I want someone to help me on writing a "Side Decking Manual".

[DARKPLANT RISING]

Some of you guys might know about [url=http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/topic/284760-march-2012-format-basic-deck-building-tutorial/]this thread[/url]. I still haven't got to wrote the Extra Deck Section, Personal Tech Section, and the Side Deck Section. While I can write the first two by myself, I want someone to write the Side Deck Section for me.

Well, even though I can frequently top the locals around me, it is true that the levels of its contestants aren't really the best of the best - I don't think I'm an expert at side decking. Given how this thread is meant to be a guide meant for beginners, written by the pros, I think someone else should write it.

Anyone care to volunteer? Giving out 3 reps as prizes. Or, 10000 points, since I don't care a s*** about them.

Meanwhile, for the others who don't care about that or don't want to write, discuss on godly matches you had in which side decking turned the tables.

[werewolfjedi]

well I personally look at each deck usually used in the meta that my deck currently has issues with, like, lack of monster removal on a swarm deck, countering for a control deck, or locking the grave or some other focus like burn.

next I check to see if my deck already can handle it somewhat, and add the additional copies I'm not normally mainlining, then add in a direct counter card set for anything I don't cover.
like, say I play 2 kycoo, and my opponent is often playing chaos dragons, I'd place my 3rd in the extra, and additional big effect monster countering like fiendish chain. (may not be the best countering choice, but I'm not looking up perfect examples here)

[Mugendramon]

I have had many hilarious matches where Prohibition made my opponent either waste twice as many resources, or simply shut them down.

Hornet for example. S*** was hilarious.

[Agro]

So I have an idea for this. Should I post it here if I finish or post a new thread for it?

[Just Crouton]

Not a pro, but, 2 important questions to ask yourself when sidedecking are

[b]What's current?: [/b]The top decks are the most played, meaning they take top priority when making the side.

[b]*How does it clash with the main deck?: [/b]The best side option could clash with your deck. For example, in a Block Golem-centered deck, Effect Veiler, a LIGHT monster, clashes with the deck You could swap the Golems for the Veilers to avoid having dead Golems game 2, but it can hurt your deck greatly by slowing it down.

*Note that the second question doesn't apply to [b]every [/b]deck, as most decks shouldn't have this issue.

You should study the top decks and their weaknesses when building the side deck. Note that "top decks" may vary depending on the area where you play, so look into your area and see what's hot.

At least, that's what I think.

[DARKPLANT RISING]

[quote name='Agro' timestamp='1340513963' post='5961730']
So I have an idea for this. Should I post it here if I finish or post a new thread for it?
[/quote]
Here, preferrably.[quote name='God Crouton!!!' timestamp='1340517789' post='5961748']
Not a pro, but, 2 important questions to ask yourself when sidedecking are
[b]What's current?: [/b]The top decks are the most played, meaning they take top priority when making the side.
[b]*How does it clash with the main deck?: [/b]The best side option could clash with your deck. For example, in a Block Golem-centered deck, Effect Veiler, a LIGHT monster, clashes with the deck You could swap the Golems for the Veilers to avoid having dead Golems game 2, but it can hurt your deck greatly by slowing it down.
*Note that the second question doesn't apply to [b]every [/b]deck, as most decks shouldn't have this issue.
You should study the top decks and their weaknesses when building the side deck. Note that "top decks" may vary depending on the area where you play, so look into your area and see what's hot.
At least, that's what I think.
[/quote]
Well, TBH I'm more concerned about the "What to throw in and what to take out". But thanks.

[DARKPLANT RISING]

Thanks. Giving out prizes.

Might make some minor edits to my liking, but I'll use it for the guide with your name. Thanks a lot.

[Agro]

Well if you want a "how to build one", I took a lot of time to write this:

[spoiler='Side Deck Building Guide'][b]Table of Contents[/b]
[b]I. Siding to Take Advantage of your Opponent's Weaknesses[/b]
[b]II. Siding Against Deck Makeup[/b]
[b]III. Siding to Build on Your Deck's Strengths/Cover Weaknesses[/b]
[b]IV. Siding to Counter Your Opponent's Side Deck[/b]
[b]V. General Side Deck Construction[/b]
[b]VI. Siding[/b]

[u][b]I. Siding to Take Advantage of your Opponent's Weaknesses[/b][/u]

This is the most basic section of building a Side Deck. You use the Side Deck to put cards into your deck that attack the weaknesses in your Opponent's deck.

The first thing to remember is that ALL decks have a weakness. Synergy is the main cause. While synergy may be amazing as Darkplant explained earlier, it also means that a deck needs to rely on a strategy. A consistent strength also means that a deck has a consistent weakness.

Inzektors may be able to work with each other by using Dragonfly and Centipede to continuously use Hornet, Ladybug, and Hopper, but that also means that they rely on having those three cards. And they rely on those cards to be able to go and be retrieved from the Graveyard. Therein lies a weakness to Inzektors. If they can't get the cards from their Graveyard, then they cannot complete their overpowered combos and their synergy is eliminated.

In simpler terms, this can also be thought of as using the Side Deck to limit what the Opponent can do, and, inevitably, to stop the deck from achieving its Deck Goal.

Inzektors rely on the Graveyard, so attack the Opponent's Graveyard. The same can be said of Chaos Dragons, Lavals, Dark Worlds, or Hieratics, all of which can be considered top tiered in the OCG or TCG. Any Rabbit deck relies on using Rescue Rabbit's effect to bring out their win conditions, so, as you can expect, the idea would be to stop Rabbit from reaching the field. But finding the card to side against Rabbit may be harder than against Inzektors.

If you think about it, Rabbit's combo to bring out their main cards takes a few steps, going first from Rabbit, then to the two Normal Monsters that the Opponent summons, then to the monster they intend to use to attempt to win with. Any of the points up to bringing the final monster out can be attacked by a side deck card.

Even the win condition can be a card that one could side against, mainly to remove it. Snowman Eater is commonly sided against Dino Rabbit because if it's attacked by Evolzar Laggia, Laggia won't be able to stop it from destroying it, thereby eliminating the win condition.

So that's the first idea, side against the strategy of the deck to attempt to stop a deck from doing what it wants to do. Simple enough, right? The more a card does to stop a deck, the better it is.

[u][b]II. Siding Against Deck Makeup[/b][/u]

I'll make this simple to understand from the get-go. The second way to side against a deck is to attack the make-up of the deck.

An interesting thing to note about decks these days is that the cards within may share similarities. Decks like Dino Rabbit or Inzektors use many key monsters with low ATK power, as well as key cards with high ATK power. Either of these traits can be attacked (for example, you can use Chain Disappearance to take out low ATK monsters or Bottomless Trap Hole to take out high ATK monsters)

Other similarities you may see are that a certain deck may use the same Attribute. In those cases, you can use cards that attack the fact that your Opponent only uses one Attribute. Inzektors and Dark Worlds are all DARK, therefore you can side against them by using something like Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror to negate all their effects.

You can do the same thing with Types instead of Attributes. The best example of this is versus Machine Decks, you can use cards like Cyber Dragon (along with Chimeratech Fortress Dragon) or System Down to eliminate all Opponent's Machine-Type monsters.

The basic idea is that if a deck uses many cards that are similar in one way or another, you can side in cards that attack that similarity. Similarities as simple as many Monsters, Spells, or Traps, or rather unusually high numbers of each, can be something to attack.

For Spells or Traps, you have cards like Royal Decree, or for more general backrow removal, any extra Mystical Space Typhoons or Dust Tornado. For Monsters, you have Skill Drain to take out effects, or cards like Smashing Ground or Soul Taker to simply eliminate them.

You can also attack a Deck's variety. This is fairly simple to understand, and in actuality, doesn't have many cards to attack with. The best 2 cards, and really, quite possibly the only two cards worth talking about, are Rivalry of Warlords and Gozen Match, which force a duelist to use only one Type or Attribute respectively.

There may be others that I'm forgetting, but as far as variety is concerned, those are the two best ways to attack it, since outside of those two examples, general variety does usually make a deck better and doesn't create a weakness, as there's more cards set to attack similarities than variety.

[u][b]III. Siding to Build on Your Deck's Strengths/Cover Weaknesses[/b][/u]

Usually, these types of cards are those that one could actually run in the Main Deck, however common matchups against select meta decks force one to place them in the Side Deck instead. There aren't many examples of cards like this, as cards that attack the Opponent are much better and more commonly sided, but there are certainly more than a few that address these issues.

As far as increasing strengths, an example of one of these cards is Return from the Different Dimension. Chaos Dragons sometimes decide to run this card, but most duelists will side it. The reason for this is that while it can, many times, bring out many monsters in an OTK scenario, if the matchup won't end up banishing monsters consistently, the card won't be as consistent.

D.D Crow is more generic, and can also be thought of as one of these cards. Crow is very good against many matchups, but it's terrible against others. With that in mind, its usually sided instead of Main'd since it's not considered important enough to keep in the Main Deck and can easily be sided in in a matchup that requires it. (other examples of this can be Super Polymerization in HEROs and Dark Smog in Dark Worlds.)

Siding is more than just strengthening your matchup, it's also making sure that your deck doesn't lose to the basic ideas of the matchup. A Chaos Dragon Deck wants to side in Royal Decree or Spell/Trap removal to deal with a Macro Cosmos Deck so that all its monsters won't be banished.

This idea works even further than looking simply at the matchup at hand.

[u][b]IV. Siding to Counter Your Opponent's Side Deck[/b][/u]

Even if you can side against an Opponent's Deck, you also need to know what your Opponent will try to side against you. Against Chaos Dragons or Inzektors, a Dino Rabbit deck will try to side in Macro Cosmos to eliminate the win condition of the deck. Because not only you, but also your Opponent, will be siding, you have to side not only against your Opponent's Deck, but also your Opponent's Side deck.

Many decks use this idea when creating their side deck, and it derives from the basis of knowing your own deck. If you don't know your own deck's strengths and weaknesses, you'll never be able to properly side as your Opponent will always be one step ahead of you. (assuming they know what I'm now telling you)

This changes with every deck, of course, but an example of what I mean here is along the same line of thinking as what I said at the end of Section III. You're siding to eliminate your deck's weaknesses. Against Dino Rabbit, Chaos Dragons or Inzektors will side in Royal Decree or other Spell/Trap destruction because they know what a Dino Rabbit deck will try to do to them. (Macro Cosmos)

[b]V. General Side Deck Construction[/b]

While many cards are very good to side against certain decks, they may not all be the best choices. No cards should be sided in if they directly affect your own deck's consistency and can stop your own deck's win condition. You won't side in Macro Cosmos if you're running Chaos Dragons and you won't side in Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror if you're running Dark Worlds, it just doesn't make sense.

That being said, there are some cards that can be played around. Koa'ki Meiru Dragon can be sided into Chaos Dragons even though its effects negatively impact every other monster in the deck because it can easily be removed from the field and then brought back without any trouble at all to the user.

As far as what cards to put into the Side Deck, remember that having a maxed out side deck doesn't decrease deck consistency and, in fact, only increases your options, so always play with 15 in the side deck. When making decisions on what to use those 15 cards for, your best bet is to focus the majority on cards that attack the win condition of other decks and focus only a small bit, or none at all, on increasing your own deck's defenses.

The side cards best used towards covering your own deck's weaknesses are only really necessary if the weakness is extremely apparent. Chaos Dragons and Inzektors almost NEED to side in Royal Decree because of how easily a card like Macro Cosmos, which is run or sided in Dino Rabbits (one of the best and most used decks, I might add), can utterly destroy them.

Remember to look at the decks that you'll normally play and know their strengths and weaknesses when deciding what to side. After all, you won't ever need to side against a deck you'll never see played.

At the time of this article's writing, the top decks (in the TCG) are Dino Rabbit, Chaos Dragons, Inzektors, HEROs, and Dark Worlds, so if you're going to side against ANYTHING, your best bet is to side against these decks.

Another thing to note when looking at those decks is to see if there are cards that work against many of them. Inzektors and Dark Worlds can both be stopped by Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror, so rather than put two different cards into the side deck to deal with the two decks, you can just side in one and have more space for other decks.

Remember though, that just because a deck is topping at a YCS doesn't mean that the decks you will play will be those decks. Each area has its own niche. For all you know, your locals could be filled with a ton of Ninja players! There'd be little point in siding against all the top tier decks if you don't face them, right? So be sure to check out what type of decks you'll facing to know just what type of decks you should be siding for.

[u][b]VI. Siding[/b][/u]

So now you've built your side deck. Now how do you use it?

Well, this is actually pretty simple and all you really need to do is understand a few key principles.

First Off: When taking cards out of your Main Deck, take the cards that are least helpful in your matchup.

Sometimes this may come down to you just having an inkling of doubt about whether you should take it out. After all, you spent so much time making that deck the way you want it, if you look at it while siding you may see just a bunch of cards that are too important to possibly take out. That being said, you don't always NEED to side. Sometimes you may not have the resources or your matchup is just that good enough anyway.

Secondly: Don't go all out.

Oh look, every last one of these cards can be sided against my Opponent's deck and used very well. That doesn't mean you should side them all in. It's not an exact science, though, really, not much of siding ever is, but it's important to know when siding in certain cards will only work to hurt consistency.[/spoiler]

Only the last section really deals with actually Siding, but it's pretty straightforward and I didn't think there was too much that was needed to be said. As long as someone knows not to side too much and knows that they should be looking for whatever is least effective in their current matchup, they should be good. That being said, if someone could write the last section better or give better advice in general, be my guest to replace it with something else.

Oh, also, someone should probably check my spelling and grammar and sentence structure and frankly anything writing-wise because I wrote this all at like 1-3 AM and can't really be asked to use half my brain as I write this now... yup, only half.

Oh, also, it doesn't have links or all that formatting stuff you did Darkplant, so if you want to add that stuff or whatever, feel free. (or, you know, you can yell at me to do it when I'm not as out of it)

Any more questions? ... I mean any more questions that half a mind can answer? No? Good, I'm going to sleep.

P.S. If I missed something, tell me.

EDIT: Totally missed something in the last section... well, several probably. I'll get to rewriting it tomorrow.

[Not-so-Radiant Arin]

Obviously, the way you should side-decking should be to take advantage of your opponent's Deck's worst disadvantages. For example, everyone runs either Macro Cosmos or Dimension Fissure to stop Inzektor plays, because the deck relies heavily on having one card in the Graveyard. If you can exploit this weakness during game 2 or even game 1, you can take control of the board relatively quickly.

In this current Meta, the current Side Deck should be able to exploit the weaknesses of all main Decks: Rabbit falls victim to Veiler (which I find that 2 Veiler in the Main, and 1 in the side works wonders), Inzektors fall victim to RFG plays (meaning you can side UP TO 2 D.D. Crow, 2 Macro Cosmos/2 Dimension Fissure), and Wind-Ups are just bad. Chaos Dragons have many outs, because they use both the Graveyard and the Banished Zone as their second Graveyard, but a well-placed Macro/Fissure can ruin them.

So basically, every Side Deck, in my opinion, should be running 1 Veiler, 2 D.D. Crow, 2 Macro/Fissure. That then takes us to the next part of proper Side Decking, which is changing strategies. For example, if you have a Deck that can balance Synchroing/Xyzing heavily, it might be a good idea to change back and forth from Xyzing to Synchroing, or vice versa.

A good Side Deck staple card can also put a damper on your opponent's plays, like Thunder King Rai-Oh. Being able to negate 1 Special Summon per turn for free is a great trade-off. But then again, just my opinion.

Alright, there's my two cents.

EDIT: Although not nearly as extensive as Agro's guide, it's still a good basis to start on.

[Tiger Tracks]

I wouldn't bother writing a side decking guide to be honest.

It's a neuanced subject and the people your guide is aimed for would take it at face value - not thinking about what was actually being said.

On top of this side deck choices are constantly changing as the meta evolves so giving an example side- deck would be of no help. There is also no such thing as generic sideboard material. Cards like Prohibition or Psi-blocker cant or shouldn't be used in every side deck. And when they can be used is only if the meta allows it. There are too many things to cover for a beginner.


The best, and only, advice you can tell someone is to critically analyze the strength of there deck and the weakness of others and use cards that can rightfully give more favorable matchup. Should they have trouble, which they no doubt will, advise them to ask someone to help them go through the process of building a side-deck AND actual side-decking. Learning and practice is the best thing a beginner can do.