MTG Salvation

So,

I did alright. Finished in top 16 and won some packs, but I have to say, this was the most miserable pre-release tournament I've played in a long time. For one, the cards from this set seemed dull. They were just way too straightforward. Two, so many creatures in this set have big butts that combat was a slow grind often devolving into boardstates where players had massive amounts of creatures on each side and just sat there staring at one another. The eternalize creatures were very meh. I was never impressed when I played them or when they were played against me. Third, mana fixing sucked. No dual lands of any kind in HoD so we had to resort to garbage like Traveler's Amulet or Manalith. Unless you were in green because green gets all the best cards now. Finally, the people who made the top 8 (108 man tourney) were all the ones who had the best Amonkhet packs. Sad. Glad this one is over. Also glad that they're going to all large sets in the future. I'm over small sets.

I did well 4-0 with this.



I am aprehensive about playing aggro in sealed but I had more than enough removal for threats or just for burn to the face.

I am not negative on the set it wasn't obviously bad as kaladesh or worse Aether revolt. The set allows me to play pretty standard sealed play, sure there is a little bit of tension of aggro cards vs controling cards. There isn't the face breaking exert cards in this set that were in Amonkhet so sure the creatures actually run into each other in this set. But with well placed tricks and removal you can push past some of the higher toughness creatures.

So my first sizeable-tournament win just eluded me. Finished the day 4-0-1, taking 2nd in a field of 34. Bad luck in the final round pairing; after I drew the fourth round leaving the field with one 4-0 player and 2 3-0-1 players, one of us was going to get paired off against the 4-0 and would control our own destiny; I was the one paired down and despite winning couldn't control my destiny.

Opened what I thought was a pretty fantastic aggro BR pool. I know RU is usually the spells-matter archetype but I played that archetype with BR... and two of the better decks I faced were doing the same thing in WR. Prowess creatures, Magmaroth, Wildfire Eternal... and lots more instants and sorceries than I'm typically comfortable playing in limited.

Rares I cracked and played:
Ammit Eternal promo
Wildfire Eternal
Hour of Devastation
Liliana, Death's Majesty
Harsh Mentor

(didn't play the completely unsupported Oketra's Last Mercy or the prohibitively costy God-Pharaoh's Gift)

My real all-stars were my removal options though: 4 red creature damage spells (Magma Spray, Electrify, Open Fire, Puncturing Blow), and my MVP creatures of the day, Magmaroth and Banewhip Punisher.

Banewhip Punisher is just amazing. All day, killing pesky 2/1 and 3/1 threats and surviving, or killing anything big and targetable via self sacrifice. Then when my Gravedigger or Liliana brings it back for another go... good times.

For once, I got a quite busted auto-build pool.

My promo was Endless Sands, but my rares and mythics were Samut (the legend), Serpopard, Ramunap Hydra, Wildfire Eternal, Leave//Chance and Nimble Obstructionist. Yeah, four bomb rares in RG. Add a crapload of removal in said colors, and effective beaters...this is what I played:



Samut is an unfair card, but till this PR, I had no idea HOW unfair. At least thrice I followed her with Cerodon or the trampling Hippo to kill opponent in one shot. Vigilance on Samut, Sharpshooters or Hydra (always 4/4) helped a lot as well.

I ended up 4-1, coming in second place. The only deck I lost to was a crazy WBg with Sunmare, Pride Sovereign, crapload of lifegain and removal. And even then, I came short 2 life in the decider I have to say that I have faced equally bomby decks since round 2 - but I managed to beat them. Almost everybody and their grandma seemed to open Pride Sovereign, I beat a GW with this, Regal Caracal and DOUBLE (!!) Angel of Condemnation, a mirror RG with Samut the Planeswalker and Sifter Wurm as the higlights, and GWb with Sunmare, Sovereign and others, that was just a little worse than the one I lost to.

Besides the crazy rares, my MVPs were Puncturing Blow, that kills about anything, and surprisingly Inferno Jet, that scored at least 4 kills. Ramunap Ruins twice took the last 2 life.

No money though in the pool, and even in the prize packs.

4th out of around 80 people.

I just played generic RB aggro backed by great removal and tricks. I didn't have broken Amonkhet packs and didn't find board states stalled by big butts. I agree Eternalize is slow. I didn't see it used much.

Finished 6-0 with a overall generic GW beatdown.

Overall a lot of new cards are weaker than the Amonkhet equivalent, the removal in red is very strong, with 3 damage and 5 damage, and the red 1 dmg ping can win against a lot of decks that play all the 1 thoughness creatures especially in white.

The bombs are overall less bomby, as the removal can take care of pretty much all of them.

Green gets to splash almost anything due to the 2/4 mana creature, its like a Gift of Paradise but with a 2/4 body. The uncommon 2/2 that untaps lands helps also to splash almost anything you like.

If you cannot run green, playing Blue/Red/Black works fairly well too, with all the afflict creatures its good to have some reach via some direct damage spells, so the opponent is really punished for blocking no matter what.

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The set doesnt have completely stupid commons like a Renegade Frighter , but it carries a lot in little combos of creatures that become tremendously powerful if not dealt with right away.

I opened possibly the best pool I ever had in a prerelease: three mythics! I got Samut (from Amonkhet), Nicol Bolas and the Locust God. I really wanted to go white because I had like five angels (including two copies of the rare angel) but I couldn't NOT play one of these mythics. I finally went Grixis, and the round I lost was because of mana screwing. So yeah, it was risky, but worth it. As much as I loved both Kaladesh and Aether Revolt, I didn't really like their prereleases, seemed like limited was... kind of limited. But HOU limited was fun for me, and everyone seemed to have fun too.

I had fun at the pre-release. I had a good BR deck with tons of removal, a Glorybringer, and a decent curve of creatures. I won a lot of tight games on my way to a 2-2 record... My two losses were to some ridiculous bombs.

In match 1 against a BRG deck, I lost the second game to a mulligan to 5 plus my opponent's turn 3 Dreamstealer. I had some good cards in my hand but I was light on mana, so I killed it with Abrade thinking that I had some time to draw more lands before my opponent could Eternalize it. Of course, he drops Oasis Ritualist turn 4 and Eternalizes the Dreamstealer turn 5... I was able to drop 1 creature in its way, but the insult to the injury was that it also has Menace.

I lost the 3rd game to God Pharaoh's Gift. In a grindfest matchup, you can survive long enough to play 7-drops and it turns out that a 4/4 Haste every turn is backbreaking.

In round 3 I lost two games I was winning to Locust God. That card is stone-cold unbeatable unless you have an exile removal spell right away (which I had two in my deck in Hour of Glory and Final Reward, but did not draw them). The locusts get out of hand so quickly it is nearly impossible to come back.

So my impressions of the format are that there are some bomb rares that are nigh unbeatable, but there is a ton of removal for both tempo-aggro and control decks to grind out games. The lack of Exert creatures that pump themselves will probably slow things down a bit.

Torment of Scarabs is just a brutal card, if you have a stall deck with bunch of removals/dicard, this card wins the game alone.

3-1 won some prices at the prerelease and this is the card that beats me sigh...

Posted these in another thread. Won 51 packs over the weekend. Savage.

The guy next to me opened Promo Samut PW, regular Samut PW and Rhonas. The rest of his pool had limited creatures in red and green so didn't go well, but he had already won before first round started.

Finished 3-1 for 4th place and 4 packs. Torment of Scarabs is really the bomb uncommon. Basically won me all my games. 4th turn Torment of Scarabs along some removals for opponent threats and they get so behind that its not possible to catch up. From what I`ve seen on other tables, all players that landed a Torment of Scarabs won the game.

Endless sands is also really strong, somewhat blanking opposing removal and messing combat math.

One of the matches in the round I lost my opponent had the nut play with Hazoret's Undying Fury on turn 6.

Opp casts spell, shuffle deck, I cut and we started to reveal cards
1-puncturing blow ----> wow, nice! there goes my fatty...
2-bloodrage brawler ----> lucky opp, got a decent beater. at least he has to discard a card...
3-Gilded Cerodon ----> what? shouldn`t he reveal a land or something like that at this point?
4-Glorybringer ---->

I ended up going 2-1-1 with no great creatures. What saved me is value creatures and I have to say Driven//Despair is an absolute blow out and straight wins games turn 5-6 if it does not get counters. I won at least 4 games when I had 3-4 creatures on board as well as being able to push damage through. Getting 2-3 cards on average while making opponents discard 2-3 can be backbreaking in a race.

I never trust people that get salty about X color getting all the best cards days into the new format. This format just started and green was middle-of-the-road in 2x amonkhet, there's no reason to think it's OP yet.

Went 16-2 over 5 prereleases, but the field was at least half scrubs since I was trying new stores (RIP greenlake games). Between me and my gf we pulled a couple bolases, promo samut, locust god, unesh, glorybringer...promo white curse thing...other stuff i forget. ton of stupid rare deserts. Of my 5 promos, 3 were deserts lol. But overall pretty decent pulls, can't complain.

Beating 2 the scarab god decks in a row with my worst pool was the highlight of the weekend. Tempoed out insane mythics with watchers of the dead wielding a honed khopesh and some savage ambuscades Beat a T4 scarab god off manalith with RG tempo beats. Even exiled scarab god once with my sick scavenger grounds promo Nothing feels as awesome as beating insane pools with trash pools.

Did a single pre-release. My pool was very average. Two of my rares were lands (desert one and teh 5 colors one). The rest equally distributed in all colors. I ended up playing WB zombies... because that's where the common and uncommon shined and allowed me two play two of my rares.



Note: no dauntless aven! !$@%!^^@! That's because I had 2 god-pharaoh's faithful and three disposal mummy. Also, my playables were spread in all colors. For example, blue had three aerial guide, but not much else except the amonkhet bounce drake at 6 CMC. Red had three good removal and the fling manticore at rare, but not much else. Green was a bunch of 6-7 drops and the lion king.

First round I'm against... WB! My deck is better (or comes out better, whichever you prefer). God-Pharaoh's Gift wins me two games. It is pretty busted. I win 2-0.

Second round against UR all-bomb. He got the locust god, hour of devastation, chaos maw, the good minotaurs, the good red removal. I lose 1-2.

Third round I play UG with nissa, steward of elements and majectic myriarch. He finds nissa twice (with eventually the myriarch in play twice). I'm forced to continually attack nissa to avoid her ultimate while he scry 2 every turn. That can't end well for me. To pour salts, I lose the first game while stabilized at 2 life because I didn't read cunning survivor and thus didn't tap it down with my fan bearer. Then he gloats that he likes free win at pre-release when people don't know the cards. Such grace. Also, claims that I lost because I was continually attacking nissa. Well duh! I'd lose instantly if she ultimates. Lose 1-2.

Fourth round I play against RG, but he gets slow draws both games while I slowly rip his hand with dreamstealer. 2-0.

Overall 2-2.

MVP:
dreamstealer: great when it lands turn 3. Scary when it comes back. Great CA engine.
god-pharaoh's gift: busted. Costs 7, but if you get there, it's really good, obviously.
unraveling mummy: with enough zombies, both its abilities are relevant.