So, let's talk about how your PR went, cool stuff you pulled off, cards that performed better than you expected, etc.
Midnight PR just finished and I chose Red as my seed color. My black and green were completely unplayable in both quantity and quality, so deck pretty much built itself. Started off with a U/W aggressive shell that I could easily sideboard into U/R Artifacts (yes, artifacts, not tempo, more on that in a bit).
The U/W shell was alright, but completely faltered against anything that played for the late game and big butts. I had to make Returned to the Ranks worthwhile, so I ended up playing 2 Bronze Sables, which turned out to be alright because they block those aggressive Intimidate R/B dudes. Avacyn, Guardian Angel is insane as well. Unfortunately bar her every single creature I had was X/2 or X/1, so stuff like Festergloom and Siege Dragon pretty much murdered me.
Fortunately, I could board into an artifacts shell that pretty much had everything it needed - 2 Shrapnel Blast, Ensoul Artifact, Goblin Kaboomist (free artifacts!), Aeronaut Tinkerers and 3 (!!!!) Scrapyard Mongrel, as well as the 2 Bronze Sables. This deck is absolutely disgusting if it comes together (it probably won't more often than not, though), because early 5/5s are crazy. I won half my post-board games with a 5/5 land mine bashing every turn and getting them within Shrapnel Blast range. Mongrel was great for putting pressure, because a 5/3 trampler for 4 is just good value.
MVP for the day would have to be Bronze Sable, I lucked out with my card pool because it just had so much value in it either deck I played. Played it to an X-1 record, losing to a mirror U/W match that had Spirit Bonds (card is insane, basically giving every creature Kicker W: 1/1 flying spirit).
Many of the games I won were just over in a flash. Start popping out creatures, convoke into something really big on turn 3/4 and they would never recover.
My 1x Hunt the Weak was my only removal and I couldn't beat the guy with Ob Nixilis, Unshackled once it got to late game. His deck just had too much flying to deal with my Seraph of the Masses so he blocked me out and just won by beating down with Accursed Spirit boosted by Scared Armory. TIP: Get artifact creatures, you might need to block that thing. He even had Hot Soup in game 3 when he finished me off. I won game 2 by casting Overwhelm. It was a massive beating, he lost everything just blocking to stay alive.
I just didn't pull any removal so there so no incentive to go into other colors. I could have splashed red for Burning Anger now all is said and done. Just because it really looks like a limited bomb and it would have been fun.
I went X-1. Most of the games weren't memorable because opponents got mana screwed and my deck spat out creatures too quick.
I'm not sure this set is too awesome for limited but convoke allowed me to do some cool things especially combined with Raise the Alarm and Triplicate Spirits which is convoke itself so sorta starts a chain reaction leading to dumping your hand
Sorry, I'm on my phone and want to sleep so I have to keep it brief. Also not sure how to tag cards so sorry about that as well.
Anyways, went x-0 at my prerelease by picking red and going with a sweet mono red aggro/midrange deck.
Generator Servant is an absolute house, and with three of them in my pool I consistently ramped out a hasty Siege Dragon or Hoarding Dragon on turns four and five, which always became a win. Hasty juggernauts on turn four are excellent as well, it turns out.
Forge Devil was excellent at dealing with x-1 deathtouch defense.
Removal was sparse on both my and my opponents' side, I somehow drew only a solitary Blastfire Bolt which I never saw anyways, and my opponents' removal was too slow to deal with my aggressive starts.
Burning Anger is as fantastic as it seems it would be, and you get a ton of value just untapping with it once.
Hammerhand was a fantastic card as well, all of its abilities were super relevant and worth the card slot.
Finally, Krenko's Enforcer ended up being my second best card after the Generator Servants. Almost everybody at my prerelease were on the black or green train (with some white as well) and it was virtually unblockable except for Bronze Sables, which Forge Devil took care of.
Red has too many answers for Indulgent Tormentor, which wasn't really ever a problem. White's promo only stalled and never stole a win from me.
Went X-0. Picked black and could have played it with any other color and feel I could have done as well. Went with green and rocked. Only the last round did I play a 3 game match and that was because I got mana screwed game 2. I think this will be a 17-18 land format. A lot of high cost solid big guys. But its too early to be sure. Tired will add to this later.
Didn't open anything of note, so I ran a UB aggro deck with 3x Tern and 3x Lynx
It needed to draw well to win. It did in the first match, and it did in the second match, too. But My opp had Garruk and his Wake. Played Garruk both games. Brutal. Third game was mana flood x2 despite only running 17 lands.
Got another in a few hours. Hoping for better results.
I did awfully, unfortunately. The best rare I pulled was Aggressive Mining(I wish I was kidding).
I ended up doing what I thought was a decent B/W token/Convoke build (4 Raise the Alarm, 3 Triplicate Spirits, 3 Seraph of the Masses) that seemed pretty good on paper, but this format is dominated by rares. Every opponent I faced had either Ajani, Soul of Theros, or Soul of New Phyrexia (Fun Fact: 10 of the 60 people pulled Soul of Theros, 5 pulled Ajani, and 7 pulled Soul of New Phyrexia. One guy pulled all three.)
Yeah, it was a slaughterhouse for me. I'm going to the next one because obviously I just got a *****ty pack; everyone else had a good time and I just sat there durdling for the loss.
I went 4-0... yay! victory :).
Since it was a core set most players were new to magic (more experienced plays went to a different more high profile stores prelease) so not really the biggest achievement.
I took the blue box because no one else did and I felt sorry for it... there was an odd number of players so the judge had to play and also took the blue box. we were the only two to do so.
All the rares I opened were blue, white or artifact.. so I was Blue white which as my favourite colour combo suited me just fine. I played the agressive WU that the oringinal poster tried to do.
The glaringly obvious card there is the Soul of New phyrexia and yep it carried pretty hard exaclty what the deck needed to smash right through board stalls.
I also had the resolute arcangel.. but I only was able ot cast it once... against a hornets nest that was stonewalling me otherwise.
The bulk of the work was done by the kinbaile beatdown.. I had some clever tricks with them and the quickling
Along with the Kinbailes actually being pretty good..Dauntless river marshal was an all star and with just the two exile effects warden of the beyond did a ton of work. 4/4 vidgelence is no joke.
encrust came in against green box players and the swiftclaws were out if they were likely to run into an elvish mystic.
sanctified charge is basically an instant speed overrun and it won a lot of games for me... one of which for exactsies with two Souls ( using pretender) when I was well behind/dead on the swing back if he had blocked with his elvish mystic.
shield of the avatar did nothing.. i was hoping it use it to keep my weenies alive but never drew it in a useful situation.
The final was between the judge and me... the two people that chose blue. I kind of think it is because we were the best magic players in the room (sounds so arrogant :S) more than chosing to go blue, but really don't let the promo stop you chosing blue at the prelease. It seems that skill is rewarded in M15, his deck was UB tempo (fae) with flying, bounce, tap and counterspell.. that gets you into a race then ends it with Coventant of blood.. he also had an indulgent tormentor however his deck needed a lot of mana to run, needs to play two things a turn to beat you on tempo he missed land drops against me and the soul finnished him off too fast. In the first game he got stuck without the fifth land for flesh to dust
The set seems quite fast compared to M14 (but that was really slow).. much more tempo orientated than raw card advantage however a good blocker can halt the beat down. So I obviously had a good first experience. I am interested in how it will draft.
LOL I'm pretty suspicious that every single person went x-0, this happens in every prerelease thread.
Anyway went x-0 lol but actually went 3-3 seeded black going red black. Really just seems extremely luck based. Your deck basically build it self. I had a great curve, clutch kill spells, some hardy creatures, just seemed like my losses were to people with much stronger cards than me. I mean first match she had seige dragon and hoarding dragon with 3 elvish mystics . One game she 3-for-1'ed me with cone of flame killing 3 creatures including my indulgent tormentor. FYI seige dragon was the most spotted seeded promo I saw and it does a ton of work with its first attack.
The first two matches I won my opponents just got land screwed, wasn't really any gameplay which is ironic because my very first match i had 5 lands and 2 6 drops, mulled to no lands, mulled to no lands, mulled to off color lands and spells, died with 3 swamps and 5 red spells in my hand.
The cards I drew the most were Indulgent Tormentor which did absolutely nothing, it died so many times before any advantage. Saw Goblin Kaboomist a ton and if you can get the second landmine out you can hold off the world. FYI the coin flip is when you place the landmine, not when you activate it, the card isn't written particularly well but love the flavor. I also saw shrapnel blast a lot which was devastating everytime i cast it, and pro tip you can sac your landmine to it >:3
The paragon cards were absurd. I believe everytime an opponent played a paragon they won, they just make even your lowly creatures viable.
That 2/1 black hexproof for 3 was so powerful even without enchantments. first strike+deathtouch? that's crazy.
Oh I drew my Soul of New Phrexia a bunch. If I could untap with it it was so powerful but there was some artifact hate and most players had a couple artifacts to make their decks more consistent. I don't mind playing a bronze sable if it explodes and kills a dragon.
All the action was on the board. Difficult to block creatures, superior numbers, really didn't see any creature get suited up and combat tricks appeared to be non-existent.
The 4 5 and 6 drops are crucial in this format. The people that beat me often had strong creatures in those slots, especially the dragons.
I went 4-1 (3rd place) out of 24 players. Chose Red as my color and got the red Soul in the seeded pack (win)! Went red/black and the packs pretty much built themselves. Such a sick sealed pool it was ridiculous! Deck is:
First round I got paired against a black white lifegain/token strategy with an enchantment that makes a token if the opponent lost life during each turn. I flooded out and sign in blood into 2 more lands.Next game he had Avacyn out with Divine Favor on it and I couldn't find the removal. I lost 0-2
Next rounds I got paired against U/W, G/W, R/B, and G/R and 2-0'ed each of those matches. Nothing to note except Accursed spirit was the stone cold nuts and especially with inferno fist attached. I did have a turn 5 Generator Servant sac into hasted Siege Dragon which cleared opponents board which was awesome as well. Cone of flame was a one-sided wrath every single time I played it.
Won 5 packs and mostly jank except one pack which had the white Soul and Foil Ob Nixilis!! Had a blast
Removal is light, and the Souls are pretty much "if I untap with this in play, I win." I ignored my Blue entirely for a W/G deck with Phytotitan (not as bad as I thought,) Soul of Theros (see aforementioned "I win"), and a bunch of 3-drops. Three hunt the Weak still didn't do anything against the normal weakness to flyers. Overall, removal feels too light, and the Souls seem to be amazingly good, to the point where they just win the game by themselves. Frustrating to play what seems to be almost like War instead of Magic.
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Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
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.
Green Seed and just stomped over everyone I played all night without dropping a single game.
In addition to the green promo I pulled a Hornet Queen and a Nissa, Worldwaker to round out my rares. Ironically I never played Nissa a single time the entire night. The closest game I had was where I had 10 life left after I failed to play my Hornet Queen with the 7 mana available with a mana elf and let a double striking Avacyn, Guardian Angel hit me for 10 before walling it off the next turn. I found myself ripping apart foes with my uncommons all night: 2 Kird Chieftain and a Nightfire Giant. I am of the opinion that both those uncommons are absolutely busted in draft (The Giant especially).
I as also quite happy with Invasive Species and ended up running 2 in the deck.
So one of my best experiences:
My opponent gets a slightly slow start, and starts laying into me with Accursed Spirit. I have Yisan, Wanderer Bard on board, no counters. He attacks, and I activate Yisan during declare attackers to find Typhoid Rats for the block. Totally not anticipating that, he blows Crowd's Favor to save his dude. I'm already feeling good about this ^^. Next turn, his Spirit attacks again, and I Yisan AGAIN to find Bronze Sable for the block. From there, it really just turns into a pod, and I climb right up the curve to win. Super happy fun times! Oh, and I ripped a Chandra shortly thereafter to murder his Children of Night and such.
The only person I lost to opened two Spectra Wards and had the common that tutors for them too. Back to back games, he T5 Spectra Ward onto a 3 power creature and just bulldozed me. That card is bonkers.
Reminds me of Pack Rat in that if you don't have an answer in a very specific time frame, you just lose. What do you do, side in Naturalizes?
The only person I lost to opened two Spectra Wards and had the common that tutors for them too. Back to back games, he T5 Spectra Ward onto a 3 power creature and just bulldozed me. That card is bonkers.
Reminds me of Pack Rat in that if you don't have an answer in a very specific time frame, you just lose. What do you do, side in Naturalizes?
Spectra Wards is just plain busted in this formate....I lost 3 games just because of it....what was wizards thinking...
I ended up picking Red. I didn't open any bombs but I did open four Evolving Wilds which let me play a B/R/G deck with all the best cards in each color. Went 4-1, lost to an opponent that just crushed me twice with the combo of Xathrid Slyblade + enchantments. Slyblade with Eternal Thirst and other enchantments on it is ridiculous. You can't race it, you can't remove it, and you can't kill it in combat. Even if your opponent gets it down late on a low life total, he can just sit it back on defense and you can never attack into it.
I went 3-1 after picking black. Started B-R, then switched to U/R after noticing that everyone had bombs and I couldn't seal with them. So my deck was:
Lightning Strike
Peel From Reality
2x Inferno Fist
2x Encrust
2x Jace's Ingenuity
Cone of Flame
Tyrant's Machine
Jace was way better than expected.. The plan of the deck was to stall until Stormtide came out, which was good enough to win matches for me. The deck was super grindy and had great removal, and I was not scared of bombs (Encrust is a great answer to Souls and Kird Apes). One game I ultimated Jace, drew him again, and then drew literally the last card of my deck before ultimating him again. I just wish I'd had Into the Void to go with Jace's ultimate.
This is weird, I posted on a discussion about best promo, which for sure is tormentor, and made a comment about how I felt black still probably was the weakest color next to blue and that red looked the best. Green was only playable if you pulled elves and havens (not completely true, but I see green as accelerated big stuff, not lots of little guys) anyone who ran green w/o ramps either couldn't get their big stuff out fast enough, or had their low drops killed by siege dragon. Blue was unplayable for me, even if I would have pulled jest or leviathan.
I would've considered running black, but I only pulled two good ones slyblade and necrobite.
Ended up going 4-1, after a lot of anxious side shuffling my deck was too clumpy and mana curve was terrible. First match in game 2 I had great curve in hand, kept, then pulled lands for next 5 turns. Second match played two lands and pulled no lands for 6 turns. What can I say, sometimes life sucks lol.
Soul of shandalar pulled its weight, and surprisingly amulet of avarice played great, just had to put it on something tough enough to prevent a stabwound or the like. Ended up running r/w with gen servant and krenkos enforcer paving the way, kept field advantage for first few turns w t2 raise the alarms to chump block x/1 creatures, then hit with lightning strike, oppressive rays, and pillar of light for any bombs (thankfully no one was running counters, or blue at all to be honest) and came in with hoarding/siege and soul. Also played bronze sable,sy mongrel, midnight guard, gob rrider, and warden of the beyond who is absolutely phenomenal with pillar since everyone is so eager to pull out those t3-5 big guys
Games usually ended with enforcer or soul of shandalar, or siege dragon. Won every match except the game I got mana screwed. Colors performed how I thought they would. W/ only 3 toughness tormentor wasnt as good in limited as the other promos, but he was a little tricky since he couldn't be hit with pillar
Chose to play Red, because I felt aggressive decks would have a leg up in the format, and Red has tons of aggressive early drops. Ended up cracking a pretty insane RW aggro pool. My deck looked something like this for most matches:
I could have used a bit more of a focus on the aggro plan (maybe cut Seige Dragon and Blastfire Bolt), but the top end of my curve was so nasty that I couldn't resist.
Went 4-0-1. The draw was to get into the top 8 where we split 8 ways (thank god) and got 7 packs each. Cracked Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and a foil Shivan Reef in my prize packs. All in all I cracked probably $40 worth of rares and mythics, which is not too shabby. Had a lot of fun too
Went 3-1-1 and drop. I was in the top 16 still (out of 90 players) but it was 6 am, so I told myself if I dropped a game I was going home.
I went black and it worked pretty well.
Pulled Ob Nixilis, Unshackled out of my seeded pack. HE IS A HOUSE. He regularly reached 8/8 or larger. Indulgent Tormenter was good, but Ob did most of the heavy lifting.
Soul of Zendikar was great. Soulmender won me several games.
I think Green is probably the best color in limited right now. I fought a damn Phytotitan in every single game. Normally he sucked but you give that thing trample and it's a problem.
I started out on black seed, with a nice B/R beatdown deck, but it proved ineffective against everyone else having random Souls, and, after being at 1-2, rebuilt the deck from scratch into the 4 colour good stuff plan. While it may seem insanely stupid to run double red, blue and black cards alongside Chord of Calling, I didn't lose a game for the remaining two rounds of the tournament. Probably, I should just quit on 'decent' decks and always stick to 4 colour something.
Went to midnight. Picked blue because it was the least popular color. Opened two of the cards that turn all my opponents creatures to frogs, Cone of Flame, Hoarding Dragon, Soul of Phyrexia. Was grateful that, as tired as I was, my deck built itself. Also Peel From Reality is bonkers. Went 4-0. Got some sleep. Ready for 2HG in a couple hours.
It was only a 3 round sealed, and I went 3-0 (6-0 in games). Ajani Steadfast was beyond amazing. I casted him in 5 out of 6 games, out by turn 6 in those games. The first strike on his +1 was by FAR the most relevant ability for me. People kept trying to make blocks, and the first strike made every block terrible. My round 3 opponent was black seeded and had his Tormentor out after I had Ajani out for 2 turns, and I just kind of shrugged at it. Raise the Alarm was as good as I hoped it to be. It gave me extra early bodies (and extra plays on T2) so I could flash in to trade with anything on turn 2/3.
My green pool wasn't terrible, I was thinking of G/W or G/R...but I had 3 3-drops (Yisan being 1) and 4 4-drops, with no 1/2's in green and 2 7-drops. When i laid it out, G/W felt a little clunky without the 2 red removal spells, and a bunch of 3's n 4's, and G/R felt underpowered without Ajani, Spectra Ward, Boonweaver Giant and the Angel.
Didn't open anything of note, so I ran a UB aggro deck with 3x Tern and 3x Lynx
It needed to draw well to win. It did in the first match, and it did in the second match, too. But My opp had Garruk and his Wake. Played Garruk both games. Brutal. Third game was mana flood x2 despite only running 17 lands.
Got another in a few hours. Hoping for better results.
Much better results second time around. Tied for 2nd place.
Inferno Fist is surprisingly useful, isn't it? I had two of them to put on on Krenko's Enforcer where they could wait to be activated as needed through my second tourney. Quite a flexible card.
I also had a Soul of Theros in that build. It's every bit as awesome as you describe: Play, untap, win.
Went to two prerealeases. Played Black both times, went X-1 both times, even though I could have played better. First time I went Black/Red aggro with kill spells to pump up Altac Bloodseeker. I feel like RB aggro is pretty weak in this format though. Lost to a guy playing green/black with lots of graveyard recursion and good blockers. Next prerelease I opened up two Angels (Avacyn and Resolute) and a Sadist and the artifact that exiles everything. I am super tired though. I made some mis-boards and mis-mulligans against a guy who was playing Boros Aggro/ Soul of Theros so that was what cost me.
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Midnight PR just finished and I chose Red as my seed color. My black and green were completely unplayable in both quantity and quality, so deck pretty much built itself. Started off with a U/W aggressive shell that I could easily sideboard into U/R Artifacts (yes, artifacts, not tempo, more on that in a bit).
The U/W shell was alright, but completely faltered against anything that played for the late game and big butts. I had to make Returned to the Ranks worthwhile, so I ended up playing 2 Bronze Sables, which turned out to be alright because they block those aggressive Intimidate R/B dudes. Avacyn, Guardian Angel is insane as well. Unfortunately bar her every single creature I had was X/2 or X/1, so stuff like Festergloom and Siege Dragon pretty much murdered me.
Fortunately, I could board into an artifacts shell that pretty much had everything it needed - 2 Shrapnel Blast, Ensoul Artifact, Goblin Kaboomist (free artifacts!), Aeronaut Tinkerers and 3 (!!!!) Scrapyard Mongrel, as well as the 2 Bronze Sables. This deck is absolutely disgusting if it comes together (it probably won't more often than not, though), because early 5/5s are crazy. I won half my post-board games with a 5/5 land mine bashing every turn and getting them within Shrapnel Blast range. Mongrel was great for putting pressure, because a 5/3 trampler for 4 is just good value.
MVP for the day would have to be Bronze Sable, I lucked out with my card pool because it just had so much value in it either deck I played. Played it to an X-1 record, losing to a mirror U/W match that had Spirit Bonds (card is insane, basically giving every creature Kicker W: 1/1 flying spirit).
I had Chord of Calling but chose not to play it. Didn't think it was worth it.
Not having removal was a real problem against black decks. I was hoping to get Plummet but it wasn't to be.
Notable cards I had Spirit Bonds, Siege Wurm x 2, Seraph of the Masses x 2, 1x Elvish Mystic, Sunblade Elf and Paragon of New Dawns.
Many of the games I won were just over in a flash. Start popping out creatures, convoke into something really big on turn 3/4 and they would never recover.
My 1x Hunt the Weak was my only removal and I couldn't beat the guy with Ob Nixilis, Unshackled once it got to late game. His deck just had too much flying to deal with my Seraph of the Masses so he blocked me out and just won by beating down with Accursed Spirit boosted by Scared Armory. TIP: Get artifact creatures, you might need to block that thing. He even had Hot Soup in game 3 when he finished me off. I won game 2 by casting Overwhelm. It was a massive beating, he lost everything just blocking to stay alive.
My blue was just too poor even though I pulled a Polymorphist's Jest. Would have been nice to use Dauntless River Marshall.
I just didn't pull any removal so there so no incentive to go into other colors. I could have splashed red for Burning Anger now all is said and done. Just because it really looks like a limited bomb and it would have been fun.
I went X-1. Most of the games weren't memorable because opponents got mana screwed and my deck spat out creatures too quick.
I'm not sure this set is too awesome for limited but convoke allowed me to do some cool things especially combined with Raise the Alarm and Triplicate Spirits which is convoke itself so sorta starts a chain reaction leading to dumping your hand
Anyways, went x-0 at my prerelease by picking red and going with a sweet mono red aggro/midrange deck.
Generator Servant is an absolute house, and with three of them in my pool I consistently ramped out a hasty Siege Dragon or Hoarding Dragon on turns four and five, which always became a win. Hasty juggernauts on turn four are excellent as well, it turns out.
Forge Devil was excellent at dealing with x-1 deathtouch defense.
Removal was sparse on both my and my opponents' side, I somehow drew only a solitary Blastfire Bolt which I never saw anyways, and my opponents' removal was too slow to deal with my aggressive starts.
Burning Anger is as fantastic as it seems it would be, and you get a ton of value just untapping with it once.
Hammerhand was a fantastic card as well, all of its abilities were super relevant and worth the card slot.
Finally, Krenko's Enforcer ended up being my second best card after the Generator Servants. Almost everybody at my prerelease were on the black or green train (with some white as well) and it was virtually unblockable except for Bronze Sables, which Forge Devil took care of.
Red has too many answers for Indulgent Tormentor, which wasn't really ever a problem. White's promo only stalled and never stole a win from me.
Didn't open anything of note, so I ran a UB aggro deck with 3x Tern and 3x Lynx
It needed to draw well to win. It did in the first match, and it did in the second match, too. But My opp had Garruk and his Wake. Played Garruk both games. Brutal. Third game was mana flood x2 despite only running 17 lands.
Got another in a few hours. Hoping for better results.
I ended up doing what I thought was a decent B/W token/Convoke build (4 Raise the Alarm, 3 Triplicate Spirits, 3 Seraph of the Masses) that seemed pretty good on paper, but this format is dominated by rares. Every opponent I faced had either Ajani, Soul of Theros, or Soul of New Phyrexia (Fun Fact: 10 of the 60 people pulled Soul of Theros, 5 pulled Ajani, and 7 pulled Soul of New Phyrexia. One guy pulled all three.)
Yeah, it was a slaughterhouse for me. I'm going to the next one because obviously I just got a *****ty pack; everyone else had a good time and I just sat there durdling for the loss.
Since it was a core set most players were new to magic (more experienced plays went to a different more high profile stores prelease) so not really the biggest achievement.
I took the blue box because no one else did and I felt sorry for it... there was an odd number of players so the judge had to play and also took the blue box. we were the only two to do so.
All the rares I opened were blue, white or artifact.. so I was Blue white which as my favourite colour combo suited me just fine. I played the agressive WU that the oringinal poster tried to do.
My deck
4 Kinsbaile Skirmisher
1 Oreskos swiftclaw
1 Dauntless River Marshal
1 Quickling
1 Preeminent captain
1 Warden of the beyond
1 Frost lynx
1 Paragon of the mists
1 Mercurial pretender
1 Kapsho Kitefins
1 Soul of new phyrexia
1 Resolute Archangel
1 shield of the avatar
spells
2 Void snare
1 Peel from reality
1 Devouring light
1 Pillar of light
1 Aetherspout
1 Sanctifed charge
lands
10 plains
7 Islands
1 oreskos sunclaw
1 sungrace pregasus
1 negate
2 encrust
1 chronostutter
1 areonautic tinkerer
1 glacial crasher
The glaringly obvious card there is the Soul of New phyrexia and yep it carried pretty hard exaclty what the deck needed to smash right through board stalls.
I lost only 1 game, when I got stuck on three plains.. and my opponent used opressive rays on my Kinsbaile skirmisher and Preeminent captain and locked me out.
I also had the resolute arcangel.. but I only was able ot cast it once... against a hornets nest that was stonewalling me otherwise.
The bulk of the work was done by the kinbaile beatdown.. I had some clever tricks with them and the quickling
Along with the Kinbailes actually being pretty good..Dauntless river marshal was an all star and with just the two exile effects warden of the beyond did a ton of work. 4/4 vidgelence is no joke.
encrust came in against green box players and the swiftclaws were out if they were likely to run into an elvish mystic.
sanctified charge is basically an instant speed overrun and it won a lot of games for me... one of which for exactsies with two Souls ( using pretender) when I was well behind/dead on the swing back if he had blocked with his elvish mystic.
shield of the avatar did nothing.. i was hoping it use it to keep my weenies alive but never drew it in a useful situation.
The final was between the judge and me... the two people that chose blue. I kind of think it is because we were the best magic players in the room (sounds so arrogant :S) more than chosing to go blue, but really don't let the promo stop you chosing blue at the prelease. It seems that skill is rewarded in M15, his deck was UB tempo (fae) with flying, bounce, tap and counterspell.. that gets you into a race then ends it with Coventant of blood.. he also had an indulgent tormentor however his deck needed a lot of mana to run, needs to play two things a turn to beat you on tempo he missed land drops against me and the soul finnished him off too fast. In the first game he got stuck without the fifth land for flesh to dust
The set seems quite fast compared to M14 (but that was really slow).. much more tempo orientated than raw card advantage however a good blocker can halt the beat down. So I obviously had a good first experience. I am interested in how it will draft.
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
Anyway went x-0 lol but actually went 3-3 seeded black going red black. Really just seems extremely luck based. Your deck basically build it self. I had a great curve, clutch kill spells, some hardy creatures, just seemed like my losses were to people with much stronger cards than me. I mean first match she had seige dragon and hoarding dragon with 3 elvish mystics . One game she 3-for-1'ed me with cone of flame killing 3 creatures including my indulgent tormentor. FYI seige dragon was the most spotted seeded promo I saw and it does a ton of work with its first attack.
The first two matches I won my opponents just got land screwed, wasn't really any gameplay which is ironic because my very first match i had 5 lands and 2 6 drops, mulled to no lands, mulled to no lands, mulled to off color lands and spells, died with 3 swamps and 5 red spells in my hand.
The cards I drew the most were Indulgent Tormentor which did absolutely nothing, it died so many times before any advantage. Saw Goblin Kaboomist a ton and if you can get the second landmine out you can hold off the world. FYI the coin flip is when you place the landmine, not when you activate it, the card isn't written particularly well but love the flavor. I also saw shrapnel blast a lot which was devastating everytime i cast it, and pro tip you can sac your landmine to it >:3
The paragon cards were absurd. I believe everytime an opponent played a paragon they won, they just make even your lowly creatures viable.
That 2/1 black hexproof for 3 was so powerful even without enchantments. first strike+deathtouch? that's crazy.
Oh I drew my Soul of New Phrexia a bunch. If I could untap with it it was so powerful but there was some artifact hate and most players had a couple artifacts to make their decks more consistent. I don't mind playing a bronze sable if it explodes and kills a dragon.
All the action was on the board. Difficult to block creatures, superior numbers, really didn't see any creature get suited up and combat tricks appeared to be non-existent.
The 4 5 and 6 drops are crucial in this format. The people that beat me often had strong creatures in those slots, especially the dragons.
1 Zof Shade
1 Sign in Blood
1 Ulcerate
1 Paragon of Open Graves
1 Child of Night
1 Carrion Crow
2 Accursed Spirit (MVP)
2 Flesh to Dust
1 Forge Devil
1 Crowd's Favor
1 Cone of Flame
1 Inferno Fist
1 Miner's Bane
2 Goblin Roughrider
2 Lightning Strike
1 Generator Servant
1 Soul of Shandalar
1 Siege Dragon
9 Mountain
7 Swamp
1 Evolving Wilds
First round I got paired against a black white lifegain/token strategy with an enchantment that makes a token if the opponent lost life during each turn. I flooded out and sign in blood into 2 more lands.Next game he had Avacyn out with Divine Favor on it and I couldn't find the removal. I lost 0-2
Next rounds I got paired against U/W, G/W, R/B, and G/R and 2-0'ed each of those matches. Nothing to note except Accursed spirit was the stone cold nuts and especially with inferno fist attached. I did have a turn 5 Generator Servant sac into hasted Siege Dragon which cleared opponents board which was awesome as well. Cone of flame was a one-sided wrath every single time I played it.
Won 5 packs and mostly jank except one pack which had the white Soul and Foil Ob Nixilis!! Had a blast
Removal is light, and the Souls are pretty much "if I untap with this in play, I win." I ignored my Blue entirely for a W/G deck with Phytotitan (not as bad as I thought,) Soul of Theros (see aforementioned "I win"), and a bunch of 3-drops. Three hunt the Weak still didn't do anything against the normal weakness to flyers. Overall, removal feels too light, and the Souls seem to be amazingly good, to the point where they just win the game by themselves. Frustrating to play what seems to be almost like War instead of Magic.
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.
In addition to the green promo I pulled a Hornet Queen and a Nissa, Worldwaker to round out my rares. Ironically I never played Nissa a single time the entire night. The closest game I had was where I had 10 life left after I failed to play my Hornet Queen with the 7 mana available with a mana elf and let a double striking Avacyn, Guardian Angel hit me for 10 before walling it off the next turn. I found myself ripping apart foes with my uncommons all night: 2 Kird Chieftain and a Nightfire Giant. I am of the opinion that both those uncommons are absolutely busted in draft (The Giant especially).
I as also quite happy with Invasive Species and ended up running 2 in the deck.
My opponent gets a slightly slow start, and starts laying into me with Accursed Spirit. I have Yisan, Wanderer Bard on board, no counters. He attacks, and I activate Yisan during declare attackers to find Typhoid Rats for the block. Totally not anticipating that, he blows Crowd's Favor to save his dude. I'm already feeling good about this ^^. Next turn, his Spirit attacks again, and I Yisan AGAIN to find Bronze Sable for the block. From there, it really just turns into a pod, and I climb right up the curve to win. Super happy fun times! Oh, and I ripped a Chandra shortly thereafter to murder his Children of Night and such.
Reminds me of Pack Rat in that if you don't have an answer in a very specific time frame, you just lose. What do you do, side in Naturalizes?
Spectra Wards is just plain busted in this formate....I lost 3 games just because of it....what was wizards thinking...
Lightning Strike
Peel From Reality
2x Inferno Fist
2x Encrust
2x Jace's Ingenuity
Cone of Flame
Tyrant's Machine
Forge devil
2x research Assistant
Torch Fiend
Bronze Sable
Rummaging Goblin
Goblin Roughrider
2x Krenko's Enforcer
Belligerent sliver
Scrapyard Mongrel
Thundering Giant
Stormtide Leviathan
Jace, The Living Guildpact
Jace was way better than expected.. The plan of the deck was to stall until Stormtide came out, which was good enough to win matches for me. The deck was super grindy and had great removal, and I was not scared of bombs (Encrust is a great answer to Souls and Kird Apes). One game I ultimated Jace, drew him again, and then drew literally the last card of my deck before ultimating him again. I just wish I'd had Into the Void to go with Jace's ultimate.
I would've considered running black, but I only pulled two good ones slyblade and necrobite.
Ended up going 4-1, after a lot of anxious side shuffling my deck was too clumpy and mana curve was terrible. First match in game 2 I had great curve in hand, kept, then pulled lands for next 5 turns. Second match played two lands and pulled no lands for 6 turns. What can I say, sometimes life sucks lol.
Soul of shandalar pulled its weight, and surprisingly amulet of avarice played great, just had to put it on something tough enough to prevent a stabwound or the like. Ended up running r/w with gen servant and krenkos enforcer paving the way, kept field advantage for first few turns w t2 raise the alarms to chump block x/1 creatures, then hit with lightning strike, oppressive rays, and pillar of light for any bombs (thankfully no one was running counters, or blue at all to be honest) and came in with hoarding/siege and soul. Also played bronze sable,sy mongrel, midnight guard, gob rrider, and warden of the beyond who is absolutely phenomenal with pillar since everyone is so eager to pull out those t3-5 big guys
Games usually ended with enforcer or soul of shandalar, or siege dragon. Won every match except the game I got mana screwed. Colors performed how I thought they would. W/ only 3 toughness tormentor wasnt as good in limited as the other promos, but he was a little tricky since he couldn't be hit with pillar
Chose to play Red, because I felt aggressive decks would have a leg up in the format, and Red has tons of aggressive early drops. Ended up cracking a pretty insane RW aggro pool. My deck looked something like this for most matches:
1 Goblin Kaboomist
1 Siege Dragon
1 Cone of Flame
1 Lightning Strike
1 Blastfire Bolt
3 Goblin Roughrider
2 Borderland Marauder
1 Rummaging Goblin
1 Torch Fiend
1 Spirit Bonds
1 Pillar of Light
2 Oreskos Swiftclaw
1 Triplicate Spirits
2 Kinsbaile Skirmisher
1 Sanctified Charge
1 Evolving Wilds
9 Mountain
7 Plains
I could have used a bit more of a focus on the aggro plan (maybe cut Seige Dragon and Blastfire Bolt), but the top end of my curve was so nasty that I couldn't resist.
Went 4-0-1. The draw was to get into the top 8 where we split 8 ways (thank god) and got 7 packs each. Cracked Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and a foil Shivan Reef in my prize packs. All in all I cracked probably $40 worth of rares and mythics, which is not too shabby. Had a lot of fun too
I went black and it worked pretty well.
Pulled Ob Nixilis, Unshackled out of my seeded pack. HE IS A HOUSE. He regularly reached 8/8 or larger. Indulgent Tormenter was good, but Ob did most of the heavy lifting.
I ended up playing Junk midrange since I pulled a Soul of Zendikar, Ancient Silverback, and some white 1 and 2 drops (Soulmender and Oreskos Swiftclaw).
Soul of Zendikar was great. Soulmender won me several games.
I think Green is probably the best color in limited right now. I fought a damn Phytotitan in every single game. Normally he sucked but you give that thing trample and it's a problem.
L1 Judge
What I sleeved up:
1 Oreskos Swiftclaw
1 Kinsbaile Skirmisher
1 Borderland Marauder
1 Bronze Sable
1 Midnight Guard
1 Warden of the Beyond
1 Goblin Roughrider
1 Razorfoot Griffin
1 Scrapyard Mongrel
1 Hoarding Dragon
1 Boonweaver Giant
1 Resolute Archangel
1 Divine Favor
2 Raise the Alarm
1 Lightning Strike
1 Pillar of Light
1 Ajani Steadfast
1 Stoke the Flames
1 Spectra Ward
1 Feral Incarnation
2 Forest
6 Mountain
8 Plains
Notable red/white cards I didnt run:
It was only a 3 round sealed, and I went 3-0 (6-0 in games). Ajani Steadfast was beyond amazing. I casted him in 5 out of 6 games, out by turn 6 in those games. The first strike on his +1 was by FAR the most relevant ability for me. People kept trying to make blocks, and the first strike made every block terrible. My round 3 opponent was black seeded and had his Tormentor out after I had Ajani out for 2 turns, and I just kind of shrugged at it. Raise the Alarm was as good as I hoped it to be. It gave me extra early bodies (and extra plays on T2) so I could flash in to trade with anything on turn 2/3.
My green pool wasn't terrible, I was thinking of G/W or G/R...but I had 3 3-drops (Yisan being 1) and 4 4-drops, with no 1/2's in green and 2 7-drops. When i laid it out, G/W felt a little clunky without the 2 red removal spells, and a bunch of 3's n 4's, and G/R felt underpowered without Ajani, Spectra Ward, Boonweaver Giant and the Angel.
WBG Karador GBW
R Daretti R
RG Omnath GR
WRG Modern Burn GRW
WB Modern Tokens BW
DCI Rules Advisor as of 5/18/2015
Much better results second time around. Tied for 2nd place.
Burning Anger is very, very good.
When paired with Boonweaver Giant, it's ridiculously good.
When those two combine with a Generator Servant, tables get flipped.
Inferno Fist is surprisingly useful, isn't it? I had two of them to put on on Krenko's Enforcer where they could wait to be activated as needed through my second tourney. Quite a flexible card.
I also had a Soul of Theros in that build. It's every bit as awesome as you describe: Play, untap, win.