Week 3 Sealed pools

We are back again, and this week we have another pool to go over. As always I will give you both the image of the pool and a the list of the cards as well. Just like last time feel free to comment here or in the LRcast subreddit with you would build the deck. On Saturday I will post the article with the suggested builds and what I came up with. I'm also going to add in a straw poll starting this week to find out what build is the most popular. Until next time, may the variance be with you!

Sealed Pools Week 2: The Builds

This week it seemed like the only color combinations people didn’t believe in were UG, RG or anything containing white. I’m going to take a look at decks suggested for RB, UB, GB, and UR. Like last week I will discuss each of the builds, and then discuss what I actually went with and give some final thoughts/lessons. Without further stalling, I will refresh your idea of what the pool looks like and then get going.

Full Pool:

RB:

The Build:

Courtesy of Sceptilesolar on the LRCast boards we have this Red and Black control deck. The build has Rolling Thunder, Serpentine Strike, Demon’s Grasp, 3xComplete Disregard, 2 Processor assaults, and a boiling earth as the removal suite. It has 3 ingest creatures, and 5 other ways to exile to power up our Mind Raker, 2x Processor Assaults, and 2x Ruin Processors. It’s also mostly a devoid deck, so we can count on consistent double pings from the double Nettle drones as well. What we are lacking is any unconditional removal spells, and have bone splinters and scour in the sideboard.

I mentioned this last week and I still believe that in this format you need an unconditional removal spell in your deck. With only 11 creatures and 2 tokens that makes it less likely we want a bone splinters, so scour might be our removal spell. That does leave us with an even more top heavy of a deck than what Sceptilesolar built, six vs five 6+ drops. This brings up an interesting question as to how many of those type of cards we want in this sealed environment, a question I would love to hear discussed in the thread/comments .  I’m not sure I’m a fan of Boiling Earth in this format for sealed, and that would probably be the card I remove for the unconditional removal spell.

The Plan:

This deck definitely is looking to play the 1 for 1 removal game with any threatening early creatures. In this deck (and many in the format) that probably means evasive threats. After it stabilizes, it wants to beat face with some Ruin Processors, or grind things out with the Nettle Drones. This deck seems like it can struggle to get overwhelmed in the mid game, and really have to rely on getting something ingested and drawing a Processor Assault or your Demon’s Grasp, and Kozilek’s Sentinel is your only good blocker in the deck.

UR:

The Deck:

No one had a build for UR, but it was mentioned on the thread as a possibility, and I received an email suggesting UR tempo may be a thing to look at. The pool for UR was actually a little more shallow, I had to struggle to put the last couple cards in to fit the theme. I went with my last cards as slab hammer to combo with the skyline cascade, and another spell shrivel.

The Plan:

This is a pretty clear tempo deck as I look at it. You want to stick some early pressure and some evasion and then use removal and counter spells to try and keep ahead. If you can keep them behind you are also able to tap out later in the game for a couple big threats and find them with Conduit of Ruin. This has a similar end game to the BR deck, but doesn’t have as much removal. I think I like this slightly better than the BR deck with some evasion and devoid synergy pushing it over the top for me.

GB:

The Deck:

Brought to you by Crosswindsc2, This is a bit of a go wide strategy with some beef and removal. He suggests a splash for white for Veteran Warleader and Retreat to Emeria. That feels a little too greedy for me, and I might just downgrade into a gyeserfield stalker and a broodhunter worm and just play beefy beats with a go wide/sacrifice subtheme. This could be one flaw I have in my sealed game for sure. I don’t think I’m great at evaluating when the splash is worth the risk. Most of my decks in limited won’t splash unless I feel like I have good fixing to go with it. I want to be slightly more powerful than consistent, but I think I may be just slightly too conservative with my splashes.

Off topic story time:

I think part of this comes from drafting original Ravnica, I never won a match in the original Ravnica block drafts. I’d love to be able to look back at how many drafts I did during the block, but I was drafting because it was fun, but I didn’t have anyone teaching me the fundamentals of drafting. This lead to me mostly drafting five color monstrosities or 3 color decks with the dreaded devil’s mana base (6, 6, 6) and no fixing. I only started to begin to win draft games (not even matches) when someone told me to stick to two colors and place a higher priority on lower to mid drops instead of the splashy big cards, which didn’t make sense since those were all “bombs” in my eyes, and BREAD was the name of the game, right? Back on topic:

The plan:

This deck is pulling in a couple directions, but really you are beefy and can beat down in the mid game. You can use the early creatures and removal to get through and keep the board clear for your midrange guys, and if you stall on the board you are trying to go a little wide and hopefully use a Zulaport Cutthroat to drain the last few points of life.  I think if you are going to splash, you probably want the sylvan scrying in there at the very least for helping find the plains when you need it around turn 4.

UB:

The Deck:

Brought to you by tvkelley from the LR Subreddit. This Deck looks like a lot of my sealed decks, and so it really makes me wonder if I just over value playing UB control in this format, or is it just a deeper/easier color combination to build in. This deck has evasive threats and removal, the combination I love in all limited formats. It has the same top end as every deck, and has my unconditional removal spell There were suggestions to cut some number of Spell Shrivels, and the Scour from Existence to bring in some combination of Zulaport Cuthroat, Grave Birthing, and/or Bone Splinters. Without more creatures, tokens, or a good sacrifice pay off I’m not a fan of bone splinters in this deck and don’t think the other cards offer an upgrade without more enablers.

My Deck:

Looking at my deck, I definitely think the conduit is better than the Geyserfield Stalker that I played. I was trying to add an additional evasive threat to my deck instead of just taking the 5/5 that tutors up a Ruin Processor.

Final thoughts:

My final thought this week is bringing us back to questions that I brought up in the article. How many 6+ drops are you willing to play in this sealed format? How willing are you to do a greedy splash if you have no fixing in this sealed format? 

Sealed Pool Week 2

Here is the next installment of my series to help us all improve our sealed deck building and game play. I continue to hope this will bring about some good discussions and hope it will help us all get better. Like before I will post the image of the deck, and then after the jump I will post the cards. This allows you to get a look for the pool, and if you would like to import the deck into MTGO. Just copy the deck list into a text file, save it, and then import it. Without further delay, here was the sealed pool.

Sealed Pool Week 1: The Builds

 For this first final build article of the series I want to focus more on the builds that could have been made instead of getting in deep on the game play decisions of the tournament I played. I feel like I and hopefully you all can get limited game play from better mediums than a column, but talking through the deck building is something that is lacking in the community. Once I feel like I have the rhythm of writing the deck building portion of this column, I might be able to focus more on figuring out how to write about my actual game play better. My plan is to go through the builds suggested by the readers, using deck lists if suggested, and then go through my process of deck building. I will then finish with my final thoughts. If you see cards in the sideboard you would have put in the builds tell me what they are and why, I’d love to see more sealed discussion either here or on the LR subreddit.

So as a recap this is what our pool looked like:

The suggested builds based of the feedback this week were the following:  Naya Allies, UB, UW, Esper, and BW.

Naya Allies:

The Build:

Personally, I think it was too greedy to go for a second of the green cards, while the green splash here isn’t “free” it is mitigated by the ally encampment that can splash for our only green card and canopy vista. The Warcaller would be good in this deck, but the double green cost seems too greedy for me. The removal suite is stasis snare, reproach, outnumber, touch, stonefury, and scour. The deck has plenty of mana sinks for the later game with 7 cards with 4+ CMC and the lookout to dump mana into.

The Plan:

Chip in with early damage, force through your evasive guys with removal, and if needed stick a bigger threat late to punch through the last bit of damage. The weakness, decks with some “defensive speed”, and I think the UW decks can tempo you right out of the game. The deck doesn’t do anything too powerful unless you live the dream of Zada + focus after going wide. I think this deck might fall into the trap of trying to be a slow aggressive deck in sealed. The deck doesn’t have the beef to be midrange, or the ability to go over the top like the control/slower midrange decks. 

 UB:

The Build:

I was tempted to splash the roil spout, I think it is just great, and I wasn’t sure about playing Part in this deck. I didn’t like the Mind Raker over the other four drops as I would rather have the evasion and tempo the other four drops provide. I did consider it over the grave birthing, and I just went with lowering my curve and making it more likely to turn on my Murk Striders on four.

The Plan:

While some suggested I look to make it more controlling, I agreed with Smolda from the subreddit that tempo looked more right. I did keep the Bane for some top end power, and I also tried to  work the ingest synergy to set up my Murk Striders on 4. While this isn’t “protect the queen” type tempo, it does try and get a lead and slow down the opponent while developing the board. 

Esper:

The Build:

This build was brought to us by LR Subreddit user “AnAlienHeat”. Eweezy suggested an 8 island, 6 Swamp (5 + mortuary mire in Alien’s build), and 4 plains mana base. I don’t think that makes it likely we will be playing our reproach or snare until much later in the game, and may make both of them less likely to make my cut. You also would need half your plains to cast your emeria shephard or snare. I think you may splash white for spout and play the UB deck above with a different mana base.

The Plan:

This deck seems somewhere between tempo and control to me, and I’m not sure I think it is all that more powerful than the UB deck. This deck tries to use the tempo to set up its bigger plays, but I don’t think you are consistent enough to be using the white spells as tempo, or to take over the game with shepherd.

BW:

The Build:

This deck was pretty quick and easy to build. I think there is an argument for going a little more aggressive with the sludge crawlers and the mind raker here and cutting the assassin, and two higher drops. When building this deck I just started thinking maybe I was undervaluing the black white synergy deck, and forced that synergy while building this one. I also have to admit to what my grandfather  affectionately calls a “brain fart”. I thought Kor Castigator was serene steward. I looked at the card, read it multiple times, and still thought it was Serene Steward.

The Plan:

This looks like a bad control/grinding deck. It has some good removal, but it doesn’t really do anything except try and gain some life to pump up a Bloodbond Vampire or get in the air with Nightwatch. The thing is I don’t think this deck has the inevitability you want in a grindy BW deck.

Final thoughts:

The deck I ended up playing was the BW deck. My thought process was most likely flawed. I thought I could play a midrange to late game with the amount of allies I had, and especially since I had Serene Steward to put +1/+1 counters on my creatures. I was so sure I had Serene Steward in my deck that I was confused on two separate occasions when I cast my Kor Castigator and wasn’t able to pay the white mana to pump one of my people. Every match I ended up side boarding out of this deck after game 1 and into the UB deck. I went 0-3 with this combination of decks, and lost every game 1 with the BW deck and none felt close. The UB deck I at least felt like I was in the games and that my decisions mattered to the outcomes.

My second final thought, I think I am playing to many 6+ drops in decks in this format. Each build I have put forth today has played scour and bane. I have waffled on scour, and find I just need the unconditional removal if I don’t have it in my pool, but in the black builds I had Grip and think I could easily cut the scour for something with a lower cost. Bane I think is a worthwhile top end threat if you don’t have one, and maybe even when I’m playing Sheherd it is worth having a second high cost/impact creature to get back, but I think it is worth questioning that idea.

If you have thoughts please post them in the comments section, the LRCast Subreddit, or email me directly. Until next time, may the variance be with you.

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@DJKMTG

Sealed Pool Week 1

Welcome to the first in (hopefully) a long series of sealed builds and discussion. The following sealed pool comes from a sealed daily in the BFZx6 format on MTGO. I am hoping this will create good discussions and create a learning tool for people struggling with sealed deck building and game play. Saturday I will post versions of the deck suggested by others, the deck I played, and discuss how the tournament went for me. 

Below you will find the image of the pool after the jump is the text list of the pool if you want to put it into a text file and import it into MTGO

I'm always looking for feedback and especially looking for a good name for the series. 

The Best Case Isn't the Best Case

If you haven’t noticed by now, when I talk about limited strategy or theory I end up talking about the Limited Resources Podcast (www.lrcast.com). Today is going to be no different, and there is a reason why. The LR hosts are responsible for creating and expanding upon language drafters can use as a basis for argumentation and evaluation. This combined with being the first podcast on Magic I listened to have made them one of my biggest Magic influences. They’ve also done their fair share of fighting for clarity and against the hyperbole that I find obscures great discussion in Magic. Today, I want to talk about one of the first concepts I really felt I had a handle on, and was able to employ in my draft strategy, avoiding BCSM or Best Case Scenario Mentality.