C · Positioning & Configuration · §14Sideboard Philosophy
C · Positioning & Configuration · §14
Sideboard Philosophy
Protect the enabler count, cut the payoffs you cannot reach, and count the Order sources before boarding.
Meta snapshot · August 2026. Dated starting configurations from the source guide, not live, not auto-updated, and not immutable plans.
vs Master Yi
Your role · Lane-breaking tempoKennen, Storm of Shuriken
14shuffled units after boarding✓ Stable
1013 floor18
14 shuffled units after boarding · at or above the 13-unit floor.
＋ Bring in
1×spell / gear
1×spell / gear
1×spell / gear
− Take out
1×spell / gear
1×spell / gear
1×spell / gear
They ask one defender to hold a battlefield behind protection. Your bodies are one and two Might, so out-sizing it is not on the table.
plus is the actual plan: shrink the lone defender, then swap whose Might is whose.
answers Zhonya’s Hourglass, which is what otherwise makes their defender uninteractive.
Preserve · · · Rebuke has no Might cap, which is the only clean answer to a defender that has grown past Gust.
Avoid · into anything they have buffed. Three Might is a low ceiling in this matchup.
Avoid · Leaving your own unit defending alone at the Waste.
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.
71.12%→At least one interaction spell in the opening four
66.68%→At least one outside-hand enabler
50.25%→At least one two-Energy body
50.25%→At least one Lightning Rush or Stacked Deck
28.38%→At least one Rhasa the Sunderer
28.38%→At least one Seal of Discord
22.26%→Two or more outside-hand enablers
10.45%→Two or more two-Energy bodies
10.26%→Baron Nashor, which is usually the wrong card to see early
From the guide . §14 Sideboard Philosophy
Three rules govern boarding here, and the third is the one people miss.
1. Enablers before payoffs
The enablers are , , and the Flow spells, plus the Champion. Keeping roughly seven of them in the shuffled deck keeps the Legend live. Below that you are holding Rhasa and Baron with nothing to make them happen, which is the worst configuration this deck has.
Rules noteWhen a matchup demands four sideboard cards, take them from the payoffs and the flex gear before you take them from the enablers.
2. The top end is matchup-dependent, not always correct
and are excellent against control and dead against fast decks. Rhasa is never cut: it is the payoff that costs almost nothing once the trash is deep, and it is the reason the deck can score late.
3. Count the Order sources
Three Order runes support , , and in the main deck. The sideboard adds two , a second Salvage, at two Power and at three.
⚠ WarningBringing in four Order cards without cutting Order-hungry main-deck cards is how this deck’s mana quietly stops working. Three fix Chaos, not Order.
First cuts
almost always. Then when neither trash is worth resetting, when your own worst unit is better than theirs, when two one-Might bodies change nothing, and whenever the game will end before ten Energy.