Sideboard Philosophy

The sideboard is six cards deep in effect: two Janna, Savior, two Disarming Rake, two Decree of Insight, two Decree of Focus, a second Thousand-Tailed Watcher and a second Unchecked Power.

What comes in, and against what

• Disarming Rake, against decks whose plan is attached to a gear. A body that kills an attachment on the way in.
• Decree of Insight, against Body-domain threats. Five Might off, ignoring Deflect while paying for it, in 22% of the sampled sideboards.
• Decree of Focus, against Fury decks. Four Might to a friendly unit in combat with a Fury unit.
• Janna, Savior, a unit with Reaction: she is the only body in the 75 that can arrive after the opponent has committed, and she is not Temporary.
• The second Watcher, against wide boards, where one global -3 was not enough.
• The second Unchecked Power, for games where their board is better than yours and neither existing is an improvement.

What goes out

The cut order is Brutalizer, then Mask of Foresight, then En Garde, then Stupefy, then a single Charm. Brutalizer first because the guide cannot tell you what it does; Mask and En Garde next because Section 11 explains why they were already fighting the plan; Stupefy because minus one Might rarely decides a combat.

Janna is the sideboard card worth understanding

She reads as a rescue spell and gets sided in as one, which undersells her. Janna, Savior has Reaction, so she can be played at any time, including to a battlefield you already control. When she arrives she heals your units there, then moves one enemy unit from there to its base.^◆src

Three things follow, and only the first is obvious. The heal saves a Sprite from damage already marked on it. The move takes a defender off the battlefield at the moment you are trying to conquer it, or takes an attacker off one you are trying to keep. And she is a unit that is not Temporary, deployed on the opponent’s turn, which is the one thing the entire Sprite engine cannot do for you.

Why the one-ofs are one-ofs

Thousand-Tailed Watcher and Unchecked Power are singles in the main deck and singles again in the board, and that is a decision rather than a shortage. Both cost seven. A game gives you one seven-Energy turn, sometimes none, so a second copy in the opening deck is a card you cannot cast held in a hand that wanted a Sprite maker.

The sideboard copy is not there to make you draw them more often. It is there for the matchups where the first one gets answered and the game still goes long enough to need a second.

Boarding does not change the role

Every plan in Section 13 keeps the deck as the aggressor, including against control. The sideboard buys better conquest turns; it does not buy a different deck, and there is no matchup in which this list transforms.