Many people keep saying: You don't want to mill your oponent because of Skaab decks. But I wonder if in Sealed there is actually that high a chance that your oponent has such a consistent Self-Mill deck that he will only profit from your milling?
I wonder, since your oponent also needs to have a way to get the good stuff that was milled away back into his hand / play. I can imagine this is quite different in a draft, where people can get together much more consistent decks...any experiences there that you might want to share?
@Psychomagus:
Thanks for the hint, I tried to fix everything.
@Mahanen
Thank you for your thoughts. I, too, thought it was quite to tough to make a choice between white and the other colors. Maybe a WBR deck would do the best work?
I just plain overlooked Altar's Reap which seems incredibly powerful...!
I just tried to build a sealed deck with the Innistrad cards, but - as always - I just have so much difficulty to "see" a good deck when I look at the pool. I think I had a lot of playables in all colors and I already had difficulty to rule out any of the colors:
White - 2x Rebuke, 1x Smite the Monstruous and solid creatures make it a valuable second color I think. I am not sure how strong rebuke is though since I can imagine it sitting on your hand more often than not if the enemy doesn't attack. Especially dangerous against werwolf players I assume? Chapel Geist, Silverchase Fox and Village Bell-raiser also seem like a very good cards.
Blue - In Blue I liked Stitcher's Apprentice as a way of recycling chump blockers, Grasp of Phantoms as a removal and the two Fortress Crabs in terms of defense. It appeared also to be a good second / Splash color but not main.
Green - Well, obviously there is an Essence of the Wild. A huge bomb, but other than that Green doesn't really deliver. No notable mid-range creatures but only guys sitting at the top of the curve. Considering the other colors, I decided to ignore Green. The Ambush Viper can be good removal, but again might flip werewolves.
So I decided to build a mini Vampire deck and splash in Blue for some extra help. But I am not sure about this...white seems very strong, too so maybe white / red might have been as good...?
I decided to put in a Traiterous Blood in hopes of Sacrificing it into Stitcher's Apprentice. Other than that the deck is pretty straight forward beat-down I guess. I wasn't sure about the lands to put in, since I had no cards that would help me find lands.
Since I am still quite new, I would love some thoughts and comments from other players to get a better picture, especially on how to single out the strong colors to play.
I think the Swiftfoot Boots will be good to haste (and hexproof) the more mana intensiv creatures like Hero and BA. Elspeth and Ajani can help against aggressive decks with the life gain and I like Ajanis Second ability which allows to attack and still block.
Actually, I felt BA is a nice fit after all to have some Air attackers together with the ground force and he also benefits from battle cry.
I put in two Sun Titans in order to be able to use the cheap battle criers in early offensive to clear the board for Hero and BA. After he hits the board the small fish will be showing up again gradually.
I did not have time to test the deck properly so far, but maybe there are some changes necessary? Maybe I need more creatures and less spells?
I was also thinking about making this deck T2 legal...but what could replace the PtEs?
I am a novice when it comes to deckbuilding and a friend passed me a couple of nice white cards to build a white deck, but I have no idea what deck I could make out of it.
I got
4x Baneslayer Angel
2x Elspeth Tirel
2x Ajani Goldmane
3x Hero of Blade-Hold
2x Path to exile
3x Day of Judgement
2x Honor of the Pure
I think this can serve as a base for an aggressive white creature deck. Doing some research on this I found out that the best ones would probably be knight or soldier decks...which would lead to leaving out baneslayer angel and ajani I guess?
Does anybody see a good deck using the above cards? Since I already received them I kind of want to use most of them if possible. (I know this is probably the worst starting point for deck construction).
Ah, thanks for the clarification. So I guess we will know what the extra cards will be once action is out!
I actually would never buy a novel on magic on its own, but I did read the novels that were included in the fat packs! And I stopped buying them once there was only 1 box included anymore since I didn't feel the price justified the content.
Shouldn't the new set be around the same size as Rise of the Eldrazi which had 248 cards?
Even though I think it unlikely, that they release two sets, I really wonder on which basis they decided the faction to win. Considering that developing takes a lot of time it's unlikely that the outcome of the worlds public events had a say in it, as due to purely financial reasons Wizards won't have two sets designed and only use one of them (unless they pay the extra designing hours with the increased fatpack prices ).
White (9):
Arrest
Auriok Edgewright
Dispense Justice
Glimmerpoint Stag
2 Seize the Initiative
Sunspear Shikari
Vigil for the Lost
Whitesun's Passage
Red (4):
Arc Trail
Oxidda Scrapmelter
Scoria Elemental
Furnace Celebration
Blue (4):
Argent Sphinx
3 Turn Aside
Black (9):
Blistergrub
Ichor Rats
Contagious Nim
Grasp of Darkness
Moriok Reaver
Plague Stinger
2 Psychic Miasma
Tainted Strike
Green (7):
Alpha Tyrranax
Blight Mamba
Carapace Forger
Cystbearer
Untamed Might
2 Withstand Death
There seemed to be some potential in an proliferate/ infect deck with the clasp, the engine and the magnet. But I felt the infect creatures were just to weak so I ended up with white/blue/red build trying to exploit Stag+Contagion and Magnet+Proliferate. The deck went better than I thought, although I had really bad draws..the Juggernaut and Tumble Magnet showed up only once each. I won 1 of 3 games, but if I had had better draws I could've won 2, I think.
But still there is the question: Do you think an infect (or yet another build) would have been stronger?
Thank you so much for insights!
I am quite relieved that I wasn't as off-track as I thought with the choices I made.
After reading the posts I can see that Berserkers, the Saberclaw and the Trigon of Contagion would have been good choices.
The main weakness of my was - besides the lack of bombs - that I no creature direct removal at all...that's saying I underrated the Trigon, but thinking of it now, I guess it would have saved me one or two matches (especially against flyers I performed very badly).
The Shikari clearly underperformed - even when equipped. I would leave it out next time I guess, unless I had some very good equipment to go with it.
I am looking forward to my next sealed play already ;-) Thank you again for help!
I played a sealed today and I feel like the worst Magic Player in the whole world. It is to say I am relatively new to limited Magic (and I really like the format) and try to learn as much and as fast as I can.
Maybe somebody cares to give me some opinion and ideas what deck could be built with the card pool. I really wonder what an experienced player would have don with this pool.
Here it goes:
Artifact:
Accorder’s Shield
Chimeric Mass
Culling Dais
Darksteel Myr
Echo Circlet
Flight Spellbomb x2
Gold Myr x3
Golden Urn
Golem’s Heart
Grafted Exoskeleton
Horizon Spellbomb
Iron Myr
Mimic Vat
Moriok Replica
Myr Galvanizer
Myr Reservoir
Necrogen Censer
Nihil Spellbomb
Nim Deathmantle
Perilous Myr
Razorfield Thresher x2
Saberclaw Golem
Strider Harness
Sylvok Replica
Trigon of Corruption x2
Non-basic Lands:
Glimmerpost
When I looked at the pool i felt that green and black where too shallow and didn't provide enough material for play. I spent a long time worrying about white, red and blue. Finally, i decided to play white/red and leave blue out (eventhough I really wanted to play the mage and reins) since it didn't provide enough material and would i feared it would unbalance the landbase.
Since I had a ton of Myrs I kind of felt compelled to play the whole Myrset, which I later felt would probably have been better replace by the blue cards, considering I had almost no Metalcraft cards in the pool.
Artifact:
Accorder’s Shield
Chimeric Mass
Darksteel Myr
2x Gold Myr
Iron Myr
Mimic Vat
Myr Galvanizer
Myr Reservoir
Nim Deathmantle
Perilous Myr
Strider Harness
Since I had the Myrs I decided to play 16 land.
I felt that the Myr could provide a solid basis to get the equipment and Khemba / Shikari Engine Running and serve as metalcraft enablers. In the late game I could eat them with the Ferrovore and retrieve them with the Reservoir.
Well, the event was a disaster...I lost almost every game :-( The main problems were, that the equipments were never good and always way too clunky (they were too expensive). I never saw Ferrovore nor Mimic Vat in 5 rounds of play. I never really got to use Chimeric Mass even though I had it in hand quite often.
I was confused at first, too by this. But I think it's fairly clear that the lands enter the battlefield untapped if they are the third to enter.
Interestingly the Japanese version of the cards reads:
"If you control 3 or more lands when X enters the battlefield, it enters the battlefield tapped." They used the actual number 3, which might make it easier understandable. http://magiccards.info/som/jp/229.html
I really like the deck idea, mostly because I really like Venser.
I tested the deck a little bit against some casual decks. Well, once Venser and the Mnemonic Wall are out I could stall my opponent completely with silence recursion and it was easy to pull off venser's ultimate.
Also with the DOJ I was equipped against flyers and other suff. But since the deck is quite mana intensive I felt the need for everflowing chalice to speed things up.
As for the finisher: I didn't play arrest so I preferred BSA over SunTitan but I think the idea intriguing to focus more on removal using arrest and SunTitan and recurse those two with Venser's first ability.
To the whole fetch land topic: Now that Condemn will see more play, it might be good to have something to shuffle the library unless you run the Shaman.
Coming back to topic: I was wondering what you think of including Culling Dais to create a card draw possibility together with nissa and nissa's chosen?
I really miss some carddrawing in the whole deck...
Do you think this might work?
I wonder, since your oponent also needs to have a way to get the good stuff that was milled away back into his hand / play. I can imagine this is quite different in a draft, where people can get together much more consistent decks...any experiences there that you might want to share?
Thanks for the hint, I tried to fix everything.
@Mahanen
Thank you for your thoughts. I, too, thought it was quite to tough to make a choice between white and the other colors. Maybe a WBR deck would do the best work?
I just plain overlooked Altar's Reap which seems incredibly powerful...!
I just tried to build a sealed deck with the Innistrad cards, but - as always - I just have so much difficulty to "see" a good deck when I look at the pool. I think I had a lot of playables in all colors and I already had difficulty to rule out any of the colors:
White - 2x Rebuke, 1x Smite the Monstruous and solid creatures make it a valuable second color I think. I am not sure how strong rebuke is though since I can imagine it sitting on your hand more often than not if the enemy doesn't attack. Especially dangerous against werwolf players I assume? Chapel Geist, Silverchase Fox and Village Bell-raiser also seem like a very good cards.
Blue - In Blue I liked Stitcher's Apprentice as a way of recycling chump blockers, Grasp of Phantoms as a removal and the two Fortress Crabs in terms of defense. It appeared also to be a good second / Splash color but not main.
Black - Here I absolutely loved the Bloodline Keeper since he is flying and produces tokens! Also the Screeching Bat and the Vampire Interloper seemed fine to me. All in all a weak color if not for the Bloodline Keeper
Red - First I noticed the Into the Maw of Hell as a power removal spell. But quite difficult to play as such. 3x Crossway Vampires seems unlucky, but it might be ok together with Rakish Heir and Bloodcrazed Neonate. Also Geistflamme and Instigator Gang make me think that Red is the strongest color in this card pool. I am not sure about Harvest Pyre though. Might be good together with the Stitcher's Apprentice.
Green - Well, obviously there is an Essence of the Wild. A huge bomb, but other than that Green doesn't really deliver. No notable mid-range creatures but only guys sitting at the top of the curve. Considering the other colors, I decided to ignore Green. The Ambush Viper can be good removal, but again might flip werewolves.
So I decided to build a mini Vampire deck and splash in Blue for some extra help. But I am not sure about this...white seems very strong, too so maybe white / red might have been as good...?
This is the pool:
1 Village Bell-Ringer
1 Unruly Mob
1 Voiceless Spirit
2 Moment of Heroism
1 Doomed Traveler
1 Smite the Monstrous
2 Silverchase Fox
1 Midnight Haunting
2 Rebuke
1 Thraben Sentry
1 Thraben Purebloods
2 Abbey Griffin
1 Cloistered Youth
1 Chapel Geist
1 Bonds of Faith
Blue:
1 Memory's Journey
2 Fortress Crab
1 Sensory Deprivation
1 Hysterical Blindness
1 Moon Heron
1 Undead Alchemist
1 Civilized Scholar
1 Delver of Secrets
1 Spectral Flight
1 Curse of the Bloody Tome
1 Runic Repetition
1 Frightful Delusion
1 Invisible Stalker
1 Dream Twist
1 Stitcher's Apprentice
1 Grasp of Phantoms
1 Curiosity
1 Screeching Bat
1 Altar's Reap
2 Walking Corpse
1 Vampire Interloper
1 Bloodline Keeper
1 Bump in the Night
1 Rotting Fensnake
1 Brain Weevil
2 Skeletal Grimace
1 Unburial Rites
Red:
1 Into the Maw of Hell
1 Harvest Pyre
3 Crossway Vampire
1 Traitorous Blood
1 Geistflame
1 Instigator Gang
1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
1 Feral Ridgewolf
1 Furor of the Bitten
1 Rakish Heir
1 Burning Vengeance
1 Infernal Plunge
Green:
1 Boneyard Wurm
1 Ambush Viper
2 Woodland Sleuth
1 Essence of the Wild
1 Spidery Grasp
1 Orchard Spirit
2 Grizzled Outcasts
1 Ranger's Guile
1 Full Moon's Rise
1 Kindercatch
1 Mulch
1 Moldgraf Monstrosity
1 Wreath of Geists
1 Ghoulcaller's Bell
1 Cobbled Wings
1 Butcher's Cleaver
1 Mask of Avacyn
1 One-Eyed Scarecrow
Lands:
2 Mountain
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Plains
1 Forest
2 Swamp
And this is the deck:
Red:
2 Crossway Vampire
1 Instigator Gang
1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
1 Feral Ridgewolf
1 Rakish Heir
Black:
1 Screeching Bat
1 Vampire Interloper
1 Bloodline Keeper
1 Walking Corpse
1 Stitcher's Apprentice
2 Fortress Crab
1 Moon Heron
1 Undead Alchemist
1 Civilized Scholar
Artifact:
1 One-Eyed Scarecrow
Red:
1 Traitorous Blood
1 Geistflame
1 Into the Maw of Hell
1 Harvest Pyre
1 Grasp of Phantoms
1 Skeletal Grimace
Lands:
9 Mountain
4 Islands
4 Swamp
I decided to put in a Traiterous Blood in hopes of Sacrificing it into Stitcher's Apprentice. Other than that the deck is pretty straight forward beat-down I guess. I wasn't sure about the lands to put in, since I had no cards that would help me find lands.
Since I am still quite new, I would love some thoughts and comments from other players to get a better picture, especially on how to single out the strong colors to play.
Thanks!
4 Accorder Paladin
4 Mirran Crusader
3 Hero of Blade Hold
4 Baneslayer Angel
2 Sun Titan
2 Elspeth Tirel
2 Ajani Goldmane
4 Honor of the Pure
4 Path to Exile
2 Swiftfoot Boots
3 Day of Judgment
24 Plains
I think the Swiftfoot Boots will be good to haste (and hexproof) the more mana intensiv creatures like Hero and BA. Elspeth and Ajani can help against aggressive decks with the life gain and I like Ajanis Second ability which allows to attack and still block.
Actually, I felt BA is a nice fit after all to have some Air attackers together with the ground force and he also benefits from battle cry.
I put in two Sun Titans in order to be able to use the cheap battle criers in early offensive to clear the board for Hero and BA. After he hits the board the small fish will be showing up again gradually.
I did not have time to test the deck properly so far, but maybe there are some changes necessary? Maybe I need more creatures and less spells?
I was also thinking about making this deck T2 legal...but what could replace the PtEs?
Thanks for your help...
I am a novice when it comes to deckbuilding and a friend passed me a couple of nice white cards to build a white deck, but I have no idea what deck I could make out of it.
I got
4x Baneslayer Angel
2x Elspeth Tirel
2x Ajani Goldmane
3x Hero of Blade-Hold
2x Path to exile
3x Day of Judgement
2x Honor of the Pure
I think this can serve as a base for an aggressive white creature deck. Doing some research on this I found out that the best ones would probably be knight or soldier decks...which would lead to leaving out baneslayer angel and ajani I guess?
Does anybody see a good deck using the above cards? Since I already received them I kind of want to use most of them if possible. (I know this is probably the worst starting point for deck construction).
I'd appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks!
I actually would never buy a novel on magic on its own, but I did read the novels that were included in the fat packs! And I stopped buying them once there was only 1 box included anymore since I didn't feel the price justified the content.
Number of cards: 175
http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/599
Shouldn't the new set be around the same size as Rise of the Eldrazi which had 248 cards?
Even though I think it unlikely, that they release two sets, I really wonder on which basis they decided the faction to win. Considering that developing takes a lot of time it's unlikely that the outcome of the worlds public events had a say in it, as due to purely financial reasons Wizards won't have two sets designed and only use one of them (unless they pay the extra designing hours with the increased fatpack prices
thanks for your suggestions! So I guess I did more or less the wiser decision.
30 card pool is correct.
I played a 4 Booster Sealed SOM on TNMO today and I got this pool:
Artifact (21):
Accorder's Shield
Auriok Replica
Chrome Steed
Contagion Clasp
Contagion Engine
Darksteel Juggernaut
Golem Foundry
Leaden Myr
Liquidmetal Coating
Moriok Replica
Myr Reservoir
Necropede
Origin Spellbomb
Palladium Myr
Perilous Myr
Razorfield Thresher
Silver Myr
Sylvok Lifestaff
Tumble Magnet
Vulshok Replica
2 Wall of Tanglecord
White (9):
Arrest
Auriok Edgewright
Dispense Justice
Glimmerpoint Stag
2 Seize the Initiative
Sunspear Shikari
Vigil for the Lost
Whitesun's Passage
Red (4):
Arc Trail
Oxidda Scrapmelter
Scoria Elemental
Furnace Celebration
Blue (4):
Argent Sphinx
3 Turn Aside
Black (9):
Blistergrub
Ichor Rats
Contagious Nim
Grasp of Darkness
Moriok Reaver
Plague Stinger
2 Psychic Miasma
Tainted Strike
Green (7):
Alpha Tyrranax
Blight Mamba
Carapace Forger
Cystbearer
Untamed Might
2 Withstand Death
There seemed to be some potential in an proliferate/ infect deck with the clasp, the engine and the magnet. But I felt the infect creatures were just to weak so I ended up with white/blue/red build trying to exploit Stag+Contagion and Magnet+Proliferate. The deck went better than I thought, although I had really bad draws..the Juggernaut and Tumble Magnet showed up only once each. I won 1 of 3 games, but if I had had better draws I could've won 2, I think.
But still there is the question: Do you think an infect (or yet another build) would have been stronger?
Thank you for your inputs!
Thank you so much for insights!
I am quite relieved that I wasn't as off-track as I thought with the choices I made.
After reading the posts I can see that Berserkers, the Saberclaw and the Trigon of Contagion would have been good choices.
The main weakness of my was - besides the lack of bombs - that I no creature direct removal at all...that's saying I underrated the Trigon, but thinking of it now, I guess it would have saved me one or two matches (especially against flyers I performed very badly).
The Shikari clearly underperformed - even when equipped. I would leave it out next time I guess, unless I had some very good equipment to go with it.
I am looking forward to my next sealed play already ;-) Thank you again for help!
Best regards
I played a sealed today and I feel like the worst Magic Player in the whole world. It is to say I am relatively new to limited Magic (and I really like the format) and try to learn as much and as fast as I can.
Maybe somebody cares to give me some opinion and ideas what deck could be built with the card pool. I really wonder what an experienced player would have don with this pool.
Here it goes:
Artifact:
Accorder’s Shield
Chimeric Mass
Culling Dais
Darksteel Myr
Echo Circlet
Flight Spellbomb x2
Gold Myr x3
Golden Urn
Golem’s Heart
Grafted Exoskeleton
Horizon Spellbomb
Iron Myr
Mimic Vat
Moriok Replica
Myr Galvanizer
Myr Reservoir
Necrogen Censer
Nihil Spellbomb
Nim Deathmantle
Perilous Myr
Razorfield Thresher x2
Saberclaw Golem
Strider Harness
Sylvok Replica
Trigon of Corruption x2
Non-basic Lands:
Glimmerpost
Green:
Alpha Tyrranax
Blight Mamba
Carrion Call
Ezuri’s Archers
Putrefax
Tangle Angler
Tel-Jilad Defiance
Tel-Jilad Fallen x2
Viridian Revel
Withstand Death x2
Red:
Assault Strobe
Blade-Tribe Berserkers
Bloodshot Trainee
Embersmith
Ferrovore
Goblin Gaveleer
Ogre Geargrabber
Oxidda Scrapmelter
Scoria Elemental x2
Shatter
Black:
Blackcleave Goblin
Bleak Coven Vampires x2
Blistergrub
Fume Spitter
Painsmith
Blue:
Bonds of Quicksilver
Disperse
Neurok Invisimancer
Plated Seastrider
Scrapdiv Serpent
Screeching Silcaw
Steady Progress
Trinket Mage
Turn Aside
Twisted Image
Volition Reins
White:
Auriok Sunchaser
Ghalma’s Warden
Khemba, Kha Regent
Leonin Arbiter
Razor Hippogriff
Revoke Existence x2
Salvage Scout
Soul Parry x2
Sunspear Shikari
Whitesun’s Passage x2
When I looked at the pool i felt that green and black where too shallow and didn't provide enough material for play. I spent a long time worrying about white, red and blue. Finally, i decided to play white/red and leave blue out (eventhough I really wanted to play the mage and reins) since it didn't provide enough material and would i feared it would unbalance the landbase.
Since I had a ton of Myrs I kind of felt compelled to play the whole Myrset, which I later felt would probably have been better replace by the blue cards, considering I had almost no Metalcraft cards in the pool.
My final deck I submitted was the following:
White:
Auriok Sunchaser
Ghalma’s Warden
Khemba, Kha Regent
Razor Hippogriff
Revoke Existence x2
Sunspear Shikari
Red:
Embersmith
Ferrovore
Ogre Geargrabber
Oxidda Scrapmelter
Shatter
Artifact:
Accorder’s Shield
Chimeric Mass
Darksteel Myr
2x Gold Myr
Iron Myr
Mimic Vat
Myr Galvanizer
Myr Reservoir
Nim Deathmantle
Perilous Myr
Strider Harness
Since I had the Myrs I decided to play 16 land.
I felt that the Myr could provide a solid basis to get the equipment and Khemba / Shikari Engine Running and serve as metalcraft enablers. In the late game I could eat them with the Ferrovore and retrieve them with the Reservoir.
Well, the event was a disaster...I lost almost every game :-( The main problems were, that the equipments were never good and always way too clunky (they were too expensive). I never saw Ferrovore nor Mimic Vat in 5 rounds of play. I never really got to use Chimeric Mass even though I had it in hand quite often.
I would really appreciate some advice on this...
Interestingly the Japanese version of the cards reads:
"If you control 3 or more lands when X enters the battlefield, it enters the battlefield tapped." They used the actual number 3, which might make it easier understandable.
http://magiccards.info/som/jp/229.html
I tested the deck a little bit against some casual decks. Well, once Venser and the Mnemonic Wall are out I could stall my opponent completely with silence recursion and it was easy to pull off venser's ultimate.
Also with the DOJ I was equipped against flyers and other suff. But since the deck is quite mana intensive I felt the need for everflowing chalice to speed things up.
As for the finisher: I didn't play arrest so I preferred BSA over SunTitan but I think the idea intriguing to focus more on removal using arrest and SunTitan and recurse those two with Venser's first ability.
Coming back to topic: I was wondering what you think of including Culling Dais to create a card draw possibility together with nissa and nissa's chosen?
I really miss some carddrawing in the whole deck...