Hey just got a quick question....Which card is better to sideboard, Hydroblast/Pyroblast, or their equivelents, Blue/Red Elemental Blasts? At first glance, they seem quite the same, but is there anything at all going for either of them? Most decklists I see pack Pyroblasts against Control, but I got no idea what their advantage is. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
They are exactly the same.
Pyro/Hydro are legal in 1.X.
Pyro/Hydro can target non-blue/red cards, though it won't have any effect, giving them a tiny advantage over the functionally identical R/BEB.
Not exactly - you can cast Pyroblast targeting a non-blue permanent or spell which you can't do with Red Elemental Blast.
So what does this mean for the blasts--good and bad. They are pretty much identical, but very rarely, it will be better to have one or the other.
If you're stuck under black vise or something like that, you can cast pyro/hydro to get rid of cards.
If you have sleight of mind or something like that, you can pyroblast/hydroblast a non-blue/red permanent and sleight your spell.
If you are trying to pyroblast a permanent (like illusions of grandeur), that pyroblast can be misdirected to any permanent (necro, land, whatever) and it will resolve with no effect. If you cast red elemental blast on that illusions, it can only be misdirected to another blue permanent in play.
Just because of misdirection, I think I like REB over pyroblast in formats where it is legal.