I have to say that the seeded boosters this time are really disappointing. Having played two different broods at pre-releases I got ZERO mana fixing for either of them. The broods feel really half-assed and I found it very hard to go more than 2 colors. Even then getting stuck with a Dragon Whisperer in hand and only one mountain on the field, because I got no dual lands and no fixing spells really sucks. The ramp in this set is pretty bad too, the common "mana dork" is in blue and only works for morph. Of the two other mana-dorks, one is uncommon and requires formidable and the other is a mythic rare. On the non-creature spell side you have uncommon Explosive Vegetation and enchantment Sheltered Aerie.
From what I saw and played, Red/Black dash is so fast that most decks have a hard time getting online. There isn't enough support for all the fatty dragons, and there are enough good cheap combat tricks for red/black that they can steam roll most of the other broods. My suggestion to anyone going to a pre-release today and doing draft later, is go Red/Black aggro, it is solid. Most of the dash is cheap enough and dodges sorcery speed removal, especially Pacifism(this card was annoying all pre-release).
Best cards: Impact Tremors - very good grind card that works amazingly well with Dash. Sprinting Warbrute - one of the fattest dash guys for a good cost. Kolaghan Forerunners - going Dragon Fodder into this card is good, one of the few/only? trample dash creatures. Reckless Imp - the best non-rare black dash card, flying evasion is sweet. Atarka Efreet - while not dash, morphing this turn 3 and flipping it turn 4 in mid-attack really caught a lot of my opponents off guard(they didn't want to block and all of a sudden take 6-7 damage to the face). Stormrider Rig - this artifact was sweet, the auto-equip makes this very potent with Dash. Coat with Venom - very solid combat trick and cheap Butcher's Glee - the other really good combat trick in black, another very solid card
So what are your experiences with the pre-release?
I don't have very fond memories of DTK, because I didn't open a single dragon in my colours. I played the Dragons of Tarkir prerelease without being able to play a single dragon. And to add insult to injury I was matched with one guy who had, or rather played at least 5 dragons: Both Dromokas, the green and the white morph dragons and the uncommon green-white dragon. I managed to hold out for a good time, but if someone has more dragons than I have removal in my entire pool, that is just an unwinnable battle.
While I opened zero dragons and zero mana fixing, I took Azorius (er...ojutai?) and built a nice blue/white tempo deck that performed well - 3-0 and then split the finals. Naturally it was pure skill that got me a Monastery Mentor and Narset. okay okay, lucksacked. Still a very fun event and Rebound is sweet - especially with Mentor
I went with kolaghan and lost first round. Decided to completely change colors to dromoka and won the rest of the matcha. (4-1) I got forth but wouldn've been 5-0 if had gone G/W from the get go.
I have to say that the seeded boosters this time are really disappointing. Having played two different broods at pre-releases I got ZERO mana fixing for either of them. The broods feel really half-assed and I found it very hard to go more than 2 colors. Even then getting stuck with a Dragon Whisperer in hand and only one mountain on the field, because I got no dual lands and no fixing spells really sucks. The ramp in this set is pretty bad too, the common "mana dork" is in blue and only works for morph. Of the two other mana-dorks, one is uncommon and requires formidable and the other is a mythic rare. On the non-creature spell side you have uncommon Explosive Vegetation and enchantment Sheltered Aerie.
From what I saw and played, Red/Black dash is so fast that most decks have a hard time getting online. There isn't enough support for all the fatty dragons, and there are enough good cheap combat tricks for red/black that they can steam roll most of the other broods. My suggestion to anyone going to a pre-release today and doing draft later, is go Red/Black aggro, it is solid. Most of the dash is cheap enough and dodges sorcery speed removal, especially Pacifism(this card was annoying all pre-release).
Best cards: Impact Tremors - very good grind card that works amazingly well with Dash. Sprinting Warbrute - one of the fattest dash guys for a good cost. Kolaghan Forerunners - going Dragon Fodder into this card is good, one of the few/only? trample dash creatures. Reckless Imp - the best non-rare black dash card, flying evasion is sweet. Atarka Efreet - while not dash, morphing this turn 3 and flipping it turn 4 in mid-attack really caught a lot of my opponents off guard(they didn't want to block and all of a sudden take 6-7 damage to the face). Stormrider Rig - this artifact was sweet, the auto-equip makes this very potent with Dash. Coat with Venom - very solid combat trick and cheap Butcher's Glee - the other really good combat trick in black, another very solid card
So what are your experiences with the pre-release?
I agree about RB dash. There are so many ways to make those cards bonkers. Ambuscade Shaman and Warbringer let Dash play strong in both the early and mid games. Magmatic Chasm was an awesome finisher. Two of my matches barely lasted 10 minutes.
I only had 2 dragons..I thought my deck was bad but still managed to make 3-1.
I actually quite enjoyed the game play, I had feared there would be too many bomb dragon timmy slam with opponents just not able to deal with it. but I found the format to be suprisingly interactive.
I liked the way exploit worked and how it "counters" pacifism and reduce in stature. I really enjoyed combining combat tricks. For example I killed my opponents boltwing maurader in both games with the combination of dance of the skywise + epic confrontation.
Counterspells are also particularly effective because you have these bomb creatures flying around.
I played ojutai in 2 prereleases. First one I splashed black for 3 removal and necromaster dragon. Went 4-0. Second I got only one dragon, the hexproof megamorph, and got crushed by descent of dragons. By two different players. 2-2 the second time.
Ojutai lacked the ability to deal with 6 dragons in a pool, but I think draft would make ojutai considerably more playable.
Played in multiple flights and found that its rare that a box has enough playables in the said colors to be competitive. In one case I didnt have enough playables to play the chosen color combo and didnt play the colors at all. Probably one of the most disappointing pre releases I have attended in some time.
I really did not enjoy this block or set, and I didn't like the sealed environment of the pre-release. None of us got good pulls for sealed or otherwise, and just weren't feeling it.
I have to say that the seeded boosters this time are really disappointing. Having played two different broods at pre-releases I got ZERO mana fixing for either of them. The broods feel really half-assed and I found it very hard to go more than 2 colors. Even then getting stuck with a Dragon Whisperer in hand and only one mountain on the field, because I got no dual lands and no fixing spells really sucks. The ramp in this set is pretty bad too, the common "mana dork" is in blue and only works for morph. Of the two other mana-dorks, one is uncommon and requires formidable and the other is a mythic rare. On the non-creature spell side you have uncommon Explosive Vegetation and enchantment Sheltered Aerie.
From what I saw and played, Red/Black dash is so fast that most decks have a hard time getting online. There isn't enough support for all the fatty dragons, and there are enough good cheap combat tricks for red/black that they can steam roll most of the other broods. My suggestion to anyone going to a pre-release today and doing draft later, is go Red/Black aggro, it is solid. Most of the dash is cheap enough and dodges sorcery speed removal, especially Pacifism(this card was annoying all pre-release).
Best cards: Impact Tremors - very good grind card that works amazingly well with Dash. Sprinting Warbrute - one of the fattest dash guys for a good cost. Kolaghan Forerunners - going Dragon Fodder into this card is good, one of the few/only? trample dash creatures. Reckless Imp - the best non-rare black dash card, flying evasion is sweet. Atarka Efreet - while not dash, morphing this turn 3 and flipping it turn 4 in mid-attack really caught a lot of my opponents off guard(they didn't want to block and all of a sudden take 6-7 damage to the face). Stormrider Rig - this artifact was sweet, the auto-equip makes this very potent with Dash. Coat with Venom - very solid combat trick and cheap Butcher's Glee - the other really good combat trick in black, another very solid card
So what are your experiences with the pre-release?
I agree about RB dash. There are so many ways to make those cards bonkers. Ambuscade Shaman and Warbringer let Dash play strong in both the early and mid games. Magmatic Chasm was an awesome finisher. Two of my matches barely lasted 10 minutes.
Well frankly, you shouldn't be going more than three colors here if you can avoid it/don't have real incentive to do it. As for my prerelease:
I did 2 flights. The first I went with the Ojutai. Ended up with enough playables for a decent blue/white tempoish deck splashing black for Dragonlord Silumgar... the only problem looking back was its removal was minimal and it just couldn't get there. I switched it over to U/B after a little while and it flowed much better. Still only managed 2-3 in that first flight. I might have done better had I been U/B from the beginning but I got slammed with Dash decks in like 3 of 5 rounds. They are VERY fast and VERY good. That said, they are not unbeatable at all. I know because of my second flight.
Flight 2 I decided if you can't beat them, join them, so I went Kolaghan and got what I felt was a pretty strong deck. I ran 18 lands because I have a bad history with R/B. It's not a color combo that I get along with. I don't usually like the play style and it always screws me on mana. The deck was pretty good. I had several of the cards that gave me problems in my first flight. Including: Sprinting Warbrute Reckless Imp Blood-Chin Rager Warbringer Coat with Venom Ire Shaman
There were others but those were my big ones. It was a pretty strong Red/Black deck all things considered. I even had that double strike enchantment but looking back I should have also added Magmatic Chasm as I think I had some and opted not to play them. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the deck and didn't mind not having any dragons.
That said man did my games sometimes get really close. My first opponent was a kid with a Grixis deck that contained both the new Kolaghan and the old Silumgar and was utterly terrifying to play against. Barely beat that kid. Round 2 I won game one on a blistering start but then games 2 and 3 he dropped dragons on me left and right. He was running Ojutai, had 2 Pristine Skywise, 2 Elusive Spellfist and plenty of solid tricks. I just had no solid answer for his dragons. My Flatten and a couple of other things gave me options so I wasn't helpless but in the end I needed one more mana to push the final point of damage through and it never came.
The only other game of note was my final round where my opponent was running a Silumgar based deck splashing red for 2 cards: Kolaghan's Command and War Hellkite Oh lordy did this thing prove how you beat the aggro decks. This thing traded off its multiple copies of Palace Familiar and Youthful Scholar to blunt my assaults and bury me in card advantage, exploited them for various effects and then got them back with the command. The girl using it piloted the deck beautifully. It was actually really kind of cool to watch her just absolutely dismantle my deck. She even used the main deck Mind Rot she was playing to obliterate some of my Dash action including eliminating my war brute which was kind of my MVP.
Thanks to Dash the format is much faster and you'll just roll over and die if you go in thinking that this is going to be the slow, grindy format that Khans was or that Khans/Fate was. Black is really strong and Kologhan and Silumgar both benefit from it dramatically. The Silumgar are deceptive so be on guard. They are SUPER controlling. White has a lot of strong cards for the beatdown plan. Overall I enjoyed this one more than I did Khans. If I had a job right now I'd probably draft more of this format.
I was not too thrilled with it. I went UW because those are my colors, but without any mana fixing in the packs, the deck was clunky. Most of the games I played with people were decided by mana screw or mana flood. There should have been a common land cycle to help make colors easier. When sets are looking for you to play 2 colors, and there is so little fixing, I think wizards should add a seeded fixing pack with common fixers like evolving wilds and the lifegain lands. On the bright side, I made top 8.
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Fared a bit better than at Fate Reforged, though 2-2 still isn't anything to write home about. Went Kolaghan, got some genuinely terrible rares (Hedonist's Trove, Sunbringer's Touch with almost no Bolster support, Blood-Chin Fanatic as my seeded rare with almost no Warrior support, Profound Journey without the expectation of being able to get to 7 mana, and a Commune with Lava that underperformed badly). I kind of regret not trying to go Ojutai with a splash or splashing white in order to make use of the one genuine bomb in my pack - Monastery Mentor - but I just decided to try to run over people with low-costed Kolaghan stuff. My curve topped out at 3 (aside from Commune), though Dash was usually enough to keep me using most of my mana every turn. Ended up beating an Atarka deck 2-1 (FRF Atarka was enough to beat me game 1, ran past DTK Atarka in game 2, was able to get around a couple of big grounded threats in game 3), lost to a Dromoka deck 2-0 (he got DTK Dromoka out both games, and I had no answer to a flying lifelinker), beat a bad Ojutai deck 2-0 (my friend was playing his first prerelease, though we were both 1-1 at the time, so maybe it was a bit better than it seemed), lost to a good Ojutai deck 2-0.
I agree with OP that Impact Tremors and Reckless Imp were all-stars in the Kolaghan deck. I didn't pull much uncommon support (one Ambuscade Shaman, no Warbringers, no Forerunners - I still wonder whether I was forcing the archetype of my box like I have in prereleases past, but there wasn't a lot in other colors, either), so the 3 Tremors and the 1 Imp (I dubbed it Aisha) were basically the core of my deck, giving me the reach to close out once the ground started getting crowded.
More than anything I did in the prerelease itself, most of my gains came from pulls from the "free play" intro decks: used store credit that was about to expire to get the Kolaghan and Ojutai intro decks. My pulls from the packs that came with them? Sarkhan Unbroken, Kolaghan's Command, Dromoka's Command, Narset Transcendent. Miles better than anything from any of the DTK packs in my prerelease box. Pack luck is weird sometimes.
Hmmmmmmmm... makes me wonder if those Dragon monuments might have been there for a reason since one of my opponents who walloped me did so using those monuments to fix his mana and power him into his dragons.
B/R has the best mix of aggro dudes and removal. The tempo is amazing. My LGS used to run out of plains for KtK and FrF drafts, but I suspect that mountains and swamps will suddenly spike in demand.
First event, Kolaghan, 4-0. Dash dot deck is amazing. I had to cut my promo Kologhan because 6 mana was too high for the curve of the deck. 16 lands, 40 cards. Rediculous synergy with Heelcutter, Tremor, and any cheap burn to kill anything else your opponent dropped to chump block.
Second event, Silumgar, 3-1, but lost to mana flood in the last round. Exploit is a horrible mechanic, and I will never ever suggest that anyone draft it. I saw people trying it, and I almost did myself, but knowing how fast I was able to kill people in the past 4 hours, I told myself that I would not have dudes to sacrifice! Turns out I was right, and going the cheaper aggro tempoish route paid off. Ojutai's Breath can save games, while you push through with smaller dudes, and use your black removal to kill off whatever you can. I exploited ONCE with Sidisi, but in the end, it wasn't worth it, because I lost a creature that would have flied over my opponents, just to get another removal spell from my deck, which was unneccesary at that point. When your opponent sees 4/6 deathtouch, and they don't have a Pacifism or the 0/2 blue enchantment, then Sidisi chump blocks for days while your cheap flier or 1 mana unblockable wins the game.
Third event, Atarka, but I ended up going 2-2. I was tired, hungry, and in pain from a broken chair for 10 hours. Lost my concentration, made poor decisions, gave up pretty quickly. The deck had some potential, but seeing fight mechanics or +2/+2 trample instead of flat out burn required too much thought after 10 hours of saying "burn that, swing, this can't block, takesome stupid amount, go."
I got absurdly lucky and pulled tasigur, whisperwood, atarka lord, silumgar lord, necromaster, acid-spewer, ventmaw, stratus dancer (so clutch), zephyr scribe (because i ran 19 lands for the four color this helped a lot with fixing). Only got 2nd because i was paired down in the final round, but I can't be too salty about it considering my luck.
2nd try: Silumgar sealed pool. Not enough playables in U/B, so I splashed Red for Kologhan and Wing Slash. Colorscrew, manascrew, 1-2-drop.
3rd try: Atarka pack. Not enough playables in R/G, again splashed black for Kologhan, Boltwing Marauder, and dash creatures. Plenty of synergy. Colorscrew, 0-2-drop.
Playing 3 colors is a trainwreck. The manafixing is terrible, and I'm honestly wondering if, in Draft, Evolving Wilds will be first-pickable over some of the rares.
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Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Went 3-3 at the midnight prerelease with Green/Red: I got one on-colour rare and the pool was decently wide but not very deep and no fixing. The deck was decent but as is usually the case with Sealed either you have it or you don't, I definitely made plenty of mistakes due to how late this went (I got out of there at 9:00). Didn't get a single dragon either
Went 0-2 on Saturday and dropped: went Black/Red, had the most insane aggro deck I've ever been able to assemble with lots of great tricks but got mana screwed every.single.time in the 5 games I played. I ragequit and it felt great.
Going to 2HG in a little while with both of us going Ojutai: I think I've given up on this set as far as sealed goes, it's going to be another Fate Reforged which means awful sealed due to the insane bombs (Khans of Tarkir was much more forgiving and, while I was very bad at it, it was by far the best set of the three) but I think it will be awesome in draft; Fate - Khans - Khans got way to much flak it was fine and plenty of fun. I could see Dragons - Dragons - Fate being a lot worse since Dragons seems more top heavy than Khans but I've decided I decided that I was going to improve at limited after being solid throughout Theros but being just terrible at triple Khans and I've had had much more success with Fate Reforged so let's see where the draft format goes before thinking it won't be good
We shall see where it goes but this Prerelease has been one of the worst ones I've been too and my friends one of which won and the others who went 4-2 also did not like the set at all
Interestingly enough I think the prerelease would have been better with 2 Dragons of Tarkir packs, 2 Fate Reforged packs and the seeded pack
Went Dromoka at the midnight prerelease, but built Atarka and went 4-1. Won 18 packs. I couldn't believe it because my sealed pool was absolutely garbage.
Went Atarka at the Saturday prerelease and built those colors becasue my RG pool was really solid. The new Surrak is an absolute house. I can't believe how ridiculous and unanswered one makes the game. Giving all of my huge formidable guys haste just takes the game over in literally 1-2 turns. Went undefeated, split top 4 for 27 packs.
Mana fixing is almost non-existant. The monuments are solid cards, being mana-fixing and turning into (at least for me) a wincon lategame.
I chose B/R and was very happy with dash and my deck in general. My notable pulls were Ambuscade Shaman and double Pitiless Horde, as well as several of the smaller dashers. I only went 4-2, but I don't feel like my losses were due to having a bad deck at all.
My first loss was in round 3 when I could not find a red mana to cast my spells for many turns. I do not know if I would have won with an earlier mountain, but I was 1 point away from lethal at the end of the game. Then unfortunately, I made a couple poor mulligan decisions in the 6th round, which I believe lead to my demise.
I'm quite fed up with that seeded booster thing. They're too swingy, the seeded rare can go from complete bomb with all excellent support in terms of common/uncommon to total chaff, and as such ruins the depth of your pool. It ruined my DTK PR experience twice, my FRF PR was a bad Abzan and a nuts Temur, then again, I go DTK Dromoka and Ojutai with okay/bad seeded boosters of course not backed by the regular boosters... and come back home frustrated. It doesn't really make me want to attend PR anymore. I wish they'd get back to regular sealed deck but with more emphasis on side animations like the Dragon Roar which are quite fun.
I chose UW and went 0-1 for 2HG. I'm not teribly upset, as me and my 2HG partner got some good cards out of it. I opened Ojutai (I know right) in my box, and i got some other useful cards. I had fun, though I always have some sort of fun, as I go for the experience anyways.
What did you guys think of the Dragons 'n Dice game? (Or 'Dragonfury' or whatever they called it) I thought it was okay, not too hard to get the first three promos.
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Decks: Casual R Burn R
EDH R Godo Voltron R RUG ETB Overload RUG BW Clerics Pain and Drain BW GW Spirits!!! GW RUG Landfall Silliness RUG
Went 4-0 in a Saturday prerelease using an R/B aggro deck (with a smidge of control). Ended up with a promo Blood-Chin Fanatic, a foil Deathbringer Regent, Crater Elemental, Risen Executioner, and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon as the deck's rares. The aggro deck is insanely fast in this format, and I managed to get a good amount of removal as well to help facilitate the attacks. I was rather happy with it. Ambuscade Shaman was an excellent helper as well. Won 18 packs from the regular tournament, then the store owner had a runoff round between the top eight, which led to me getting $25 in store credit as well.
Also managed to snag a promo Zurgo Bellstriker and a regular Dragonlord Dromoka from going Kolaghan in the midnight prerelease, in which I went 3-1 and won 6 booster packs. I traded my second Kolaghan dice for an Ojutai one as well, which put a nice little topper on the Saturday evening.
I'm quite fed up with that seeded booster thing. They're too swingy, the seeded rare can go from complete bomb with all excellent support in terms of common/uncommon to total chaff, and as such ruins the depth of your pool. It ruined my DTK PR experience twice, my FRF PR was a bad Abzan and a nuts Temur, then again, I go DTK Dromoka and Ojutai with okay/bad seeded boosters of course not backed by the regular boosters... and come back home frustrated. It doesn't really make me want to attend PR anymore. I wish they'd get back to regular sealed deck but with more emphasis on side animations like the Dragon Roar which are quite fun.
At least you are guaranteed a rare in your colour this way and while some are certainly better than others I don't know that any of them are outright unplayable
I like the seeded pack, it's a great to make the prerelease stand out from other sealed events and a great way to help newer players
I played a grindy Silumgar deck to a 4-1 finish. My only loss came from the mana issues I experienced because I splashed white for a pristine skywise that I shouldn't have played. Exploit was an absolutely excellent mechanic all day, only being slightly suboptimal against Kolaghan, but the bodies are mostly fine, and it's still a good way to finish the game after you pull ahead. Still, I had fun and came if third place overall. I look foreward to drafting many palace familiars.
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From what I saw and played, Red/Black dash is so fast that most decks have a hard time getting online. There isn't enough support for all the fatty dragons, and there are enough good cheap combat tricks for red/black that they can steam roll most of the other broods. My suggestion to anyone going to a pre-release today and doing draft later, is go Red/Black aggro, it is solid. Most of the dash is cheap enough and dodges sorcery speed removal, especially Pacifism(this card was annoying all pre-release).
Best cards:
Impact Tremors - very good grind card that works amazingly well with Dash.
Sprinting Warbrute - one of the fattest dash guys for a good cost.
Kolaghan Forerunners - going Dragon Fodder into this card is good, one of the few/only? trample dash creatures.
Reckless Imp - the best non-rare black dash card, flying evasion is sweet.
Atarka Efreet - while not dash, morphing this turn 3 and flipping it turn 4 in mid-attack really caught a lot of my opponents off guard(they didn't want to block and all of a sudden take 6-7 damage to the face).
Stormrider Rig - this artifact was sweet, the auto-equip makes this very potent with Dash.
Coat with Venom - very solid combat trick and cheap
Butcher's Glee - the other really good combat trick in black, another very solid card
So what are your experiences with the pre-release?
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I agree about RB dash. There are so many ways to make those cards bonkers. Ambuscade Shaman and Warbringer let Dash play strong in both the early and mid games. Magmatic Chasm was an awesome finisher. Two of my matches barely lasted 10 minutes.
I actually quite enjoyed the game play, I had feared there would be too many bomb dragon timmy slam with opponents just not able to deal with it. but I found the format to be suprisingly interactive.
I liked the way exploit worked and how it "counters" pacifism and reduce in stature. I really enjoyed combining combat tricks. For example I killed my opponents boltwing maurader in both games with the combination of dance of the skywise + epic confrontation.
Counterspells are also particularly effective because you have these bomb creatures flying around.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
This isn't a three color set.
Ojutai lacked the ability to deal with 6 dragons in a pool, but I think draft would make ojutai considerably more playable.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Well frankly, you shouldn't be going more than three colors here if you can avoid it/don't have real incentive to do it. As for my prerelease:
I did 2 flights. The first I went with the Ojutai. Ended up with enough playables for a decent blue/white tempoish deck splashing black for Dragonlord Silumgar... the only problem looking back was its removal was minimal and it just couldn't get there. I switched it over to U/B after a little while and it flowed much better. Still only managed 2-3 in that first flight. I might have done better had I been U/B from the beginning but I got slammed with Dash decks in like 3 of 5 rounds. They are VERY fast and VERY good. That said, they are not unbeatable at all. I know because of my second flight.
Flight 2 I decided if you can't beat them, join them, so I went Kolaghan and got what I felt was a pretty strong deck. I ran 18 lands because I have a bad history with R/B. It's not a color combo that I get along with. I don't usually like the play style and it always screws me on mana. The deck was pretty good. I had several of the cards that gave me problems in my first flight. Including:
Sprinting Warbrute
Reckless Imp
Blood-Chin Rager
Warbringer
Coat with Venom
Ire Shaman
There were others but those were my big ones. It was a pretty strong Red/Black deck all things considered. I even had that double strike enchantment but looking back I should have also added Magmatic Chasm as I think I had some and opted not to play them. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the deck and didn't mind not having any dragons.
That said man did my games sometimes get really close. My first opponent was a kid with a Grixis deck that contained both the new Kolaghan and the old Silumgar and was utterly terrifying to play against. Barely beat that kid. Round 2 I won game one on a blistering start but then games 2 and 3 he dropped dragons on me left and right. He was running Ojutai, had 2 Pristine Skywise, 2 Elusive Spellfist and plenty of solid tricks. I just had no solid answer for his dragons. My Flatten and a couple of other things gave me options so I wasn't helpless but in the end I needed one more mana to push the final point of damage through and it never came.
The only other game of note was my final round where my opponent was running a Silumgar based deck splashing red for 2 cards: Kolaghan's Command and War Hellkite Oh lordy did this thing prove how you beat the aggro decks. This thing traded off its multiple copies of Palace Familiar and Youthful Scholar to blunt my assaults and bury me in card advantage, exploited them for various effects and then got them back with the command. The girl using it piloted the deck beautifully. It was actually really kind of cool to watch her just absolutely dismantle my deck. She even used the main deck Mind Rot she was playing to obliterate some of my Dash action including eliminating my war brute which was kind of my MVP.
Ended up going 2-2 in that flight but didn't have a single real regret. Got 4 packs and ended up opening the following:
Assault Formation
Hidden Dragonslayer
Sidisi, Undead Vizier
and drumroll please...
Narset Transcendent
Yeah, no real problems with this one.
Thanks to Dash the format is much faster and you'll just roll over and die if you go in thinking that this is going to be the slow, grindy format that Khans was or that Khans/Fate was. Black is really strong and Kologhan and Silumgar both benefit from it dramatically. The Silumgar are deceptive so be on guard. They are SUPER controlling. White has a lot of strong cards for the beatdown plan. Overall I enjoyed this one more than I did Khans. If I had a job right now I'd probably draft more of this format.
RIP Batman guy. I hope somebody picks up the slack now that you are gone. Sick children need their Batman.
I agree with OP that Impact Tremors and Reckless Imp were all-stars in the Kolaghan deck. I didn't pull much uncommon support (one Ambuscade Shaman, no Warbringers, no Forerunners - I still wonder whether I was forcing the archetype of my box like I have in prereleases past, but there wasn't a lot in other colors, either), so the 3 Tremors and the 1 Imp (I dubbed it Aisha) were basically the core of my deck, giving me the reach to close out once the ground started getting crowded.
More than anything I did in the prerelease itself, most of my gains came from pulls from the "free play" intro decks: used store credit that was about to expire to get the Kolaghan and Ojutai intro decks. My pulls from the packs that came with them? Sarkhan Unbroken, Kolaghan's Command, Dromoka's Command, Narset Transcendent. Miles better than anything from any of the DTK packs in my prerelease box. Pack luck is weird sometimes.
First event, Kolaghan, 4-0. Dash dot deck is amazing. I had to cut my promo Kologhan because 6 mana was too high for the curve of the deck. 16 lands, 40 cards. Rediculous synergy with Heelcutter, Tremor, and any cheap burn to kill anything else your opponent dropped to chump block.
Second event, Silumgar, 3-1, but lost to mana flood in the last round. Exploit is a horrible mechanic, and I will never ever suggest that anyone draft it. I saw people trying it, and I almost did myself, but knowing how fast I was able to kill people in the past 4 hours, I told myself that I would not have dudes to sacrifice! Turns out I was right, and going the cheaper aggro tempoish route paid off. Ojutai's Breath can save games, while you push through with smaller dudes, and use your black removal to kill off whatever you can. I exploited ONCE with Sidisi, but in the end, it wasn't worth it, because I lost a creature that would have flied over my opponents, just to get another removal spell from my deck, which was unneccesary at that point. When your opponent sees 4/6 deathtouch, and they don't have a Pacifism or the 0/2 blue enchantment, then Sidisi chump blocks for days while your cheap flier or 1 mana unblockable wins the game.
Third event, Atarka, but I ended up going 2-2. I was tired, hungry, and in pain from a broken chair for 10 hours. Lost my concentration, made poor decisions, gave up pretty quickly. The deck had some potential, but seeing fight mechanics or +2/+2 trample instead of flat out burn required too much thought after 10 hours of saying "burn that, swing, this can't block, takesome stupid amount, go."
2nd try: Silumgar sealed pool. Not enough playables in U/B, so I splashed Red for Kologhan and Wing Slash. Colorscrew, manascrew, 1-2-drop.
3rd try: Atarka pack. Not enough playables in R/G, again splashed black for Kologhan, Boltwing Marauder, and dash creatures. Plenty of synergy. Colorscrew, 0-2-drop.
Playing 3 colors is a trainwreck. The manafixing is terrible, and I'm honestly wondering if, in Draft, Evolving Wilds will be first-pickable over some of the rares.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Went 3-3 at the midnight prerelease with Green/Red: I got one on-colour rare and the pool was decently wide but not very deep and no fixing. The deck was decent but as is usually the case with Sealed either you have it or you don't, I definitely made plenty of mistakes due to how late this went (I got out of there at 9:00). Didn't get a single dragon either
Went 0-2 on Saturday and dropped: went Black/Red, had the most insane aggro deck I've ever been able to assemble with lots of great tricks but got mana screwed every.single.time in the 5 games I played. I ragequit and it felt great.
Going to 2HG in a little while with both of us going Ojutai: I think I've given up on this set as far as sealed goes, it's going to be another Fate Reforged which means awful sealed due to the insane bombs (Khans of Tarkir was much more forgiving and, while I was very bad at it, it was by far the best set of the three) but I think it will be awesome in draft; Fate - Khans - Khans got way to much flak it was fine and plenty of fun. I could see Dragons - Dragons - Fate being a lot worse since Dragons seems more top heavy than Khans but I've decided I decided that I was going to improve at limited after being solid throughout Theros but being just terrible at triple Khans and I've had had much more success with Fate Reforged so let's see where the draft format goes before thinking it won't be good
We shall see where it goes but this Prerelease has been one of the worst ones I've been too and my friends one of which won and the others who went 4-2 also did not like the set at all
Interestingly enough I think the prerelease would have been better with 2 Dragons of Tarkir packs, 2 Fate Reforged packs and the seeded pack
Went Atarka at the Saturday prerelease and built those colors becasue my RG pool was really solid. The new Surrak is an absolute house. I can't believe how ridiculous and unanswered one makes the game. Giving all of my huge formidable guys haste just takes the game over in literally 1-2 turns. Went undefeated, split top 4 for 27 packs.
Mana fixing is almost non-existant. The monuments are solid cards, being mana-fixing and turning into (at least for me) a wincon lategame.
My first loss was in round 3 when I could not find a red mana to cast my spells for many turns. I do not know if I would have won with an earlier mountain, but I was 1 point away from lethal at the end of the game. Then unfortunately, I made a couple poor mulligan decisions in the 6th round, which I believe lead to my demise.
What did you guys think of the Dragons 'n Dice game? (Or 'Dragonfury' or whatever they called it) I thought it was okay, not too hard to get the first three promos.
Decks:
Casual
R Burn R
EDH
R Godo Voltron R
RUG ETB Overload RUG
BW Clerics Pain and Drain BW
GW Spirits!!! GW
RUG Landfall Silliness RUG
Also managed to snag a promo Zurgo Bellstriker and a regular Dragonlord Dromoka from going Kolaghan in the midnight prerelease, in which I went 3-1 and won 6 booster packs. I traded my second Kolaghan dice for an Ojutai one as well, which put a nice little topper on the Saturday evening.
RGWMayael the AnimaRGW
UBRMarchesa, the Black RoseUBR
Modern Decks
RGWNaya BurnRGW
At least you are guaranteed a rare in your colour this way and while some are certainly better than others I don't know that any of them are outright unplayable
I like the seeded pack, it's a great to make the prerelease stand out from other sealed events and a great way to help newer players