As we usually do, I'm looking for us to get a feel of what colors are performing well at pre-release top tables so far. Feel free to expand on what color combos are doing particularly well.
I played Black/Blue to a prerelease win (out of 61), but the other 3 undefeated players and the player I defeated in the final round all had Green/X decks. White was oddly completely shut out.
The place where I usually go (but didn't: they raised their already costly price from 25 to 30$) posted the winners of their first two pre-release: white and white. Seems Wizards dropped the ball on balancing the promo and colours.
The place where I usually go (but didn't: they raised their already costly price from 25 to 30$) posted the winners of their first two pre-release: white and white. Seems Wizards dropped the ball on balancing the promo and colours.
That is a fairly limited sample size on which to base that statement. Also there is ridiculous selection bias. If the most competitive players are convinced white is best and so they all choose white it should come as little surprise that white comes out on top provided it's not totally awful or something (and I think we can be pretty confident its not).
Besides red, which seemed drastically under-powered, there was a good representation of all colours in the top decks I saw. White and black seemed the strongest when paired with blue, from what I saw.
That is a fairly limited sample size on which to base that statement.
When I posted that, the pool indicated 61% of wins for white, with blakc a distant second at 25%. Currently, white still has more than 50% of the wins. I based my comments on that.
At my shop I think a lot of the top decks had white in them, but I think like half the field chose white as their pre-release color. So I'm not sure I buy into the white being better line too much because of the general over-representation of white decks - if half of the players chose white, then it makes sense that half the top decks would have white. Casual players looked and said "with white I can get Ajani, Athreos, or Iroas! Not to mention Deicide has awesome art! And so does that crazy sheep that gains me life and can block all day! Let's go white!" while all the good limited players were like "White/x heroic is the safest known archtype" which combined with each other for loads and loads of white players.
I saw green in the decks that I liked. I ran UG splash Banishing Light and I split the finals with a guy running GW. Other top 8's included UB, GWb, GR, and BG. The Elk-Elf was very strong across the board - almost all of the top-8 green decks ran at least 1 copy. If the format is slow enough, ramp is good.
A white deck took 1st at ours, but a fair bit of the top 8 (including me) were black. Then again, the black players I knew specifically builded to beat white Heroic.
I wonder if white was overrepresented in the winner bracket just because better players tended to pick white in advance and more players played white in general. Statistically, that means you'd expect more white domination even if white wasn't actually stronger.
I won our 86 person event Wu Heroic. The other top decks were 4 WB, 1 RB, 1 UG, and 1 WG. Our second event was 34 players and was won by a guy playing BW with a UR secondary deck. I also drew for first in our 23-team 2HG tournament with monoblack constellation (3 Doomwake Giants/15 enchantments) and RU midrange. The other team was BW control and UG tempo. There weren't any white packs left for the 2HG tourney since Wizards effed up the promo balance.
1. White (blue)
2. Green (blue)
3. Green (white)
4. Black (?)
5. Red (White)
6. Black (Red)
I Don't remember last 2, we didn't do a top 8 after 5 rounds. I played green and went 4-1 to take 3rd. White black and green were to top picked colors.
UW - with Elspeth, white promo, Celestial Archon and nice heroic dudes
GW - with Ajani (he went to 120 life!), white promo, quality creatures
BU - with Macar, black promo, black Wrath, black Dictate
RW - didn't really see his deck
Well, I went ot the sunday pre-release and chose... white. We were a grand total of 8 players, three chose white. I won the whole thing (IOW, 3-0) going WU with dictate of heliod (foil! easy MVP), prognostic sphinx and two other white rares I didn't play (spirit of the labyrinth and aegis of teh gods). My final opp was WR (white promo + stormbreath dragon and hundred-handed one. Semi-final was again WR and first round against GB. (Note: he played master of the feast... i pinned it to the ground. ) The only notable card I oponed in my winnings is a krupix.
So the five pre-releases went: WU, Wx, Rx, Bx, WU. So even though white was the popular choice, it was not representing 60% of the field, yet won 60%.
Aggro is alive and well, and white is still the main aggro colour.
Well, I went ot the sunday pre-release and chose... white. We were a grand total of 8 players, three chose white. I won the whole thing (IOW, 3-0) going WU with dictate of heliod (foil! easy MVP), prognostic sphinx and two other white rares I didn't play (spirit of the labyrinth and aegis of teh gods). My final opp was WR (white promo + stormbreath dragon and hundred-handed one. Semi-final was again WR and first round against GB. (Note: he played master of the feast... i pinned it to the ground. ) The only notable card I oponed in my winnings is a krupix.
So the five pre-releases went: WU, Wx, Rx, Bx, WU. So even though white was the popular choice, it was not representing 60% of the field, yet won 60%.
Aggro is alive and well, and white is still the main aggro colour.
Out of curiosity, why did you cut Spirit and Aegis? Aegis is mediocre, for sure, but Spirit is perfectly fine as an aggressive 2-drop, and it can occasionally get some value through its ability. I can't see cutting it from a white deck in sealed.
I played 2, going white in the midnight (4-0-1) and black the next day (3-1, losing to the white promo after failing to draw a second Swamp for Asphyxiate). The white promo was just so imbalanced compared with the others.
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I cut Aegis because I had 30 playables and a metric ton of two-drops. I preferred keeping things with better abilities like oreskos sun guide, oreskos swiftclaw, sightless brawler and the like. (I also thought that being an enchantment made it easier to remove.) It was one of my last cut. with dakra mystic. I'm not sure about cutting that one,but I thought a 1/1 was almost irrelvant and spending mana and tempo in the hope of getting assymetrical draw / mill was a long shot. It just doesn't fit WU aggro's game plan.
PS: I 8 games, I didn't raw my promo once. It was more that W, and WU in particular, is often busted that won me the matches.
I went red. Pulled a storm breath dragon and twin flame. Went green red with two skinks and two hinds. I went 4/1 and got second(thankfully the indefeateds in the last round did not split). The winner went black and had a disgusting constilation deck
Did anyone else really abuse Constellation? Unlikely to ever happen again, since the mechanic is significantly worse in draft (1/3 of packs JOU instead of 1/2) and even other Sealed events will have no seeded pack full of constellation goodies. This was the time to do it folks! I had fun casting creatures and triggering discard, -1/-1, life loss and evasion all at once!
It'll come up in draft for sure because all the sets have enablers. If you're going to do Constellation though, you'll have to get the creatures early.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
PS: they were playing WU and Wx.
That is a fairly limited sample size on which to base that statement. Also there is ridiculous selection bias. If the most competitive players are convinced white is best and so they all choose white it should come as little surprise that white comes out on top provided it's not totally awful or something (and I think we can be pretty confident its not).
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
When I posted that, the pool indicated 61% of wins for white, with blakc a distant second at 25%. Currently, white still has more than 50% of the wins. I based my comments on that.
I wonder if white was overrepresented in the winner bracket just because better players tended to pick white in advance and more players played white in general. Statistically, that means you'd expect more white domination even if white wasn't actually stronger.
1. White (blue)
2. Green (blue)
3. Green (white)
4. Black (?)
5. Red (White)
6. Black (Red)
I Don't remember last 2, we didn't do a top 8 after 5 rounds. I played green and went 4-1 to take 3rd. White black and green were to top picked colors.
UW - with Elspeth, white promo, Celestial Archon and nice heroic dudes
GW - with Ajani (he went to 120 life!), white promo, quality creatures
BU - with Macar, black promo, black Wrath, black Dictate
RW - didn't really see his deck
So the five pre-releases went: WU, Wx, Rx, Bx, WU. So even though white was the popular choice, it was not representing 60% of the field, yet won 60%.
Aggro is alive and well, and white is still the main aggro colour.
Out of curiosity, why did you cut Spirit and Aegis? Aegis is mediocre, for sure, but Spirit is perfectly fine as an aggressive 2-drop, and it can occasionally get some value through its ability. I can't see cutting it from a white deck in sealed.
I played 2, going white in the midnight (4-0-1) and black the next day (3-1, losing to the white promo after failing to draw a second Swamp for Asphyxiate). The white promo was just so imbalanced compared with the others.
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
PS: I 8 games, I didn't raw my promo once. It was more that W, and WU in particular, is often busted that won me the matches.
RBGLiving EndRBG
EDH
UFblthpU
BRXantchaRB
BGVarolzGB
URWZedruuWRU
EDIT: Harvestguard Alseids was amazing. I almost didn't play it MD. That card did SERIOUS work.