What’s good everybody, I’m back with another part of my UR Primer, and this time I’ll focus on all things sideboard – which cards I run and why, which cards I’d consider running should the metagame changes, and some of my usual, nonsensical musings sprinkled over it. If you haven’t read the first and second part of my primer, I’d recommend checking them out and then come back to this text.

Before I start discussing specific choices, here’s my current list to provide you with some context:

Mystical Dispute/Spell Pierce/Spell Snare/Flusterstorm

Cheap countermagic is extremely important in a wide range of matchups in format as swift and powerful as Modern. I like having access to this nice 2/2/2/2 split in my seventy five, so I can pick and choose ones that are best suited for any given job. You can switch those around to some extent (I’d recommend against maindeck Disputes/Flusters and 2 maindeck Snares, but anything else is fair game), but I think having a nice array of options in the countermagic department is crucial. There seems to be a lot of doubt surrounding Spell Snare usefulness – I’ve seen a lot of people taking my list and immediately cutting Snares for more Pierces, which is a mistake in my opinion. Sure, Spell Snare is completely dead against Living End and largely bad versus Rhinos, but it’s one of the best cards in the mirror and against four colour Yorion. It’s also important to acknowledge that both Pierce and Snare have pretty serious diminishing returns, so splitting the difference between them makes sense to me, and having as many answers to a turn two Wrennski on the draw as possible can’t be overvalued in my opinion.

Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon

My preferred way to combat big mana right now, but also one of the best sideboard cards against Living End. As much as I liked Magus over Blood Moon a while ago, having some way to answer Cavern of Souls against Elementals is crucial in my opinion, and it’s much harder for Four Colour to kill enchantments than creatures. In turn, Magus outclasses Blood Moon when the popular decks you want it against run stuff like Boseiju, Force of Negation or Disenchant effects instead of Dismember or other piece of creature interaction. Either of those cards are especially deadly on the play on turn 2 with the help of Ragavan, and because of that you can try to cheese your opponents mostly on the play in some less conventional situations (for example Yawgmoth, UW or BG Saga), but for the most part I’d stick to just boarding it in against big mana/other land-based strategies, 4c and Living End.

Dress Down

Even though Dress Down’s primarily use is answering Urza’s Saga, it’s definitely one of the most interesting cards printed in at least the last few years, having some really impactful uses outside of dealing with Urza’s Saga (most important ones are Amulet against both Prime Time and Colossus and Hardened Scales against basically all of their creatures). You should always take a look at Dress Down and figure if it has some important applications in the matchup you’re currently playing. Some examples of important applications would be those mentioned above against Amulet and Scales, as well as stripping hexproof off of Bogles, and some instances in which it’s likely not important enough to board in (remember, you need to first cut a card to add something, and most of your maindeck cards are good in most matchups, so you need a good reason to board something in) would be turning off opposing Snapcasters or Omnaths.

Fury

For a deck that’s often dubbed “MH2 Tribal”, UR hasn’t dabbled into pitch Incarnations nearly as much as you’d think after hearing the aforementioned moniker. The main reason for that is most likely the fact that Subtlety is probably the weakest of the five, and Fury is the victim of its own success – after every small ball creature deck got pushed out of the format thank to this Pyrokinesis redux, Fury started waning in popularity since there were fewer and fewer matchups in which it truly shined. However, there are still decks like Hammer and Yawgmoth against which Fury can prove quite effective, and from time to time you’ll get paired against some sort misguided tribal enjoyer that still want to cast Champion of the Parish after all these years, so having a copy or two in the board makes a perfect sense to me.

Unlicensed Hearse

Hearse is basically an even more extreme take on Relic of Progenitus in terms of a graveyard hate that shines against fair stuff and isn’t the most efficient card versus all-in graveyard strategies. It costs two mana and can’t nuke their whole yard in one fell swoop, but it’s unmatched when it comes to constant, targeted shrinking of their resources to prevent Delirium, catch their Undying creature with the trigger on the stack or exile a crucial flashback spell before they get a chance to cast it, while also being a potential, sizeable threat should the game go long. If you’re looking for a way to beat Living End, there’s a bunch of better options, such as Relic, Tormod’s Crypt or Soul-Guide Lantern, but if you’re already covered in that matchup and are in need of a tool to combat more value oriented graveyard synergies, especially in some sort of midrange battle, then Hearse is the best car(d) for the job.

Engineered Explosives

Explosives are something of a cross between a single target interaction and mass removal, and while they’re clunky, they can quite often get you out of the sticky situation in the way that no other card you can play in UR could. The most common matchups in which Explosives shine the brightest are low curve, artifact Saga decks, such as Hammer, Affinity, Asmo or Scales, since they can mow down a sizable share of their relevant board in one fell swoop most of the time. Additionally, Explosives provide an answer to otherwise difficult to interact with classes of cards in enchantments, artifacts and creatures with protection from red – most common ones are Rest in Peace, Chalice of the Void and Sanctifier en-Vec, but sometimes you’ll snag 2 Utopia Sprawls and it’ll be enough to win the game.

Archmage’s Charm

(ATTENTION: THIS PARAGRAPH IS MORE ABOUT MY GENERAL FEELING ON HOW PEOPLE PERCEIVE SIDEBOARDS AND DECKBUILDING THAN THE CARD ARCHMAGE’S CHARM ITSELF) In general, I think that people are too hesitant to put more copies of cards that typically are associated with maindeck in the sideboard, probably in fear of “wasting” one of their valuable fifteen slots. I find this type of prejudice limiting, and a sign of treating their maindeck and sideboard as two separate entities rather than a coherent seventy five. Don’t be afraid to do things like that, as the only concern you should have when putting cards in your deck is whether it’ll help you win more, and not how it looks in the eyes of others, especially those without a deeper understanding of deckbuilding as a whole. As far as Archmage’s Charm goes as a card, I’ve already said what I had to say about it early on – it’s a great card and you should play it.

POSSIBLE INCLUSION: Chalice of the Void

It’s always good to have multiple angles of attack against any given strategy to make it more complicated for them to line up their answers, and Chalice is about as unique as it gets as another way to attack Cascade decks if that’s what you’re in the market for. You don’t want to run more than maybe two in my opinion, since you can’t play multiple copies on zero at the same time, and it’s only good against Cascade for the most part (it has some fringe applications against Pacts versus Amulet, Belcher, Neoform and Ad Nauseam), because you don’t want to set it for anything other than zero.

POSSIBLE INCLUSION: Subtlety

I’ll be honest with you – I haven’t played too much with Subtlety (no more than three or four Leagues), but it was pretty underwhelming in the matchup where I expected it to shine the most (Four Colour), so I’m benching it (or double benching it if you consider sideboard to be a bench already I guess) for the time being. I obviously might be wrong about it, but I’d rather approach the Four Colour matchup by trading up on mana and even on cards rather than playing a card that’s either a four mana answer (even if it’s a two for one) or a card disadvantage if used early on.

POSSIBLE INCLUSION: Relic of Progenitus/other graveyard hate

If you prefer to have more graveyard hate instead of additional pieces of countermagic against Living End, then Relic would be my first choice. It’s not terribly efficient as you need to spend two mana total to use it, but chipping away at their graveyard is pretty good and replacing itself after nuking their yard can be quite significant, especially in those low resource games involving multiple Griefs and Forces, as well as some heavy mulliganing. If you’re in the market for something more efficient then both Tormod’s Crypt and Soul-Guide Lantern are decent choices, but I’d rather play Relic over them most of the time.

POSSIBLE INCLUSION: Force of Negation/other countermagic

You can explore other countermagic options if the current configuration of cheap counterspells doesn’t work well in your metagame for some reason.

POSSIBLE INCLUSION: Grim Lavamancer

If for some reason you want to bolster your matchup against small creature decks, but you can’t (or don’t want) to play more copies of Fury, then I’d turn towards this hooded fellow and his lizard. Lavamancer lacks the same immediate impact that Fury has, but it’s not gated by the number of red cards in your deck and is even better in the longer affairs, shooting stuff left and right over multiple turns.