It's Christmastime, and that means that many of my friends are back in town for a few weeks. One of my friends, Greg, plays Magic, and has some friends who play too. So, we decided to set up a Shards draft. It occurred last night.
There were only four of us: me, Greg, Dave, and Eric. Greg and Dave had done Shards sealed once, and Eric had never seen Shards before, so I had a considerable experience advantage going into the draft, for what it's worth. I opened my packs, as usual, based on the art: first the Steward of Valeron pack, then Godsire, then Sedris, the Traitor King.
My first pack's rare was Mycoloth, but the pack also contained Bone Splinters and Oblivion Ring. There was hardly any white in the pack, though, so I decided not to take Oblivion ring, and instead took Bone Splinters. I figured, if I didn't take it, someone else would, and if one of us had Mycoloth and the other had Bone Splinters, I'd rather be the one with the Splinters. A good choice? I don't know. But we'll see.
I gradually edged my way into Grixis, taking lots and lots of removal early on, with hardly any creatures until the end of my second pack. My second pack's rare was Hellkite Overlord, which I obviously had to take, but I didn't want to splash green to play it, so it stayed in my sideboard, safely out of Greg's reach (he was playing Jund, and his first pick was Kresh the Bloodbraided). Greg was seated to my right, Eric playing Bant/Esper to my left, and Dave's Naya across from me. So there wasn't a huge amount of competition for cards.
I got a Cruel Ultimatum passed to me in the third pack. I knew how amazing the Ultimatum was, but they didn't, so they didn't hate-draft it before I could snatch it up in my grimy claws. There were a ton of Grixis uncommons, which was awesome for me. I also got a Covenant of Minds, and…well, here's my decklist:
40 Cards (I counted this time)
17 LANDS
1 Crumbling Necropolis
5 Island
5 Mountain
6 Swamp
15 CREATURES
1 Blood Cultist
2 Fatestitcher
1 Hissing Iguanar
1 Kathari Screecher
1 Kederekt Creeper
1 Rockslide Elemental
1 Scourge Devil
1 Shore Snapper
1 Skeletal Kathari
1 Tidehollow Strix
1 Undead Leotau
1 Viscera Dragger
2 Vithian Stinger
8 OTHER SPELLS
1 Bone Splinters
1 Call to Heel
1 Covenant of Minds
1 Cruel Ultimatum
2 Grixis Charm
1 Infest
1 Obelisk of Grixis
2 SIDEBOARD CARDS I USED
2 Swerve
Awesome. Now on to the games. With only four of us, we just did round robin, with victory going to whoever had the best record. I played Greg first.
Greg had a lot of 1 toughness dudes, which fell swiftly to my Blood Cultist. He didn't draw Kresh, but it would hardly have mattered – a Fatestitcher locked down all his good stuff while I attacked with my fliers and Creeper. Covenant of Minds proved to be awesome, and I used Grixis Charm's red mode (+2/+0 to all my creatures) more than the others. He didn't stand much of a chance.
The second game, I got to play Cruel Ultimatum. The outcome of that game should be obvious. I beat Greg 2-0.
Then I played Dave's aggressive Naya deck. Wild Nacatl beat me down quite a bit before I managed to get rid of it, and he kept playing threats, but eventually I played Cruel Ultimatum and, well, you know the rest.
The second game, I found out who had ended up with the Mycoloth. It was Dave. It was wrecking me until I finally managed to Infest all his Saprolings and then Call to Heel the Mycoloth. But he got more dudes and devoured them again, and I couldn't remove it. I died.
The third game, I drew Cruel Ultimatum again. I beat Dave 2-1.
Then I had to play Eric. Eric isn't a spectacular player, but he's a much better deckbuilder than Greg and Dave. The first game, his big Esper dudes (Cloudheath Drakes and Steelclad Serpents) plus his sneaky Deft Duelists cause me a lot of trouble, especially since he backed them up with a lot of good defense - Hindering Light, Resounding Wave, and Call to Heel. I kept trying to remove his Drakes, only to have him bounce them and play them again. And his Metallurgeon didn't make things any easier. I couldn't stop his swarm of fliers, and I died.
The second game was epic. My removal was a bit more effective, but this time I got some Vithian Stingers and Fatestitchers out. I kept tapping down his big guys and removing whoever I could, and then pinging him for one or two at the end of each of his turns. He couldn't attack into my Kederekt Creeper and Undead Leotau, and I kept removing any flier he'd play, or keeping it tapped with a Fatestitcher. I won that game by pinging him to death. I never attacked with a single creature.
The third game was much the same as the first. I died. Eric defeated me 2-1.
So my record was 5-3. Dave's was also 5-3, Eric's 4-3, and Greg's 1-6 (poor Greg). Dave and I played a tiebreaker game…during which I played Cruel Ultimatum. That card is truly a game-winner.
In retrospect, I should have kept Shore Snapper in my sideboard in favor of Swerve, because I had to keep switching the Snapper out whenever I played an opponent with no Islands (which was 2/3 of them). I never actually got to play Swerve, but it certainly would have been useful if I had had it in some of my game 1's. In the second game against Eric, I actually sideboarded Infest out, because his dudes were all bigger than mine, so it would rarely have been useful. Still, I was pretty happy with how my deck ended up. Fatestitcher is an insanely powerful card in limited, and I had two of them. Those guys and Cruel Ultimatum are probably what won me most of my games.
So anyway, I won (woohoo!), and the prizes at our little draft were to divvy up the rares. We all took the rares out of our decks and placed them on the table to pick which ones we wanted. The rares were:
Brilliant Ultimatum
Covenant of Minds
Cruel Ultimatum
Gather Specimens
Hellkite Overlord
Keeper of Progenitus
Knight-Captain of Eos
Kresh the Bloodbraided
Manaplasm
Minion Reflector
Mycoloth
Sharding Sphinx
I got to pick two first, so I took Cruel Ultimatum and Sharding Sphinx. I don't remember the exact order and picks of everyone, but I ended up with Mycoloth and Knight-Captain of Eos. Not bad. My Esper deck could use a second Sphinx, and I may now have enough cards to build a decent Grixis deck, or at least augment my new Jund deck.
We then played Greg's Battlestar Galactica board game, which was pretty funny. Greg kept throwing people in the Brig. The phrase "throw ___ in the BRIG!" was shouted many, many times. But the Cylons won, because Greg threw me in the Brig, but I wasn't actually a Cylon, so I was powerless to stop treacherous Cylon Dave from depleting all of our fuel. Jerk.
Greg and co. will be around for a while, and they enjoy drafts, so hopefully I'll get to draft some more in the coming weeks. Casual drafts are nice; no one yells at you if you say what card you picked, or if you look at your drafted cards during a round. No one shuffles your deck 2420934 times and counts your deck to see if it has 40 cards. And best of all, no one hate-drafts Cruel Ultimatum! :D
Showing posts with label grixis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grixis. Show all posts
Monday, December 29, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Shards draft!
The shop that I've started going to didn't have a Shards of Alara release party, but instead, they turned last night's Friday Night Magic into a Shards of Alara booster draft, complete with promo Ajani Vengeants. (They actually do a booster draft every other FNM, which is great because I love Limited.) Anyway, I went to that draft last night, and HERE ARE MY TALES.
There were 25 players, seated at tables of 6, 6, 6, and 7. I was at one of the 6-player tables, and I was of course super excited. My excitement was immediately justified when my first pack contained an Emyprial Archangel. Bant is my favorite shard anyway, and I already have a decent amount of Bant cards (though not quite a deck's worth), so I was glad to grab the shiny Angel and immediately commit myself to Bant. Neither of the players next to me were playing Bant, so I kept getting passed a lot of Bant cards, which was awesome.
Another pack had Clarion Ultimatum, which is nigh useless in Limited, but I grabbed it for use in a deck later. I also picked up another Angel's Herald, which, it turned out, was also not especially useful. My second pack contained a foil Spearbreaker Behemoth and a Ranger of Eos. The Behemoth was just too awesome not to take, but the Ranger came back around to me, so I grabbed him too. (He too later proved useless, though.) I picked the Behemoth thinking "OH MAN I CAN MAKE MY EMPYRIAL ARCHANGEL INDESTRUCTIBLE AND PREVENT ALL DAMAGE TO ME EACH TURN FOR A MERE ONE MANA." But then when I went to actually do it in game, I noticed that the Angel had shroud. And I wept bitter tears.
There weren't any other really outstanding picks, but I grabbed a Minion Reflector for later use. Or rather, because it looked cool. I also got a bunch of repeats of cards I had from the Sealed tournament, which allowed me to make a shiny Bant deck afterward. Anyway, I of course mixed all my cards together again before recording any of them, and changed it between games, but here's the closest estimate of what my final deck looked like (and I actually managed to keep it to 40 cards after other players gave me stern looks when I told them my deck was 46):
16 LAND:
1 Bant Panorama
1 Esper Panorama
5 Forest
5 Island
7 Plains
14 CREATURES:
1 Akrasan Squire
1 Algae Gharial
1 Cylian Elf
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 Jhessian Infiltrator
1 Qasali Ambusher
1 Rhox War Monk
1 Rockcaster Platoon
1 Sighted-Caste Sorcerer
1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
1 Sunseed Nurturer
2 Waveskimmer Aven
10 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Angelic Benediction
2 Courier's Capsule
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
1 Hindering Light
1 Obelisk of Bant
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Resounding Silence
1 Sigil Blessing
1 Soul's Grace
So that's what I had as of the third round. Now to recount the actual games...
My first opponent was also playing Bant, but he had a Battlegrace Angel as well as a Stoic Angel, which was very painful. Our first game went back and forth with life gain and Exalted, but I finally managed to turn the tides by using a Resounding Silence on his freaking Battlegrace Angel, and somehow I got enough damage through to win the first game. The second game was a different story, as he got the Battlegrace Angel out again but I couldn't stop it. The game dragged on even longer, and we even went into overtime with each of us having only 3 cards left in our decks. He won just in time, since his Knight-Captain of Eos was able to prevent too much of my damage, and so we drew 1-1 in the first round without even getting to game 3.
I then fiddled with my deck a little and faced a Grixis player. I hadn't faced a dedicated Grixis deck before, but he wore me down in small increments with Onyx Goblet and two Kederekt Creepers, spelling my doom. I lost 1-2.
Then I consulted another player, who made some recommendations for my deck, and I got it configured as you see above. My third opponent was playing what seemed like an Esper control deck, but he hardly played anything, so I never really found out what it was supposed to do. I won 2-0.
My final opponent was playing only two colors (white-blue), but had trouble getting his blue out. He had a TON of life gain (two Crystal Goblets as well as an Invincible Hymn), but he didn't have enough defense, and I had even MORE life gain with my Rhox War Monk attacking with Exalted. It took a while, but I won 2-0.
I don't know how I would have done if I had made the deck properly from the outset, but I was pretty happy with how I did. 6 wins and 3 losses is solid, even though I had no chance of winning a prize after the second round, but I definitely enjoyed myself. And now I have an Exalted deck! I may post the full decklist at some point, but it's not really necessary: it's just every Exalted card I have, plus a few others thrown in (Rhox War Monk!). I don't use Empyrial Archangel because, as awesome as it is, it's really not that useful to an Exalted deck, and its extremely high mana cost makes it much less playable in Constructed.
But I DID make a red-green Naya deck using some of the cards I got, plus a bunch of Shadowmoor cards, and even a few from Tenth Edition:
25 LAND:
14 Forest
11 Mountain
26 CREATURES:
1 Algae Gharial
1 Belligerent Hatchling
1 Briarhorn
1 Cragganwick Cremator
2 Devoted Druid
2 Elvish Visionary
1 Exuberant Firestoker
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Foxfire Oak
2 Incurable Ogre
2 Jungle Weaver
2 Loamdragger Giant
2 Morselhoarder
1 Oakgnarl Warrior
2 Roughshod Mentor
1 Scuzzback Marauders
1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
1 Stampeding Wildebeests
1 Tattermunge Witch
9 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Branching Bolt
1 Double Cleave
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Mighty Emergence
2 Naturalize
1 Soul's Fire
1 Where Ancients Tread
I opted not to use white because I really don't have many good white cards that would fit in here, besides Rakeclaw Gargantuan. I left out Sarkhan Vol because he just doesn't do anything especially useful for Naya. Most of my creatures are going to be more concerned with attacking than blocking, often leaving him undefended, and his abilities just aren't that helpful to the deck. That said, let's look at some of the awesome parts.
Stampeding Wildebeests is really good. I didn't realize how awesome he was, but he has really great interactions with many of the other cards in this deck. He allows me to reuse my Elvish Visionaries and Farhaven Elf, and if I have Where Ancients Tread, I can return the Wildebeest himself and replay him for 5 more damage each turn. Many of the creatures here don't start out with 5 toughness, so they don't trigger the comes-into-play enchantments, but they still quickly get up to 5, which supports Exuberant Firestoker and allows them to be targeted by Spearbreaker Behemoth. It's slow to get going, but if it lasts long enough, it will finish the job quickly. I also like how it uses cards from a variety of sets despite being based on a Shards of Alara theme.
So there you have it. My first Shards of Alara draft, and a few decks that resulted from it. I hope to draft Shards again at some point, but I don't yet know when that might be. Comments and suggestions on my red-green deck are welcome :)
One final story: after one of the rounds where I finished early, I wandered around looking at other people's games. I found two guys locked in the most epic battle of all time. One had a Windwright Mage with 60 +1/+1 counters on it, made possible by a Cradle of Vitality. He also had a Metallurgeon and a Tidehollow Strix, making any attack against him very uninviting. He had 88 life. His opponent had a Feral Hydra with 19 +1/+1 counters on it. He was at 52 life. There were a bunch of other creatures out, but they didn't do much. The guy with the artifacts eventually won, but it was a very amusing battle. Seeing a 62/62 creature with flying and lifelink in Limited is just ridiculous. RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME.
There were 25 players, seated at tables of 6, 6, 6, and 7. I was at one of the 6-player tables, and I was of course super excited. My excitement was immediately justified when my first pack contained an Emyprial Archangel. Bant is my favorite shard anyway, and I already have a decent amount of Bant cards (though not quite a deck's worth), so I was glad to grab the shiny Angel and immediately commit myself to Bant. Neither of the players next to me were playing Bant, so I kept getting passed a lot of Bant cards, which was awesome.
Another pack had Clarion Ultimatum, which is nigh useless in Limited, but I grabbed it for use in a deck later. I also picked up another Angel's Herald, which, it turned out, was also not especially useful. My second pack contained a foil Spearbreaker Behemoth and a Ranger of Eos. The Behemoth was just too awesome not to take, but the Ranger came back around to me, so I grabbed him too. (He too later proved useless, though.) I picked the Behemoth thinking "OH MAN I CAN MAKE MY EMPYRIAL ARCHANGEL INDESTRUCTIBLE AND PREVENT ALL DAMAGE TO ME EACH TURN FOR A MERE ONE MANA." But then when I went to actually do it in game, I noticed that the Angel had shroud. And I wept bitter tears.
There weren't any other really outstanding picks, but I grabbed a Minion Reflector for later use. Or rather, because it looked cool. I also got a bunch of repeats of cards I had from the Sealed tournament, which allowed me to make a shiny Bant deck afterward. Anyway, I of course mixed all my cards together again before recording any of them, and changed it between games, but here's the closest estimate of what my final deck looked like (and I actually managed to keep it to 40 cards after other players gave me stern looks when I told them my deck was 46):
16 LAND:
1 Bant Panorama
1 Esper Panorama
5 Forest
5 Island
7 Plains
14 CREATURES:
1 Akrasan Squire
1 Algae Gharial
1 Cylian Elf
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 Jhessian Infiltrator
1 Qasali Ambusher
1 Rhox War Monk
1 Rockcaster Platoon
1 Sighted-Caste Sorcerer
1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
1 Sunseed Nurturer
2 Waveskimmer Aven
10 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Angelic Benediction
2 Courier's Capsule
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
1 Hindering Light
1 Obelisk of Bant
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Resounding Silence
1 Sigil Blessing
1 Soul's Grace
So that's what I had as of the third round. Now to recount the actual games...
My first opponent was also playing Bant, but he had a Battlegrace Angel as well as a Stoic Angel, which was very painful. Our first game went back and forth with life gain and Exalted, but I finally managed to turn the tides by using a Resounding Silence on his freaking Battlegrace Angel, and somehow I got enough damage through to win the first game. The second game was a different story, as he got the Battlegrace Angel out again but I couldn't stop it. The game dragged on even longer, and we even went into overtime with each of us having only 3 cards left in our decks. He won just in time, since his Knight-Captain of Eos was able to prevent too much of my damage, and so we drew 1-1 in the first round without even getting to game 3.
I then fiddled with my deck a little and faced a Grixis player. I hadn't faced a dedicated Grixis deck before, but he wore me down in small increments with Onyx Goblet and two Kederekt Creepers, spelling my doom. I lost 1-2.
Then I consulted another player, who made some recommendations for my deck, and I got it configured as you see above. My third opponent was playing what seemed like an Esper control deck, but he hardly played anything, so I never really found out what it was supposed to do. I won 2-0.
My final opponent was playing only two colors (white-blue), but had trouble getting his blue out. He had a TON of life gain (two Crystal Goblets as well as an Invincible Hymn), but he didn't have enough defense, and I had even MORE life gain with my Rhox War Monk attacking with Exalted. It took a while, but I won 2-0.
I don't know how I would have done if I had made the deck properly from the outset, but I was pretty happy with how I did. 6 wins and 3 losses is solid, even though I had no chance of winning a prize after the second round, but I definitely enjoyed myself. And now I have an Exalted deck! I may post the full decklist at some point, but it's not really necessary: it's just every Exalted card I have, plus a few others thrown in (Rhox War Monk!). I don't use Empyrial Archangel because, as awesome as it is, it's really not that useful to an Exalted deck, and its extremely high mana cost makes it much less playable in Constructed.
But I DID make a red-green Naya deck using some of the cards I got, plus a bunch of Shadowmoor cards, and even a few from Tenth Edition:
25 LAND:
14 Forest
11 Mountain
26 CREATURES:
1 Algae Gharial
1 Belligerent Hatchling
1 Briarhorn
1 Cragganwick Cremator
2 Devoted Druid
2 Elvish Visionary
1 Exuberant Firestoker
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Foxfire Oak
2 Incurable Ogre
2 Jungle Weaver
2 Loamdragger Giant
2 Morselhoarder
1 Oakgnarl Warrior
2 Roughshod Mentor
1 Scuzzback Marauders
1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
1 Stampeding Wildebeests
1 Tattermunge Witch
9 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Branching Bolt
1 Double Cleave
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Mighty Emergence
2 Naturalize
1 Soul's Fire
1 Where Ancients Tread
I opted not to use white because I really don't have many good white cards that would fit in here, besides Rakeclaw Gargantuan. I left out Sarkhan Vol because he just doesn't do anything especially useful for Naya. Most of my creatures are going to be more concerned with attacking than blocking, often leaving him undefended, and his abilities just aren't that helpful to the deck. That said, let's look at some of the awesome parts.
Stampeding Wildebeests is really good. I didn't realize how awesome he was, but he has really great interactions with many of the other cards in this deck. He allows me to reuse my Elvish Visionaries and Farhaven Elf, and if I have Where Ancients Tread, I can return the Wildebeest himself and replay him for 5 more damage each turn. Many of the creatures here don't start out with 5 toughness, so they don't trigger the comes-into-play enchantments, but they still quickly get up to 5, which supports Exuberant Firestoker and allows them to be targeted by Spearbreaker Behemoth. It's slow to get going, but if it lasts long enough, it will finish the job quickly. I also like how it uses cards from a variety of sets despite being based on a Shards of Alara theme.
So there you have it. My first Shards of Alara draft, and a few decks that resulted from it. I hope to draft Shards again at some point, but I don't yet know when that might be. Comments and suggestions on my red-green deck are welcome :)
One final story: after one of the rounds where I finished early, I wandered around looking at other people's games. I found two guys locked in the most epic battle of all time. One had a Windwright Mage with 60 +1/+1 counters on it, made possible by a Cradle of Vitality. He also had a Metallurgeon and a Tidehollow Strix, making any attack against him very uninviting. He had 88 life. His opponent had a Feral Hydra with 19 +1/+1 counters on it. He was at 52 life. There were a bunch of other creatures out, but they didn't do much. The guy with the artifacts eventually won, but it was a very amusing battle. Seeing a 62/62 creature with flying and lifelink in Limited is just ridiculous. RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Shards of Alara Prerelease: DONE
I went to the Shards of Alara Prerelease on Sunday! It was awesome. To start off, I'll list my sealed pool. Some notes:
- At the end of the night, there were still 10 booster packs left, so the host gave them out randomly as a reward for those who stuck around till the bitter end. (A lot of players left early to preserve their rankings or some crap.) So I ended up with one of those, and when I got home, I mixed them all together. So I don't remember exactly which ones were in that booster and which were in my Sealed deck, but my list should be pretty accurate except for a few commons.
- There are 86 cards: 44 from Sealed (because one was a foil Plains) and 14 from each booster.
- I've organized the cards by shard, but I’m not 100% sure about which cards go in which shard. Most are easy to categorize, but some I just guessed.
Without further ado:
BANT
1x Angel's Herald
1x Angelic Benediction
1x Angelsong
1x Bant Charm
3x Bant Panorama
1x Clarion Ultimatum
1x Dawnray Archer (not sure about this one)
2x Excommunicate
2x Guardians of Akrasa
1x Knight of the White Orchid
1x Resounding Silence
2x Rhox Charger
1x Rhox War Monk
1x Seaside Citadel
1x Topan Ascetic
1x Waveskimmer Aven
2x Welkin Guide (one foil)
ESPER
1x Cloudheath Drake
1x Dispeller's Capsule
1x Etherium Sculptor
1x Filigree Sages
1x Obelisk of Esper
1x Oblivion Ring
1x Onyx Goblet (not sure about this one)
1x Punish Ignorance
1x Spell Snip
1x Steelclad Serpent
1x Thoughtcutter Agent
1x Tidehollow Strix
1x Tower Gargoyle
1x Vectis Silencers
1x Windwright Mage
GRIXIS
2x Banewasp Affliction
1x Blightning
1x Dreg Reaver
1x Fatestitcher
1x Grixis Panorama
2x Incurable Ogre
1x Kathari Screecher
1x Kederekt Creeper
1x Lightning Talson
1x Shadowfeed
3x Skeletal Kathari
1x Skeletonize
1x Undead Leotau
JUND
1x Branching Bolt
1x Carrion Thrash
1x Deathgreeter
1x Dragon Fodder
1x Goblin Deathraiders
1x Goblin Mountaineer
1x Hissing Iguanar
1x Magma Spray
1x Sarkhan Vol!!!
1x Tar Fiend
1x Thorn-Thrash Viashino
1x Thunder-Thrash Elder
NAYA
1x Cylian Elf
1x Exuberant Firestoker
1x Godtoucher (not sure about this one)
2x Gustrider Exuberant
2x Jungle Weaver
1x Lush Growth
1x Naya Charm
1x Obelisk of Naya
1x Qasali Ambusher
1x Rakeclaw Gargantuan
1x Resounding Roar
1x Savage Hunger
1x Soul's Fire
1x Soul's Grace
1x Soul's Might
1x Where Ancients Tread
1x Wild Nacatl
So as you can see, my pool was fairly heavily invested in green and white. Luckily, I love green and white, so my deck ended up being green-white-red splashing blue (for the three excellent tricolor Bant cards). Plus, almost all of my mana fixing was Bant, so I had to do SOMETHING with it. Also, I had to run red because of Sarkhan. With this deck…I got completely destroyed 0-2 against a green-white-red-black deck. Also, my deck was 50 cards because I just didn't have the heart to cut anything. Beginner's folly.
So then I said SCREW IT and completely redid my deck for the second round. I started with blue, and ended up with all 5 colors and another large deck of 46 or 47 cards. I went 1-1-1 with it (against a green-white-blue-black deck with Empyrial Archangel, which was not especially easy to deal with), though I probably would have won the last game but just barely. It was not a good deck since I could rarely play any of my spells until I had all 5 colors of mana out.
So then I said SCREW IT and was going to completely redo my deck but it was already time for the next round, so I lost 1-2 with my crappy 5 color deck again (against a solid Naya deck). But after THAT swift defeat, there was plenty of time to redo my deck over and over until I liked it. So I bit the bullet, chose a shard (Bant), and cut any card that was not ideal in a Bant deck, like Wild Nacatl and, sadly, Sarkhan Vol. The one time I had gotten to play him previously, I made a tactical error and stole a dude, but left my opponent with a flyer on his turn to finish off Sarkhan. However, my focus on Exalted made Sarkhan's abilities not especially useful, so cutting him wasn't really that painful. I managed to get my deck to 40 cards by running just 16 lands, but with no spells costing more than 5 mana. It worked pretty well, as I went 2-0 in the fourth round with it and 1-2 in the final round (though the 2-0 was against a guy who clearly was new). If I had made that deck for the first round, I might even have done respectably well. Oh well, at least I had fun with the new set!
I signed up for a Shards of Alara draft for this Friday. Drafting should be much different from Sealed, and I'm excited. I'm going to get crushed, but it will still be neat. I'm really hoping to get Elspeth, Knight-Errant since she is just SO AWESOME. Even with Jund. Free dragon food each turn! I will relate my drafting adventures next week.
As far as conclusions about the set go, I'm not really cut out for that sort of thing. I saw few dedicated Esper decks, but I suspect that will be a different story in a booster draft. I saw plenty of red and green, as Naya and Jund seemed to be popular in Sealed. As far as my personal tastes go, I am a fan of Bant, since Exalted is quite a powerful mechanic in Limited. With lots of defensive Exalted creatures (like Guardians of Akrasa) and a few evasive creatures, you can build up damage quickly without sacrificing defense. I really like Welkin Guide; at 4W, it's expensive for a 2/2 flier, but its comes-into-play ability can give another powerful creature evasion, and then become your evasive Exalted champion itself on subsequent turns. Sweet.
I also really like the interactions of the mechanics in the set – except for Esper, which is a jerk. Exalted works well with Naya cards that care about having a creature with power 5 or greater during combat or at end of turn, which is a fair number of them. Devour works well with anything involving creatures with power 5 or greater, since Devour creatures are often huge. And Devour also works with Unearth: Unearth a dude, attack with him, and if he's still alive, Devour him, since he's going to leave play anyway. But then there's Esper, which only cares about artifacts, which has nothing to do with anything else. You know what, Esper? BITE ME.
Well, that's all I have for now. Hopefully I'll have more to say next week after the draft. Until then, BANT RULES GRIXIS DROOLS KBYE.
- At the end of the night, there were still 10 booster packs left, so the host gave them out randomly as a reward for those who stuck around till the bitter end. (A lot of players left early to preserve their rankings or some crap.) So I ended up with one of those, and when I got home, I mixed them all together. So I don't remember exactly which ones were in that booster and which were in my Sealed deck, but my list should be pretty accurate except for a few commons.
- There are 86 cards: 44 from Sealed (because one was a foil Plains) and 14 from each booster.
- I've organized the cards by shard, but I’m not 100% sure about which cards go in which shard. Most are easy to categorize, but some I just guessed.
Without further ado:
BANT
1x Angel's Herald
1x Angelic Benediction
1x Angelsong
1x Bant Charm
3x Bant Panorama
1x Clarion Ultimatum
1x Dawnray Archer (not sure about this one)
2x Excommunicate
2x Guardians of Akrasa
1x Knight of the White Orchid
1x Resounding Silence
2x Rhox Charger
1x Rhox War Monk
1x Seaside Citadel
1x Topan Ascetic
1x Waveskimmer Aven
2x Welkin Guide (one foil)
ESPER
1x Cloudheath Drake
1x Dispeller's Capsule
1x Etherium Sculptor
1x Filigree Sages
1x Obelisk of Esper
1x Oblivion Ring
1x Onyx Goblet (not sure about this one)
1x Punish Ignorance
1x Spell Snip
1x Steelclad Serpent
1x Thoughtcutter Agent
1x Tidehollow Strix
1x Tower Gargoyle
1x Vectis Silencers
1x Windwright Mage
GRIXIS
2x Banewasp Affliction
1x Blightning
1x Dreg Reaver
1x Fatestitcher
1x Grixis Panorama
2x Incurable Ogre
1x Kathari Screecher
1x Kederekt Creeper
1x Lightning Talson
1x Shadowfeed
3x Skeletal Kathari
1x Skeletonize
1x Undead Leotau
JUND
1x Branching Bolt
1x Carrion Thrash
1x Deathgreeter
1x Dragon Fodder
1x Goblin Deathraiders
1x Goblin Mountaineer
1x Hissing Iguanar
1x Magma Spray
1x Sarkhan Vol!!!
1x Tar Fiend
1x Thorn-Thrash Viashino
1x Thunder-Thrash Elder
NAYA
1x Cylian Elf
1x Exuberant Firestoker
1x Godtoucher (not sure about this one)
2x Gustrider Exuberant
2x Jungle Weaver
1x Lush Growth
1x Naya Charm
1x Obelisk of Naya
1x Qasali Ambusher
1x Rakeclaw Gargantuan
1x Resounding Roar
1x Savage Hunger
1x Soul's Fire
1x Soul's Grace
1x Soul's Might
1x Where Ancients Tread
1x Wild Nacatl
So as you can see, my pool was fairly heavily invested in green and white. Luckily, I love green and white, so my deck ended up being green-white-red splashing blue (for the three excellent tricolor Bant cards). Plus, almost all of my mana fixing was Bant, so I had to do SOMETHING with it. Also, I had to run red because of Sarkhan. With this deck…I got completely destroyed 0-2 against a green-white-red-black deck. Also, my deck was 50 cards because I just didn't have the heart to cut anything. Beginner's folly.
So then I said SCREW IT and completely redid my deck for the second round. I started with blue, and ended up with all 5 colors and another large deck of 46 or 47 cards. I went 1-1-1 with it (against a green-white-blue-black deck with Empyrial Archangel, which was not especially easy to deal with), though I probably would have won the last game but just barely. It was not a good deck since I could rarely play any of my spells until I had all 5 colors of mana out.
So then I said SCREW IT and was going to completely redo my deck but it was already time for the next round, so I lost 1-2 with my crappy 5 color deck again (against a solid Naya deck). But after THAT swift defeat, there was plenty of time to redo my deck over and over until I liked it. So I bit the bullet, chose a shard (Bant), and cut any card that was not ideal in a Bant deck, like Wild Nacatl and, sadly, Sarkhan Vol. The one time I had gotten to play him previously, I made a tactical error and stole a dude, but left my opponent with a flyer on his turn to finish off Sarkhan. However, my focus on Exalted made Sarkhan's abilities not especially useful, so cutting him wasn't really that painful. I managed to get my deck to 40 cards by running just 16 lands, but with no spells costing more than 5 mana. It worked pretty well, as I went 2-0 in the fourth round with it and 1-2 in the final round (though the 2-0 was against a guy who clearly was new). If I had made that deck for the first round, I might even have done respectably well. Oh well, at least I had fun with the new set!
I signed up for a Shards of Alara draft for this Friday. Drafting should be much different from Sealed, and I'm excited. I'm going to get crushed, but it will still be neat. I'm really hoping to get Elspeth, Knight-Errant since she is just SO AWESOME. Even with Jund. Free dragon food each turn! I will relate my drafting adventures next week.
As far as conclusions about the set go, I'm not really cut out for that sort of thing. I saw few dedicated Esper decks, but I suspect that will be a different story in a booster draft. I saw plenty of red and green, as Naya and Jund seemed to be popular in Sealed. As far as my personal tastes go, I am a fan of Bant, since Exalted is quite a powerful mechanic in Limited. With lots of defensive Exalted creatures (like Guardians of Akrasa) and a few evasive creatures, you can build up damage quickly without sacrificing defense. I really like Welkin Guide; at 4W, it's expensive for a 2/2 flier, but its comes-into-play ability can give another powerful creature evasion, and then become your evasive Exalted champion itself on subsequent turns. Sweet.
I also really like the interactions of the mechanics in the set – except for Esper, which is a jerk. Exalted works well with Naya cards that care about having a creature with power 5 or greater during combat or at end of turn, which is a fair number of them. Devour works well with anything involving creatures with power 5 or greater, since Devour creatures are often huge. And Devour also works with Unearth: Unearth a dude, attack with him, and if he's still alive, Devour him, since he's going to leave play anyway. But then there's Esper, which only cares about artifacts, which has nothing to do with anything else. You know what, Esper? BITE ME.
Well, that's all I have for now. Hopefully I'll have more to say next week after the draft. Until then, BANT RULES GRIXIS DROOLS KBYE.
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