Seventeen open-field starting configurations, with the posture, the play and draw splits, and what each one is really about.
Meta snapshot · August 2026. Dated starting configurations from the source guide, not live, not auto-updated, and not immutable plans.
vs Boros Energy
Your role · Stabilizing combo-controlAtraxa, Grand Unifier
19shuffled units after boarding✓ Stable
1719 floor25
19 shuffled units after boarding · at or above the 19-unit floor.
＋ Bring in
3×spell / gear
2×unit
1×spell / gear
− Take out
2×spell / gear
1×unit
1×unit
2×spell / gear
Qualifications
Preserve life. Every decision downstream of that gets easier.
Wrath at X=2 clears most of their creatures and Goblin Bombardment, Rest in Peace, High Noon and Vexing Bauble alongside them.
Riddler is the post-sweeper threat, and it does not care what they boarded against your graveyard.
Fetch basics before the Blood Moon turn, not after.
Preserve · · · · Atraxa over Griselbrand in every game. Your life total will not pay for seven cards here.
Avoid · Overcommitting Frog and Archaeologist into your own Wrath.
Avoid · Spending removal on every one-drop when a sweeper is a turn away.
Avoid · Reanimating because the ceiling looked higher.
Sideboard philosophy in §14 · role assignment in §5.
Memory aids
Structural problem → the card that answers it. Each sideboard slot exists for a specific structural reason, not a general one.
78.3%→At least two lands in the opening seven
77.8%→At least one of the eleven direct enablers
54.1%→At least one dedicated reanimation target
39.9%→At least one Goryo’s Vengeance
39.9%→At least one Ephemerate
32.0%→Solitude plus another white card
20.0%→Goryo plus a dedicated target
19.6%→Force of Negation plus another blue card
13.8%→Goryo plus target plus a direct enabler
From the guide . §15 Matchup Map
The current field is led by Boros Energy, Goryo itself, Affinity, Gruul Broodscale, Ruby Storm, Eldrazi Tron and Eldrazi Ramp, in that rough order of share.◆src
⚠ WarningPublished matchup samples for this deck are small. One aggregator records twenty-seven matches against Boros and twenty-one against Affinity, with fewer than ten against several other leading archetypes. Treat those as context, not as win rates.◆src
What follows are open-field starting configurations. Each one names the posture you are adopting, the cards that come in and out, the play and draw split where it changes, and the specific traps in that matchup. Adjust them against the exact list in front of you rather than the archetype name.
Pilot noteThe single most common sideboarding error across all seventeen is the same one: removing so much of the reanimation package that their hate cards stop being awkward and start being spare.