Bma's thoughts: Sideboard in BP05 (Patreon)

With Igni's 500 USD tournament featuring a 10 card sideboard, it's worthwhile thinking about what implications this will have on the best decks on the format.

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The biggest implication is its impact on Egg Haven in particular. Egg is a fantastic deck in the bo1 format, where even if people do want to tech for it, they still have to consider their other matchups. They can't go 3x Urd, 3x Urd Evo, 3x Lyrial JUST to beat a single deck in the meta. However, with a sideboard, it's practically an inevitability that every player will sideboard at the very least, 3 Urd + 3 Urd Evo. This means that Fable counter stacking becomes practically impossible, and your Tin Soldiers will spend more time in the Banish zone than anywhere else.

In addition, players can use any number of strong anti-egg tools, including Lyrial, additional early game removal (angelic snipe etc) to make it very challenging for Egg Haven to thrive in the meta. Even if a player were to play zero anti-egg tools in game 1, the ability to sideboard into it for game 2 and 3 gives the non-egg player a significant advantage.

My view is that Egg Haven is therefore unviable for the bo3 sideboard tournament. However, just because it's theoretically wrong to play Egg Haven doesn't mean that people won't play it anyway (lol). Which means that the players well prepared with sideboard will have a great time vs the Egg Haven players.

In a world where it's a closed-invite tournament, let's say the world championship, it would be reasonable to assume egg would have a very low play-rate in this kind of format. This would allow you to get away with not teching for Egg in main deck and side deck. However, because it's an open tournament, I do believe that teching for Egg is completely necessary.

Other decks in the meta

Usurpation Sword

All this being said, it's actually a little awkward when we consider decks like Usurpation Sword. Evo deck space is very tight, which actually limits the type of tech you can use. It's not actually possible to run 3 Urd due to too many compulsory evo targets (Floral/Leonidas/Octrice/Apostle etc). Of course, Sword can opt to run cards like Lyrial, but is that actually enough?  Sword's best shot is probably teching in 3x Angelic Snipe, a few surefire bullets and some Lyrials. I do believe that Sword's weakest matchup in the meta is Egg Haven, so potentially this is a good way to hedge. It's also worth considering if Egg will be popular enough to merit so much hate in the side board. There's definitely a world where you try to tech vs the other decks in the meta with the expectation of less Egg Haven.

One of the matchups that Sword can sometimes become a little unbearable is Aegis Haven, especially when they hold banish to prevent Leonidas from dropping Resolve. There are, of course, ways to deal with this. Examples include Armor of the Stars or simply running additional copies of Leo in the main + evo deck.

That said, decks like Sword are not that easy to tech against, nor do I think it'll be at the top of anyone's radar really for the limited sideboard space. As a result, I do believe there is some potential here.

Aegis Haven

Speaking of Aegis Haven, this is where it gets quite interesting IMO. Of course, the first thing is how you tech to ensure you have the right types of removal for specific matchups. For example - opponent doesn't go wide? Take out Jeanne/Themis. Opponent's on Egg? Bring in the Urds and Lyrials.

I think as the Aegis Haven player, you should feel pretty good about your odds of beating Egg in Game 2 and 3, so you could probably take out almost all of your Egg Haven tech in the main deck and focus primarily on the rest of the field.

3 Marwynn in the evo deck is surprisingly good in certain matchups, so I'd definitely consider putting this into the sideboard too. I also think Aegis Haven is likely to be popular in this format, so 100% you'd want to tech for the mirror. There's probably a world where you tech the 10pp Hare of Illusions, for instance.

Overall, Aegis Haven has the most space to play with in the sideboard, as both the Evo deck and the Main deck can make various adjustments to optimise against different matchups. Definitely one of the best options for the tournament.

Forest

Forest is probably one of the decks that has real options against Aegis Haven. Combo (5) Homecoming is very strong against Heavenly Aegis in particular, and I would expect to see this at 3 copies combined within the main + sideboard.

As Harvest Festival is imperative against control matchups, I also expect to see Starry Elf as a common sideboard target to ensure you can hit it consistently vs Aegis Haven.

Aside from that, Forest has a lot of wriggle room in terms of tech options. You can play around with all of the various ratios within the deck, even test options such as Mark of the Six against mirror and Uma Musume, for instance. The standard Urd options vs Egg still exist too.

Forest is in my opinion one of the major winners of the sideboard format, but I also don't think Forest is particularly popular in the West. This is one of the biggest opportunities for sure.

Uma Musume

I think this deck also has a lot of potential in this type of format. At the moment, one of the biggest weaknesses, in my opinion, is that sometimes you are forced to run somewhat dead cards vs certain matchups. Who hasn't run into excess removal vs decks like Aegis Haven, or run into unplayable cards like Rice Shower, for instance. We also frequently run into the issue of "do we even run 7cm ahead?". Well now we can just slot them in when we actually need them!

For example, we can run turbo 7cm ahead vs Aegis Haven if we want to now. We can run cards like King Halo to never run out of resources vs slower matchups. We can even run healing (heal 5/heal 2 respectively)!

We can run cards like Narita Brian to close out Forest games (leave 2pp up for Raindrop to seal Elephant).

Egg Haven is the only deck I don't think we can really tech for, outside of getting rid of... Rice Shower? But that's okay, right? It's supposed to go down in playrate anyway!

Tier 2 decks with potential 

There are three other decks I'd look out for with potential, Lishenna, Ramp Dragon, and all Abyss variants. They are all similar in a certain way, their weakness is that the meta is too wide. They currently have to tech against Egg Haven while simultaneously needing to tech VS the rest of the meta, which is simply impossible with their current card pool.

However, with the ability to sideboard, they can get rid of the weak cards against their active matchup, and side in the strong cards. Think stuff like Urd vs Egg Haven, Alchemical Lore/Conflag vs aggro, siding out stuff like Surefire vs control, but slipping them in vs Aggro.

Being able to target the specific deck they are facing allows them to more consistently play their main game plan without losing on the spot to Aggro. Now, that said, is this necessarily enough to make them worth playing over the other decks? Maybe not, but I think people who like these decks are going to see way more success than in bo1 tournaments.

Conclusion

These are my unpolished thoughts on the upcoming BP05 bo3 sideboard tournament. Of course, my opinion may change over the coming days and week, but I do think I have some pretty good thoughts here, and they should help you if you choose to participate in the tournament.