else should be playing 4x Leyline of the Void and a couple grafdigger's cages in their sideboards. It's worth the opportunity cost in some cases to just pack the narrow hate.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm