How do side decks work

Harder still is the task of conveying just how important those cards are, and how vital it is to choose them carefully. Tournament matches are typically determined by a "best two-out-of-three" set of games. For the first game, both players play with their main decks— their primary 60 cards that will be the same for the start of every match. After Game One, the players have the option to swap in any number of the 15 cards from their sideboard in an effort to make their deck better suited to winning the next game.

Technically speaking, it's legal to play with a deck of more than 60 cards, but at all times your deck must be at least 60 cards and your sideboard must be at most 15 cards. Except in Limited. Sideboarding in Limited will be covered in a future article. Sideboards win tournaments.

Because your sideboard cards can be more specialized—pinpoint focused for a certain task or matchup—they're often your most powerful tools. Sometimes, sideboarding can be the most important factor in determining how two decks will match up against one another. Building and using your sideboard well will be crucial to your tournament success. You sideboard with the goal of making your deck better suited for a matchup. What simpler way is there to accomplish that goal than to bring in the perfect answers for your opponent's threats?

Similarly, if your opponent has lots of Planeswalkers, you might want to sideboard in more answers to Planeswalkers. If your opponent is trying to win via a swarm of cheap creatures, you might want board sweepers like End Hostilities. If using a small handful of powerful creatures, then you might want spot removal like Murderous Cut.

Your sideboard lets you find the perfect tool for any job. Playing Game One ought to show you exactly what "the job" is in any particular case. On the flip side, you can also use your sideboard to find a new threat that your opponent will struggle with.

You might go about this in a number of different ways. First, you might simply add more threats in an attempt to overload your opponent's answers. Imagine, for example, that you face a control deck that features very few creatures. During sideboarding, you get to take out some of your ineffectual creature removal and increase your concentration of threats, which ought to be tremendously helpful. Search Advanced search…. New posts. Search forums. Log in.

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It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser. Status Not open for further replies. I come from Yugioh, and the one thing I miss the most is the side deck. I'm slowly creeping into the pokemon tcg because I always used to have more fun with it playing the old base set cards in the past. But anyways, the point of this thread is about what I miss the most from competitive yugioh, which is the side deck.

I'm obviously very new to the TCG on a competitive level, but I feel that 1. So many problems would change if you could side, and 2.

The game would take considerably more skill. First of all, you could get away with not maining tool scrappers until you actually know if they will use a healthy amount of tools. And this will also include counting and estimating just how many tools they likely use. And then there's the typical "yomi" strategy of them siding out all their tools so you side in dead cards against them.

You only play one round in non-topcut apparently, and there's no side for the topcut. It would be much nicer to be able to side in a few basic energies and a few tech pkmn of a different type in order to counter meta-game monsters like landorus etc. Has anyone playtested the game on a high level of play like this? I feel like this is one thing that really dumbs down the tcg the most. A single round is about as skillful as a yugioh round. But I think I have to call yugioh the more skilled game due to the large learning curve on how to side properly.

Pokemon to me takes more strategy in single round games than yugioh, but it would be much more strategic if there were a side deck. Anyway, I play Pokemon and Magic, so I also see how a side deck could be useful. Unfortunately Pokemon has the ridiculous "Prizes" mechanic, so even if you side in a few cards, there's a good chance they'll be locked out of use anyway. Sorry, but what you said about dumbing down the game Like you said, the way Weakness and Resistance works really begs for it.

I'm hoping they learn to cater for high-level play in the next series Introducing side decks and altering the prizes rules is one step towards this. Click to expand Last edited: Apr 25, Raen New Member. It is much, much too easy to side just a handful of cards to hard counter other decks.

Previously, the Side Deck could not be used to alter the contents of the Extra Deck, though this has been changed. Wiki Explore. Structure Deck R Starter Decks. Game terms. Summoning conditions Normal Summon Flip Summon. The Side Deck is invaluable in tournament play.

Facing certain Decks can be a walk in the park or a nightmare depending on the contents of the Side Deck. For example, a Burn Deck based around dealing effect damage could be easily countered by including several cards to prevent Life Point damage, such as " Des Wombat " or " Nature's Reflection ", while a Deck focused on Special Summoning many times in a single turn can be countered by " Nibiru, the Primal Being ".

In addition, it can be a method of shoring up a Deck's weaknesses against other Decks that can easily exploit them, by adding cards to the DEck that provide extra defense against them or removing cards from the Deck that are weak against them. Familiarizing oneself with the most popular Decks is a great way to know what cards to put in a Side Deck.