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如果您是新来的，请不要忘记查看我们的 Discord 频道。它对所有人免费！

This is an update of the Energy primer and sideboard guide that was first posted in August 2024. You’ll find more than just updated lists for both Boros and Mardu though – I added a few sideboard options, three more matchups and updated matchup notes, so this article could be up-to-date. If you have any questions, I’m available on the Discord. 
这是对 2024 年 8 月首次发布的 Energy 入门和备牌指南的更新。不过，你不仅可以找到波洛斯和玛尔都的更新列表—我还添加了一些备牌选项、另外三个对局和更新的对局说明，所以这篇文章可能是最新的。如果你有任何问题，我可以在 Discord 上联系。

Introduction 介绍

What is Energy midrange? 什么是 Energy midrange？

Do you like midrange decks? Do you like punching your opponent in the face really hard? Do you like making tons of tokens? Or do you just like cats? If all of that sounds like you, then Boros Energy is the deck for you!
你喜欢中速套牌吗？你喜欢狠狠地打对手的脸吗？你喜欢制作大量的代币吗？或者你只是喜欢猫？如果这一切听起来都像你，那么 Boros Energy 就是你的套牌！

The deck’s core is really strong and allows for a handful of flex slots to adapt to different metagames or splash different colors. The world is your oyster: Do you want to stay in Boros and play Blood Moon? Do you want to add black and play Orcish Bowmasters? Do you want to fuel your graveyard for Phlage with Malevolent Rumble?
这副牌的核心真的很强大，并允许一些灵活的插槽来适应不同的元游戏或喷洒不同的颜色。世界是你的牡蛎：你想待在波罗斯玩血月吗？你想添加黑色并玩 Orcish Bowmasters 吗？你想用 Malevolent Rumble 为 Phlage 的墓地加油吗？
No matter what colors you decide to splash (or don’t), you can be sure that Guide of Souls followed by Ajani, Nacatl Pariah and Ocelot Pride will make your opponent’s life difficult if they don’t answer your threats quickly.
无论您决定使用（或不）使用哪种颜色，您都可以确定，如果对手不迅速回应您的威胁，那么 Guide of Souls 以及 Ajani、Nacatl Pariah 和 Ocelot Pride 都会让您的对手的生活变得困难。

There are the two main versions of the archetype – Boros and Mardu. Both are proven and they had a lot of successes.
这个原型有两个主要版本——波洛斯和玛尔都。两者都得到了证明，并且取得了很多成功。

Boros: 波罗斯：

Downloadable list can be found here.
可下载列表可在此处找到。

Mardu: 玛尔都：

Downloadable list can be found here.
可下载列表可在此处找到。

if you can’t see decklists and links, it’s probably becasue you didn’t accept cookies. Doing so is mandatory for the website to work correctly.
如果您看不到 Decklists 和链接，可能是因为您不接受 Cookie。这样做是网站正常运行的必要条件。

What are its biggest strengths?
它最大的优势是什么？

In most far matchups, the deck can often switch on the go between offence and defence.
在大多数远距离比赛中，牌组通常会在进攻和防守之间切换。
Its aggressive starts can be incredibly hard to stop, but it is not a one trick pony, as many aggro decks have been in the past. The incidental lifegain from Phlage, Guide of Souls and even Ocelot Pride allows you to race many decks, while still grinding incredibly well. Even though it’s mostly a creature deck, it plays really well through removal, as the majority of your creatures provide some sort of card advantage. But your ways of pulling ahead on cards don’t end there. Unstable Amulet may not be a 4-of anymore, but there have been games where it drew me 5 cards for 2 mana. Chthonian Nightmare has an incredibly high ceiling and can help you rebuild your board after a wrath or combo off and Phlage your opponent multiple times for lethal. And finally, Fable doesn’t need any introduction at this point – just one of the strongest cards printed in the last decade.
它的激进开局可能非常难以阻止，但它不是一招鲜的小马，就像过去的许多快攻套牌一样。来自 Phlage、Guide of Souls 甚至 Ocelot Pride 的附带生命增益让您可以参加许多套牌比赛，同时仍然磨练得非常出色。虽然它主要是一副生物套牌，但它在去除时表现得非常好，因为你大部分的生物都提供了某种卡牌优势。但是你在卡片上取得领先的方式并不止于此。Unstable Amulet 可能不再是 4-of，但有些游戏会用 2 点法术力抽到 5 张牌。Chthonian Nightmare 的天花板非常高，可以帮助您在愤怒或连击后重建棋盘，并多次 Phlage 您的对手造成致命。最后，Fable 在这一点上不需要任何介绍——只是过去十年中印制的最强卡牌之一。

In the past, aggressive decks often struggled because they lacked inevitability. Now we have Phlage as a great way to grind out those longer games. The flexibility of the archetype also allows for different builds that can fight different metagames better. Sometimes you want Blood Moon, sometimes you want Thoughtseize and Orcish Bowmasters, but because the core leaves a decent amount of flex slots, there is a lot of room to adapt.
在过去，快攻的套牌经常因为缺乏必然性而苦苦挣扎。现在我们有 Phlage 作为磨练那些较长游戏的好方法。原型的灵活性也允许不同的构建，可以更好地对抗不同的元游戏。有时你想要血月，有时你想要 Thoughtseize 和 Orcish Bowmasters，但由于核心留下了相当数量的弹性槽，所以有很大的适应空间。

What are its weaknesses? 它的弱点是什么？

While the Deck thrives in most fair matchups because it can fluently adapt which role to take, it can struggle against unfair decks and control, where its only viable plan is being the aggressor and lots of your interaction is dead.
虽然 Deck 在大多数公平的对决中都蓬勃发展，因为它可以流畅地适应要扮演的角色，但它可能会与不公平的套牌和控制作斗争，在这种情况下，它唯一可行的计划是成为侵略者，而你的很多互动都已经死了。

Eldrazi (Especially the Through the Breach variants), Storm and Nadu can be really tough game one. Your sideboard has to do heavy lifting in those matchups, because they either dodge your interaction, lock you out of playing the game, or just win faster than you can. Other than the combo decks, Jeskai Control also can give you a hard time. Wrath of the Skies cleaning up not only your creatures, but also your artifacts and enchantments is tough to deal with. Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of good sideboard cards against them, but playing cards like Ob Nixilis, the Adversary to dodge both their counters and board wipes helps soften the blow.
奥札奇（尤其是 Through the Breach 变体）、Storm 和 Nadu 可能是非常艰难的第一场比赛。在这些对局中，你的备牌必须做繁重的工作，因为它们要么躲避你的互动，要么让你无法玩游戏，要么就是比你赢得更快。除了组合套牌之外，洁斯开控制也会让你感到困难。Wrath of the Skies 不仅清理你的生物，还清理你的神器和结界，这很难对付。不幸的是，没有很多好的备牌来对抗他们，但打出像 Ob Nixilis， the Adopponent 这样的牌来躲避他们的指示物和盘面擦除有助于减轻打击。

Primer

The main gameplan

Your plan is to deploy threats each turn, ideally starting from turn one, and eventually overwhelm your opponent. The deck is built to reflect that game plan, with around 10 one drops, each of them threatening in their own way. Guide of Souls can create Energy to either enhance your other cards or pump your creatures, and life to get ahead in races or trigger Ocelot Pride more reliably, speaking of Pride, it can go wide on its own if unanswered, create blockers and trade with many 1 drops because of first strike. Lastly, Ragavan has been a staple of the modern format for quite some time, but is actually one of the weaker one drops in the deck (more to that in the card choice segment). Nevertheless, the mana and card advantage Ragavan can provide is incredible and needs to be answered by your opponent.

As I already mentioned, the deck tries to curve out as much as possible – you don’t want to leave any mana unspent. Turn one Guide into double one drop or a two drop is where the deck feels most comfortable. Topping that off with a 3 drop is the icing on the cake, even if it is “just” a Phlage.

Once you hit your 4th land drop, you can usually go for the strongest turns. Either casting multiple cheap creatures or escaping Phlage are both great ways to pull ahead. Do not be shy to Legend Rule your Ajani to get him to flip. The planeswalker side is incredibly powerful and you still get the token from the second copy. Once you have a flipped Ajani with another red permanent in play, it usually locks down the board for the opponent, and it’s one of the reasons why most decks can’t contest the board against Energy.

With the early game covered, let’s focus on the longer perspective .Obviously we have Phlage, which is one of the most powerful cards printed in MH3 as far as I am concerned. Turns out a repeatable Lightning Helix on a 6/6 body is quite strong, especially in conjunction with Arena of Glory. Escaping Phlage and giving it haste is a total of twelve damage if your opponent doesn’t have a blocker or removal if you kill the blockers. Phlage aside, there are some other tools for each version to help them go long. Boros usually run Fable and can have some number of Unstable Amulets, while Mardu variants tend to pick Chthonian Nightmare and Ob Nixilis, the Adversary over them. On top of that, every variant can also have Jegantha.

To put everything together we have so far:

• Create early pressure with early creatures.
• Grind your opponent out with Phlage and other card advantage engines if they dont die earlier.
• Abuse one of the most broken mechanics in Magic’s history in Companion.

Which build is better – Boros or Mardu?

That’s the question on most people’s mind when it comes to the Energy archetype at the moment. Unfortunately, I cannot give you a clean cut answer to that, but I can help you decide what you should pick for your next tournament.

Generally speaking, in Modern you need more reasons to not add a colour then to add one. Manabases can be built to be super reliable, and with the recent addition of surveil lands it sometimes feels like multicolour manabases are better than the other way around. I have seen more Necro players die to a Blood Moon than Omnath players, because mono colour manabases have become so reliant on nonbasics in both MDFCs and utility lands, whereas Omnath is fine with just abusing fetchlands and getting one of each basic. Now, to the biggest deciding factor and difference between Boros and Mardu: Blood Moon.

The biggest upside Boros has compared to the 3 coloured energy decks is its access to Blood Moon, especially in the maindeck. Due to the heavy mana restrictions Phlage’s Escape brings, 3 colour variants cannot play enough basics to cast their spells reliably under the Moon. 1 Swamp for the black spells, 2 Plains for double spelling and escaping your Titan + 1 Mountain against Field of Ruin or Harbinger of the Seas is not feasible. One of the biggest reasons why you should play Ragavan in Boros (but only in Boros) is to have access to a turn two Moon on the play.

So, what about Mardu? It gets access to some other incredibly powerful cards in exchange for not being able to run Blood Moon so easily. Most notable ones are Orcish Bowmasters, Chthonian Nightmare and Thoughtseize.

Let’s compare each card with what it replaces from the Boros list:

• Blood Moon vs Thoughtseize: both cards help you fight unfair decks, Tron and control. Blood Moon can proactively lock your opponent from playing the game while also giving you some free wins. Nevertheless, there are certain matchups where the card is dead and serves no use other than being discarded to Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. Thoughtseize gives you another turn one play, which is especially important since you don’t play Ragavan without Blood Moon, and a way to take away your opponents combo piece and interaction. Eldrazi and different Tron variants are rough matchups because they play tons of interaction that wreck us and big threats to shut the door quickly. Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere and All is Dust, all can ruin our game plan without much counterplay. This is where Thoughtseize shines by getting rid of them altogether. Playing against a Combo deck? Discard + pressure has always been one of the best ways to fight them, ever since Modern’s inception, so why change a good formula? As you can see they both serve a similar purpose – Blood Moon stops your opponent from having mana to cast All is Dust or Wrath the Skies, while Thoughtseize can just get rid of it.
• Ragavan – Orcish Bowmasters: it might seem counterintuitive to compare these cards at first glance, but let me explain and come to the conclusion on why I prefer the one build over the other. Ragavan gives you access to the turn two Blood Moon and some free wins as a consequence. He is good against linear combo decks, that don’t play much creature removal and allow him to connect freely. On the other hand, Orcish Bowmasters are great in the mirror and against The One Ring decks, and bring two bodies to the table. That last bit is important for Chthonian Nightmare to really pop off,and Ob Nixilis to have fodder for his Casualty. All in all, Ragavan is good in Boros in combination with Blood Moon, while Bowmasters give you more utility in grindy games and against Ring decks.

In conclusion, in a metagame with linear combo decks that are weak to both Ragavan and Blood Moon and fold to sideboard hate, Boros is the stronger variant. If the combo decks are resistant to Blood Moon, like Ruby Storm, and you rather have discard or you are in a more midrangy metagame, Mardu is better. 

To Ring, or not to Ring?

Let’s first talk about the major strength The One Ring brings to the table for the deck: Energy threats are incredibly cheap and efficient. This means that even when drawing 4 or 5 cards per turn in the later stages of the game, you can still use all those cards and nothing goes to waste. Energy also has a lot of incidental lifegain. Guide of Souls, Ocelot Pride and Phlage keep you going and make sure you don’t die to your Ring. Guide of Souls especially can easily gain you upwards of 5 life in a single turn once you have a full hand with the Ring. The One Ring also helps you fight sweepers. While Goblin Bombardment deals damage to your opponent when they want to remove your threats and can kill your opponent out of nowhere, it still gets removed by All is Dust or Wrath of the Skies. The One Ring dodges both and allows you to deploy more and more threats every turn until your opponent runs out of answers.

What are its downsides then? Four mana is a steep cost that can lead to it being stranded in your hand or bricking your Amped Raptor, even when you had an Aether Hub.

So what should you do? In my opinion, Boros should play The One Ring moving forward. Not having access to instant speed threats in Bowmasters and discard makes it really tough to play around sweepers, and Ring perfectly fills that void. It also makes the Mardu matchup way better, if not favourable, as they cannot keep up with the card advantage without playing the Ring themselves. Mardu, on the other hand, can be played both ways. The Ring helps win the mirror and against some control or big mana decks, where Thoughtseize thrives against combo decks like storm.

Which version should you play?

Thanks to The One Ring, Boros can be resilient against All is Dust. Blood Moon, Obsidian Charmaw and Ring allow you to fight big mana decks really efficiently. Mardu has its edge against combo decks that are resilient to land destruction and require you to discard their combo pieces. Apart from that the decks don’t differ as much anymore as they have been streamlined, especially when you also play The One Ring in Mardu. Orcish Bowmasters is great against UB Frog variants to help you play around counterspells, but a resolved Ring from Boros also can single handedly win you the matchup. Aside from big mana and combo, the last big comparison is the strength in the mirror, or semi-mirror. Here is a quick order in which the decks fall: Mardu < Ring Boros < Ring Mardu. This order is to be taken with a grain of salt, as The One Ring alone doesn’t win the game, but there are a handful of games where it snowballs and makes it impossible to catch up to your opponent. So your deck choice for your next event should be influenced by the ratio of Big Mana decks to combo decks and the amount of Energy you expect. I personally like to strike a balance in between with a Mardu list that includes some Rings, but doesn’t go all in so it can still include discard.

Important deckbuilding decisions

I’m not going to cover every single card in the deck, as I’ve already written extensively about some of them, and there are some that are self-explanatory, so instead I’m going to focus on the most interesting decisions I’ve made. 

• The One Ring: I talked about the strength of the Ring previously at length. It is without a doubt one of the most powerful cards in the format and Energy can use its strength well. 
• Goblin Bombardment: Bombardment is not only good in sacrifice lists with cards like Marionette Apprentice. It’s also a great synergy tool with Ajani, helping you flip him and being a red permanent, and one of your best burn spells, allowing you to kill your opponent after they resolve their Ring. It also helps you fight some board wipes, by dealing loads of chip damage that quickly add up. Basically, it does most of what Ob Nixilis does but two mana instead of three. 
• Ob Nixilis, The Adversary: helps you fight opposing board wipes and curves insanely well with Ajani, Nacatl Pariah. Playing Ajani on two and using the token on three for Casualty is a near instant win. Other than that the card is also good against The One Ring decks, because it allows you to either create a token or still make them lose life, because his plus doesn’t target. Including him over Fable is a meta call though, and can definitely change in the future, for example when Wrath of the Skies sees less play. You could also go for a split and play 2 Ob Nixilis and 2 Fable, while shaving the second Chthonian Nightmare (as those are your late game card advantage cards), but i prefer having access to Nightmare more often.
• Chthonian Nightmare: it allows you to come back after a board wipe and gives you value in the late game. It combines really well with Ajani and Bowmasters, to overwhelm your opponent in value. You don’t want to play more than two, unless you play more creatures that leave a token behind or something similar, because the card can be unreliable at times and you usually just want to see a single copy later in the game. However it’s one of the first cards on the chopping block if you include The One Ring, as it gives you more card advantage without being soft to graveyard hate. 
• Manabase: the manabase is fairly stock. I’m running three surveil lands in Mardu and two in Boros, as they’re really good and I want to pack as many of them as I realistically can. Patching up your curve with these taplands is pretty nice if you happen to have an opening somewhere, and getting to surveil Phlage to the graveyard is just gravy. Another extremely important utility land is Arena of Glory. Sadly, it’s hard to fit more than one in Mardu, and getting to play two in Boros is undoubtedly an argument for staying in just red and white. Last part of the manabase that needs to be covered in my opinion are basics. Two Plains are necessary to function properly under Blood Moon. It allows for reliable double spelling and escaping Phlage. A single Mountain is a safety measure against Harbinger of the Seas and Field of Ruin. If the format is low on Blood Moon, you can go down to only one Plains. Notably, this is the set of basics I’m running in both of my lists, which means that the Mardu deck doesn’t play a basic Swamp. There is simply no space for it and it is counterproductive to our Phlage gameplan. Blood Moon can be answered in a variety of ways if you need the black mana that desperately.

[Possible addition in the future] Sacrifice package
There have been a handful of people seeing success with Marionette Apprentice and Goblin Bombardment in the deck. Bombardment synergizes really well with lots of cards in the deck, especially Ajani. Being a free sacrifice outlet that’s also a red permanent can immediately flip Ajani and have his cat making ability start dealing damage. If combined with Marionette Apprentice, it often is a straight up kill. This package makes Chthonian Nightmare better, as Apprentice is another card that produces multiple bodies, and each time you bring something back it’ll trigger Apprentice for some extra damage. I really like these builds against removal but not counter heavy decks, but right now I prefer the more consistent “standard” Mardu build, because it doesn’t need as much setup. With Spell Snare seeing more and more play it also gets harder and harder to rely on an engine that needs multiple two drops, where decks like Dimir Murktide can otherwise be a decent matchup for you.

Important plays and tricks you must know

Guide of Souls

• Take care of your sequencing to get as many triggers as possible
• The buffs Guide of Souls provide are permanent, and can be given to any of your attacking creatures, even when Guide itself doesn’t attack
• Track your triggers properly and communicate to your opponent clearly what you are doing – you don’t want to lose because you didn’t get all the life and energy you should

Ocelot’s Pride

• The main part of Ocelot is its trigger, so don’t just throw it out against removal.
• Multiple Ocelot scale incredibly well when you have the City’s Blessing. Here’s a quick guide to how many cats you make: one Ocelot produces 2 Cats, two Ocelots produce 6 Cats, three Ocelots produce 14 Cats and four Ocelots produce 30 Cats
• Ocelot creates copies of all your tokens that entered this turn. Track your token and make sure to copy them all, be it Treasure, Goblin Shaman, Cats or Ob Nixilis the Adversary
• Remember that Ob Nixilis is bugged with Ocelot on MTGO. According to the rules, you should create copies of your token that enter with the same starting loyalty as the token did

Ajani, Nacatl Pariah

• Legend Ruling Ajani flips him
• In boardstalls, or when you want to dodge an upcoming boardwipe you can use removal on your own Cat to flip Ajani and have a strong planeswalker
• You do not have to flip Ajani when a Cat dies. This can be beneficial when your opponent destroys the cat precombat and could attack Ajani

Amped Raptor

• Sequence your triggers with Raptor and Guide of Souls correctly, so you have enough Energy to cast whatever you hit
• When you hit Discharge off of Raptor and there is no other creature on board, just target the Raptor. You can choose to not pay Energy for the Discharge and gain some additional Energy
• Hitting Ob Nixilis still allows you to sacrifice Raptor to Casualty

The rest

• Static Prison does not generate Energy if you don’t exile a card with it
• You can cast the card exiled with Unstable Amulet, even after the Amulet has been destroyed
• Arena of Glory giving haste to Phlage is one of our main ways to have lethal out of nowhere. Especially against bad matchups that can keep our board clean or in grindy games that are back and forth
• Arena of Glory can give haste to two creatures, assuming that you’ll use the mana produced from it to cast both of them
• Jegantha can be used under Blood Moon to get easier access to the second white mana for Phlage’s Escape.
• Goblin Bombardment combined with Orcish Bowmaster can deal insane amounts of damage. Just sacrifice your Army token in between all Bowmaster triggers to deal double damage to your opponent if you don’t need the big token, or need Energy from Guide of Souls.

Sideboarding

General notes

• The Energy maindeck is really good at grinding and being aggressive, so your sideboard should mostly include cards that help fight faster linear and unfair decks.
• Apart from Guide of Souls, there is pretty much no sacred cow that cannot be cut or shaved postboard. Because your cards are often still good but you need to make space for the sideboard cards, you often just trim a couple of different cards, instead of cutting something altogether
• Ocelot Pride is so good you don’t entirely cut it against Bowmaster decks, but shave it, and sometimes you can even keep all of them on the play
• When cutting or shaving synergy reliant cards you should also often shave or cut the corresponding cards

Sideboard options

Generally speaking, when building your sideboard you want to look for cards that fall under some categories. You want them to be good hits off of Amped Raptor and to work with Jegantha, unless they help fix an otherwise unfixable matchup.

Suncleanser

Suncleanser has established itself as one of the most valuable cards to fight the Energy decks. Not only can we use it against Boros or Mardu Energy, but also Jeskai Control and Goryo’s Vengeance to stop them from casting Wrath of the Skies and wiping our board. Do not forget that Suncleanser cannot target your opponent when they have protection from The One Ring, but you can use the other mode to get rid of all the counters from it and to make sure they won’t draw more cards with it. It can still be more beneficial to wait a turn and target them instead, but keep the other line in mind.

Blood Moon

As mentioned previously Blood Moon is one of our main tools in fighting Tron and other problematic strategies. Cutting off your Tron opponent from colourless mana and making more than one with a land, or cutting off your Jeskai opponent from double white and blue to resolve threats and go wide is important in those matchups. Even against Mardu Energy Blood Moon can be strong, when your opponent doesn’t respect it or simply doesn’t play enough basics.

Obsidian Charmaw

Obsidian Charmaw is a one trick pony, but one that’s needed in Mardu. Blowing up Tron lands and Eldrazi Temple are one of the main ways to fight them when you do not get to play Blood Moon. Losing Jegantha in those matchups doesn’t hurt us a lot, because usually those games are decided one way or another way before Jegantha would come up.

Damping Sphere

Damping Sphere allows us to fight multiple bad matchups in Storm and Tron, so if you expect to see a lot of both you can try Sphere, otherwise you are better off using the more focused options, such as Charmaw or Magistrate respectively.

Drannith Magistrate

Drannith Magistrate helps us fight Storm, Cascade decks and miscellaneous combo decks that utilise either Wish or Underworld Breach.

Celestial Purge

Works well against Phlage in the mirror, multiple cards out of Necro decks, and can also kill other troublesome permanents. A pretty great and versatile sideboard card overall.

Wear // Tear

Wear/Tear is one of the more flexible sideboard cards, which is why I like having at least one. It is great against Nadu, as it can deal with Urza’s Saga, Shuko and even Nantuko. Generally speaking, Wear/Tear is great mostly against Urza’s Saga decks, but has other applications as well.

Disruptor Flute

Disruptor Flute is another great flexible sideboard card against combo decks that are reliant on one namesake card. If Nadu is gone it can likely replace Harsh Mentor, in case Yawgmoth or something similar comes back.

Unlicensed Hearse

Unlicensed Hearse is one of my personal favourites when it comes to graveyard hate. It is a great hit off of Amped Raptor and can keep graveyards tidy over the long run.

Nihil Spellbomb and Soul-Guide Lantern

Both are good options when you need to empty your opponents entire yard all at once. Soul-Guide Lantern is particularly effective against Phlage thanks to its trigger.

Surgical Extraction

When you expect to play against both a lot of Phlages and Goryo’s Vengeance, Surgical Extraction can solve those problems permanently, where other graveyard hate cards can be interacted with more easily.

Magebane Lizard, Deafening Silence

These are cards that solely focus on the Storm matchup and have fallen out of favour ever since Storm’s poor performance at the PT. If Storm comes to replace Nadu after its ban, maybe we’ll need some of them to help shore that matchup.

Fatal Push
Fatal Push is one of the best tools against opposing Suncleansers and in general a great removal in lots of metas. Nethergoyf, Tarmogoyf and Psychic Frog can often be tough to kill with Discharge, which is why Fatal Push can also be included when your opponent has loads of big cheap threats and you expect to see a big number of Suncleansers

Thraben Charm
It’s a really nice flexible card, in case you are wondering: sideboard cards usually should be powerful in certain matchups and not flexible against a lot. So why consider Charm? The modes end up working really well against a lot of decks in some spots. Usually you want to have a variety of decks were multiple modes are good to varant putting it in your board. The best thing to showcase that are some examples:

• In the mirror, exiling the graveyard is decent against Phlage, but so is destroying your opponents Goblin Bombardement, Blood Moon, Nightmare or Static Prison.
• In some spots the removal can also be relevant when you are ahead or at a boardstall. Against Zoo Charm can answer Leyline of the Guildpact, which is one of the most dangerous cards against us combined with Scion of Draco, Leyline Binding and exile the graveyard for Phlage.
• Exiling their graveyard can also brick their combos and the removal helps against them quite a bit.

Containment Priest

Containment Priest is one of our only ways to interact with Through the Breach. If it only did that it wouldn’t necessarily be worth talking about, but it also helps against Goryo’s Vengeance decks. Both are difficult to deal with and Containment Priest is one of the only cards with cross applications in both of those matchups, and it’s a decent hit off of Raptor.

Reprieve

Reprieve started pícking up popularity in some lists. Against certain combo decks it can help you get that extra turn you need to win. However it is really niche, as against combo decks like Goryo’s or Storm it often doesn’t do enough.

Cast into the Fire

Cast into the Fire is decent against some Energy threats and a solid answer against The One Ring. Now that the Energy mirror went from “whoever escapes Phlage first?” to “whoever resolves the Ring first?”, this can help you fight Ocelot in the early game and The One Ring later on.

End the Festivities/ Fear, Fire, Foes!

These are the 2 cheapest one sided board wipes we can play for the mirror. End the Festivities always does one damage, but also always costs one mana, whereas Fear, Fire, Foes! can kill one bigger threat and clean up cat tokens at the same time. However, it can be fizzled with either a removal spell or, worse yet, Goblin Bombardment, which is definitely a downside of the card.

Ob Nixilis, The Adversary

Ob Nixilis has incredible synergy with Ajani. Sacrificing the token, flipping Ajani and ending up with three planeswalkers outright wins some matchups. Casualty playing well through counterspells is one of the main reasons to include Ob in the board against decks like Frogtide and Jeskai Control.

Chained to the Rocks

This is a card that Boros can use to answer large creatures, such as Murktide or Phlage.

Sideboard guide cheat sheet

As we’re trying to further evolve our content to be more convenient and useful for you, we’re going to implement some changes to how our sideboard guides are presented. You can still find the Cheat Sheet with the exact numbers I settled on for today above, and below you can find more evergreen guidelines as to which cards work and which don’t in each matchup. This way, you can take more from these plans even if your list isn’t exactly the same as mine.

Since Energy players are divided between two builds – Boros and Mardu – I decided to create a list a cheat sheet for both of them. Enjoy!

Mardu:

Boros:

Sideboard guide

Amulet

Cards that are bad: Fatal Push
Cards that aren’t great: Phlage, Lightning Bolt
S-Tier sideboard cards: Blood Moon, Wear//Tear, Magus of the Moon
Good sideboard cards: Reprieve, Damping Sphere, Fulminator Mage
Marginal sideboard cards: Obsidian Charmaw
Unknown sideboard cards: —
Trap cards: —

Amulet is a pretty straightforward matchup. If your hate consists of permanents like Blood Moon, most of the time it is correct to just play them (unless you miss lethal that way obviously to stop them from going off. With Wear//Tear or other stack based interaction you have to be conscious of their combo windows to know when to let them do stuff and when to interact. 

How to mulligan:

You need at least one piece of interaction, as they are faster than you if you don’t make them stumble. Just aggression alone won’t do the trick 90% of the time, unless it is a one drop heavy draw with Bombardment to kill them through The One Ring protection.

Eldrazi Ramp

Cards that are bad: Galvanic Discharge, Fatal Push
Cards that aren’t great: Phlage, Lightning Bolt
S-Tier sideboard cards: Obsidian Charmaw
Good sideboard cards: Wear//Tear
Marginal sideboard cards: Blood Moon, Damping Sphere
Unknown sideboard cards: —
Trap cards: —

Eldrazi Ramp has to be one of the toughest matchups for us. They are resilient to Blood Moon and Damping Sphere because they play so many basics and they ramp with Utopia Sprawl and Talismans. They have a lot of board wipes, Kozilek’s Command and big Eldrazi, all of which can be tough to deal with. Another annoying thing about their basic heavy mana base is that Charmaw rarely costs two mana, and often costs four or more. This is one matchup where both The One Ring and discard spells can shine. Playing a Ring and being able to refuel every turn to force through their board wipes will eventually get the job done.

How to mulligan:

Either look for a really, really aggressive hand with Bombardment to dodge their Ring into All is Dust hands or have a way to disrupt their lands with additional pressure. If you’re playing the Ring yourself, you can try a bit less aggressive hands and try to resolve your Ring to start throwing your cards in their face and eventually kill them.

Eldrazi – Through the Breach

Cards that are bad: —
Cards that aren’t great: Phlage, Galvanic Discharge
S-Tier sideboard cards: —
Good sideboard cards: Obsidian Charmaw, discard spells, Containment Priest
Marginal sideboard cards: Wear/Tear, Bonecrusher Giant, Blood Moon
Unknown sideboard cards: —
Trap cards: —

From the outside, this deck might look similar to Tron, but for us it is far worse, as they are far less susceptible to land destruction. They play all the best cards against us: All is Dust, Kozilek’s Command and The One Ring, with a combo kill we can’t interact with on top of that

Our best plan is to cheese them with Ajani into Bombardment creating a couple of tokens to build a board and survive a hit from their Emrakul or kill them through Ring protection. Discard and Containment Priest are also really important in winning against their good draws.

How to mulligan:
We need early threats and discard to interrupt their combo or removal and kill them in time.
Slow hands are an absolute no go, because with every turn the game goes on they are more likely to win. The only exception to that rule are hands with multiple Charmaws or Charmaw + discard and Containment Priest.

Energy – Boros

Cards that are bad: Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
Cards that aren’t great: Thoughtseize
S-Tier sideboard cards: Suncleanser, Fatal Push
Good sideboard cards: Unlicensed Hearse, Celestial Purge, End the Festivities, Fear, Fire, Foes! , Cast into the Fire
Marginal sideboard cards: Wear/Tear
Trap cards: —

After talking about our worst matchups, I finally get to talk about a good one. The quasi-mirror is where the black splash can truly show its strength, because it is a classic case of a slightly bigger deck being favoured in the midrange matchup. The early turns are pretty much the same, we just have the better grindy cards. Orcish Bowmasters killing Ocelot Pride or Chthonian Nightmare loops are something they can’t really deal with in game one. We, on the other hand, have to make sure to not die to Blood Moon, and not let them snowball with Guide and Ocelot Pride. Ajani is another key card in this matchup. Flipping him and having him deal damage can make it so they can not contest our board. Creating a token and removing opposing creatures is hard to deal with for either side, so use it to your advantage if possible. If the game goes long it often is a race to escape Phlage, because neither deck has a great answer to it game 1. Postboard, we still have to be wary of opposing Blood Moons, as well as potential Suncleansers. Our Suncleanser should often not block, because they could Bolt it afterwards and it keeps them locked from using Guide, Discharge and Raptor. Our best solution for opposing Suncleanser is to either dig for an answer, or go over the top with stuff like Ajani and Ob Nixilis.

In the past the Mirror was largely solved through a small flowchart:

With Rings in the mix, all of that was reduced to 2 steps:

Of course this is all just hyperbole. In reality, the flowchart just got another step post Phlage in form of The One Ring.

Nevertheless, an uncontested Ring in the mirror is one of the most powerful things to do. So what are the main ways to contest it? Obviously, you can play your own Ring, but what else can you do? Contesting the board with Bombardment and putting your opponent under enough pressure that they will die once they cast their Ring, or even before they get to four mana. This of course is easier said than done, since Energy has a lot of incidental lifegain and Phlage alone can sometimes throw off the entire equation. You also have to respect Blood Moon, as it can make one of our best cards for the matchup stranded in hand. Orcish Bowmasters is a great tool against their one toughness creatures and The One Ring, and it can make a huge difference in a game. As far as Phlage goes, even with The One Ring in the mix, it still is a huge card in the mirror, especially with Arena of Glory often threatening lethal, or at the very least a massive life swing. Remember that grabbing your second Plains against Blood Moon often means the difference between winning or losing.

How to mulligan:

On the draw, you need answers for their one drops so they do not snowball out of control. On the play, we are more flexible. The tempo advantage from being on the play usually means that just having a good curve is the most important thing. You do not want to stumble and have them run you over. Phlage and Suncleanser are strong enough in the matchup that they allow you to bend those rules if the rest is not perfect.

Energy – Mardu

Cards that are bad: Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
Cards that aren’t great: Thoughtseize
S-Tier sideboard cards: Suncleanser, Fatal Push
Good sideboard cards: Unlicensed Hearse, Celestial Purge, End the Festivities, Fear, Fire, Foes!, Cast into the Fire
Marginal sideboard cards: Wear//Tear
Trap cards: —

This matchup is mostly the same to Boros Energy. The only big differences are us not having to respect Blood Moon but having to play around Orcish Bowmasters instead, and to a lesser degree Chthonian Nightmare. It is again important to not let them snowball with their one drops. Postboard, we have to control their graveyard not only for Phlage, but also for Chthonian Nightmare.

How to mulligan:

Similarly to the Boros matchup, on the draw you need to keep their one drops in check. Once again, on the play we are more flexible. Good curve and/or Phlage or Suncleanser is what you’re after.

Goryo

Cards that are bad: Ob Nixilis, the Adversary
Cards that aren’t great: Galvanic Discharge, Chthonian Nightmare, Phlage
S-Tier sideboard cards: Surgical Extraction
Good sideboard cards: Graveyard hate, discard, Containment Priest
Marginal sideboard cards: Celestial Purge, Suncleanser
Trap cards: —

In this matchup, discard and graveyard hate are your best friends if backed up with aggression. As a combo deck, Goryo is notoriously difficult to beat game one, but fortunately our sideboard can help us fix it. In every game, but especially game one, you need a fast start to make them use their resources to survive and so they do not have time to dig for their combo until they stumble and die. This is also a reason why you cannot let the game go too long as eventually they will find what they need, even after you disrupted them earlier. Multiple one drops are tough for them to deal with in game one, so yet again Guide and Ocelot are the strongest early plays. Postboard, Suncleanser is protection against their Wrath of the Skies to protect yourself from a sweeper, so that your one drops get to it. Many Goryo’s lists are running fewer Wraths in their board and are opting to play Toxic Deluge instead. If your opponent does the same, scrap Suncleanser. Ob Nixilis uptick is a liability in this matchup, because it allows them to discard their creature and go off faster, so just take them out. You can still keep one in for the potential synergy with Ajani that can kill your opponent when they have Solitude with lots of removal. In addition to our pressure we also have access to graveyard hate. Because of their removal suite, it is tough to find a good spot to play your permanent-based graveyard hate. If they already have their target in the graveyard, you can safely play it but if they do not have a way to get it in there and combo in the next turn, you should put more pressure on the board and wait with the hate instead.

How to mulligan:
Goryo’s is no exception from the other linear decks: no pressure? Send it back. No interaction? Send it back. Apart from their combo, they lack inevitability opposed to stuff like Eldrazi Breach, so we can afford to be slower if our hand consists mostly of interaction and two drops.

Jeskai Ring

Cards that are bad: Galvanic Discharge
Cards that aren’t great: Lightning Bolt
S-Tier sideboard cards: Ob Nixilis, the Adversary
Good sideboard cards: Suncleanser, Bonecrusher Giant
Marginal sideboard cards: Disruptor Flute
Trap cards: —

Jeskai Control can be tricky, as both The One Ring and Wrath of the Skies are really dangerous cards for us. Phlage is terrifying if they manage to escape it, but the same goes the other way around, because it gives us some form of inevitably in the long games as well. Their other removal and counters usually are fine for us., Especially if we manage to sneak a Ring through. A resolved Ring from us is often more terrifying for them than the other way around, but we have to bait them into using their counters beforehand. Your best bet is casting your own Ring after them tapping out for a board wipe or their own Ring, so that their only out is Force of Negation. Subtlety and Solitude trade down on cards in the early stages and are only good if they get to cast their Ring later. Almost all our threats leave behind another body and are good against point removal because of that. This is probably the matchup where the black splash shines the brightest. Orcish Bowmasters allow us to play around counterspells better and make them use their mana in spots they do not necessarily want to. Not only that, but it is also a great way to punish The One Ring. Thoughtseize allows us to get rid of the dangerous cards. Ob Nixilis both plays around counterspells and potentially flip Ajani to have three planeswalkers on board for permanent pressure that avoids their Wrath. When playing Boros, you want to deploy a fast Blood Moon to stop them from having both double blue and white mana. Those attempts are allowed to be reckless most of the time, because otherwise the game one is hard to win, and if they do not have an answer you can try to cheese the victory. Other than that, this also is a matchup where Jegantha comes up a lot. The additional card it provides can be really valuable for the longer games and after your opponent removed your other threats. Postboard, the matchup doesn’t get easier unfortunately. Suncleanser is a great way to stop a lot of their removal, but they bring Supreme Verdict to get rid of Suncleanser and the rest of our board. I have great hopes in Sunspine Lynx helping us a lot in the matchup as many games you lose are after your opponent stalls with The One Ring into a board wipe. Lynx should be able to punish them for tapping out for Ring and in many cases kill them on the spot. Another card you should also be conscious of when sequencing your plays is Spell Snare. Usually, you want to play a two drop on turn two rather than two one drops, as they’re easier to weave into the curve later on. Against Spell Snare, you’d rather play two creatures that dodge it to create board pressure.

How to mulligan: 

In this matchup, you are not really looking for any specific card. You are just looking for a good mix of threats that create some form of curve. Having multiple one drops is nice, as it often is, but you do not want to mulligan too much in order to have enough cards for long games.

Living End

Cards that are bad: Galvanic Discharge, Fatal Push
Cards that aren’t great: Static Prison, Lightning Bolt
S-Tier sideboard cards: graveyard hate, Drannith Magistrate
Good sideboard cards: discard
Marginal sideboard cards: Disruptor Flute
Trap cards: —

Living End is one of the more dangerous combo decks for us. Wiping our board and resetting our graveyard with Endurance to have them rebuild on their own is tough to deal with. However, if they do not have Endurance, we can beat them sometimes. In game one we can beat them if their Living End isn’t too big by rebuilding really fast after it. Our removal is often surprisingly useful, which most of the time is not the case against Living End. Having an aggressive start with Guide and Ocelot makes them use their cascade ASAP, because otherwise they die. If we managed to play a Phlage before or surveil something into our graveyard, we can often start rebuilding and blocking their big creatures while going wider to have chump blockers. Often, you can use a spare removal spell in response to their Living End to help rebuild faster. Ajani is another card that can really help in this matchup by legend ruling himself, flipping and putting another Ajani in the graveyard for the Living End. Upticking your Ajani also presents a one sided board wipe after their LE, so don’t just autopilot by making a token. Both the ultimate after their combo and the token to block and shoot your opponent are difficult for your opponent to interact with in game one. Postboard the matchup improves in my experience – Drannith Magistrate and graveyard hate make it difficult for your opponent to go off properly, unless they find an early Grief.

How to mulligan:

Your hate pieces and early threats are invaluable. Your opponent often cannot afford to mulligan once they have a cascade spell in hand, so a single Thoughtseize can sometimes ruin their day. However this does not guarantee a victory. Try to look for a one drop, a two mana hate piece and either Phlage for a lot of burn or other threats and interaction. On the draw, a hand without interaction is close to unkeepable, unless you already mulliganed. Generally speaking, you need more interaction on the draw than on the play. On the play, really aggressive hands can sometimes work without interaction, but that is only rarely the case. You are usually looking for at least a couple of hate pieces even then.

Necrodominance

Cards that are bad: —
Cards that aren’t great: Galvanic Discharge, Ocelot Pride, Ragavan Nimble Pilferer
S-Tier sideboard cards: Celestial Purge
Good sideboard cards: Bonecrusher Giant
Marginal sideboard cards: Wear/Tear
Trap cards: Disruptor Flute

Necro is a really interesting matchup. On the one hand, it is a deck that deals a lot of damage to itself, which is great for us, on the other hand it can get near infinite life, which is a thing we can almost never beat. If Necro doesn’t deploy one of their card advantage engines early on we usually have an easy win. The deck only becomes dangerous for us if they play a fast Necro or Ring and have pitch spells to remove our threats and gain life. As long as we stay proactive and get rid of the key cards in Sheoldred, Necro and The One Ring, they often have neither the resources, nor the life to contest us. Something worth noting is that you can remove your own creatures in response to Soulspike or March of Wretched Sorrow to stop them from gaining life. Especially after they resolved a Necro, this can break their back, because each lifepoint matters a lot to them. Another play that is important to remember is to flash in your Orcish Bowmasters with their Necro trigger on the stack. It works pretty much the same as Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, meaning you have to play it before, and they can still decline to draw. Postboard, they have notable access to Toxic Deluge and Plague Engineer. Both cards are really good at stopping us from going wide. Nevertheless Deluge costs them a decent amount of life, so as long as you do not overextend into it and keep some cards in hand you should be fine. Celestial Purge being an answer to every of their cards apart from The One Ring also is really nice, especially if you let them tap out for Necro and get rid of it before their end step. Wear/Tear is not on the same power level, but serves the same purpose. A situation that comes up quite a bit is that you draw your removal for Necro after it has already been resolved. If it’s an instant, do not remove it immediately, let your opponent skip their draw and play their turn as if they could draw with Necro at the end of the turn. Remove it only if they play a discard spell or pass priority to their end step. Another card that is a huge playmaker against Necro is Goblin Bombardment. Being able to sacrifice your creatures in response to their removal prevents their lifegain and allows you to kill them in their upkeep after they cast The One Ring.

Prowess

Cards that are bad: Chthonian Nightmare, Ragavan Nimble Pilferer
Cards that aren’t great: Ocelot Pride
S-Tier sideboard cards: Magebane Lizard
Good sideboard cards: Graveyard Hate, Deafening Silence
Marginal sideboard cards: Drannith Magistrate, Damping Sphere
Trap cards: —

Prowess is another premiere aggro deck, gaining value from removal spells in combination with their Prowess creature. Interaction and lifegain combined with board presence and Phlage on top of all that makes it into a pretty favourable matchup. The biggest problem is when they start going off with Underworld Breach, as they can easily go over the top with it. Gameplay wise, this matchup goes down a common path. We play a threat and remove theirs, while creating additional value in our cards. Try to protect your Guide of Souls as much as possible and pump it to dodge their removal. That way we can often win any race against them. Postboard you should be fine as long as you keep their graveyard in check so they do not suddenly kill you with Underworld Breach. Phlage killing their creature and also gaining us life is most of the time enough to beat them. Neither party in that matchup has insane sideboard cards, so the game mostly stays the same.

How to mulligan:
Your key cards are Guide of Souls, Phlage and removal. As long as your hand has a functional gameplan with any two of those you are golden.

Storm

Cards that are bad: Blood Moon
Cards that aren’t great: Ob Nixilis, the Adversary, Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury, Chthonian Nightmare
S-Tier sideboard cards: Deafening Silence, Drannith Magistrate, Magebane Lizard
Good sideboard cards:Damping Sphere, Discard, Wear/Tear
Marginal sideboard cards: Graveyard hate
Trap cards: —

After the initial hype, Storm’s poor showing at the PT stopped many people from playing it. This is really good for us, because game one we have almost nothing to stop them from going off. Our only plan is playing loads of threats and having removal for their cost reducer. Discard can also help disrupt their hand if they only have one cost reducer or draw effect. Postboard we just want to have as much hate as possible to stop them from doing their thing. As long as they do not get to remove our hate pieces, we can slowly beat them down. Especially Drannith Magistrate and Deafening Silence stopping their Wishes and card advantage engines make it significantly harder for them to dig towards potential answers. Despite that, they’ll still eventually find them, given enough time, so you should try to kill them in a timely fashion regardless.

How to mulligan:
The rule against Storm is simple- no hate, no keep. You need at least some removal for their cost reducers before considering your hand, especially on seven cards. Your dream hand has removal for both Ral and Medallion, Ocelot Pride and a lockpiece like Drannith Magistrate.

Tron

Cards that are bad: Galvanic Discharge
Cards that aren’t great: Ob Nixilis, the Adversary, Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury, Chthonian Nightmare
S-Tier sideboard cards: Obsidian Charmaw, Blood Moon
Good sideboard cards: Damping Sphere, Bonecrusher Giant
Marginal sideboard cards: discard spells
Trap cards: —

At large, most Tron variants are amongst the worst matchups for our deck. Kozilek’s Command, All is Dust, The One Ring from all versions and Trinisphere with Chalice of the Void from the Prison build exclusively are tough to deal with. So what should we do?

There are only a handful rather straightforward paths for us to take. Either we play turn one Ragavan, connect and play a Blood Moon to buy us some time, or we discard their key interaction with Thoughtseize. Either way, aggression is a key factor, and it needs to be paired, as in most matchups, with the right interaction. At the moment of writing this article I did not get to try Sunspine Lynx, but I put a lot of hope in it, helping us beat The One Ring decks the turn they play it, and I hope this also will be the case against Tron. In many games we deploy threat after threat until they loop Rings into All is Dust. With Lynx we potentially get to play around Ring loops by dealing both a decent amount of damage with it and taking away their protection. Without having tested the Lynx we rely on disrupting their manabase as a semi-permanent solution. Blood Moon and Obsidian Charmaw are our best ways to do so, especially with Charmaw also being a big body that can close a game in a couple of turns. Other notable things are keeping them off Tron and getting rid of their Maps.

How to mulligan:
Yet again we need good threats and interaction, who would have thought. But Tron really requires proper interaction to be winnable. Looking for Ragavan and Blood Moon or Obsidian Charmaw is a necessity if you want to have a chance. Other than that our only real way to beat them is with Guide, multiple Ocelots and discard spells to stop their All is Dust.

UB Murktide

Cards that are bad: Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
Cards that aren’t great: Galvanic Discharge, Ocelot Pride
S-Tier sideboard cards: Ob Nixilis, the Adversary
Good sideboard cards: graveyard hate
Marginal sideboard cards: —
Trap cards: —

UB Murktide is one of the grindiest matchups for us. Both our opponent and us are loaded with good removal against each other’s threats. The only notable exception is Murktide Regent, which we are most of the time forced to answer with Static Prison or discard before it comes down. Orcish Bowmasters can handle our 1 toughness creatures rather well, but our Bowmasters get to trigger more often due to their card draw. Having a two drop with Flash is a pretty big deal for us, as UB is quite heavy on Spell Snares most of the time. As already mentioned in the Jeskai section, Spell Snare changes a lot of our usual sequencing pattern. Where usually we often play our two drop instead of two one drops on turn two, against Spell Snare you’d rather deploy multiple things and it can’t tag. Another benefit of Flash is making them use their mana on their turn, giving us more opportunities to resolve our spells. Counterspell matchups also increase the value of our surveil lands, because we sometimes rather not play into their counterspell when we can just grab a surveil land in their end step. The matchup often goes into the late game were Jegantha becomes a real threat for them. Psychic Frog can sometimes be tricky to deal with, but Galvanic Discharge works in a way that is profitable for us. When we target the Frog with Discharge, our opponent has to start discarding their hand before we say how much energy we spend. If our opponent ends up discarding enough cards that we cannot destroy the Frog, we can choose to not pay and gain three energy instead. This also helps our future Discharges. As previously mentioned, Ob Nixilis and Ajani are a great pair against Counterspell decks. Ob Nixilis dodging counterspells and creating multiple threats is difficult for them to deal with. Postboard, the matchup becomes a lot trickier. They play additional one mana counterspells in Spell Snare and Stern Scolding that handle our two drops. We on the other hand can manage their graveyard, so they cannot deploy a Murktide Regent or send their Frog to the skies. With the increased density of cheap interaction, we often have to make them have it or punish them for tapping out that much harder. Not only do they have the cheap counters, they also have access to Toxic Deluge, which allows them to wipe our board after some threats slipped through. This creates a weird balance of trying to resolve as many threats as possible and not overextending, which you have to master. As a general rule of thumb, you are better off slamming threats, unless a suspicious number of them resolve into their open mana.

How to mulligan:
UB Murktide is another matchup without a direct lights out card, so we just want to have a good functional hand with a decent curve. Phlage being recursive and one drops dodging Spell Snare are nice assets, but not necessary to have a functional hand.

Zoo

Cards that are bad: Thoughtseize
Cards that aren’t great: —
S-Tier sideboard cards: Wear//Tear, Celestial Purge
Good sideboard cards: —
Marginal sideboard cards: graveyard hate
Trap cards: —

Zoo is basically a worse version of Energy in my opinion. As long as they do not have Leyline of the Guildpact + Scion of Draco to blank our interaction and win the race, we can go over them. Don’t be hesitant to take a hit or two, as long as you are not in range of Tribal Flames. Our lifegain should keep us afloat and allow us to go wide enough to block their creatures without much worries.

How to mulligan:

A good curve should generally be enough, as we do not have any key cards to fight their gameplan. A way to get rid of their Leyline is always good to have, but we don’t want to mulligan an otherwise perfectly good hand just to have one.