I really don’t know how else to put it: if you want to win a Regional or a Shonen Jump Championship, you need a side deck, plain and simple. It truly shocks me that some people show up to these events without one and brag about it. They actually think that they’re impressing someone by openly revealing how unprepared they are for the event. Your side deck is the only “outside” help that you’re ever going to get in a tournament. Its purpose can range from allowing you to drop cards that you shouldn’t have main-decked in the first place to completely changing your basic strategy, as long as you follow a few simple rules.

First, your side deck must contain either zero or fifteen cards. Three is not enough for a legal side deck, and eighteen is way off. If you have any number of cards other than zero or fifteen, the judges are going to flag it when they see your decklist, and (assuming that your decklist is accurate) you’re going to take a game loss. Second, you can only use your side deck between games in a match. That means at the start of every round, your main and side deck must be exactly as they appear on your decklist. Third, you can only exchange cards from your deck and side deck on a one-to-one basis. There will be no tossing in five cards while pulling out ten from your deck: that is blatant cheating on a number of levels. Finally, your side deck can’t break any of the normal rules of deck construction. Specifically, if you already have two copies of a card in your deck, you can’t have two more of it in your side deck, nor can you have extra copies of Limited cards. As long as you follow these rules, you’re allowed access to an extra fifteen cards that could make or break your entire run at a Championship. The only question is, which fifteen cards will give you the best shot at going all the way?

Last time, I wrapped things up by asking you in what order you would prioritize a list of concerns that comes into play when building your side deck. I’ll quickly recap for those of you who missed the last installment.

Rate these factors in order of importance to you when you build a side deck:

The decks that were run at the last Shonen Jump Championship.

The decks people play at your local hobby league.

The decks your deck has a weakness against.

Specific cards your deck has a weakness against.

Alternate strategies that you could side deck to and from.

I was happy to see that many readers chose to respond to this poll, and the results were actually quite surprising. A number of the responses I received (around 40%) listed alternate strategies that you could side deck to and from as their number one concern when building their side deck. I find this surprising because it suggests to me one of three things. One: there is a strategy that’s easily sided into that no one will see coming. Two: players are becoming less confident in the decks that they build. Three: these people are actually referring to siding in Royal Decree against trap-heavy decks as an alternate strategy.

I’m highly inclined to disbelieve the first possibility since, if there was such a strategy and it was any good, we would have seen it already. Cyber-Stein OTK was a good example of an easy-to-use alternative strategy that you could bring in from the side deck, since many commonly used cards in Monarch decks were also generally included in the combo deck. There was a point where burn was such a strategy, but with Mobius seeing a lot of play and Twister in the available card pool, full stall-burn isn’t looking like such a hot idea. Your best bet if you really want to side into an alternate strategy is to try and transform your deck into an aggressive burn hybrid.

I really hope that possibility number two isn’t the case, and as such, I’m inclined to believe that number three is the only viable reason for prioritizing alternate strategies. If people are indeed referring to siding in Decrees against trap-heavy decks, I would suggest that they are not siding in an alternate strategy so much as siding for specific cards their deck has a weakness against. After all, you side in Decrees when your opponent is playing a large number of powerful traps that could really mess you up, correct?

After alternate strategies, the next three most common top priorities for side decks were decks from the previous SJCs, decks that you have a weakness to, and specific cards that your deck has a weakness to. Almost no one picked their hobby league as their highest concern, and for an audience that I expect is mainly comprised of people looking to hit it big on the SJC circuit, that makes perfect sense. When it comes down to whether you prioritize tech against specific cards, decks that hurt you, or popular decks, I think it’s largely dependent on what type of deck you play. If you’re playing a mainstream strategy like Trooper Return or Diamond Dude Turbo, you’re likely going to be siding against specific cards that hurt you and other popular decks from the last SJC. If you’re playing more of a rogue deck, you’ve probably built it so that it can already beat the popular decks, so you side for specific cards and decks that can hurt you.

The common factor between the two is that every deck has some specific cards that hurt it. I would submit that, regardless of what deck you play, your number one priority should be cards sided to deal with specific answers to your deck. For example, I play a counter-Fairy deck. If my opponent has Royal Decree, goes first, gets it in his or her starting hand and activates it during my end phase, I’m in trouble. I already main deck a couple of copies of Dust Tornado, but they can’t help me if my traps are locked down from turn 1. So, I have a set of Twister cards in my side deck, which lets me zap Royal Decree in addition to pesky cards like Snatch Steal, Call of the Haunted, Premature Burial, and Swords of Revealing Light. It also helps me out just in case someone out there is actually playing a stall/burn deck. Clock Tower Prison and Wave-Motion Cannon hate Twister, especially if it’s chained to Magic Reflector. Being able to work around Royal Decree is the most important thing I need my side deck to do.

Likewise, decks that rely on getting monsters into the graveyard—especially decks that rely on using Card Trooper to do it—need to have an answer to Dimensional Fissure. Trooper Return just doesn’t work when Card Trooper is reduced to the status of a 400 ATK vanilla Machine. The unending wall of D.D. Survivor cards that usually accompanies the Fissure is just icing on the proverbial cake of un-pleasantness

Finally, if you have none of these concerns and only care about having a deck to play in local tournaments, feel free to build your deck with your local environment in mind. Local events generally have the greatest variety of decks, so you may find yourself wanting to side in cards like Exile of the Wicked for your buddy’s Fiend deck or Heavy Slump against a player who likes to draw lot of cards as he or she searches through the deck for the pieces of Exodia.

The last major issue to talk about is deciding which cards to side out during a match once you know what you want to side in. Your first priority should be to rid yourself of any dead cards for the matchup you face. Switching out copies of Sakuretsu Armor for Twister in a matchup against Clock Tower control is a good example of this. Next, consider removing cards that would conflict with the cards you’re attempting to side in. An example would be removing as many trap cards as you can if you plan on siding in Royal Decree. Finally, you want to side out any cards that your opponent has demonstrated an ability to seriously exploit, such as Dimensional Fissure in a deck main-decking D.D. Survivor when it comes across a deck running both Survivor and D.D. Scout Plane.

Now that you all (hopefully) know a great deal more than you used to about how, when, and why you side deck, let’s have a little quiz to see how well the information has been absorbed?

The Side Deck Quiz

1. Assume the Six Samurai have hit a high point in their national popularity and the other most commonly played decks at the moment are Trooper Return and Diamond Dude Turbo. Which of these would you be most likely to include in your side deck?
1. Warrior Elimination
2. Kinetic Soldier
3. Dimensional Fissure
2. You lost game 1 to an incredibly aggressive deck running Hydrogeddon and Don Zaloog, with three copies of Shrink to back them up. Which of these cards is most likely to be of limited use in the next game, making it a perfect candidate to be sided out?
1. Nobleman of Crossout
2. Ring of Destruction
3. Confiscation
3. You have three spots left in your side deck after making sure to cover all the specific weaknesses of your own deck, and you want to dedicate them to beating combo decks like Diamond Dude Turbo and Advanced Ritual Art variants. Which of these makes things the most difficult for both decks?
1. Dimensional Fissure
2. Anti-Spell Fragrance
3. Royal Decree
4. If you’re playing a Gadget deck, which of these is best left in the side deck?
1. Bottomless Trap Hole
2. Widespread Ruin
3. Solemn Judgment
5. True or False: Pulling the Rug should be main decked over Forced Back.
6. True or False: You should never openly reveal how many cards you’re going to side deck between games.

Scoring is as follows:

4 points for each correct multiple choice.

2 points for each correct True/False.

Total: 20 points.

You can look at the first question in a number of ways, but in this case all roads lead back to Kinetic Soldier. First off, the two spells cannot be searched out by any reasonable means, whereas Soldier can be grabbed by the effect of Sangan. Second, Kinetic Soldier won’t set off Grandmaster of the Six Samurai’s ability to return something to the Samurai player’s hand, whereas Warrior Elimination unfortunately will. Finally, Kinetic Soldier has an effect that will keep on happening every time it battles a Warrior, whereas Warrior Elimination is used once and then gone. Soldier also has important implications against both DDT and Six Samurai, whereas Elimination is only truly useful against Samurai. Dimensional Fissure is discounted due to the ease with which any of the three decks can make use of your own side deck card by either siding in D.D. Survivor cards (which Samurai decks commonly do) or outright winning just because you removed all their monsters from play for them (which the other decks are likely to do).

In number 2, you definitely don’t want to get rid of Confiscation because you know you have the choice to go first in game 2. Confiscation has a nasty habit of winning the game outright by stripping your opponent of his best card on the first turn and allowing you to prepare a counter for all your opponent’s likely moves. Ring of Destruction is an excellent card in this matchup due to its ability to clear the way for a direct attack, thus negating the threat of Shrink. Shrink really loses its luster when every attack you make is a direct one. Therefore, out of those three cards, the least useful one is going to be Nobleman of Crossout. I told you the deck was highly aggressive, and highly aggressive decks probably aren’t going to be setting many monsters . . . especially if they want to tempt you into attacking Hydrogeddon.

For number 3, the thing to consider is that both of those decks are very reliant on key spells to do their thing. Advanced Ritual Art is a must for those types of decks and DDT is more than half composed of spells. Thus, Anti-Spell Fragrance is a great way to slow those decks down to a manageable speed and give yourself the opportunity to pick off those spells with removal before they can be used. Royal Decree is practically worthless in the matchup, and as I mentioned before, DDT can use Dimensional Fissure to its advantage more easily than you might think.

For the last multiple choice, I can see a bunch of people shouting “Solemn Judgment!” at their screens, and my question is, why? Why would you want to side deck the card that gives a deck built to do exactly three things the option to win a lot of games it otherwise wouldn’t? Solemn Judgment lets you win game 1 against a variety of decks that would otherwise stomp you flat, and Widespread Ruin is a great non-targeting trap that acts as an extra copy of Sakuretsu Armor that Cyber Phoenix can’t get around. Bottomless Trap Hole, on the other hand, can be used against you by Trooper Return and can’t hit a variety of popular and obnoxious monsters such as Card Trooper and Neo-Spacian Grand Mole. Leave it in your side deck.

Finally, the first true/false question is false and the second one is true. Pulling the Rug is a very specific card, whereas Forced Back is a very generic card. You generally don’t want to main a specific counter over a general one unless you have a very good reason to do so. Thus, Forced Back goes in the main and you bring Pulling the Rug in against Monarch-heavy decks, Gadget decks, and Advanced Ritual Art decks (for Manju/Senju). The other question is there so that you recognize a common mistake that players newer to the tournament scene make when they get to an SJC. Many people who have only really competed at a local level aren’t used to the fact that most SJC competitors are there to win at any cost, and will find and exploit any advantage they can over the less experienced competitors. That includes exploiting the fact that most local communities are tight-knit and their members tend to be very open and friendly with each other during matches. Something as simple as revealing the number of cards you’re siding in can reveal to an expert player exactly what you’re siding in, allowing him or her to pick the appropriate cards from his or her own side deck to counter.

Side decking is important. In fact it’s one of the most important skills you need to have before you get heavily committed to SJC play. If you missed more than one of the questions above, make sure you know exactly why you answered the way you did and what assumptions you made to reach your conclusion. A good side deck can carry you through many matches that you would likely lose otherwise, so make sure that you build and use yours carefully. Until next time, play hard, play fair, and most importantly, have fun!

Jerome McHale

jcmchale@andrew.cmu.edu

HOMEWORK: Your opponent goes first. He summons Sangan and sets a spell or trap. You have Cyber Dragon and Banisher of the Radiance in hand. Why shouldn’t you play them both?