I had a pretty interesting night. I went black and pulled a Mogis, God of Slaughter, Fleecemane LionFoil, and Heliod, God of the Sun as my notable rares. I ended up building Junk colored aggro deck. I went 3-0 and split the last round to get 10 packs each or $35 store credit. I chose a Stormbreath DragonFoil out of the case and 2 boosters of BNG that held bulk rares.
The story of the night was my friend who plays a lot of League of Legends noticed that Chaox, a professional LoL gamer, was playing at the store. I didn't know who he was since I don't play LoL, but my friend says he knows some professional MTG players like Brian Kibler. The second round, I ended up getting paired with Chaox. He was playing a Simic colored deck. The first game he got mana screwed after mulliganing to six. In the second game, my Fleecemane Lion came out early to put the game away. He kept a one land hand in the second game and was disappointed when his Satyr Wayfinder revealed all creatures off the top. He was very friendly though, and my friend came by to talk with him. Here's his profile in case anyone is curious.
I saw some crazy pools last night.... But mine wasn't one of them...
I picked red, with the promo being my best pull.. Ended up R/W which was decent, but my opponents kept dropping bomb after bomb... With me just scratching my ass and looking at my card pool in awe.
... My first match, I played a girl and she dropped 5 rares and 1 mythic all in her colors.. Crazy stuff.
My only take away from the nite was I sure wish all prereleased were only 6 paks of that set... As my only goal was to experience playing with the new cards.. Of which I didn't much of due to my pool.
Had a frustrating time though, my opponent at the end of round 1 dropped to go work which destroyed my tiebreakers for the remainder of the game putting me solidly at the bottom of the X-0 and later X-1's. At the end of round 5 I was 11-3 in games and 4-1 in rounds but my tiebreakers were so low I still couldn't place for packs, so I instead reported my round as 1-2 in my opponents favor since it would get him something. Pretty frustrating to do that well in games/rounds and not even place.
We had one guy open Mogis, Stormbreath Dragon, Phenax, Erebos, Champion of Stray Souls, Hammer of Purphoros, 2 Sea God's Revenge, and some mana fixing. But, he built his deck poorly and isn't that good in general. Despite that pool he only went 1-4.
Things I noticed:
Tribute was awful, I felt bad for my opponent every time they played a tribute card because it always lead to them losing.
Heroic/Bestow are still insane
Hero of Iroas is unbelievable
And my favorite, Inspired is pretty funny (bad) when you're playing a deck that has Heliod in it.
Ambush Krotiq makes me laugh so much. I keep rereading the card and it keeps not having Flash. In what sense is this an ambush again? I just have visions of this huge Krotiq poorly concealed in some bushes, feeling slightly sad that his carefully planned ambushes never seem to work.
Went Blue, settled on U/G tempoish build. Retraction Helix is certainly a card. Carried a few games pretty hard for me. Had Tromakratis, but the only game I drew into him was an unfortunate series of events against the single best limited player I have ever met. He consistently goes 3-0 in drafts, wins the majority of limited events he goes to, and know *exactly* what you have in your hand or are planning to do. Naturally I lost against him, as I usually do (I've beat him once in RTR draft). Tromakratis would normally have won me the game, but alas. Still, 2-1-1 for the day isn't horrible. My last opponent and I drew out, but we played for fun and my deck decimated his heroic deck (Seriously, Retraction Helix is a thing, particularly against Heroic).
Did ok in pre-release i chose black as my color, i ended up making this black/red deck went 3-3 it decided to work ever other game, think i should have ended up going white/red...thoughts?
I chose blue and very quickly deduced that U/ was the only colour combo I could play. Black had 2x Asphyxiate and 2x Sip of Hemlock and pretty much nothing else, Red had 1 piece of removal and some mediocre creatures, and White, while it had a solid creature base and some tricks, didn't have any actual removal or bombs to draw me into it.
My only pieces of "removal" were Nullify, Vortex Elemental, Shredding Winds and Wavecrash Triton, none of which is reliable (I didn't have any enchantment removal either - not even an Annul). My plan was to suit up a flyer with auras (or make one with Stratus Walk) and smash them before they could find their bombs or removal.
The Reaper splash wasn't my first inclination, but a fellow player convinced me that it would be better than the Pheres-Band Tromper I had in its place that I had almost no way to push through for damage other than making him huge. I'm not convinced it was worth it - there were a number of games I remember Reaper sitting in my hand (though for most of them the Tromper wouldn't have done anything either) - but Reaper was at least worth it against the mono-removal player where I suited her up with the Ordeal and left up hexproof mana across multiple turns till I finished by Hunter's Prowessing with deathtouch for lethal through multiple blockers.
I ended up 4-1, most of my wins attributed to Satyrs ramping into Nyxborn Triton bestows to make an enormous Chorus of the Tides. My lack of removal never really came up that much, mostly because my opponents had some clunky draws and they lacked removal themselves (also, I always seemed to have Vortex Elemental in hand when I needed it - I cast the card 5 times in one 3-game match). My one loss was in the second round to a G/W big dudes deck, the first game loss coming to due mana flood and the second from a close race where he had enough to stop me from winning on board on my turn and ensured I died next turn if I didn't have anything, and I just didn't have anything.
Some takeaways:
- Wavecrash Triton is still very good, especially when you put a Nyxborn Triton on it and have tritons all the way down.
- I always had lots of stuff to do whenever I played her, but I can tell Aerie Worshippers is very good even without any support. If you make two birds, it's already extremely worth it.
- Every time I cast Hunter's Prowess, I won the game, even when I drew six cards of which four were lands. It would have been even better in a deck that had more powerful bombs and/or cheap removal to draw into - drawing a bunch of expensive to cast fliers and 2/3s isn't exactly super-powerful.
- Stratus Walk is a monster of a card, cheaply enabling my one Heroic creature, letting my huge grounded monsters fly above a wall of blockers, stopping my opponents huge monster from blocking my ground army, and enabling a deck that has pretty close to 0-maindeck outs to a resolved Phalanx Leader a way to kill it in combination with Shredding Winds (which, as I suspected, always had a target - I only made the Walk+Winds play once, against a Phalanx Leader, obviously).
Whelming Wave + Mnemonic Wall mill control. I milled all the way to 11th place (out of 58) today and surprised opponents who didn't expect a mill deck that didn't involve Phenax nor Ashiok at the prerelease. I did play black, for control, but generally just exiled cards with Mind Reaver and milled with Evanescent intellect.
The three things that got in my way:
Bow of Nylea (opponent drew each game, allowed to put only cards they wanted to draw on bottom of library, ended up creaming me)
Returned Centaur (milled me instead! Lost one game, not match, to this)
Underworld Cerberus (shut down Mnemonic Wall, opponent drew all 3 games)
I went 4-2 with this, Whelming Wave, other bounce spells, counters, Sip of Hemlock, Necrobite, and Drown in Sorrow being my best friends - mill a few times (just 3-4 times), then lock down opponent until they die. I normalized at 3-5 life almost every game I won, then managed to lock down with my little combo. Scrying is very powerful for control decks.
Tjhey were out of blue promo and so both me and my son took the red one.
My pool was horrendous. My special-pack rare was oracle of bones and I didn't even main-deck it. In fact I almost didn't play my red and in fact sided it out once. I played RB because I got hythonia the cruel and eater of hope with good black bestow and double gary. All my good cards where from Theros, not Born of the God (well, except for the dragon).
Finished 2-3. Of my two wins, once was undeserved because my opponent had me dead on the board but failed to play properly. (In fact, I was about to scoop but chose let him play his attack phase instead and, yes, he messed up by not activating his dragon to prevent me from blocking...!?) The other win was by a hair with me at 1 life and top-decking the 8th land to activate hytonia while he had multiple guys out and the helm that grant unblockable.
My son, OTOH, opened Xenagos and good green and red. Still went 2-3 too. His deck did lack removal.
My take-away:
red is still weak. satyr nyx-smith was my best red card outside the promo, and it still is only 3/1 that dies to everything. titan's strength doesn't help much on that front. The new vanilla black 2/1 bestow guy neither. bolt of keranos is still a sorcery.
Inspire is slow, require attacking unless you got lucky with enablers, and even then you only get benefits on the untap and it ties up your mana before you get the chance to see your draw.
Tribute shows that punisher mechanics are still not very good. I had the 3/3 giant that may deal 5. In my blue that I played once I had the 1/1 flying that may be a ray of command. You nenver get want you'd want.
I went 2-2 today. I can't remember what was in my deck but here are the important cards...
I chose red because it had the most cards I wanted for my EDH decks. My seed pack gave me Xenagos, God of Revels and at that point I was hoping that I pulled decent red green cards. I pulled/used...
I went 4 and 1 at our local pre release. Only black and red were available, so I took black. Ended up with some really solid removal : 3 Asphyxiate, 2 Gild, Drown in Sorrow, Weight of the underworld. All of those with Agent of fates and about 6 target effects.
I ended up going white/black to go with the heroic theme, had 2 Skyguard and Scholar of Atheros. Scholar did work all night, most of my matches were 2-1 and Scholar won maybe 5 of the matches mostly by himself.
Satyr Nyx-smith was absolutely bonkers for me in red-white aggro. Only lost one round due to bad mulligans in the first match. And Felhide Spiritbinder copying my dragon was pretty good, too. Copying anything, really, was great.
Green-black with a splash of blue for Griptide and Kiora brought me 4-0 as well. BNG has seemed to lower the average creature size and given us a lot more removal. Swordwise Centaur and Servant of Tymaret both did a lot of work for me in this deck.
Picked green, did 4-1 last night and placed second out of 21. Only played 2 of my rares - Fabled Hero (not as good as he looked) and the green promo hydra (also not that great?). The real stars were the POWER COMMONS, and damn do we have power commons in this draft.
The only match I lost was against... another Bant Tempo, who ended up placing 3rd (his deck was better though - he went mostly blue and drafted much better rares).
If you pull Hunter's Prowess, you have to run it. I only cast it 4 times and drew 23 cards off of it.
I went 4-0 with an awesome UG decks that had tons of shenanigans going for it. I absolutely loved my experience and look forward to the draft format. Savage surge and triton tactics have most certainly moved up in my pick order.
Went 8-1 at my prerelease this evening, losing in the finals to ridiculously good luck on my opponents part in the form of 2x Sudden Storm and 2x Voyage's End, plus other combat shenanigans that just led to me getting out tempo'd.
All in all, my pool was awesome. My only gripe was the lack of better playable removal, but I can't really complain due to how many bombs I packed in.
Crypsis - Easily the MVP common of my night. When combined with Heroic or Inspired triggers, this card can blow out an opponent. I lost count of the number of times I used it to untap Wavecrash Triton to block a smaller creature and use the Heroic trigger to lock down a fattie.
Siren of the Fanged Coast - I was really pleasantly surprised by her, as it ended up being a 4/4 flyer for 5 every single time. No one wanted to give up a creature, even if it meant eating 4 in the air every turn.
My favorite play of the night was in my top 8 match. Game 3 I got taken to 5 life really early from an aggressive R/W deck with a lifegain subtheme. I managed to stabilize with some removal, and landing Prognostic Spinx on board turn 5. Turn 6, down came Arbiter of the Ideal, and the game quickly swung in my favor from there, as it turns out picking what you want Arbiter to find with it's Inspired trigger via Scry 3 is really, really good.
I picked black. I went 4-1. I built a super greedy BUg deck because I wanted to play Prophet of Kruphix. The mana worked for 4 rounds and then died a quick and painful death in round 5. Prophet was great, obviously. Herald of Torment was amazingly good. Double Retraction Helix was pretty awesome. Black Oak of Odunos did some work for me, especially when paired with Servant of Tymaret.
Then I did a 2HG event and crashed and burned hard. In round one our opponent cast Hunter's Prowess on a Horizon Chimera after bouncing our only flier, and proceeded to hit us for 6, draw 6 cards, and gain 6 life. That was not at all fun.
>Took red because the store didn't respect my presale registry.
>2 mythics, both unplayable **** Ashen Rider and Chromanticore. Most valuable card is Temple of Triumph.
>Build red green, ready to go.
>Five rounds, top 4 splits 40 boosters.
>I don't appear in the pairings, employee didn't register me, get a bye.
>Here we ****ing go.jpg
>Win next 4 rounds, first place.
>Top 8, last match of the night to win boosters, play against my first opponent, he changed his deck into BUR all-removal with few little evasive ****s. Wins 2-0 cause my creatures can't live a damn turn and he kills me with a single Vaporkin both games.
>Win notthing.
I don't even want to play magic anymore. Spent all day trying to trade for Liliana and Griselbrand no one has so I can't finish my Duel Commander nor my Modern decks, Legacy is dead in my city cause no one has the ****ing cards, T2 is artificially expensive monotonous **** and BNG limited is even ****tier, if you don't open removal it doesn't matter how well you play or how many bombs you have, the ******* with 3x Voyage's end, 2x Fall of the Hammer, Hero's Downfall and some flying ****s will always win.
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Played at a 72 person event. Won it with a 6-0-1 record.
Choose blue as my colour. Basically ran two decks and went back and forth as needed.
The first was a super slow Blue/Black deck with 3 Divinations, 3 Lash of the Whip, Hero's Downfall, 3 counter spells, and some blue dorks like the promo and the emissary. Divination is easily one of the best cards in sealed and I love playing them. So much advantage for so little cost.
The second deck was a Red/White aggro list with 18 dorks, 2 tricks and 2 Glimpse of the Sun God. That card is just awesome and lead to me winning a few games I had no right winning. Basically load up the board with 10 - 15 power worth of smaller dudes then alpha for the win.
Firstly, 75 people at the Saturday prerelease. Holy crap, that was a big tournament. They announced seven rounds, then chopped it back to 6 and sweetened the prize pool to make up for the lost round due to time (they were bumping up against a scheduled 6:30 prerelease). It was the largest tournament the store had ever run, and it was run pretty well, I thought.
Plus, my son and I both walked away with door prizes. He with a promo Grisly Salvage and me with a Marath Commander deck (!).
So, now, in true draftcap style... (may repost this part in that forum to get more gameplay feedback)
Went 2-3 on the afternoon, alternating between the two decks I built (hooray "open deckbuilding" event). I didn't take any notes, but here's how it went generally:
Round 1: The 'taurs beat a RUG deck that never really got off the ground. Feeling good.
Round 2: Color screw was the name of the day as I fell 1-2 to a four-color, 60-card deck.
Round 3: Switched over to the Fleecemane Lion deck for this one and picked up a win over a GB deck.
Round 4: Highlight of the round was the announcement of the door prizes, which my son and I both walked away with something. Stuck with the GW deck and again fell to color screw, drawing all of my Plains and none of my Forests.
Round 5: Went back to the minotaurs deck, first two games were lost to land issues and I dropped Game 3 when I couldn't push through the giant wall of Green and Red beefy things. Had to get to work at this point, so I dropped.
I chose the red promo pack. My red and blue were very very weak, I got the Fated Conflagration from the seeded back. My green was questionable, and probably playable, but I went black white.
I went undefeated, the heavy removal was awesome. I think my MVP was probably Glimpse the Sun God because its so versatile, it tapped the board out for me a few times and was an awesome heroic enabler at the same time.
Went with Red for my prerelease and finished 2-2. Ended up running UG after pulling the blue promo, Arbor Colossus and Master of Waves. Also pulled Satyr Firedancer, a foil Fleecemane Lion and a Spirit of the Labyrinth. White commons and uncommons were weak so I decided not to splash it plus I wanted to draw cards with the spirit preventing me.
Round One I get paired against the same guy I ALWAYS get paired against Round One-- he's a regular, and I can never seem to beat him. He hadn't been around for a few months or so, but whenever he and I enter the same tournament, I ALWAYS face him round one and lose. I don't know if there's something about his and my DCI numbers or what.
Lost round two as well, despite getting double Sea Gods both games I just didn't have a finisher. Rounds three and four my opponents are no-shows. I look again at my pool and realize there's good White cards, but it's all good Heroic stuff and I don't really have enough Heroic/Aggro in any other color. Realizing B/U isn't working for me, I build a W/r Heroic deck (I had three Red Heroes, but no Red enablers besides a single Fall of the Hammer) A practice game against someone else whose opponent no-showed makes me think this was the deck I should've built.
Round Five I face a guy who went 0-4... and lost to him. I had a ton of Heroes but barely any spells to trigger them, and he had turn one Hopeful Eidolon all three games. Also I misread Acolyte's Reward and forgot my devotion to white was only 2 at the time-- not that it mattered, since he had a counter-trick anyway.
I should also mention that I didn't pull a single God in any color, so I think I can do better tomorrow. I'll probably pick Blue or White and hope for a Heroic deck I can actually work with.
There was strong support for green white, but since my partner had pretty beast red cards we put him into Gruul for our aggro deck. I didn't end up using any of my black rares but since we pulled 3 Gray Merchant of Asphodel (this is 2HG remember), 3 Disciple of Phenax, and a Keepsake Gorgon I went u/b with support cards like 3 Voyage's End, 2 Retraction Helix, Ashiok, and 2 Dissolve.
The Games
Game 1
Round one we played an orzhov and gruul deck and we immediately thought we had lost when a voltron Tormented Hero took us down to half our life by turn 3. But we started getting board presence and I landed a Gary to stabilize us. We suited up an Ill-tempered Cyclops, hit them for about 16 and then I played a second Gary to close out the game.
Game 2
Round two we play Dimir and Gruul and we were evenly matched for most of the game. I played a well timed Ashiok which denied one of the players of land he had already missed and next turn he soaked up an attack from a Two-Headed Cerberus bestowed with a Herald of Torment. I was then able to control the board with bounce spells as Xenagod did some work on my partner's creatures. Finally, a well timed Sea God's Revenge gave us just enough damage to get them down to 2 then I finished them off with a Claim of Erebos.
Game 3
Round three we played another Gruul and Dimir Deck. My partner had to mull to 5 and I had a slow draw which gave our opponents a head start but we immediately got a Setessan Oathsworn suited up to get us back in the race. Life totals were at 13/17 when we realized that the opponents had illegally triggered heroic on a Tormented Hero by having the ally cast spells on it twice earlier so without getting officials involved we simply reset the life loss/gain so life totals switched to 17/13 and the opponents found themselves loosing the race. Finally, a Sea God's Revenge one turn and a Voyage's End the next left them open for an alpha strike.
Game 4
Round four was tough. Mono Green and Mono Blue. We had a good start getting a Setessan Oathsworn suited up but we had to be cautious because the blue player was leaving counter mana up the entire game (turns out they were waiting to stop a Gary from sticking). The green player kept the ground locked down with a Sedge Scorpion but I enchanted our beater with an Aqueous Form to skirt around it. A surprise Sudden Storm left us vulnerable to 15 damage and gave us one last turn to win. We played a Fanatic of Mogis to hit them 10 leaving them at 2 then we swung all out. They were able to block everything but I bounced of the the creatures blocking our trampler and the damage went through for the win.
I'm a little envious as he got much better pulls than I did but it was a great night. Voyage's End, Setessan Oathsworn, Retraction Helix, and Ill-Tempered Cyclops were our MVPs. Ashiok just fogged us the two times we played him. Xenagod caused mayham in limited and I'm not looking forward to playing against him in standard. Although Gary and Fanatic of Mogis are extremely powerful in two-headed giant, we only got to play Gary twice (despite having 3) and Fanatic once.
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- Nessian Wilds Ravager (obviously)
- Fated Intervention
- Shipbreaker Kraken
- Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
- Reaper of the Wilds
- Astral Cornucopia
- Whims of the Fates
Ended up going Green / Blue splashing black for the Reaper, considering the following were all in my pool (and my deck):
- Nimbus Naiad x2
- Ordeal of Thassa
- Sealock Monster
- Vaporkin
- Voyage's End
- Artisan's Sorrow (sideboard)
- Leafcrown Dryad
- Nemesis of Mortals
- Nylea's Disciple
- Nylea's Presence
- Sedge Scorpion
- Time to Feed
- Voyaging Satyr
- Burnished Hart
- Archetype of Imagination
- Divination
- Nullify
- Aspect of Hydra
- Pheres-Band Tromper
Went undefeated, with many commenting I had opened one of the strongest pools of the night.
- Main Cube
- No Brains, All Feelings Cube
The story of the night was my friend who plays a lot of League of Legends noticed that Chaox, a professional LoL gamer, was playing at the store. I didn't know who he was since I don't play LoL, but my friend says he knows some professional MTG players like Brian Kibler. The second round, I ended up getting paired with Chaox. He was playing a Simic colored deck. The first game he got mana screwed after mulliganing to six. In the second game, my Fleecemane Lion came out early to put the game away. He kept a one land hand in the second game and was disappointed when his Satyr Wayfinder revealed all creatures off the top. He was very friendly though, and my friend came by to talk with him. Here's his profile in case anyone is curious.
http://lol.gamepedia.com/Chaox
Credit to Heroes of the Plane Studios for the Avatar & Miraculous Recovery for the Banner.
My 540 Card Cube (WIP)
I picked red, with the promo being my best pull.. Ended up R/W which was decent, but my opponents kept dropping bomb after bomb... With me just scratching my ass and looking at my card pool in awe.
... My first match, I played a girl and she dropped 5 rares and 1 mythic all in her colors.. Crazy stuff.
My only take away from the nite was I sure wish all prereleased were only 6 paks of that set... As my only goal was to experience playing with the new cards.. Of which I didn't much of due to my pool.
Here's my pool/deck
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=590683
Had a frustrating time though, my opponent at the end of round 1 dropped to go work which destroyed my tiebreakers for the remainder of the game putting me solidly at the bottom of the X-0 and later X-1's. At the end of round 5 I was 11-3 in games and 4-1 in rounds but my tiebreakers were so low I still couldn't place for packs, so I instead reported my round as 1-2 in my opponents favor since it would get him something. Pretty frustrating to do that well in games/rounds and not even place.
We had one guy open Mogis, Stormbreath Dragon, Phenax, Erebos, Champion of Stray Souls, Hammer of Purphoros, 2 Sea God's Revenge, and some mana fixing. But, he built his deck poorly and isn't that good in general. Despite that pool he only went 1-4.
Things I noticed:
Tribute was awful, I felt bad for my opponent every time they played a tribute card because it always lead to them losing.
Heroic/Bestow are still insane
Hero of Iroas is unbelievable
And my favorite, Inspired is pretty funny (bad) when you're playing a deck that has Heliod in it.
Naturally proceeded to go 1-3.
Creatures
enchantment
spells
Second deck
creatures
spells
enchantment
The deck:
3x Voyaging Satyr
1x Leafcrown Dryad
2x Nyxborn Triton
1x Nyxborn Wolf
1x Wavecrash Triton
2x Chorus of the Tides
1x Aerie Worshippers
1x Siren of the Fanged Coast
1x Arbiter of the Ideal
1x Vulpine Goliath
1x Stratus Walk
1x Nullify
1x Ordeal of Nylea
1x Shredding Winds
1x Divination
1x Peregrination
1x Hunter's Prowess
8x Island
1x Swamp
Unused rares:
Mindreaver
Temple of Abandon
Thoughtseize
My only pieces of "removal" were Nullify, Vortex Elemental, Shredding Winds and Wavecrash Triton, none of which is reliable (I didn't have any enchantment removal either - not even an Annul). My plan was to suit up a flyer with auras (or make one with Stratus Walk) and smash them before they could find their bombs or removal.
The Reaper splash wasn't my first inclination, but a fellow player convinced me that it would be better than the Pheres-Band Tromper I had in its place that I had almost no way to push through for damage other than making him huge. I'm not convinced it was worth it - there were a number of games I remember Reaper sitting in my hand (though for most of them the Tromper wouldn't have done anything either) - but Reaper was at least worth it against the mono-removal player where I suited her up with the Ordeal and left up hexproof mana across multiple turns till I finished by Hunter's Prowessing with deathtouch for lethal through multiple blockers.
I ended up 4-1, most of my wins attributed to Satyrs ramping into Nyxborn Triton bestows to make an enormous Chorus of the Tides. My lack of removal never really came up that much, mostly because my opponents had some clunky draws and they lacked removal themselves (also, I always seemed to have Vortex Elemental in hand when I needed it - I cast the card 5 times in one 3-game match). My one loss was in the second round to a G/W big dudes deck, the first game loss coming to due mana flood and the second from a close race where he had enough to stop me from winning on board on my turn and ensured I died next turn if I didn't have anything, and I just didn't have anything.
Some takeaways:
- Wavecrash Triton is still very good, especially when you put a Nyxborn Triton on it and have tritons all the way down.
- I always had lots of stuff to do whenever I played her, but I can tell Aerie Worshippers is very good even without any support. If you make two birds, it's already extremely worth it.
- Every time I cast Hunter's Prowess, I won the game, even when I drew six cards of which four were lands. It would have been even better in a deck that had more powerful bombs and/or cheap removal to draw into - drawing a bunch of expensive to cast fliers and 2/3s isn't exactly super-powerful.
- Stratus Walk is a monster of a card, cheaply enabling my one Heroic creature, letting my huge grounded monsters fly above a wall of blockers, stopping my opponents huge monster from blocking my ground army, and enabling a deck that has pretty close to 0-maindeck outs to a resolved Phalanx Leader a way to kill it in combination with Shredding Winds (which, as I suspected, always had a target - I only made the Walk+Winds play once, against a Phalanx Leader, obviously).
The three things that got in my way:
Bow of Nylea (opponent drew each game, allowed to put only cards they wanted to draw on bottom of library, ended up creaming me)
Returned Centaur (milled me instead! Lost one game, not match, to this)
Underworld Cerberus (shut down Mnemonic Wall, opponent drew all 3 games)
I went 4-2 with this, Whelming Wave, other bounce spells, counters, Sip of Hemlock, Necrobite, and Drown in Sorrow being my best friends - mill a few times (just 3-4 times), then lock down opponent until they die. I normalized at 3-5 life almost every game I won, then managed to lock down with my little combo. Scrying is very powerful for control decks.
My pool was horrendous. My special-pack rare was oracle of bones and I didn't even main-deck it. In fact I almost didn't play my red and in fact sided it out once. I played RB because I got hythonia the cruel and eater of hope with good black bestow and double gary. All my good cards where from Theros, not Born of the God (well, except for the dragon).
Finished 2-3. Of my two wins, once was undeserved because my opponent had me dead on the board but failed to play properly. (In fact, I was about to scoop but chose let him play his attack phase instead and, yes, he messed up by not activating his dragon to prevent me from blocking...!?) The other win was by a hair with me at 1 life and top-decking the 8th land to activate hytonia while he had multiple guys out and the helm that grant unblockable.
My final lost, while at 2-2 and playing to see who'd get 2 packs, was against someone who had 6 on-color rares / mythic: he picked green, played WG, and had a 2nd copy of nessian wilds ravager, hero of leina tower, karametra, gods of the harvest, brimaz, king of oreskos and spear of heliod. And all the good green and white you'd want. A suspiciously good pool, but plausible I guess. (How did he ever end-up 2-2?!?)
My son, OTOH, opened Xenagos and good green and red. Still went 2-3 too. His deck did lack removal.
My take-away:
red is still weak. satyr nyx-smith was my best red card outside the promo, and it still is only 3/1 that dies to everything. titan's strength doesn't help much on that front. The new vanilla black 2/1 bestow guy neither. bolt of keranos is still a sorcery.
Inspire is slow, require attacking unless you got lucky with enablers, and even then you only get benefits on the untap and it ties up your mana before you get the chance to see your draw.
Tribute shows that punisher mechanics are still not very good. I had the 3/3 giant that may deal 5. In my blue that I played once I had the 1/1 flying that may be a ray of command. You nenver get want you'd want.
I chose red because it had the most cards I wanted for my EDH decks. My seed pack gave me Xenagos, God of Revels and at that point I was hoping that I pulled decent red green cards. I pulled/used...
My MVP and combos were
Kragma Butcher + Fall of the Hammer
Kragma Butcher + Savage Surge + Fall of the Hammer
I won a single booster and pulled Kiora, The Crashing Wave
All in all I had fun and the games where I lost were all pretty close.
BURWGSliver Hivelord's alt wincon deck at Maze's EndBURWG
GWBSidar Kondo and Ikra Shidiq likes big butts
RUMizzix of the Izmagnus Super ThiefRU
BURWGGeneral Tazri, The Megazord AllyBURWG
BURJeleva Mill and Kill BUR
BRGrenzo's get out from under that deck!BR
WUG Roon's Enchanted Evening (enchantment deck) WUG
BUG The Undersea World of Tasigur CousteauBUG
BWGAnafenza, Counter QueenBWG
I ended up going white/black to go with the heroic theme, had 2 Skyguard and Scholar of Atheros. Scholar did work all night, most of my matches were 2-1 and Scholar won maybe 5 of the matches mostly by himself.
Green-black with a splash of blue for Griptide and Kiora brought me 4-0 as well. BNG has seemed to lower the average creature size and given us a lot more removal. Swordwise Centaur and Servant of Tymaret both did a lot of work for me in this deck.
I built a Bant Tempo/Heroic deck which turns out to be a monster when you have 2 Sea God's Revenge, 2 Aspect of Hydra, 2 Retraction Helix and some efficient drops (Akroan Skyguard, Swordwise Centaur, Agent of Horizons, Setessan Oathsworn). Wavecrash Triton also does em dirty. Some of the matches were just total shutouts.
The only match I lost was against... another Bant Tempo, who ended up placing 3rd (his deck was better though - he went mostly blue and drafted much better rares).
If you pull Hunter's Prowess, you have to run it. I only cast it 4 times and drew 23 cards off of it.
Refraction helix on staunch-hearted warriors. Heroic triggers. Block your 3/3. Tap to bounce your nessian asp. Activate kiora's follower to untap the warriors. Bounce your Sealock monster (monstrous'd). Successfully dissolve your nessian asp when you recast it.
Activate Vortex elemental, targeting your 12/12 green promo. Activate it again targeting your prescient chimera. Attack. pay U.
Divination into divination, thassa's bounty.
Griptide my opponent's nemesis of mortals, then use kiora's follower to untap his pain seer FTW.
I went 4-0 with an awesome UG decks that had tons of shenanigans going for it. I absolutely loved my experience and look forward to the draft format. Savage surge and triton tactics have most certainly moved up in my pick order.
All in all, my pool was awesome. My only gripe was the lack of better playable removal, but I can't really complain due to how many bombs I packed in.
1x Deepwater Hypnotist
1x Loyal Pegasus
1x Triton Fortune Hunter
1x Thassa, God of the Sea
1x Brimaz, King of Oreskos *FOIL*
1x Sealock Monster
1x Siren of the Fanged Coast
2x Nimbus Naiad
1x Wavecrash Triton
1x Arbiter of the Ideal *PROMO*
1x Archetype of Courage
2x Chorus of the Tides
1x Prognostic Sphinx *FOIL*
1x Omenspeaker
2x Crypsis
1x Glimpse the Sun God
1x Nullify
1x Retraction Helix
1x Divine Verdict
9x Island
8x Plains
Crypsis - Easily the MVP common of my night. When combined with Heroic or Inspired triggers, this card can blow out an opponent. I lost count of the number of times I used it to untap Wavecrash Triton to block a smaller creature and use the Heroic trigger to lock down a fattie.
Siren of the Fanged Coast - I was really pleasantly surprised by her, as it ended up being a 4/4 flyer for 5 every single time. No one wanted to give up a creature, even if it meant eating 4 in the air every turn.
My favorite play of the night was in my top 8 match. Game 3 I got taken to 5 life really early from an aggressive R/W deck with a lifegain subtheme. I managed to stabilize with some removal, and landing Prognostic Spinx on board turn 5. Turn 6, down came Arbiter of the Ideal, and the game quickly swung in my favor from there, as it turns out picking what you want Arbiter to find with it's Inspired trigger via Scry 3 is really, really good.
Then I did a 2HG event and crashed and burned hard. In round one our opponent cast Hunter's Prowess on a Horizon Chimera after bouncing our only flier, and proceeded to hit us for 6, draw 6 cards, and gain 6 life. That was not at all fun.
>2 mythics, both unplayable **** Ashen Rider and Chromanticore. Most valuable card is Temple of Triumph.
>Build red green, ready to go.
>Five rounds, top 4 splits 40 boosters.
>I don't appear in the pairings, employee didn't register me, get a bye.
>Here we ****ing go.jpg
>Win next 4 rounds, first place.
>Top 8, last match of the night to win boosters, play against my first opponent, he changed his deck into BUR all-removal with few little evasive ****s. Wins 2-0 cause my creatures can't live a damn turn and he kills me with a single Vaporkin both games.
>Win notthing.
I don't even want to play magic anymore. Spent all day trying to trade for Liliana and Griselbrand no one has so I can't finish my Duel Commander nor my Modern decks, Legacy is dead in my city cause no one has the ****ing cards, T2 is artificially expensive monotonous **** and BNG limited is even ****tier, if you don't open removal it doesn't matter how well you play or how many bombs you have, the ******* with 3x Voyage's end, 2x Fall of the Hammer, Hero's Downfall and some flying ****s will always win.
Choose blue as my colour. Basically ran two decks and went back and forth as needed.
The first was a super slow Blue/Black deck with 3 Divinations, 3 Lash of the Whip, Hero's Downfall, 3 counter spells, and some blue dorks like the promo and the emissary. Divination is easily one of the best cards in sealed and I love playing them. So much advantage for so little cost.
The second deck was a Red/White aggro list with 18 dorks, 2 tricks and 2 Glimpse of the Sun God. That card is just awesome and lead to me winning a few games I had no right winning. Basically load up the board with 10 - 15 power worth of smaller dudes then alpha for the win.
Fun set so far.
Plus, my son and I both walked away with door prizes. He with a promo Grisly Salvage and me with a Marath Commander deck (!).
So, now, in true draftcap style... (may repost this part in that forum to get more gameplay feedback)
1 Griffin Dreamfinder
1 Hold at Bay
1 Last Breath
1 Ray of Dissolution
1 Silent Sentinel
1 Ornitharch
1 Akroan Skyguard
1 Phalanx Leader
1 Nyxborn Shieldmate
1 Wingsteed Rider
1 Acolyte's Reward
1 Chosen by Heliod
1 Oreskos Sun Guide
Blue
1 Thassa's Rebuff
1 Annul
1 Breaching Hippocamp
1 Coastline Chimera
1 Gainsay
1 Sphinx's Disciple
2 Deepwater Hypnotist
1 Chorus of the Tides
1 Nyxborn Triton
1 Stratus Walk
1 Nullify
1 Oracle's Insight
2 Wavecrash Triton
1 Sealock Monster
1 Blood-Toll Harpy
2 Eye Gouge
1 March of the Returned
1 Scourgemark
2 Felhide Brawler
1 Asphyxiate
1 Read the Bones
1 Thoughtseize
Red
1 Reckless Reveler
2 Epiphany Storm
1 Akroan Crusader
1 Rage of Purphoros
1 Felhide Spiritbinder
1 Two-Headed Cerberus
1 Everflame Eidolon
2 Scouring Sands
1 Fall of the Hammer
1 Ill-Tempered Cyclops
1 Dragon Mantle
1 Spearpoint Oread
1 Felhide Spiritbinder
1 Pharagax Giant
1 Fanatic of Mogis
1 Forgestoker Dragon (PROMO)
1 Minotaur Skullcleaver
1 Impetuous Sunchaser
1 Titan's Strength
1 Bolt of Keranos
1 Searing Blood
1 Nylea's Presence
1 Pheres-Band Centaurs
1 Culling Mark
1 Satyr Hedonist
1 Setessan Oathsworn
1 Karametra's Acolyte
1 Ordeal of Nylea
1 Raised by Wolves
1 Vulpine Goliath
1 Karametra's Favor
2 Swordwise Centaur
1 Nessian Asp
1 Hero of Leina Tower
1 Nessian Courser
1 Savage Surge (FOIL)
Gold
1 Fanatic of Xenagos
2 Fleecemane Lion (!)
2 Kragma Warcaller
Artifacts
1 Opaline Unicorn
1 Gorgon's Head
1 Prowler's Helm
1 Traveler's Amulet
2 Fleecemane Lion
1 Silent Sentinel
1 Ornitharch
1 Akroan Skyguard
1 Phalanx Leader
1 Nyxborn Shieldmate
1 Wingsteed Rider
1 Oreskos Sun Guide
1 Setessan Oathsworn
1 Karametra's Acolyte
1 Ordeal of Nylea
1 Vulpine Goliath
2 Swordwise Centaur
1 Nessian Asp
1 Hero of Leina Tower
1 Nessian Courser
1 Acolyte's Reward
1 Chosen by Heliod
1 Raised by Wolves
1 Karametra's Favor
1 Ray of Dissolution
1 Savage Surge
Land
9 Forest
7 Plains
1 Traveler's Amulet
2 Kragma Warcaller
2 Felhide Brawler
1 Everflame Eidolon
1 Ill-Tempered Cyclops
1 Spearpoint Oread
1 Felhide Spiritbinder
1 Pharagax Giant
1 Fanatic of Mogis
1 Forgestoker Dragon
1 Felhide Spiritbinder
1 Minotaur Skullcleaver
1 Impetuous Sunchaser
1 Asphyxiate
1 Read the Bones
1 Thoughtseize
2 Scouring Sands
1 Fall of the Hammer
1 Dragon Mantle
1 Titan's Strength
1 Bolt of Keranos
1 Searing Blood
11 Mountain
6 Swamp
Round 1: The 'taurs beat a RUG deck that never really got off the ground. Feeling good.
Round 2: Color screw was the name of the day as I fell 1-2 to a four-color, 60-card deck.
Round 3: Switched over to the Fleecemane Lion deck for this one and picked up a win over a GB deck.
Round 4: Highlight of the round was the announcement of the door prizes, which my son and I both walked away with something. Stuck with the GW deck and again fell to color screw, drawing all of my Plains and none of my Forests.
Round 5: Went back to the minotaurs deck, first two games were lost to land issues and I dropped Game 3 when I couldn't push through the giant wall of Green and Red beefy things. Had to get to work at this point, so I dropped.
1 Phalanx Leader
1 Oreskos Sun Guide
1 Baleful Eidolon
2 Servant of Tymaret
1 Lagonna-Band Elder
2 Wingsteed Rider
1 Mogis's Marauder
1 Akroan Horse
1 Grey Merchant of Asphodel
1 Evangel of Heliod
1 Archetype of Finality
1 Mortal's Ardor
1 Glimpse the Sun God
1 Pharika's Cure
1 Divine Verdict
Sorceries
2 Asphyxiate
2 Sip of Hemlock
Auras
1 Claim of Erebos
1 Chosen by Heliod
9 Swamps
I went undefeated, the heavy removal was awesome. I think my MVP was probably Glimpse the Sun God because its so versatile, it tapped the board out for me a few times and was an awesome heroic enabler at the same time.
Round One I get paired against the same guy I ALWAYS get paired against Round One-- he's a regular, and I can never seem to beat him. He hadn't been around for a few months or so, but whenever he and I enter the same tournament, I ALWAYS face him round one and lose. I don't know if there's something about his and my DCI numbers or what.
Lost round two as well, despite getting double Sea Gods both games I just didn't have a finisher. Rounds three and four my opponents are no-shows. I look again at my pool and realize there's good White cards, but it's all good Heroic stuff and I don't really have enough Heroic/Aggro in any other color. Realizing B/U isn't working for me, I build a W/r Heroic deck (I had three Red Heroes, but no Red enablers besides a single Fall of the Hammer) A practice game against someone else whose opponent no-showed makes me think this was the deck I should've built.
Round Five I face a guy who went 0-4... and lost to him. I had a ton of Heroes but barely any spells to trigger them, and he had turn one Hopeful Eidolon all three games. Also I misread Acolyte's Reward and forgot my devotion to white was only 2 at the time-- not that it mattered, since he had a counter-trick anyway.
I should also mention that I didn't pull a single God in any color, so I think I can do better tomorrow. I'll probably pick Blue or White and hope for a Heroic deck I can actually work with.
The Decks
My partner's kit was ridiculous. He chose red and got Forgestoker Dragon (promo), Xenagos, God of Revels, Polukranos, World Eater, Pain Seer, Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, Heroes' Podium, and Shipbreaker Kraken.
There was strong support for green white, but since my partner had pretty beast red cards we put him into Gruul for our aggro deck. I didn't end up using any of my black rares but since we pulled 3 Gray Merchant of Asphodel (this is 2HG remember), 3 Disciple of Phenax, and a Keepsake Gorgon I went u/b with support cards like 3 Voyage's End, 2 Retraction Helix, Ashiok, and 2 Dissolve.
The Games
Game 1
Game 2
Game 3
Game 4
We each got 4 packs with my pulls being: Karametra, God of Harvests, Plea for Guidance, Tromokratis, and Mindreaver.
My Partner got: Phenax, God of Deception, Satyr Firedancer, Hero of Iroas, and Hunter's Prowess.
I'm a little envious as he got much better pulls than I did but it was a great night. Voyage's End, Setessan Oathsworn, Retraction Helix, and Ill-Tempered Cyclops were our MVPs. Ashiok just fogged us the two times we played him. Xenagod caused mayham in limited and I'm not looking forward to playing against him in standard. Although Gary and Fanatic of Mogis are extremely powerful in two-headed giant, we only got to play Gary twice (despite having 3) and Fanatic once.