The Storm Factor or the Curse of the Bad Sideboard Card

While moving around the internet forums, I have seen this card pop up regularly, often with the following title: "Is this a good sideboard card?"

Soon after I would find these justifications in the following comments:

"hoses storm", "better than rule of law", "can come in vs UW", etc.

Out of these, which do you think is the most pertinent one?

I personally think that the most pertinent one is the one concerning UW, as it holds a specific way of thinking: it wants to attack one particular (and maybe crucial) angle of the matchup, in whichever deck would need this card (one could think about decks like UW spirits that can go around the restriction to win the counter war).

However whether this appraisal of the card is right is entirely up to debate, I personally think that it isn't enough to make the card playable, but we are not here to talk about how to make the card playable, I am here to talk about the first two comments, most notably the "hoses storm" argument.

As a storm player, it is one that I have been happy to see over the past few years, and it makes for hilarious stories to tell my friends.

"And then you see? He plays Deafening Silence, and the next turn he plays another one! And I'm looking at the Echoing Truth in my hand and I'm like :HAHAHAHHAA

However as a Magic player, this kind of sideboard building makes me shake my head in despair. It speaks of two possibilities outside of the player having a true gameplan with the card: either the player is so desperate to win a certain matchup (in this case Storm) that he has to pull out all the stops in the sideboard to fit in such a card (which is definitely possible if you are in a very Storm Heavy meta).

The other possibility is that the player is not envisioning well how the matchup goes, and that he thinks that the card is enough for a certain matchup or is actually good in it.

We will delve further into the second possibility, as the first one is after all one that could actually happen and is quite reasonable.

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Let us take the example of Storm and Rule of Law effects.

Let me tell you a little story: You play a game versus Storm, you finally get them down to their last hit points, and if all goes well, you should be able to win the next turn. But then they proceed to Storm off to kill you with a lethal Grapeshot.

During sideboarding, they even admit that storming off to Storm Count 200 was a bit too much. The nerves of that opponent! Luckily you have in your sideboard the perfect answer to a Storm deck, Deafening Silence! As a playset no less! You're investment of XXX$ will finally pay off!

Now the second game starts and you have a hand with a Deafening Silence turn 1 in your hand, and the rest of your hand is not too shabby either, you keep. You slam it on turn 1, with a sigh of relief. The game goes on... wait the game goes on?? Why didn't the opponent immediately concede when seeing the card? He's cantripping every turn half-heartedly, and sometimes even on your turn. Nevermind, they're probably wanting to see how your awesome deck will kill them.

Meanwhile, however; your gameplan has slowed down, you notice that Deafening Silence is symmetrical, and that you're killing them a bit more slowly than before. Then, you draw into the second Deafening Silence, you smile, you want to rub it into the opponent's face that the game is in your bag, and without a second thought you windmill slam it onto the board with lethal on board. After a brief thought the opponent says:"Mmm.... Resolves"

You are happy, you're finally going to get this game. The next turn you are dead, killed by a Grapeshot for 400 this time. And you didn't register what happened.

You start talking with the opponent still dazed:

Storm is a deck that wants to kill in one turn, and HAS to play multiple spells in one turn to win, right? Right.

This means that post-board, the best answer is to stop the Storm player from Storming off, right? Right.

Then that means that a card like Rule of Law or Deafening Silence are GREAT against Storm right? Wrong.

But- WRONG!

Normally that is how the conversation would go. In a perfect world (for non Storm-players at least), the answer to the last question would be "Right",however Storm players are not stupid, and, like most other Magic Player, and all the life forms present on this planet, they have adapted to hate.

In other words, post-board, while you have boarded in your hate in the form of Rule of Law, we Storm player have also learned to think two steps ahead, and have boarded in *audible gasp* anti-anti-hate cards like Echoing Truth, or Wipe Away, or Chain of Vapor!

And that is exactly what happened, that game that you lost was because the opponent started his turn by Echoing Truth away your Deafening Silences and proceeded to Storm for the win.

It is a story that every Storm pilot has gone through, and it is one of those many stories where the pilot gets to laugh every time they retell it.

But on your side you're probably thinking: he had the perfect answer to your hate. But then Magic is a game of threats and answers so the sideboard card itself isn't so bad right?

This is where you are wrong, and your reasoning is flawed the most often. Most people do not understand well enough the concept of Enablers and Payoffs to see how they shape a game of Magic. Often, in fair matchups those concepts do not come up as clearly as in unfair matches like with Storm, hence why I call this the Storm Factor: the reason why you decided to play Deafening Silence was Storm, but the desired effect wasn't there. Why?

I have an analogy which will make most people understand the problem better:

Stopping Storm is like stopping a car from moving. There are many ways to go about it. For example you can put blocks all around the car to stop it from moving. However soon enough the pilot will find that it is possible to move those blocks away from the way of the car, and speed straight ahead.

That's what happens when you play cards like Deafening Silence against Storm: you're putting blocks in front of the opponent's gameplan which he can easily move aside. Of course, you are disabling the pilot to go for what he wants (the Payoff) but none of his Enablers are disabled, and once the pilot is enabled, they can go straight ahead towards their goal.

There is however another way to stop a car from moving: damage/remove its engine (the Enabler). Sure the pilot can just repair it or replace it, but it takes more time than moving blocks aside, and it sure as well take more energy and resources on the pilots end to go about doing that.

So how can we achieve this in the Storm example? We first have to see what is the engine of the deck, the Enablers of the deck, the thing that allows Storm to do such busted things.

Storm is what can be called a Critical Mass deck, basically a deck that needs a certain amount of resources to go off. The two main Enablers are: the graveyard, and the hand size.

So there are two angles effective angles of attack you can have against the deck: attacking their graveyard, or attacking their hand, or why not both if you're able to.

This is why cards like RiP, Leyline of the Void, or Discard Packages are often thought to be very strong against Storm, because they hit hard on the Enablers of Storm, and like damaging a car engine, the damage have to be repaired or replaced first before going ahead which is harder to do than simply removing a Payoff Limiter like Deafening Silence.

Enabler-targeting hate cards are extremely strong because even if they themselves are dealt with, or are gone, they often leave lasting damage behind them, something that Deafening Silence doesn't do. It is harder to recreate a full graveyard, or refill your hand effectively than vomiting your entire hand, especially when your deck is designed to do so.

Also attacking the engine of such a deck may cause them to have to rely on their backup engine which is much slower and much less effective than the main one, and which is usually quite beatable.

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So this isn't a secret, a lot of player have understood it, otherwise the meta would be ripe of decks like Storm and on the opposing side, there would be decks with sideboard cards like Deafening Silence for Storm decks to prey on.

Applying this exercise to other decks allows you to find good sideboard, for example, decks like Humans rely on the powerful Enter the Battlefield effects of their creature, so cutting this engine is very strong(a wrath will also do the trick since it also voids those preceding ETB effects).

Dredge relies on its graveyard engine (big surprise I know), Tron relies on the power of its lands etc...

So when doing your sideboard please:

1-Analyse your weak matchups

2-Analyse the engine of those decks

3-Find cards that hit those engines

4-Play those cards in your sideboard

Bonus points if those cards hit multiple matchups at once. For example Damping Sphere hits the engine of Tron, but is also roadblocks Storm which makes it an excellent addition to whatever in the side also hits the Storm engine.

Do not rush in when seeing a card that is apparently good against a certain archetype, slow down and analyse it slowly. Us Magic players have the leasure of playing a game that is not based on either dexterity or speed, so do no rush anything. Look at the card, does it attack the engine of a powerful deck? Great! Of multiple powerful decks? Even better! This card seems to be a hit for sideboards.

But sometimes you have no choice: you have no card available that can attack the engine of a certain deck your pining for: and that's okay, the effect will probably not be as powerful as hoped, but roadblocking someone when you cannot attack the engine will have to be good enough.

There are some occasions where playing the Payoff disabler can be good enough: mostly when you are able to protect it reliably, like giving it hexproof for exemple, but those are rare, and often those disablers are too narrow to be a worthy inclusion in the side.

It is good that some people have understood how to attack an engine, and that other persons have followed suit a bit blindly with sideboard guides, to then understand how effective those engine hitting cards are good in these types of matchups. However this post is for the people who people who have yet to understand this, so if you know of such people around you please link them this article to help them better their sideboard building abilities.

*Rips Deafening Silence in the background*

Until the next blog post, take care!