Sideboarding mastery

Few tips on sideboarding:

1. It matters a lot if you are on play or draw. When you are on the draw, you are behind in the tempo and damage race from the start. However, you do have one extra card instead. As a result, you can safely cut a land and shave a few cheap threats. Meanwhile, you should add efficient answers and catch-up cards. Fatal Push and Radiant Flames are examples of spells that are better when you’re on the draw, as they allow you to steal back tempo.

2. Sideboard against post-sideboard deck. Bringing in cards that would have been good in game 1 is a common mistake. Try to predict a gameplane of your opponent in game 2 and adjust.

3. Don't oversideboard situational answers. Sideboarding a card, that blocks only up to 4 opponnent's cards it is not a good decision. Your card will too often be a dead card. It should have a least 8 targets.

4. Don't oversideboard in general. Sometimes, by bringing in too many sideboard cards, especially reactive ones like removal spells or counterspells, we run the risk of simply diluting our deck’s core strategy so much that we hurt our chance of winning the gam

4. If you are not familiar with deck your are playing, becasue you copied someone's else deck list, you should prepare your sideboard plan before tournament. It is legal to have notes what you should cut and what add in specific matchup. 

Play Points for sale

Wizards store is now offering Play Points for sale. Three bundles to choose from:

• 240 Play Points for $24 (regular price)
• 480 Play Points for $45
• 1200 Play Points for $100.

Let's do some math. We can buy Event Tickets from players at classifieds for around $0.95 each. So, we are able to get 105,26 Event Tickets for $100 or 47,37 Event Tickets for $45. I'm not taking into consideration buying Event Tickets directly from Wizards, because it always costs $1 each and we want to get them as cheap as possible. Remembering, that 10 Play Points are considered as 1 Event Ticket we are coming to conculsion as follows. If we want to save some money it is the most reasonable to buy 1200 Play Points bundle. We must transfer Play Points into Events Tickets for the analysis to see it clear. Spending $100 at Wizards store gives us 120 Event Tickets, in comparizon to 105 Event Tickets bought from sellers in classifieds for the same amount of money. To wrap up, buying direclty from Wizards gives us extra 15 Event Tickets.


These Bundles are only available through the holidays and will disappear from the store when Rivals of Ixalan releases on January 19, 2018.

From the Vault: Transform

Starting November 24 From the Vault: Transform hits the shelves. What could be found inside FtV?

• Huntmaster of the Fells - New art
• Garruk Relentless - New art
• Delver of Secrets - New art
• Archangel Avacyn
• Arguel's Blood Fast
• Arlinn Kord
• Bloodline Keeper
• Bruna, the Fading Light
• Gisela, the Broken Blade
• Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh
• Elbrus, the Binding Blade
• Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
• Kytheon, Hero of Akros
• Liliana, Heretical Healer
• Nissa, Vastwood Seer

Grand Prix changes

Starting with January 2018, the number of rounds on Day One of any Grand Prix is changing, as is the cut to make Day Two. All Constructed events will have eight rounds on Day One and you need to go at least 6-2 in order to qualify to Day Two where you will play next seven rounds. As a reminder not long ago we needed 7-2 result and later it was shifted to 6-3.

For individual Limited events, Day One will still be nine rounds played with Sealed decks. However, there will be a cut after round 8. All players that didn't score at least 6-2 are eliminated. Then, all remaining players will play round 9 with their Sealed deck and continue competition in Day Two.

The participation promo card at GPs for the first half of 2018 will be Mutavault.

In my opinion, cutting one round is good move. Day One will be shorter. Staying focus and performing at your best level for nine rounds was a tough task.