[Deck] TPS's sideboard without Cunning Wish.

[Negator]

I saw a couple of days ago an interesting TPS's decklist from Hi-Val on Starcitygames.com. It was something like this:

From Hi-Val:

My TPS list looks something like this right now:

4 FOW
4 Brainstorm
2 Gifts
1 Ancestral
1 Mystical
1 Time Walk
1 Future Sight
1 Rebuild
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Tinker
1 Timetwister
1 Memory Jar
1 Psychatog
1 Time Spiral
1 Mind's Desire
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duress
1 Tendrils of Agony

9 Dumb Artifacts
1 Academy
4 Sea
4 Delta
1 Strand
3 Island
1 Swamp
4 Dark Rit
1 Cabal Rit

My build goes away from the usual Draw-7 kills which are unreliable and tries to optimize Gifts more, though I'm still working on the whole thing. TPS only needs 1 Tendrils. The deck has 5 Tutors that find them and numerous ways to draw into it.

The big reason that I included Tog is that it is never dead. I hate drawing into Colossus because it's uncastable and needs another card to be good. Psychatog lets you drop a significant threat on the table and still have Tinker left in your deck for other goods. I'm not arguing that Psychatog goes in every TPS deck, just that if you're planning on running a maindeck creature, I think it's the better one.

1 Future Sight  What do you think about the addition of this card to the maindeck?

1 Psychatog  The same question for Psychatog, what do you think of this creature instead of Darksteel Colossus?

3 Island  I think the third Island is here to support the three blue mana of Future Sight.

I found this decklist interesting too because it doesn't use Cunning Wish. It can have a extremely good sideboard. Three days ago I tested against T1T and I was a lot disapointed because I didn't have good results. Without Cunning Wish, I could make space in my sideboard to put Defense Grid and some other interesting stuff. I think that in game two with TPS, you have to try to disturb the opponent rather than use addtionnal draw or tutoring IMO. Against Control, Defense Grid is almost an auto-win card when it is not countered. I tried to add two Skeletal Scrying against T1T but it didn't improve my results a lot.

The main question of this thread is to know what you would put in your TPS's sideboard if you were not running Cunning Wish in you maindeck.

[BigMac]

I would run a transformational sideboard but that is just me.

I think if you run a normal sideboard the possibilities with cunning wish (and burning wish for that matter) are far greater than without. Sure you get open slots to fill with eg defense grid. But that card doesn't enhance your game 1 win percentage, while cunning wish does just that. It looks for answers when you need those answers.

So, if you don't run it make sure you have a really good reason for that, as there are way to many good instants that can be run in a sideboard.

[atwa2002]

If you are planning on making a transformational sideboard, maybe you can make it:

3 future sight
4 sensei's top
4 heml of awakening.

It seems like the cores of both decks are the same

[Negator]

If you are planning on making a transformational sideboard, maybe you can make it:

3 future sight
4 sensei's top
4 heml of awakening.

It seems like the cores of both decks are the same

Well, it's a good idea, but in what does it improve any matchups? Why would I side that? To do what?

[BigMac]

The point of a transformational sideboard is that the deck gets a new wincondition altogether, so a very different gameplan. TPS and sensei are very similar and the surprisefactor will be minimal.

My example in my article was changing TPS into oath. Those are very different and have good matchups against different decks. The point of your sideboard always should be making your deck better versus certain matchups. So either make sure you have hate for not to good matchups or make it different to the point you get an advantage.

So put in hate and possibly use cunning wish, or no cunning wish but make sure your sideboard really makes your deck better in certain matchups.

[Hi-Val]

If you wanted to go crazy transformational, you could board in 2 Togs and 4 Mana Leaks for junk and go U/B Tog using draw-7s to pump up your Tog. I'd consider this over other ideas like Oath because they use up less room. You can also use Morphling, but I doubt it's more effective. When people board against TPS, they bring in Sphere, Lab, Chalice, Stifle, etc. If you have a transformational strategy, it must avoid all of these cards. Negators aren't a terrible idea if you want to go beatdown, or if you feel like Gators are too much, you can use Serendib Efreets or Djinns, though I'd opt against it.