Countdown to Regionals: Replenish Part 3
**Replenish 3: Sideboard Options
This is where it gets really hard. There are a ton of cards you want to put in your sideboard and only fifteen slots. The key is to walk the line between having multiples of what you need and using Enlightened Tutor as much as possible, while still dealing with every matchup. A lot of my decisions were based on what I am told are the problem decks and on abstract analysis. They're no substitute for solid testing and local metagaming, but they're a great start. Again, I'll use the advantages/disadvantages format. First, I'll assume you can board up to four Seal of Cleansing, which you must be able to do.
Section One: Enchantment (and Artifact) Removal
Advantages: Maximum flexibility of all your additional enchantment removal options. Above all, it can target artifacts, so it's better against Accelerated Blue and in some strange tier two matchups like Tinker, where pure enchantment kill would be bad. Against Bargain you can kill Grim Monolith or Tooth of Ramos.
Disadvantages: It doesn't remove the target from the game, so Replenish can get it back. It costs two mana, which makes it harder than Erase to save mana for if you're trying to stay active. In many matchups where this is good, you have other cards that are better, and this isn't specialized enough to play in their place. Conclusion: It's certainly a valid choice, but right now there's no reason not to specialize.
Advantages: Removes the enchantment from the game to stop a Replenish, and the price is right. You can cast it by playing a Plains if you're Tide-locked.
Disadvantages: If you have to kill your own enchantments they get removed as well. You don't get the more fancy effects of other cards. Many enchantments can be sacrificed or hidden in response. Conclusion: This seems like the way to go to me, compensating for the huge mana requirements of the deck and making it much more difficult to put you away in the mirror. I have two, but as the mirror becomes more important that number will go up unless I choose to hedge my bests.
Advantages: Two for one (and just two mana) is a good deal. The deck you want it for most plays enough enchantments that you'll want to kill two of them a lot. If you need to you can target your own enchantments, especially Attunement. For now this should have surprise value.
Disadvantages: If they Replenish they get it all back. Horrible outside the mirror, since few other decks will actually give you two targets, forcing you to target one of your own enchantments. When you want to kill one specific problem in the mirror, like a Seal on turn two or a Tide on turn four, there may be no second target, or no good second target.
Conclusion: This isn't the right way to go. It may shine in any one game but too often it won't work.
Advantages: This is the big gun. If it resolves on one of the key enchantments, you should have a big edge. If you get Opalescence you may even be able to deck them if they didn't cover that possibility when sideboarding. Getting one of the big enchantments gives you a significantly better deck for the rest of the game. By looking through their deck (and graveyard, which can be really nice) you get to see everything they sideboarded. If you do pull this off on Yawgmoth's Bargain they'll have to go to Skirge beatdown to win.
Disadvantages: It costs four mana, and you've already got a ton to do with four mana. There are a lot of ways to protect enchantments in the mirror, from Seal of Cleansing to Parallax Wave. If you start losing you may not get a chance to cast this. If two Opalescence come out at once and you don't have additional removal for the first one you don't win the game, and if they have a Wave Scour will fizzle. You should win against Bargain once you get four mana anyway, and you can't save the mana just in case they get a Bargain next turn. Against other decks, this is too expensive to use unless they're really dependant on an enchantment, such as Opposition.
Conclusion: Scour seems extreme to me, but Replenish is getting huge. I wouldn't go with too many of them because of mana problems, but it's a very powerful card. I would also try to back it up with some cheaper stuff, which can also be used to clear the path for Scour to resolve.
Section Two: Fighting the counter war
Advantages: Still amazing against blue decks, forcing them to counter it or keep an extra counter ready the entire game once it grows enough. Still a great turn two play, and all the other advantages it has maindeck. If you're playing against random hate, this will help stop it.
Disadvantages: Not quite as powerful as a truly targeted card for blue like Mana Short. The deck is tight, so this isn't going to go in very often. If it did, you would have it in the maindeck. Becomes useless over time.
Conclusion: The deck isn't flexible enough to use this kind of sideboard card, and you shouldn't need it.
Advantages: If it resolves against permission you probably win the game, and countering it probably does most of the damage anyway. Forces them to choose between using Thran Foundry or similar cards with activation costs now or leaving themselves open to a huge Replenish on your turn. This can stop the paying of echo costs most of the time.
Disadvantages: They can cast spells in response, as always. Blue should still be pretty easy to beat, and you have almost all good cards, so there's no need to go overboard with this. Mana Short is expected, so they'll try to prepare for it.
Conclusion: I was talking out enough cards to put in two of these before cutting cards started to hurt, which is where it should probably stop. If you have other useful cards (like Disenchant) it's reasonable to consider none at all.
Section Three: Not getting overrun by beatdown
Advantages: Buys time against practically everything, often a ton of time.
Disadvantages: It's not targeted at any one deck, and it requires using more sideboard space than you want to use. It may also be in the maindeck already.
Conclusion: If you can spare the slots, and there are some ways you might be able to, this is a good kind of insurance to buy, especially since it also helps against Bargain. Like in the maindeck I found I didn't need multiples and didn't want to tutor for it, but that might be a combination of the local metagame and other factors like my style. There's a lot to be said for it.
Advantages: Gives a two casting cost answer to black creatures if you can keep your mana open. When you do have to tap out, you should no longer need it.
Disadvantages: It isn't always easy to keep your mana open, and this doesn't work on Masticore. Thran Lens is in their sideboard anyway and will make this mostly useless.
Conclusion: More than one would be a waste of space, but one gets you out of a lot of problematic situations. You certainly need something at the two level.
Advantages: If this hits the table, all you have to do is stop Masticore and Thran Lens and they can basically scoop. Stops the Skirge beatdown!
Disadvantages: This costs four mana, the same amount as Parallax Wave. If you can cast Light of Day, couldn't you have just won normally?
Conclusion: This is wrong for a deck with such a high mana curve. In matchups where you want this you should try to compensate for that.
Advantages: Requires no mana to activate. With almost no non-basic lands and a lot of enchantments, it's likely that many decks that attack will have no way to remove it in time. Discard spells tend to get burned on you before you get to two mana. Tutoring for it will save games you can't win another way. By the time you need to start having cards hit your graveyard you shouldn't need it anymore.
Disadvantages: Discard still hurts. You can't keep it there while using Attunement or Brainstorm. If you tutor for it, you're basically taking a huge gamble. If they can remove it you very likely just lost. Has an unfortunate interaction with Replenish itself.
Conclusion: I didn't give this card enough thought earlier on, and I think I would probably go down on other creature defense to fit in one of these. You should be able to tell which of them I'm not as big on.
Advantages: Stops red threats already on the table, which Chill doesn't. For example, it will deal with an attacking Lightning Dragon. It works in the late game when Chill is useless. Against Sligh Chill might actually be too late on turn two. Circle is white, so if you have no Islands you don't lose that way.
Disadvantages: Sparing mana for this can be difficult. If red is trying to blow up your lands, this won't stop them.
Conclusion: It seems right to use one, but that could just be tradition talking.
Advantages: Slows Ponza a ton, and helps a lot with other red decks unless their permanents are out of control.
Disadvantages: Even on turn two it may be too late, especially if they went first.
Conclusion: One's needed, the second is starting to look questionable to me. Three is overkill, since there's a better way to deal with land destruction.
Advantages: Keeps the good stuff feeling intact. Makes it much less likely to lose to bad draws against general creature decks and random creatures, giving you more copies of Parallax Wave. This should prove invaluable in a format like Regionals full of randomness.
Disadvantages: It costs four, and you've got a lot of those already. It could be argued it doesn't add that much to the deck, especially if you're missing Mystical Tutor as I think you should be. Conclusion: I think you should use at least two, and I wouldn't object that strongly to more. This is one reason why so much of the rest of this section of the sideboard ends up costing two mana.
Other options include Sanctimony, Circle of Protection: Green and White, Meekstone.
Section four: Must. have. more. mana.
Marble Diamond (and additional copies of Sky Diamond)
Advantages: Makes it easier to get to four mana a turn faster in the matchups where that's all you need to do. Allows you to escape from Port pressure or Adept locks you would otherwise scoop to, or get ahead of a wave of red land destruction. Allows you to tutor for white mana and not just blue. If you're facing mana denial you can increase your mana ratio, and if you're facing a situation where nonbasics are horrible you can bring these in for the duallands. Also, after the ProTour some people may try to use Rising Waters.
Disadvantages: This uses slots that could be used for cards that do things. As with the maindeck Sky, drawing them later is poor. Conclusion: I think the Marble is a definite, more than that probably is a waste of space.
Advantages: Gets you out of Port pressure (a little) and saves your land from destruction (slowly). It can't be that bad since you can use it to recycle lands you don't want.
Disadvantages: You should always want to get something else with your Tutor.
Conclusion: Stay away.
Other options include Basic Lands (very few people seriously consider this option enough in any deck, although it's bad here), Rishadan Port.
Section five: Other cards
Arcane Laboratory needs to be available for the matchup against Bargain unless you run it maindeck. It's not that amazing, so don't run more than one. The problem with it being maindeck is that you really need to keep access to Attunement before you can afford to go for Arcane Laboratory without taking a huge risk.
Back to Basics should start in the maindeck, but the extra copies of it belong in the sideboard. The question here is how many you want. One more is definitely a good idea. More than that would be nice, but I found that there were other cards I wanted more. As with all sideboard cards this comes down to a metagame call.
Masticore is amazing against many decks, but that's actually not what it's doing in the sideboard. The reason it's there is Scour. Opalescence is your only way to kill your opponent game one. That's not really a problem, since you can prevent them from stopping it in any number of ways. But after boarding, Scour can prevent you from having a way to win the game. To stop that, you can board in the one Masticore. This gives you a way to win without enchantments. This applies to Scour but also to other hate. If your opponent has all the enchantment and graveyard hate out there, this can win the game while you pitch those useless targets away.
That wasn't everything you can sideboard, but it was a lot of the options you have. A major key to the deck, if not THE key, will be doing well in the mirror matchup. While I can speculate on what the tech should be, I'm not going to aside from my comments on the enchantment kill. It normally comes down to who drops the first Parallax Tide game one, but game two is another story, although the Tide play is still great. What's the best way to board here? Good question, and probably the best one. If I figure out the answer I'll write about it.
Good luck at Regionals, everyone!
Zvi Mowshowitz
** [**](#top)