Played in my first prereleased earlier this afternoon. My sealed pool looked weak, but I did OK with it. My only good rares were Krenko, Mob Boss and Firewing Phoenix. I played RG Control, and went 3-1. I had a Rancor and the green ring, which helped a lot. Two Baloths and two Centaurs also helped. I had some good removal, including the new Arc Trail , the new Fireball and a Turn to Slag. I didn't have a lot of goblin support, but I did have one Krenko's Command, which helped jump start token generation twice.
In my second round, I put Rancor on an Elvish Visionary, equipped the ring and eventually used it to beat down my opponent for game 2. My third round was comical, because I finally got Krenko to resolve. Game one I swung for lethal with 62 goblins (my opponent played the white card that prevents all damage, buying herself and extra turn), and game two I swung with over 50 goblins.
The all-star of the day had to be my humble Wall of Fire. In every game I won, I played it. Between that and my two Baloths, no one wanted to come at me on the ground. The most annoying card of the day I faced in the first round. My first round went to three games, and in each one my opponent dropped Duty-Bound Dead turn one. That is one annoying card! Sure, it's 0/2. But it regenerates and has exalted, so it's actually a 1/3 the first few turns. It kills off chump blockers like a champ. That card is going to fly under the radar until someone takes it to a tournament and beats face with it.
Placed third, won four packs. Pulled a Gilded Lotus and foil Jayemdae Tome. So pretty good so far. I'm playing in my second sealed prerelease in an hour. I'll let y'all know how it goes.
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My Decks:
Innistrad-RTR
UWR Flash: 7-1, 1 FNM Win-A-Box
Rakdos Aggro: 20-8
UW Flash: 11-5
Boros Aggro: 3-1
Jund: 42-12-3, 4 TNM Win-A-Box, 2 Koopa Standard IQs, Gatecrash Game Day Champion, M14 Game Day Champion
Didn't have much fun getting rolled first round by B/G Exalted. Mainly because he kept opening with me having a bunch of white guys and played multiple Knight of Infamy and Duty-Bound Dead to have a Tormented Soul beat my face in with Exalted triggers.
I really like this Limited environment a hell of a lot better than AVR, for sure. I think whoever had Green and Black at the top of the heap for color strength had it right, with White and Blue being even after that and Red pulling up the rear.
As an aside, any game but one that I cast Talrand's Invocation in, I won, especially since I kept getting it on turn 4. I think both it and Talrand himself are going to be pretty awesome.
--Jed
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L5R or MTG, if it's got Samurai, Knights or Soldiers, it's all good as far as I'm concerned.
Definitely had the most fun I've ever had in a core set Sealed.
I went 5-1 with some unholy GBu control pile with the only bomb being a Garruk that I had to cast off of 7 forests and an Evolving Wilds, and only two mediocre removal spells (Essence Drain and Cower in Fear). Everything else was just durdles. The fact that this deck was capable of 5-1 makes me think the format is awesome, though it might turn out that I was just insanely lucky. There were many close and interesting games.
I disagree that aggro is dominant -- there are good aggro decks to be sure, but I beat most of them with my pile. My loss was to a Krenko deck that was aggressive, but ended up actually winning due to playing Krenko in the late game, which I couldn't remove due to having only 2 removal spells.
I just got back from the prerelease going 4-0-1 with B/w, and here are my thoughts in M13 in Sealed:
- It's a relatively slow format
There are a lot of roadblock creatures at the common level. In particular at the common level: Guardians of Akrasa, Vedalken Entrancer, Giant Scorpion, Wall of Fire, Deadly Recluse, and Sentinel Spider. Those guys saw quite a bit of play around the store. 1 drops, 2 drops, and sometimes even three drops can be walled pretty easily without support. There are some battlecruiser elements to the format, but not as much as ROE or as slow as RAV.
- Ring of _______ breaks stalemates
If you have the right Ring for your deck, you can turn any creature into wrecking ball. When a board bogs down and both players have spent resources, having a creature charge up to be humongous and crash through can decide the game. This is especially true for any creature that has evasion. I won a handful of games today because I put Ring of Xathrid on a random black creature, let it get big, and sent it into the red zone. The fact that the counters stay on the creature even if the Ring falls off is really good too. This lets you charge up a second creature or get around a removal spell like Pacifism.
- Bombs not named planeswalkers are solvable
I hated M11 and M12 mainly because the Titans were just so frustrating to deal with from a resource perspective. Unless you had blue and countermagic, any Titan generates instant value and threatens to snowball the advantage into something insurmountable if your opponent didn't have removal right then and there. Even if you did have the removal right away for the Titan, the damage they did was done, and usually it was a type of advantage that decided the match.
The legend cycle doesn't ruin games as bad as the Titans did. None of them generate instant value upon entering the battlefield and being midrange creatures instead of 6/6s they are easier to tolerate and answer. You still have other ridiculous bombs like Serra Avatar, Elderscale Wurm, and Primordial Hydra, but they require extreme color commitment and/or mana investment, which justifies their power in the first place.
Has anyone seen a mill deck around yet? I was wondering, because I'm fairly sure the only way you can have a decent mill deck is either having Jace himself, or one or two of his phantasms as the key cards, then have a suite of mill to go with them...
I got milled to death from sands of delerium. the guy had 3 deathtouch creatures on the board (two deadly reculse and a scropian). I couldn't profitably attack and he got me lol.
First sealed event I've played (been playing casually for a year). Went 4-0-1 for 3rd. Pulled an Ajani in the first pack I opened. Then proceeded to open serra avenger, intrepid hero, door to nothingness, nefarox, orverlord of grixis, and elvish archdruid. Really debated going W/B exalted, but I had the perfect blue cards for W/U fliers. Favorite play was having my opponent magmaquake to kill his 3 goblin arsonists and two of my ground creatures. With the arsonists he intended to kill my flier, in response, safe passage.
I did 4-0-1 with UGr. I opened a garruk, A staff of nin And A void stalker. I bad two archaneomancers which i used to recur burn sPells. I had loads of fliers, too. I can confirm that the rings are All very good at What they do. In order, i'd place Them black>blue=green>white And the red one sucks.
Thé format is very Well balanced, with All Colors having access to decent tricks. The auras are better than I thought, And I think naturalize may be an okay 23rd card.
À great play today was making a Gw Opponent scoop because i assembled archaneomancer, the 4/4 that bounces à creature each upkeep And à fog.
Sorry about the horrid writing. Posting from my phone.
Has anyone seen a mill deck around yet? I was wondering, because I'm fairly sure the only way you can have a decent mill deck is either having Jace himself, or one or two of his phantasms as the key cards, then have a suite of mill to go with them...
the only mill deck i saw wasn't a mill deck, the guy just happened to have a sands of delirium that he would mise into and start using if the board stalled up.
I ran a G/W/U pseudo-mill type deck, managed to pull 3 Mind Sculpts, 2 Jace Phantasm and Sands of Delirium. I went 6-0, got first place. I had no trouble at all, Exalted became less scary when running against a Fog Bank. Red was so under represented in my sealed, no one wanted to play it, they were afraid too, I think one player splashed it for the 0/1 pumpable drakes, but it didnt get off the ground.
my pool wasn't the best I opened 3 lands: Hellion Crucible, Glacial Fortress, and Rootbound Crag. Then i got a void stalker (which surprised me to be really good), spelltwine (may use it in edh), and ground seal. But still managed to put together a control/aggro deck with my awesome green creatures and my blue counterspells that went 2-2. Could have went 3-1 but i flooded out last game.
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Has anyone seen a mill deck around yet? I was wondering, because I'm fairly sure the only way you can have a decent mill deck is either having Jace himself, or one or two of his phantasms as the key cards, then have a suite of mill to go with them...
I didn't have any cards with Jace in the name, and I went 5-1 with a mill deck, with my only loss essentially being to mana screw (I was on 3 lands when my opponent was on 11 in one game, then in the third game I never drew any mountains and died with red spells in hand - I know, if it wasn't for luck I'd never lose, right?).
I actually built the deck initially without Mind Sculpt (and entrancer as just walls), with a Bladetusk Boar and Canyon Minotaur instead, but I was extremely underwhelmed by that list since it had no good way to win. I decided to have fun with it and run mill but it wasn't until about round three that I started to feel my list was good.
I actually won three games with conventional damage (Chandra's ultimate once after my opponent activated Elixir of Immortality), Furnace Whelp the other two times), and the rest of my wins were all mill.
I was known as 'the mill guy', yet I got paired against the mirror match in round 4. Crazy times, since neither of us had much of a clock on the other.
Archaeomancer is absolutely absurd and is my vote for best common in the set by a country mile. I felt like I was playing an unfair game every time I cast it, especially for blue's amazing uncommon pair of Talrand's Invocation and Switcheroo. I want as many of these things in my deck as I can draft.
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Providing a plethora of pompous and pedantic postings here since 2009.
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
Signalling is like farting: it's a natural thing that helps people avoid being where you are, and if you try to do it deliberately, things turn to crap fast.
Quote from Hardened »
I hereby found the American Chapter of the Zealots of Semantics. All glory to The Curmudgeon.
I think the set has a bit higher ratio of defensive to offensive cards than most, but not substantially. Decks can still lay on the hurt with exalted and evasion, 1 or 2 power for 1, 2 or 3 power for 2, 3 power for 3; and some auras and equipment at common or uncommon that can really get in damage. If think you can make a pretty aggro deck don't be afraid, especially if your low on bombs, but do have some kind of plan for turns 6-10. And if you want to play for late game still be wary that some decks will lay on a cheeky sort of aggro beats. Also, there is a inordinately high ratio of flying aggro to ground aggro compared to most sets. Good removal overlaps with everything and you should always try and play as much as you can, cards like Arms Dealer are fantastic. You'll diffidently need to side-in enchantment removal against many decks, particularly B and W enchantments, cards like War Priest of Thune are great to run standard.
The only strong arc-type I know for certain is BW or Bw exalted; I've seen and heard of numerous cases of great success with that, it can be aggro based and try and get ahead early into Blood Reckoning or be more mid-late range and/or bomby.
You still have other ridiculous bombs like Serra Avatar, Elderscale Wurm, and Primordial Hydra, but they require extreme color commitment and/or mana investment, which justifies their power in the first place.
What about Sublime Archangel, no extreme color commitment and/or mana investment there?
My problem with this set is the damn exalted. I ran into numerous players with 10+ exalted cards, making my removal crap. Most annoying had to be the enchantment that tapped my fog bank every time they attacked.
In my second round, I put Rancor on an Elvish Visionary, equipped the ring and eventually used it to beat down my opponent for game 2. My third round was comical, because I finally got Krenko to resolve. Game one I swung for lethal with 62 goblins (my opponent played the white card that prevents all damage, buying herself and extra turn), and game two I swung with over 50 goblins.
The all-star of the day had to be my humble Wall of Fire. In every game I won, I played it. Between that and my two Baloths, no one wanted to come at me on the ground. The most annoying card of the day I faced in the first round. My first round went to three games, and in each one my opponent dropped Duty-Bound Dead turn one. That is one annoying card! Sure, it's 0/2. But it regenerates and has exalted, so it's actually a 1/3 the first few turns. It kills off chump blockers like a champ. That card is going to fly under the radar until someone takes it to a tournament and beats face with it.
Placed third, won four packs. Pulled a Gilded Lotus and foil Jayemdae Tome. So pretty good so far. I'm playing in my second sealed prerelease in an hour. I'll let y'all know how it goes.
Innistrad-RTR
UWR Flash: 7-1, 1 FNM Win-A-Box
Rakdos Aggro: 20-8
UW Flash: 11-5
Boros Aggro: 3-1
Jund: 42-12-3, 4 TNM Win-A-Box, 2 Koopa Standard IQs, Gatecrash Game Day Champion, M14 Game Day Champion
RTR - Theros
RDW 6-0 1 TNM Win-A-Box
Esper Control 7-4
Boros Burn 3-1
RW Devotion 3-1
Monoblack Devotion 8-4
Didn't have much fun getting rolled first round by B/G Exalted. Mainly because he kept opening with me having a bunch of white guys and played multiple Knight of Infamy and Duty-Bound Dead to have a Tormented Soul beat my face in with Exalted triggers.
I really like this Limited environment a hell of a lot better than AVR, for sure. I think whoever had Green and Black at the top of the heap for color strength had it right, with White and Blue being even after that and Red pulling up the rear.
As an aside, any game but one that I cast Talrand's Invocation in, I won, especially since I kept getting it on turn 4. I think both it and Talrand himself are going to be pretty awesome.
--Jed
L5R or MTG, if it's got Samurai, Knights or Soldiers, it's all good as far as I'm concerned.
I went 5-1 with some unholy GBu control pile with the only bomb being a Garruk that I had to cast off of 7 forests and an Evolving Wilds, and only two mediocre removal spells (Essence Drain and Cower in Fear). Everything else was just durdles. The fact that this deck was capable of 5-1 makes me think the format is awesome, though it might turn out that I was just insanely lucky. There were many close and interesting games.
I disagree that aggro is dominant -- there are good aggro decks to be sure, but I beat most of them with my pile. My loss was to a Krenko deck that was aggressive, but ended up actually winning due to playing Krenko in the late game, which I couldn't remove due to having only 2 removal spells.
sublime angel is broken especially if you get rancor on something
the green guy that you return a creature to your hand during upkeep i had to went well with forcemage or card drawing dude is easily done
the 4/4 vigilant spider with reach is quite good too
i 5-0'd my day but my deck was pretty much unbeatable i think
16 packs- beat the pro 2 times for 2 more packs and won 5 packs in raffle
haha
did i mention sublime angel is broken? =P
- It's a relatively slow format
There are a lot of roadblock creatures at the common level. In particular at the common level: Guardians of Akrasa, Vedalken Entrancer, Giant Scorpion, Wall of Fire, Deadly Recluse, and Sentinel Spider. Those guys saw quite a bit of play around the store. 1 drops, 2 drops, and sometimes even three drops can be walled pretty easily without support. There are some battlecruiser elements to the format, but not as much as ROE or as slow as RAV.
- Ring of _______ breaks stalemates
If you have the right Ring for your deck, you can turn any creature into wrecking ball. When a board bogs down and both players have spent resources, having a creature charge up to be humongous and crash through can decide the game. This is especially true for any creature that has evasion. I won a handful of games today because I put Ring of Xathrid on a random black creature, let it get big, and sent it into the red zone. The fact that the counters stay on the creature even if the Ring falls off is really good too. This lets you charge up a second creature or get around a removal spell like Pacifism.
- Bombs not named planeswalkers are solvable
I hated M11 and M12 mainly because the Titans were just so frustrating to deal with from a resource perspective. Unless you had blue and countermagic, any Titan generates instant value and threatens to snowball the advantage into something insurmountable if your opponent didn't have removal right then and there. Even if you did have the removal right away for the Titan, the damage they did was done, and usually it was a type of advantage that decided the match.
The legend cycle doesn't ruin games as bad as the Titans did. None of them generate instant value upon entering the battlefield and being midrange creatures instead of 6/6s they are easier to tolerate and answer. You still have other ridiculous bombs like Serra Avatar, Elderscale Wurm, and Primordial Hydra, but they require extreme color commitment and/or mana investment, which justifies their power in the first place.
I got milled to death from sands of delerium. the guy had 3 deathtouch creatures on the board (two deadly reculse and a scropian). I couldn't profitably attack and he got me lol.
Thé format is very Well balanced, with All Colors having access to decent tricks. The auras are better than I thought, And I think naturalize may be an okay 23rd card.
À great play today was making a Gw Opponent scoop because i assembled archaneomancer, the 4/4 that bounces à creature each upkeep And à fog.
Sorry about the horrid writing. Posting from my phone.
the only mill deck i saw wasn't a mill deck, the guy just happened to have a sands of delirium that he would mise into and start using if the board stalled up.
I didn't have any cards with Jace in the name, and I went 5-1 with a mill deck, with my only loss essentially being to mana screw (I was on 3 lands when my opponent was on 11 in one game, then in the third game I never drew any mountains and died with red spells in hand - I know, if it wasn't for luck I'd never lose, right?).
2 Mind Sculpt
2 Essence Scatter
1 Searing Spear
1 Encrust
1 Divination
1 Chandra, the Firebrand
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Turn to Slag
2 Volcanic Geyser
1 Wind Drake
1 Rummaging Goblin
1 Wall of Fire
3 Vadalken Entrancer
1 Furnace Whelp
1 Talrand's Invocation
1 Fire Elemental
9 Island
8 Mountain
1 Negate
1 Rewind
1 Canyon Minotaur
1 Bladetusk Boar
I actually built the deck initially without Mind Sculpt (and entrancer as just walls), with a Bladetusk Boar and Canyon Minotaur instead, but I was extremely underwhelmed by that list since it had no good way to win. I decided to have fun with it and run mill but it wasn't until about round three that I started to feel my list was good.
I actually won three games with conventional damage (Chandra's ultimate once after my opponent activated Elixir of Immortality), Furnace Whelp the other two times), and the rest of my wins were all mill.
I was known as 'the mill guy', yet I got paired against the mirror match in round 4. Crazy times, since neither of us had much of a clock on the other.
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
The only strong arc-type I know for certain is BW or Bw exalted; I've seen and heard of numerous cases of great success with that, it can be aggro based and try and get ahead early into Blood Reckoning or be more mid-late range and/or bomby.
What about Sublime Archangel, no extreme color commitment and/or mana investment there?