When looking for a slide deck the three things i look for are stiffness, symmetry, and length.
Flexy boards have their place in cruising, but when sliding, which also entails some speed, flex is not your friend. Think of it this way, when you slide your weighting and deweighting different parts of the board separately. To do this you need quick input from your body to the board. Flex in a deck removes input by spreading out the weight when under stress. When trying to slide a flexy deck your are: loosing some power, delaying the triggering of the slide, and increasing the variability of the slide due it flexing different under varying conditions.
symmetry is pretty obvious. Once you get good at sliding your gonna start doing 180s and end up switch. You dont want a directional board thats A: gonna ride like shit when switch causing you to fall B: not gonna want revert back to normal causing you to be stuck riding a board against its natural geometry (not fun). This means any wedging is out the question for a straight freeride board.
Length. Longer wheel base boards will slide with a skilled rider and correct technique, but not nearly as easily. Short WB have quicker turning radius making it easier to get into slides faster. You'll notice this when attempting tricks or when trying to slide on a narrow road.
These are just my guidelines/preferences. The thing about longboarding is any board can kill any aspect as long as the rider can handle it. Boards/setups are much more oriented to single aspects than many people think. Yes people say they "DH" on a loaded, but to me that's like taking ski blades in deep pow, im sure someone can do it, by why would you want to.
If you want suggestions other than loaded, original, and bustin PM me. Ive already typed out lists of suggestions for this kind of stuff in other threads.
