UUU Merfolk UUU "Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR "The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
Dragons of Tarkir.. Went to the pre-release Saturday without having spend too much time reading up on the set's contents. However, Dragons of Tarkir.. I got my ship captain's costume from the attic and prepared for some battlecruiser magic, bring those flying fatties!
Got to the event and grabbed an Atarka pack, can't go wrong with GR when it comes to battlecruisers! Open packs.. 1 Dragon, in WG! Wait.. What..
This was not what I expected from the set. Got no luck with the other packs, grabbing: Ojutai's Command Volcanic Vision - Promo - They really have to stop putting these crap cards as promo cards.. Zurgo Bellstriker Arashin Sovereign Mardu Strike Leader Hidden Dragonslayer
The only option left was making an aggressive deck (in 3 colors, no support for only 2) so I could win before the dragons came out..
Deck performed ok, ending 4-1. Losing only to bad draws / land flood, winning 6 packs (my LGS is too friendly at times, giving everyone with 2-2-1 and up boosters). Not what I expected from the set, but happy what my deck-building skills brought me in the end.
My sealed pool rares were so terrible that the magic gods took pity on me.
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Level 1 Judge
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU "Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR "The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
People are too used to playing khans/frf and just trying to jam 3/4/5 colours and deservedly losing to their manabases. I'll just play a consistent 2-colour deck (as I did), and collect the free wins.
And pull the support for 2 colors from the stash of cards you have hidden up your sleeve? Some/most pools just don't have the cards to create a solid 2 color deck that give you 'free wins'. So, attribute it to luck in stead of your skills please.
I wont be opening any prize packs... by all agreeing to keep them we can have a 2 X DTK 1 X fate reforged draft tomorrow night.. I am looking forward to it. I'll rare draft if need be.
I really did enjoy the prelease, I really feel like if you did horribly somewhere you went wrong, perhaps you played the wrong colour combo perhaps you expected something more akin to draft. I abandoned Ojutai as soon as I realised the only reason to play white was pacifism and blue also lacked the punch required for sealed. Instead I went blue green ignoring the clans completely and just built a good sealed deck with tough creatures and tricks with two dragons sitting on the top end.
Megamorph was somewhat overcosted in my opinion, I only morphed because I wanted a turn 3 play. Rebound seemed alright particularly in white which I didn't play.
Gatecrash was when I started regularly drafting so I am pretty much the only person that actually liked it... and I even drafted dimir often. So perhaps I am an odd ball.
This set has a lot of tricks and those tricks are extremely valueble but also can be really hard to use, for example triggering frerocity mid combat. Exploit is such a decision heavy mechanic giving creatures three modes which I love. Dash has gone from medicore in Khans + Fate into something dangerous and super synergistic in this set. Bolster invovles a lot of thinking and board management trying to get the counter where you want it, especially since you can exploit or again use pump spells/morphs to move the counter to different creatures.
Maybe the set isn't as timmy as you wanted from a dragon set?
I wont be opening any prize packs... by all agreeing to keep them we can have a 2 X DTK 1 X fate reforged draft tomorrow night.. I am looking forward to it. I'll rare draft if need be.
I really did enjoy the prelease, I really feel like if you did horribly somewhere you went wrong, perhaps you played the wrong colour combo perhaps you expected something more akin to draft. I abandoned Ojutai as soon as I realised the only reason to play white was pacifism and blue also lacked the punch required for sealed. Instead I went blue green ignoring the clans completely and just built a good sealed deck with tough creatures and tricks with two dragons sitting on the top end.
Megamorph was somewhat overcosted in my opinion, I only morphed because I wanted a turn 3 play. Rebound seemed alright particularly in white which I didn't play.
Gatecrash was when I started regularly drafting so I am pretty much the only person that actually liked it... and I even drafted dimir often. So perhaps I am an odd ball.
This set has a lot of tricks and those tricks are extremely valueble but also can be really hard to use, for example triggering frerocity mid combat. Exploit is such a decision heavy mechanic giving creatures three modes which I love. Dash has gone from medicore in Khans + Fate into something dangerous and super synergistic in this set. Bolster invovles a lot of thinking and board management trying to get the counter where you want it, especially since you can exploit or again use pump spells/morphs to move the counter to different creatures.
Maybe the set isn't as timmy as you wanted from a dragon set?
Ironically... UW was my best record. 4-0 no questions asked. Of course... I had a sick pool.
It was not fair... had monastery mentor, new Silumgur, tons of rebound cards. It was fun
I went with Silumgar and finished 2-3 in a 20+ group.
Illusory Gains was fun to pull because my opponents didn't want to give me a bigger creature. Besides that, I found that I had a bit too high of a mana curve and lost to quick games. When I would win a game, I was below 5 life.
Deathbringer Dragon was my promo, and it worked great once I got to 7 mana.
Overall, I had fun and memorable games. Especially the part that I hit Ugin, the Spirit Dragon with a late game Duress, which would have killed me.
Went 4-0 with a White/Black aggro deck. Not warriors specifically, but I got 2 of the Dragon Hunter and Hand of Silumgars mixed with 2 of the exploit avens and 2 exploit Gravecallers. Lost 1 game out of all my matches. It was also strange because I pulled absolutely zero dragons in all of my cards.
Maybe I am different from others, but part of the playing magic, especially sealed, is the deck building aspect and then seeing how well you can do with the deck. The 'set' doesn't matter nearly as much as my abilities. While I did find it interesting to not have any dragons, I did beat most people up before they could even cast their dragons Overall I had a fun time. It did help I had Ojutai's Exemplars (never lost a game that I cast him).
My only complaint: I was surprised they didn't add mana fixing to the seeded pack. Yea Dragons is "supposed" to be only two colors, but fate is not. Which so happens to be included in the kit : /
I admit, I was expecting either a tapland or a Monument in the seeded in your colors. While not a must have in a two color centric set, it is always nice. Still funny that I ended up winning more off three colors anyway because of the fixing I cracked.
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“Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
I admit, I was expecting either a tapland or a Monument in the seeded in your colors. While not a must have in a two color centric set, it is always nice. Still funny that I ended up winning more off three colors anyway because of the fixing I cracked.
Yea. My only 4-0 record consisted of cracking three evolving wilds and a gain-land I could use.. there was a reason for that.
Even in two color decks, mana fixing helps tremendously. It adds more consistency.
That "consistency" was lacking for the most part in the pre-release.
One thing that astonishes me in several of these posts is the huge number of packs people are getting...
We have 24 players max, each one gets at least one pack, and a single display serves as winnings for all... So even if you win the tournament, you get like 4 or 5 packs... :/
Also, Schutzwald, I'll go to bed and cry now.
I imagine the variance we see here to be associated with size of the touranment.
I got 8 packs for winning a small tournament. The big store up the street pays out a box worth of cards to the winner, but you're playing against over a hundred people for 6 rounds.
I admit, I was expecting either a tapland or a Monument in the seeded in your colors. While not a must have in a two color centric set, it is always nice. Still funny that I ended up winning more off three colors anyway because of the fixing I cracked.
Yea. My only 4-0 record consisted of cracking three evolving wilds and a gain-land I could use.. there was a reason for that.
Even in two color decks, mana fixing helps tremendously. It adds more consistency.
That "consistency" was lacking for the most part in the pre-release.
Out of 3 events I didn't pull my matching monument or gain land or an evolving wilds a single time. Going two colors wasn't so bad, but going 3 was a real chore from what I saw. I played my third pre-release Sunday, went Kologhan again and got Pitiless Horde as my seeded rare(this thing is bonkers), Ambuscade Shaman, and Warbringer got them all out in one game and it was cruel and unusual punishment. Dashing in a 7/5 for BB every turn is awesome.
It has been said before, but yes, there wasn't a lot of fixing... but that isn't a problem, as the set is meant for 2 colors. You can be gready and try playing 3 colors, messing with your mana flow or play a bit more steady without a splash, but some more "not so great" cards... it's the choice you make. (Consistency vs. power)
I do feel like the overall feel of the set is less then the last 2 sets.
I attended 2 prereleases. Dit really bad at the first (1-3) while playing UB splashing R. Had some of those mana stones and I believe 1 color fixing land. also played with 4 dragons, because I could (1 of them the UW mana stone)... At home, I discovered, I should have played RB... would have been more consistent. Just kill everything colors... with 2 wrath effects.
The second prerelease I chose WU... but again, Blue failed to impress me. So I ended up playing WB and later splashed Green for a bit more Flying removal (flyers seem to be the biggest threats I needed to protect myself and my flyers from). I felt the deck was janky, but managed to win the tournament (5-0) Just had some consistent creatures, combat tricks and removal. Also had 2 of those evolving wilds to make the splash easy.
Best thing about that deck I gues, versatility. I could side in lifegain creatures against RB-dash to take the steam away (which really helped me a couple of times) and otherwise had effects to make all my creatures a bit bigger. (So I would become more of an agressor). Although I did have 4 dragons in my pool, I didn't play any of them, felt they where cards to trick people to play them... clunking up their hands, while the environment actually was pretty fast with good removal (=bigger creatures are worse)
I said it before, and I'll say it again. Although dragons was designed for two colors, fate reforged was not. It's was very possible to get only multicolor cards from your fate pack with zero support, rendering those card's usless.
That's why I feel like normal sealed will be 100% better and more consistent. From my pre-release experience: the success of my deck was driving nearly 100% by what I opened in the fate reforged pack.
Yeah that isn't the correct format. Real sealed for DDF is going to be four packs Dragons, two Fate. It's possible they just didn't have enough product on hand to do it though.
I feel like DTK sealed would be much better if there were a cycle of mono-colored dragons at common. Just basic dragons at common to give players more chances to use those dragon-centric cards that need dragons to be useful.
Went 4-0 with a U/W/B deck. A ton of fliers + decent removal & combat tricks.
In 2HG, went 3 - 1 with a paired R/G deck and U/W/B/g deck. Impact Tremors goes from being good to being absolutely nuts.
Overall, this was a really fun format. Most decks had one to three dragons, which is enough to feel like dragons are a big deal without being enough to feel swamped by dragons. I saw several effective strategies; the dominant ones seemed to be Red Dash (which worked equally well in Atarka or Kolaghan) and Silumgar Control.
I had a horrible time. I went Silumgar, opened the black boardwipe dragon in my seeded pack, which can be swingy, but SEVEN MANA?!?! Nothing else worth running except for a Butcher's Glee in that pack. And no Monument. Real fail on Wizards part. I know it's not a wedge set, but if you are gonna do seeded packs for Sealed, the HARDEST format to have smooth mana in and the most swingy from the random card pools, why not include some form of fixing in the seeded packs. Even an Evolving Wilds would have helped. As usual, I had not enough playables in at least two colors and so had to go three. Everyone else playing Silumgar had much better commons and uncommons than me, and sure, that's just bad luck and not reflective of the Sealed play overall, but I agree that this prerelease was probably the hardest in a long time as far as deck building goes. Also, the dice game was sad. I saw many people score highly and walk away with only an Evolving Wilds because all the other three cards were given out the day before. I understand it's "while supplies last", but they shouldn't be out of the promos at the BEGINNING of the event, even if it is on Sunday. And I'm done with the seeded packs. It was cute at first, now it's just stale. No more prereleases for me until they do away with seeded packs and unbalanced promo giveaways.
3-0 first prerelease, pulled Sarkhan, fetch, dragons whisper, foil sidisi, 2 command, total over $70 worth of stuffs. I went G/U splashing red for Sarkhan, I had a lot of evasion in my deck.
0-2 2nd prerelease, but I pulled another Sarkhan and dragons whisper so yeah.
Yeah that isn't the correct format. Real sealed for DDF is going to be four packs Dragons, two Fate. It's possible they just didn't have enough product on hand to do it though.
Every sealed of Fate Reforged I played was 3 Khans and 3 Fate Reforged and I would assume it would be 3 Dragons and 3 Fate
Yeah that isn't the correct format. Real sealed for DDF is going to be four packs Dragons, two Fate. It's possible they just didn't have enough product on hand to do it though.
Every sealed of Fate Reforged I played was 3 Khans and 3 Fate Reforged and I would assume it would be 3 Dragons and 3 Fate
Right. I hadn't looked it up to validate it, but that was also my assumption because of the KKKFFF sealed.
It's not going to be. The reason it was 3/3 was because Fate was the newer set and they wanted to emphasize it. DDF is going to be 4-2 Dragons. It's already been confirmed.
Our boosters and seeded pack were one huge disaster - no Dragonlord and regents we got were meh. B Regent won us one game but ate removal after ETB. We opened no bombs, our FRF booster was terrible and only viable rare was in W but we didn't have enough cards to support it.
If by B Regent, you mean the black one (Deathbringer Regent), you opened one of the biggest bombs in the set. That card is better in sealed than most of the dragonlords.
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Standard: UR Blue-Red Control
Modern: UBR Grixis Control UWR Jeskai Control
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I had been trash talking the entire night saying I would 2-0 everybody, I fell a little short on that lol.
I opened a foil Sarkhan Unbroken and a Narset Transcendent in my prize packs.
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU
"Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR
"The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
Got to the event and grabbed an Atarka pack, can't go wrong with GR when it comes to battlecruisers! Open packs.. 1 Dragon, in WG! Wait.. What..
This was not what I expected from the set. Got no luck with the other packs, grabbing:
Ojutai's Command
Volcanic Vision - Promo - They really have to stop putting these crap cards as promo cards..
Zurgo Bellstriker
Arashin Sovereign
Mardu Strike Leader
Hidden Dragonslayer
The only option left was making an aggressive deck (in 3 colors, no support for only 2) so I could win before the dragons came out..
1x Zurgo Bellstriker
2x Atarka Beastbreaker
1x Blood-Chin Rager
1x Mardu Strike Leader
1x Hardened Berserker
1x Sabertooth Outrider
2x Vulturous Aven
1x Dragon-Scarred Bear
1x Gurmag Angler
1x Hand of Silumgar
1x Stormcrag Elemental
1x Screamreach Brawler
1x Summit Prowler
1x Impact Tremors
1x Twin Bolt
2x Flatten
1x Epic Confrontation
1x Dragon Fodder
1x Sarkhan's Rage
1x Roast
1x Press the Advantage
17x Land
Deck performed ok, ending 4-1. Losing only to bad draws / land flood, winning 6 packs (my LGS is too friendly at times, giving everyone with 2-2-1 and up boosters). Not what I expected from the set, but happy what my deck-building skills brought me in the end.
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU
"Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR
"The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
And pull the support for 2 colors from the stash of cards you have hidden up your sleeve? Some/most pools just don't have the cards to create a solid 2 color deck that give you 'free wins'. So, attribute it to luck in stead of your skills please.
I really did enjoy the prelease, I really feel like if you did horribly somewhere you went wrong, perhaps you played the wrong colour combo perhaps you expected something more akin to draft. I abandoned Ojutai as soon as I realised the only reason to play white was pacifism and blue also lacked the punch required for sealed. Instead I went blue green ignoring the clans completely and just built a good sealed deck with tough creatures and tricks with two dragons sitting on the top end.
Megamorph was somewhat overcosted in my opinion, I only morphed because I wanted a turn 3 play. Rebound seemed alright particularly in white which I didn't play.
Gatecrash was when I started regularly drafting so I am pretty much the only person that actually liked it... and I even drafted dimir often. So perhaps I am an odd ball.
This set has a lot of tricks and those tricks are extremely valueble but also can be really hard to use, for example triggering frerocity mid combat. Exploit is such a decision heavy mechanic giving creatures three modes which I love. Dash has gone from medicore in Khans + Fate into something dangerous and super synergistic in this set. Bolster invovles a lot of thinking and board management trying to get the counter where you want it, especially since you can exploit or again use pump spells/morphs to move the counter to different creatures.
Maybe the set isn't as timmy as you wanted from a dragon set?
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
Ironically... UW was my best record. 4-0 no questions asked. Of course... I had a sick pool.
It was not fair... had monastery mentor, new Silumgur, tons of rebound cards. It was fun
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
Illusory Gains was fun to pull because my opponents didn't want to give me a bigger creature. Besides that, I found that I had a bit too high of a mana curve and lost to quick games. When I would win a game, I was below 5 life.
Deathbringer Dragon was my promo, and it worked great once I got to 7 mana.
Overall, I had fun and memorable games. Especially the part that I hit Ugin, the Spirit Dragon with a late game Duress, which would have killed me.
Maybe I am different from others, but part of the playing magic, especially sealed, is the deck building aspect and then seeing how well you can do with the deck. The 'set' doesn't matter nearly as much as my abilities. While I did find it interesting to not have any dragons, I did beat most people up before they could even cast their dragons Overall I had a fun time. It did help I had Ojutai's Exemplars (never lost a game that I cast him).
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
Yea. My only 4-0 record consisted of cracking three evolving wilds and a gain-land I could use.. there was a reason for that.
Even in two color decks, mana fixing helps tremendously. It adds more consistency.
That "consistency" was lacking for the most part in the pre-release.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
I imagine the variance we see here to be associated with size of the touranment.
I got 8 packs for winning a small tournament. The big store up the street pays out a box worth of cards to the winner, but you're playing against over a hundred people for 6 rounds.
Out of 3 events I didn't pull my matching monument or gain land or an evolving wilds a single time. Going two colors wasn't so bad, but going 3 was a real chore from what I saw. I played my third pre-release Sunday, went Kologhan again and got Pitiless Horde as my seeded rare(this thing is bonkers), Ambuscade Shaman, and Warbringer got them all out in one game and it was cruel and unusual punishment. Dashing in a 7/5 for BB every turn is awesome.
I Stream MTGO on Twitch: broodwarjc
I also post recordings of those streams on Youtube: broodwarjcavidgamer
Standard Deck:
BUPirates
Modern Deck:
B8-Rack
I said it before, and I'll say it again. Although dragons was designed for two colors, fate reforged was not. It's was very possible to get only multicolor cards from your fate pack with zero support, rendering those card's usless.
That's why I feel like normal sealed will be 100% better and more consistent. From my pre-release experience: the success of my deck was driving nearly 100% by what I opened in the fate reforged pack.
Twitter: twitter.com/axmanonline
Stream: twitch.tv/axman
Current Decks
Modern: Affinity
Standard: BW Control
Legacy: Death and Taxes :symw::symr:
Vintage: NA
In 2HG, went 3 - 1 with a paired R/G deck and U/W/B/g deck. Impact Tremors goes from being good to being absolutely nuts.
Overall, this was a really fun format. Most decks had one to three dragons, which is enough to feel like dragons are a big deal without being enough to feel swamped by dragons. I saw several effective strategies; the dominant ones seemed to be Red Dash (which worked equally well in Atarka or Kolaghan) and Silumgar Control.
0-2 2nd prerelease, but I pulled another Sarkhan and dragons whisper so yeah.
EDH: Xenagos, God of Revels.
Every sealed of Fate Reforged I played was 3 Khans and 3 Fate Reforged and I would assume it would be 3 Dragons and 3 Fate
Right. I hadn't looked it up to validate it, but that was also my assumption because of the KKKFFF sealed.
http://magic.wizards.com/en/content/fact-sheet-grand-prix-atlantic-city-2015
Sealed deck Product: 4 Dragons of Tarkir boosters/2 Fate Reforged boosters
If by B Regent, you mean the black one (Deathbringer Regent), you opened one of the biggest bombs in the set. That card is better in sealed than most of the dragonlords.
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control