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Many Magic: The Gathering players approach the sideboard as an afterthought. Their mainboard is often viewed as their full deck, while the side board's role is thought of as secondary, or even one whose purpose is ambiguous.

In reality, your sideboard is no less a part of your deck that your mainboard, and failing to build and develop a strong strong sideboard means failing to build and develop a strong deck. In fact, it can be argued that your sideboard deck sees more overall play than the non-sideboard version of your deck, so failing to understand the role of the sideboard is often a critical error.

This video will discuss the basic concepts of sideboarding that are often overlooked or ignored.

Please note: This video is meant as an introductory lesson in sideboarding. Many of the rules and theories it will discuss have exceptions, especially in advanced situations. This video is not intended as the fully detailed, end all be all lesson on sideboards, but is instead a guide to begin the process of understanding and building better sideboards. Let’s begin!

What is a sideboard?

A sideboard is a collection of up to 15 cards that a player may bring to a game of Magic. After each game within a match, each player add or remove cards from their deck for cards in their sideboard. Sideboarding does not require a 1 to 1 swap of cards from the mainboard, meaning you can add cards to your deck from your sideboard and are not required to remove one in return. So long as, at the start of the next game, your main deck has no fewer than 60 cards and your sideboard no greater than 15 cards, any changes you wish to make are legal.

Why sideboard?

The goals of sideboarding is make your deck better in games 2 and 3 using the information of what deck your opponent is playing with combined with the pregame choices you made in constructing the 15 cards of your sideboard. But I’d like to offer an even simpler rule, let’s call it Rule 1….to sideboarding…

The point of sideboarding is to make your deck better.

A sideboard is all about choice. It involves both decisions before the game in regards to what goes into your sideboard, but also, and perhaps more critically, relies on your decision making on the spot, in-between games.

A sideboard must not be ‘random.’ Do not construct your sideboard in isolation, imagining random or general situations you may possibly face. Instead, your sideboard must be constructed, to the best of your ability, in anticipation of the specific deck you will be facing. Which is why the first true step of sideboard construction is...

What is your meta?

What decks will you face at the event you are playing in. Whether you are playing at Friday Night Magic or competing at a higher level, you need a plan for your matchups.

Ask yourself: What decks are people playing? Which decks are being the played the most? Which decks are possibly only being played by 1 or two players? Which decks is no one playing?

Obviously, this involves an enormous amount of guesswork. Hopefully, if you play regularly at your local game store, you have paid attention to the decks you have come up against and so can make an educated guess as to what you will face next time.

But even if you do not play regularly, or if you are playing at a new venue, there are ways you can make reasonable guesses as to what you will face. Pay attention to recent major tournaments and events, with a strong focus on both the top 8 decks from these events as well as the overall makeup of decks in the competition. It is highly likely that your meta will reflect these winning decks to a certain degree.


How do you determine what your deck is weak against? This is where testing comes in, and why having something like a deck library is so important. I recently recommended the website metadeck.me, and I’ll restate that recommendation here. Printing out a library of decks to practice against is a great way to help determine your deck’s strengths and weaknesses.

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