Here's my pool. What would you have played? I still did well, but I'm wondering if I poorly evaluated the power level of the JOU cards and the shift to the format. Curious on your opinions.
Ahah! I read the pool and thought BU was the obvious, obvious choice. And so did you. Black is obvious and blue with double sirens, triple naiad (two white water, one nimbus) and curse of swine.
I think I'd have run the ordeal instead of rotted hulk: vanilla 2/5 that doesn't trigger constellation nor anything else... while ordeal is still a triple pump spell with two bonus cards. If you wanted to be a bit more aggressive, you could put bloodcrazed hoplite and aspect of gorgon main instead of the 1/4 constellation guys, but I guess they work better with extinguish all hopes.
Yeah, I was considering those changes when building the deck. I had to think a lot about it because cutting an amazing 2-drop Heroic and an Ordeal seemed counterintuitive. But I had to be realistic about my deck. My pool had lousy aggressive creatures and only a few Heroic enablers (mostly ones that didn't synergize with the rest of the deck). If I didn't curve out perfectly those would be really weak draws. Meanwhile, with 2 1-sided wraths and all my top end and so many ways to get evasion and even card quality filtering, I knew I had most decks beaten in the lategame. So all I needed to do was survive to the lategame. That meant cutting potential dead cards and running questionable 1/4s and 2/5s to roadblock the early attackers. If they have to blow a combat trick to kill something as awful as a Rotted Hulk, I'm happy with that.
Though Rotted Hulk was the first slot I boarded out against anything other than blistering fast aggro. I think I was just overly cautious about getting swarmed by aggro.
The 1/4 constellation guys were actually really good. I got both out a couple times. The life loss adds up quickly. I'd argue it's better than Basilica Guards, which saw a lot of play in slower Orzhov builds. Sometimes they actually drew combat tricks and hard removal from many opponents to try to buy tempo. Later in the game it was a nice 3cc enchantment to sandbag for turns I wanted double constellation.
I initially ran Ordeal main. I think I cut it after round 2, only boarding in occasionally, boarding it out liberally against U or B decks. Of the 4 times I got to enchant a creature, the creature was bounced/killed before Ordeal could go off 3 of the 4 times. The other time, I did get to draw 2 cards and keep my fatty but he also flooded hard and I would have crushed him either way, ie it was "win more". It seemed like it was just opening me up to get 2-for-1'd more often than not. Because of cards like Reprisal and Feast of Dreams, sometimes it opened up my flyers to removal that wouldn't have even hit them otherwise. I found I got way more value out of Nyx Infusion than the Ordeal.
I'd have been pretty tempted to splash the Keranos. My basic principle in Sealed, and especially at prereleases, is to play as many of my pool's ridiculous cards as possible, and it's not like it's that hard to do in this case. I find that most of the really good decks are slow, powerful, and have lots of removal and little synergy compared to the equivalent draft format, and if you run into the one guy in the room with the nut heroic beatdown deck then you can side in a better manabase and cheap interaction. This means that my default strategy is to be even slower so that I 100% have inevitability if the game drags on.
Not playing the Ordeal and the Hoplite is 100% correct as it just isn't what you're trying to do with the deck.
I was wondering if someone was going to bring up Keranos. I thought about it during deck construction. With a single U/R or B/R scryland or with Traveler's Amulet, I probably would have at least tried the splash. I messed around with it during lunch break and reasoned that I would have to do these changes to the deck:
-1 Swamp
-2 Island
-2 Whitewater Naiad
-1 Mogis's Marauder
+3 Mountain
+1 Opaline Unicorn
+1 Keranos, God of Storms
+1 Dreadbringer Lampads
This is basically an attempt to stabilize the curve and mana requirements. With blue as a secondary color, UU gets harder in general, so Lampads comes in as a replacement for Naiads. Didn't want to to cram the deck with too many 5-drops nor impede my tools to survive in the early game since SO many people were playing Wx at my prerelease, so there weren't really other good slots to cut (maybe Rotted Hulk instead or Pharika's Cure instead, except those are both really good against aggro). I decided that although Keranos would be nuts, the chance I would see both him and red mana in a game would be rare whereas the overall loss in quality to my deck from the above changes would have been bad. Maybe I was wrong, but double Naiads were nuts for me all day and I didn't want to get in their way.
Here's my pool. What would you have played? I still did well, but I'm wondering if I poorly evaluated the power level of the JOU cards and the shift to the format. Curious on your opinions.
The deck:
1 Charging Badger
1 Culling Mark
1 Satyr Piper
1 Nylea's Disciple
1 Centaur Battlemaster
1 Feral Invocation
1 Staunch-Hearted Warrior
1 Satyr Grovedancer
1 Golden Hind
1 Bassara Tower Archer
1 Oakheart Dryads
1 Sedge Scorpion
1 Goldenhide Ox
1 Market Festival
1 Desecration Plague
1 Strength from the Fallen
RED:
1 Satyr Rambler
2 Rage of Purphoros
1 Dragon Mantle
1 Akroan Conscriptor
1 Pharagax Giant
2 Lightning Diadem
1 Starfall
2 Font of Ire
1 Impetuous Sunchaser
1 Satyr Nyx-Smith
1 Wild Celebrants
1 Bladetusk Boar
1 Eagle of the Watch
1 Oppressive Rays
1 Stonewise Fortifier
1 Heliod, God of the Sun
1 Lagonna-Band Trailblazer
1 Supply-Line Cranes
1 Aegis of the Gods
1 Lagonna-Band Elder
1 Observant Alseid
1 Griffin Dreamfinder
1 Ephara's Radiance
BLUE:
1 Sphinx's Disciple
1 Nullify
1 Rise of Eagles
1 Lost in a Labyrinth
1 Coastline Chimera
1 Ordeal of Thassa
1 Sigiled Starfish
1 Pin to the Earth
1 Nimbus Naiad
2 Whitewater Naiads
2 Cloaked Siren
1 Curse of the Swine
BLACK:
2 Rotted Hulk
1 Boon of Erebos
1 Scourgemark
1 Squelching Leeches
1 Bloodcrazed Hoplite
1 Pharika's Cure
1 Aspect of Gorgon
1 Nyx Infusion
1 Thoughtrender Lamia
1 Keepsake Gorgon
2 Grim Guardian
1 Erebos's Emissary
1 Lash of the Whip
1 Nyxborn Eidolon
1 Extinguish All Hope
1 Mogis's Marauder
1 Necrobite
1 Cast into Darkness
1 Doomwake Giant
1 Dreadbringer Lampads
1 Viper's Kiss
1 Feast of Dreams
1 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Stormchaser Chimera
1 Ragemonger
1 Disciple of Deceit
1 Opaline Unicorn
1 Temple of Enlightenment
My deck:
//2 drops
1 Sigiled Starfish
1 Disciple of Deceit
1 Nyxborn Eidolon
//3 drops
2 Grim Guardian
1 Mogis's Marauder
1 Nimbus Naiad
//4 drops
1 Erebos's Emissary
2 Cloaked Siren
1 Rotted Hulk
//5+ drops
1 Keepsake Gorgon
1 Doomwake Giant
2 Whitewater Naiads
1 Thoughtrender Lamia
1 Pin to the Earth
1 Pharika's Cure
1 Feast of Dreams
1 Nyx Infusion
1 Lash of the Whip
1 Extinguish All Hope
1 Curse of the Swine
Lands
9 Swamp
7 Island
1 Temple of Enlightenment
1 Necrobite
1 Cast into Darkness
1 Dreadbringer Lampads
1 Viper's Kiss
1 Swamp
1 Ordeal of Thassa
1 Bloodcrazed Hoplite
1 Aspect of Gorgon
1 Scourgemark
Result:
1-2, 2-1, 2-0, 2-0, 2-1, 2-0
Finished in top 8.
I think I'd have run the ordeal instead of rotted hulk: vanilla 2/5 that doesn't trigger constellation nor anything else... while ordeal is still a triple pump spell with two bonus cards. If you wanted to be a bit more aggressive, you could put bloodcrazed hoplite and aspect of gorgon main instead of the 1/4 constellation guys, but I guess they work better with extinguish all hopes.
Yeah, I was considering those changes when building the deck. I had to think a lot about it because cutting an amazing 2-drop Heroic and an Ordeal seemed counterintuitive. But I had to be realistic about my deck. My pool had lousy aggressive creatures and only a few Heroic enablers (mostly ones that didn't synergize with the rest of the deck). If I didn't curve out perfectly those would be really weak draws. Meanwhile, with 2 1-sided wraths and all my top end and so many ways to get evasion and even card quality filtering, I knew I had most decks beaten in the lategame. So all I needed to do was survive to the lategame. That meant cutting potential dead cards and running questionable 1/4s and 2/5s to roadblock the early attackers. If they have to blow a combat trick to kill something as awful as a Rotted Hulk, I'm happy with that.
Though Rotted Hulk was the first slot I boarded out against anything other than blistering fast aggro. I think I was just overly cautious about getting swarmed by aggro.
The 1/4 constellation guys were actually really good. I got both out a couple times. The life loss adds up quickly. I'd argue it's better than Basilica Guards, which saw a lot of play in slower Orzhov builds. Sometimes they actually drew combat tricks and hard removal from many opponents to try to buy tempo. Later in the game it was a nice 3cc enchantment to sandbag for turns I wanted double constellation.
I initially ran Ordeal main. I think I cut it after round 2, only boarding in occasionally, boarding it out liberally against U or B decks. Of the 4 times I got to enchant a creature, the creature was bounced/killed before Ordeal could go off 3 of the 4 times. The other time, I did get to draw 2 cards and keep my fatty but he also flooded hard and I would have crushed him either way, ie it was "win more". It seemed like it was just opening me up to get 2-for-1'd more often than not. Because of cards like Reprisal and Feast of Dreams, sometimes it opened up my flyers to removal that wouldn't have even hit them otherwise. I found I got way more value out of Nyx Infusion than the Ordeal.
Not playing the Ordeal and the Hoplite is 100% correct as it just isn't what you're trying to do with the deck.
-1 Swamp
-2 Island
-2 Whitewater Naiad
-1 Mogis's Marauder
+3 Mountain
+1 Opaline Unicorn
+1 Keranos, God of Storms
+1 Dreadbringer Lampads
This is basically an attempt to stabilize the curve and mana requirements. With blue as a secondary color, UU gets harder in general, so Lampads comes in as a replacement for Naiads. Didn't want to to cram the deck with too many 5-drops nor impede my tools to survive in the early game since SO many people were playing Wx at my prerelease, so there weren't really other good slots to cut (maybe Rotted Hulk instead or Pharika's Cure instead, except those are both really good against aggro). I decided that although Keranos would be nuts, the chance I would see both him and red mana in a game would be rare whereas the overall loss in quality to my deck from the above changes would have been bad. Maybe I was wrong, but double Naiads were nuts for me all day and I didn't want to get in their way.