Best of one is bad

[Minmataro]

I've been playing less than a year but once i swapped to best of three i've had a much better time playing magic.

I actually get to counter decks with my sideboard.
The shuffler seems way more random
The match maker seems much more random
Building decks with a 15 card side board offers more game play flexibility.
I get roped and emote spammed way less even in casual queue.

Its been generally a pleasant experience. Am i the only person that feels this way?
What do you play? If you exclusively play Bo1 whats the reason? are u mostly aggro and just want the games to end fast? maybe only care for doing quests asap? i would like to see your responses.

[Soji]

No, that's the general experience from me too. Bo3 really is the only way to enjoy magic. I try to tell people a lot of their complaints about arena would be solved by just playing in the Bo3 formats but you can only yell into the void so many times.

Lately I just been playing a u/b schooner deck. It's fine, not the most fun deck but I have moods where I pick a deck and play it for a season just to see how it goes.

[Winter Wolf]

Laziness would be my excuse. I tend to enjoy the shorter game spans that BO1 provides and I don't have to spend hours upon hours crafting a sb to answer whatever meta there is. I spent quite a few years on the tournament scene before digital magic existed playing best of 3 and then on MTGO also best of 3, so no sideboards, bo1 has been refreshing. Less of late though.

As a midrange/aggro-control player I probably should play more bo3 but that requires a greater time commitment and as I said, at least a semi functional sideboard. Playing Bo3 without a sideboard is rather pointless.

[DontMisunderstand]

The concept of sideboarding is actively harmful to the game. If there was no sideboard, best of 3 might work, but because sideboards exist there are no benefits whatsoever to best of 3 over best of 1.

[Minmataro]

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

The concept of sideboarding is actively harmful to the game. If there was no sideboard, best of 3 might work, but because sideboards exist there are no benefits whatsoever to best of 3 over best of 1.

I was about to give you a hard time. however after i reflected a little. I wanted to ask you to explain this opinion you have. Imo magic is a game of deck building. The sideboard allows you to build around your opp deck after game one etc. Why are you against that?

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by Minmataro:

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

The concept of sideboarding is actively harmful to the game. If there was no sideboard, best of 3 might work, but because sideboards exist there are no benefits whatsoever to best of 3 over best of 1.

I was about to give you a hard time. however after i reflected a little. I wanted to ask you to explain this opinion you have. Imo magic is a game of deck building. The sideboard allows you to build around your opp deck after game one etc. Why are you against that?

Precisely because Magic is a game of deckbuilding. You don't have to build a good deck when you can swap out good cards with bad matchups for bad cards that act as a silver bullet to your opponent's deck. There's no meaningful skill involved with sideboarding or building a sideboard, and it actively promotes bad deck construction simply because you can just sideboard specialized hate to solve your deck's problem rather than just building your deck properly in the first place. Sideboarding is the worst possible solution to the problem it purports to solve; it'd genuinely be better to just allow swapping to entirely different decks for game 2 and 3.

To be more concise, I believe at a fundamental level you should be building around every opponent's deck simultaneously during deck construction.

[Minmataro]

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

Originally posted by Minmataro:

I was about to give you a hard time. however after i reflected a little. I wanted to ask you to explain this opinion you have. Imo magic is a game of deck building. The sideboard allows you to build around your opp deck after game one etc. Why are you against that?

Precisely because Magic is a game of deckbuilding. You don't have to build a good deck when you can swap out good cards with bad matchups for bad cards that act as a silver bullet to your opponent's deck. There's no meaningful skill involved with sideboarding or building a sideboard, and it actively promotes bad deck construction simply because you can just sideboard specialized hate to solve your deck's problem rather than just building your deck properly in the first place. Sideboarding is the worst possible solution to the problem it purports to solve; it'd genuinely be better to just allow swapping to entirely different decks for game 2 and 3.

To be more concise, I believe at a fundamental level you should be building around every opponent's deck simultaneously during deck construction.

You make no sense. the 15 card side board is the deck. you build it for every possible situation u can so does the Opp.

Without sideboarding how do you counter a deck that you cant deal with in your 60 cards? you're stuck just like in Bo1. its already decided unless RNG plays a part.

You basically want an advantage without even playing the match. thats not magic. Bo1 was never intended nor was it balanced for and side boards have existed since the first tourney in the 90s.

[Berserkr]

I think there's a lot of casuals as well who are just getting quests done as fast as they can and they're more than likely going to play BO1

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by Minmataro:

You make no sense. the 15 card side board is the deck. you build it for every possible situation u can so does the Opp.

Without sideboarding how do you counter a deck that you cant deal with in your 60 cards? you're stuck just like in Bo1. its already decided unless RNG plays a part.

You basically want an advantage without even playing the match. thats not magic. Bo1 was never intended nor was it balanced for and side boards have existed since the first tourney in the 90s.

That's the entire balance of deckbuilding though, the tradeoff between having answers and having threats that need answered. Your goal as a deckbuilder is to have the highest number and variety of both while still having a consistent and coherent strategy. That is indeed a very tight window for 60 cards, which, as you said, is why sideboarding gives you that extra 15.

You counter a deck you "can't deal with in your 60 cards" by not putting yourself in that situation in the first place. If you've built your deck to auto-lose to specific opponents, you should suffer the consequences of that choice. Like I said, that's the tradeoff. There are sacrifices you make in deckbuilding to achieve what you want your deck to achieve. I dislike that sideboarding just means you don't have to make any sacrifices. Because yes, the hard part of minimizing a deck's weaknesses is cutting down to 60. Once you dip below 80, you're generally sacrificing power and versatility for consistency. There's no tradeoff when you're just allowed to run a 75 card deck and just ditch the 15 cards you only want to see sometimes.

I honestly don't see how I'm failing to make sense. My assertion is "deckbuilding is balanced around competing needs", so it seems more than reasonable to conclude that sideboarding, which necessarily reduces competition for slots in the deck while allowing more needs to be filled in the process, actively reduces the skill ceiling for the deckbuilding portion of the game.

[GarbageCollector]

The game has been designed around having a sideboard for at least as long as I've been playing. The thought is built into the development process when they approach every card, surely.

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

I honestly don't see how I'm failing to make sense. My assertion is "deckbuilding is balanced around competing needs", so it seems more than reasonable to conclude that sideboarding, which necessarily reduces competition for slots in the deck while allowing more needs to be filled in the process, actively reduces the skill ceiling for the deckbuilding portion of the game.

A 15 card sideboard is not nearly enough to reorient an entire strategy around. Most people swap out just a few after the first game and their overall plan rarely changes by much. You'd also still lose game 1 if your deck is built purely around switching to your sideboard to counter them... somehow.

What you're arguing would make sense if you could just swap decks entirely. I've only ever seen changes anywhere near that drastic in sealed though (because of the huge card pool and relatively weak importance of each card) and quite rarely.

[GarbageCollector]

Forgot to respond to the original post:
Yep, Bo1 is very bad. I only play it because Bo3 in limited is way too expensive and dailies care about matches not games so it takes ~2.5x longer to do Bo3 in constructed.

Yet again, trash economy forcing me to make the choice of a better game mode or valuing my time.

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

A 15 card sideboard is not nearly enough to reorient an entire strategy around. Most people swap out just a few after the first game and their overall plan rarely changes by much. You'd also still lose game 1 if your deck is built purely around switching to your sideboard to counter them... somehow.

What you're arguing would make sense if you could just swap decks entirely. I've only ever seen changes anywhere near that drastic in sealed though (because of the huge card pool and relatively weak importance of each card) and quite rarely.

Never claimed it was. In fact I claimed it's the opposite, that it's just a risky silver bullet toolbox you can have to invalidate opposing decks without the sacrifice that comes with putting niche cards in the deck proper. Certain individual cards read "shut off your opponent's entire deck simultaneously", and their existence is balanced largely around the fact that they do nothing if your opponent isn't running that strategy. The sideboard removes that balance.

[GarbageCollector]

Originally posted by DontMisunderstand:

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

A 15 card sideboard is not nearly enough to reorient an entire strategy around. Most people swap out just a few after the first game and their overall plan rarely changes by much. You'd also still lose game 1 if your deck is built purely around switching to your sideboard to counter them... somehow.

What you're arguing would make sense if you could just swap decks entirely. I've only ever seen changes anywhere near that drastic in sealed though (because of the huge card pool and relatively weak importance of each card) and quite rarely.

Never claimed it was. In fact I claimed it's the opposite, that it's just a risky silver bullet toolbox you can have to invalidate opposing decks without the sacrifice that comes with putting niche cards in the deck proper. Certain individual cards read "shut off your opponent's entire deck simultaneously", and their existence is balanced largely around the fact that they do nothing if your opponent isn't running that strategy. The sideboard removes that balance.

If your opponent knows these cards exist shouldn't they be building their own deck around that as well? I can see why it changes the deckbuilding decisions but I don't see how it removes them, seems like it just changes them. Do you mean that it stifles deck diversity? Because that I'd agree with even though I'm not particularly upset about the kinds of decks it gatekeeps.

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by GarbageCollector:

If your opponent knows these cards exist shouldn't they be building their own deck around that as well? I can see why it changes the deckbuilding decisions but I don't see how it removes them, seems like it just changes them. Do you mean that it stifles deck diversity? Because that I'd agree with even though I'm not particularly upset about the kinds of decks it gatekeeps.

How do you build a deck that doesn't auto-lose to the silver bullets? By simply not playing those decks. What does this mean, effectively? It means your deck contains no life gain, no planeswalkers, no counterspells, no destroy effects, is not a go-wide weenie wave, also isn't a voltron deck, contains no artifacts whatsoever, uses only basic lands. These are just the easy examples of entire strategies invalidated by individual cards. The risk of running those individual cards is, typically, that they often do nothing, and are thus a wasted draw, lowering the consistency of your deck. A sideboard allows you to have that card if you need it without sacrificing consistency.

There's also the less extreme example of the same principle, cards you put into the sideboard because they're good against specific threats that need answered but are too weak to justify main-decking against decks without that threat. While not a full silver bullet, they're cards you only took out of the main deck because you wanted to make your own strategy more consistent at the cost of weakening yourself against the threat you expect to see. I do agree that this form of sideboarding is closer to what you describe, it changes deckbuilding decisions without exactly removing them, just lessening their impact. At a fundamental level both of them are the same, just with different severity.

[GarbageCollector]

Give me specific card examples to help me understand the two different cases you're describing.

Is it
Case 1: I realize it's monowhite weenies so I put 4x sunfall into my esper control deck?
Case 2: I realize it's monored aggro so I swap out 3x destroy evil for 3x knockout blow?

or is that way off target.

[Blade of Eagle]

Ehh, As for me, lately playing UR Phoenix, Best of 3 only means Leyline of Void and Rest in Peace. and instead playing less fun UR Drake-Saheeli.

update: damn, some "maniac" begin to RiP in BO1, and even brought crazier stuff. guess is the time to save wild gold for my own LoV now.