[easybox]Through a clerical oversight on my part, Dan's article was not published on Friday as it should have been. My apologies to all of our readers. Dan will run as normal on Friday. -- Trick[/easybox]

Okay, I admit it. I've been on an Orthogonal bend lately. I just can't help myself. Every deck list I make or see on the net just screams out "blend me." So I am just trying to merge ideas with ideas that are only 15 cards different. Is that a winning strategy? Sometimes, but only if the Meta is just right and your opponents aren't expecting it. But for ME, EVERYONE is expecting it! So I've had to change gears and look at sideboards a little differently. Today I would like to share those thoughts with you.

Let's look at a common Jund deck built on the averages.

Average Jund

[cardlist]4 Bloodbraid Elf

4 Blightning

4 Sprouting Thrinax

4 Putrid Leach

3 Maelstrom Pulse

4 Lightning Bolt

3 Terminate

2 Sarkhan the Mad

3 Goblin Ruinblaster

3 Siege-Gang Commander

4 Raging Ravine

4 Verdant Catacombs

4 Savage Lands

4 Dragonskull Summit

3 Forest

3 Mountain

3 Swamp

1 Lavaclaw Reaches[/cardlist]

While I realize this isn't the best build of Jund. Nor is it even good enough to really test with. It will serve the purpose of this lesson. You see, what I believe is one of the best assets of Jund is often overlooked. That asset is the versatility of its sideboard. I you're facing a competent Jund player you really never know what you might be facing in game two or three.

Traditional Boarding

I can remember a time where I didn't care about a sideboard. Those were the days. We all just played casual and may the better deck win. Taking the time to see 2 out of 3 seemed like a waste and taking more time to actually switch cards was worse. I'm sure that in an honest moment many people would admit that the actual act of sideboarding between games is the most boring and tedious part of a match.

But with the advent of the WPN we all have more access to competitive ratings based matches. And with the ease and access of many decklists via the internet the game becomes more predictable. Because of this predictability a player can tune their sideboard to "hate" out the most common decks. This I believe is the first and most common sideboard plan. This is because it's the easiest to do. All I player has to do is grab his mouse and do a little research and he can see what's been winning. Then find the cards that can defeat those plans.

Let's say you where planning on carrying the above deck. What competition would you expect? The mirror match would be expected. Super Friends would see play. U/W control may be an issue. Conscription Decks will almost surely see play since everyone inherently loves swinging the fattys. That's four decks to plan for so let's see what cards may help us come out on top post board.

Deathmark and Doom Blade can help to hold off our evil twin attacks. Sometimes going one for one is okay when you spend less mana on your one.

Duress and Mind Rot can tip the card advantage scale in your favor. I've also seen some players crank out the Sedraxis Specter so they can just "out Blightning" their counterpart.

One of my fav's right now though is Consuming Vapors. It's a two for one that adds life. Considering many Jund matches end up being top deck affairs that are decided by life that can be counted on a D6 the card can play out to value.

In both the Super Friends and UW matchups I like to see two cards. Duress to hit their best hope of holding you off and Malakir Bloodwitch. If you really expect to see a lot of walkers you can look to Vampire Hexmage as well but she isn't really that good.

For the Conscription decks I really like to see early, cheap, instant speed removal. Deathmark and Doom Blade jump out again. You can go with two plans and both are successful. Remove their Mana Dorks and watch as they are forced to discard their best muscle to Blightning. Or just let Exalted go on the stack and then remove their one attacker. 2 or 3 hits like this and there needing a different game plan.

So a common Sideboard would look like this.

[cardlist]4 Duress

2 Malakir Bloodwitch

4 Doom Blade

2 Deathmark

3 Consuming Vapors[/cardlist]

There. I now have "hate" for almost every deck I will face. Even off the wall decks can be dealt with. This board may be a little Black for our mana base but we won't be bringing all 15 off the bench so it shouldn't be a big deal.

The shortcoming of this plan is its narrow vision. While this sideboard plan is what most of us employ it doesn't really make it there. The problem is it doesn't take into account what you opponent may board in. That anticipation and foresight lead us to our next type of boarding.

Proactive Boards

This Sideboard is much harder to do and maybe even harder to explain. The idea is this. You are a known deck. Your opponent has a sideboard strategy built for you. Those cards are going to pile the "hate" on you. Sure you can hope your hate outlast his hate but that's just as bad a flipping a coin to see who wins.

So instead we can plan for their plan. Making their hate ineffective and thereby making our maindeck options stronger. Take this for an example; you're expecting to see a Spreading Seas type of plan. Everyone and their brother know how hard a properly placed Seas can hurt Junds game. So maybe you can use that to your advantage and bring in a Sedraxis Specter in for game two. Now the little Island actually helps. Or another plan and one that I personally love and wish I had thought of is Prophetic Prism. Now we have a Cantrip plus that Blue mana can become any color I want. The Cantrip is the best part since even Cascading into it yields card advantage. With Junds mana base we can even keep it simple a put in a Naturalize. With Naturalize I can get rid of Seas, O-ring, Monument, or any other pesky annoyances. But Cascading into a Naturalize with no Enchantment or Artifacts on the table is pretty lame.

Look at a Conscription decks sideboard and you will find a Dauntless Escort if it isn't already maindecked. When we were looking at the "hate" plan above you see that many decks just bring in the removal so the Conscription deck plans ahead and boards in the Escort. With an Escort on the battlefield all of your instant speed removal go to naught since it only forces the Dauntless sacrifice and their 2/1 Cobra turns into a 13/12 Trampling Snake of Doom.

Or remember a few months ago when Kor Firewalker was spelling the doom of Red Deck Wins. The very next big tournament found a RDW splashing black. Not for anything in the Main Deck but for the Deathmark and Doom Blade in the Sideboard. That was being proactive. Now as the white deck brings in the "answer to all things Mountain" they only find it running into Swampland.

Hopefully you can see that having a proactive sideboard is a better route. The problem is the vast number of possibilities that deal with you. Each of the 4 major deck types probably averages 3 or 4 different choices that they could "hate" you with. That's 12 to 16 different hate cards you need to prepare for and find proactive answers to. Remember you only get 15 sideboard cards.

Of course you can blend the two strategies together as well. Or you could go a different route focuses our meta info into the deck not the board.

The 80/20 plan

You know the meta. You would rather win game one than depend on your board. You want to be prepared for anything not just a few things. So what do you do?

This is where the 80/20 plan comes into play. If you really study the meta game you can easily find that certain cards are better than others. By taking advantage of the flexible mana base we can easily build our deck to use common hate main. The Jund list above already has quite a few cards that hurt any deck built. Blightning almost always cripples. Goblin Ruinblaster is very strong in a meta full of creature lands. Maelstrom Pulse hits ANY permanent (except land). Pretty much everything in the deck with the exception of Putrid Leach is versatile against a majority of decks. With the right build we have favorable matchups against 80% of the decks out there. Then we make sure that our sideboard fits the other 20%.

Thought Hemmorage would be a great card for our 80/20 board. It can single handedly destroy Polymorph decks or any other combo-ish opponent. Just learn the combo in game one and then hand it to them for games 2 or 3. But as I said earlier Jund is versatile enough that it has chances Game one as well.

Transformative Board

This is where Orthogonal comes into play. But I must use transformative to cover decks that just shift gears. Orthogonal Boards should feel like you've turned 90 degrees while a Transformative Board can just go askew by 40 degrees and still work. (For more on Orthogonal you can read my last two weeks of articles.)

For my Jund list above we can easily transform. The goal here would be to switch to some other version of Jund. I really like the Vengevine builds that have started being more prevalent. If you look at the two versions of Jund they aren't that dissimilar but the way you play against them is. With the list I have above a player needs to either get the drop early and hope you have enough gas to get there or they need to just protect until they can start to control the board. Vengevine Jund requires you to be aggressive with your answers. The combination of Hastyness and Recursion force you to be more active as the control player.

Take the example list and put this as its board.

[cardlist]4 Vengevine

4 Hell's Thunder

4 Lotus Cobra

3 Mold Shambler[/cardlist]

I realize that the Mold Shambler may surprise some of you but I can tell you without a doubt that it does more than you would ever need against the Planeswalkers you'll see. About the only card I would consider there instead is Hellspark Elemental since it is Hasty as well as easy to cast with another critter in the same turn.

So which type of board do you normally play? Hate, Proactive, 80/20, or Transformative. As I said earlier I've been in the Transformative lately. Though I do feel the best is to be Proactive for at least part of your board.

Class dismissed.