MTG Salvation

I went to a sealed pptq yesterday and this was my sealed pool. How would you go about building this pool?

I'm convinced the pool was pretty poor. I started the day 0-2 with pretty close games; losing to Thunderbreak Regent twice on Turn 4 when the opponent was on the play. I didn't drop because I wanted more experience but ended up going 3-3 (one was a bye). The only wins were to really just inexperienced players.

I'll post the deck I submitted a little later. Thanks for the input, I'm really looking to just get some other opinions.

Ya its a pretty poor pool. Got a few powerful cards in every colour but none of them are really deep enough. By the looks of things, I'd say w/u is your best shot.



Not great but theres some power in there. Might want the second Center Soul or third Ojutai's Breath over something

This seems like a really obvious UW flyers deck. You have a solid 26 playables:



If you run 23 land that's going to be 3 cuts. Channel Harm is the easiest, since it's so expensive and you have cheaper tricks. After that I guess Dromoka Dunecaster and Gurmag Drowner (nothing you really want to exploit) seem the weakest.



Curve
1 c
2 ssss
3 ccccccccsss
4 cccss
5 c
6 c

This deck doesn't seem weak at all other than a lack of 2-drops. You have 7 flyers and a bunch of high quality tempo based tricks.

I like U/W, but Blessed Reincarnation looks pretty bad. Am I missing something there?

Quote from Axelrod »

I like U/W, but Blessed Reincarnation looks pretty bad. Am I missing something there?

It turns their bomb into a 2/2 (approximately) at instant speed. And if they get another bomb, you get that as well on the rebound.

Thanks for all the input everyone. Just like everyone, I went with a U/W build. Here's my list:

Here are the things I learned (in no particular order):

1) Monastery Loremaster isn't that good of a card. A 3/2 for 4 isn't great and the megamorph cost is rather large. Not once did I ever unmorph it. It always ended up dying as a blocker. However, I understand the problem was magnified by the fact that my deck was a little crowded at the 4 drop slot and out of all the 4 drops, I would rather cast Lotus Path Djinn or Abzan Skycaptain. I always sided this out after every single game, if anything I should have played Champion of Arashin for the damage race.

2) I know Channel Harm is a little bit on the expensive side and good players can often play around it once they've seen it. However, with it being only 2 packs of FRF, people were always forgetting about it. My deck often would go into a damage race and this was exactly what I needed to survive a turn and kill they're best creature or their one blocker to beat them on the swing back. U/W sometimes has a hard time with removal and I desperately needed this.

3) Blessed Reincarnation was in my sideboard. I contemplated putting it in for game 2 or 3 but always choose against it. I think this was a mistake. This does kill things at instant speed and kills the hard-to-deal-with bombs. A lot of the decks I faced were playing a lot of 1 or 2 drops (Shambling Goblin, Kolaghan Aspirant, etc). Blessed Reincarnation would have allowed me to deal with bombs and if it missed the first time, then just cast it again on rebound and hope for the best. I think I should have main decked this. I probably should have taken out a Center Soul.

4) This deck was really weak because I didn't have any 2 drop creatures. I believe it is extremely important in this format to have 2 drops. I was always playing from behind trying to stabilize with Sandcrafter Mage as a 3/3 but always lost in combat somehow (combat trick, removal, etc). On the play I would do things like turn 3 Lightform, turn 4 Sandcrafter Mage or turn 3 Gudul Lurker, turn 4 Sandcrafter Mage and unmorph. Lessoned learned = need 2 drops. Thus I should have main decked Dragon Hunter. Plus there are a lot of hard to deal with dragons going around.

5) Center Soul wasn't that good. Sometimes it would save a creature, but the rebound always didn't do much cause I couldn't afford to attack. It's probably at its best in an aggressive shell. I'm sure this card is fine, but the problem may have been magnified by the absence of 2 drop creatures.

6) Scion of Ugin is okay (but I think all of us already knew this). Being colorless can be a bonus sometime.

7) Shu Yun with Taigam's Strike was awesome. On any creature (Lotus Path Djinn, itself, etc) it was 10 damage a turn. Sometimes I didn't have the 6 mana to do it all, but I could always get it on the rebound.

I like Monastery Loremaster a lot due to its card advantage, getting a 4/3 creature and a non-creature non-land card out of the graveyard is a great deal for 6 mana (Warden of the Eye from KTK was one of the better uncommons if playing those colors), and being able to trade it as a morph early blocker if you need to is helpful. Hard casting it is bad value as a 3/2 for 4 unless you really need to for some reason.

Blessed Reincarnation can be great against combat tricks as a 2-for-1, and is a way to deal with bombs (which are more prevalent in sealed) as well as creature enhancements (such as multiple +1/+1 counters), but it and Channel Harm also have times when they just sit in the hand without a good time to cast, that doesn't make them poor cards but they are not worth having in some matchups, plus curve considerations apply to Channel Harm.

Did you give any thought to playing G/X/y(/z)? Surrak is pretty bomby, and you have triple Glade Watcher to hold the ground while you set up. Between Ainok Traker, Explosive Vegetation, and your R/G gainland, I would probably give some consideration to some kind of Temur build. Red provides some removal options as well as giving you mana to activate Shu Yun. If you chose to play white with green, Center Soul would work well there, protecting Surrak and then getting through some damage on your next turn. Center Soul was nuts for me at a PPTQ on Saturday, protecting my threats and then removing Pacifism both in sealed and in the top 8 draft. Channel Harm is okay, but it's also fine to bring it in from the sideboard for matches where it will do more work for you.

Surrak is good and there are some decent creatures to go with it. I decided though to go the other direction to value consistency. I felt like there wasn't a huge jump in power to try and incorporate all the different colors. I appreciate the opinion though, makes me feel that I wasn't at least totally crazy to consider it for a brief time.