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?
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