Friday morning, I woke up with the start of a cold. My housemate has been sneezing and snuffling all week; while annoying, this is not unexpected. I staggered downstairs to be greeted by said housemate with, “Hey, so all hell has broken loose on the Internet.” To which I genuinely replied, “Oh, no, they’ve changed the Pro Tour to Modern, haven’t they?” Only to have my worst fears recognized. Now, I don’t want to yell at Wizards. Too many people spend far too much time doing that. But as a newer player to the game who has spent the last two months learning the Extended format, I’m really devastated. I have three weeks to learn a huge card pool. There is physically no way (given that I have a job) I have the time to read all the legal cards, get a grip on all the interactions, have some understanding of the metagame, playtest, and fiddle with decks in that time. Also, they added a very large Banned List; while I agree with it on principle (especially banning Jace), I can’t help but feel I have even less information on the meta than ever before.

It’s a shame, because given six to eight weeks’ notice, I would have been as excited as many of the longstanding pros seem to be, and I am sure the Pro Tour will be a more exciting event for being Modern rather than Extended. However, I actually feel that I have been put at a large and significant disadvantage. I will do my best, but I think that my chances of doing well at Philadelphia just got dramatically slashed.

Looking at the bright side of things (which I started to do after I stopped hyperventilating and hurriedly e-mailing people to see if I can borrow cards), this finally forces me to pay attention to a format that goes way back. I have been studiously ignoring the Eternal formats, because I find the vast pool of cards available rather intimating. Not having tried them firsthand, I find the combinations hard to spot. Now that I have to go back to 8th Edition, I may as well go all the way, so look forward to me showing up in some random Eternal event sometime.

On to the main topic of this week’s article, which is Sideboarding in Limited events, particularly drafts. You may think this is a fairly dry topic, and it’s obvious when you have reasonable cards and there are obviously a bunch of off-color cards you can’t board into, etc. Well, you are wrong. I watch my opponents not even look at their sideboards, and I shake my head. Sometimes, people forget, but you should always look. I mean, you can’t remember every card in your ’board, and you might find a really key card that could have swung the match just waiting for you to bring it in.

What notable cards are there in M12 draft you may want to board in? Well, there are the obvious conditional removal spells that only don’t get main-decked because they could be dead cards. These include Combust, Deathmark, Plummet, and Celestial Purge. However, there are other cards that may not make the cut but could be much more powerful in a given matchup. For example, in the Blue control mirror, that Harbor Serpent is going to be really good. Likewise, Master Thief will be superb against someone with notable artifacts like the Druidic Satchel or even Swiftfoot Boots.

Just because you aren’t in a color doesn’t mean you can’t board in a splash. An extreme example of this happened to me in NPH draft when my opponent played Mirran Crusader. I had no way in my G/B deck to answer it. So, I looked through my board. I had to bring in five Mountains and a Turn to Slag (notably a spell). It worked, and I won the match. Would have been embarrassing if I hadn’t looked at or even considered my “off-color” cards. If you need an answer, you can look anywhere for it.

Similarly, with lots of Illusions in the format, remember that auras can target your opponents’ creatures, and you can board in Flight against a heavy Illusion deck as a kill spell. Does your opponent have some sort of sorcery you need to prevent resolving (like Overrun or Fireball)? You should probably board in Negate. Alternatively, if you are facing down multiple copies of Goblin PikerStormfront Pegasus, Circle of Flame may actually be worth running.

In summary, don’t forget to look at all of your cards, and remember that answers can be found in unusual places. A bad card can be good in the right match.