From my card pool I only had two creatures with evolve... Cloudfin Raptor and Adaptative Snapjaw.
Well...............................
Aggro Beatdown it is.
I saw one of the most spectacular games in the last round of my second prerelease; it was Gruul vs. Dimir, and Gruul was getting beaten down hard. They had 1 life, one card left in their library and a Viashino Shanktail facing down a Mortus Strider and a Balustrade Spy (the Dimir player sat on 11 life and tapped out). He untaps, draws his last card, attacks with the Shanktail...and bloodrushes Skargg Goliath. Applause ensued. The opponent was too busy laughing to be mad.
I played Dimir, and went 4-1. Lost 2-1 to a cruddy Boros deck that splashed black in exclusively for Crypt Ghast . Of the rares I popped I played Soul Ransom, Sepulchral Primordial, Undercity Plagueand the promo. I picked up nine removal. Grisly SpectacleandShadow Slice made the deck competitive. I really think Dimir has the better removal than Orzhov.
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I played Dimir, and went 4-1. Lost 2-1 to a cruddy Boros deck that splashed black in exclusively for Crypt Ghast . Of the rares I popped I played Soul Ransom, Sepulchral Primordial, Undercity Plagueand the promo. I picked up nine removal. Grisly SpectacleandShadow Slice made the deck competitive. I really think Dimir has the better removal than Orzhov.
I have a question for people playing the prereleases... do you guys often wish u had maindeck naturalizes? Between keyrunes and lots of retaded creature enchantments, is it worth it? I'm afraid of the white protection from creatures enchant / madcap skills and the orzhov flying/lifelink enchant
I ran two maindeck. They were almost never dead cards. those "protection from multicolored" enchants were very scary - removing them at key moments meant I got rid of two threats for one card. another guy ran equipment that gave +1/+2. That was rather obnoxious and had to go. I was very lucky I had that opportunity.
In the days leading up to the pre-release, the buzz on MTGS seemed to say go Simic. My gut said Boros though, and I went with it, with a splash of black form some Extort
I ended up 4-1, which is the best I've done at an event in awhile.
Through the course of the day, I went against 2 Simic, 1 Orzhov, 1 Gruul, and 1 other Boros player. My one loss was in the Boros mirror, though Gruul gave me a tough time.
I like Orzhov's colors, as well as extort, and almost went that route, but after seeing what an Orzhov mirror match looks like I'm glad I didn't.
Pulled a Gideon out of my prize packs; pretty happy with the evening
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I ran two maindeck. They were almost never dead cards. those "protection from multicolored" enchants were very scary - removing them at key moments meant I got rid of two threats for one card. another guy ran equipment that gave +1/+2. That was rather obnoxious and had to go. I was very lucky I had that opportunity.
Your decklist kinda produced my question. I've played lotsa drafts online and pretty much never mainboarded artifact/enchant removal. I guess sealed has lower power level than draft so more artifacts and enchants see play?
Did anyone play Agoraphobia? Kinda hard to judge. XP is needed.
I was lucky enough to pull Lazav, Dimir Mastermind and Obzedat, Ghost Council while playing Orzhov. The worst part of the night was getting my Luminate Primordial countered by Mystic Genesis. I only pulled three extort cards other than the guild promo, but I can already tell that extort is definitely a deck to draft, assuming you can pick up the right removal.
Most amusing match i had was with a dimir who had me chump blocking his 15/15+ aberration with all my ****. He played a duskmantle seer, and then proceeded to kill himself seeing as his deck has almost twice my deck's average CMc.
i have to say, Martial Glory has to be my MVP together with Boros Keyrune. (nobody ever blocks the 1/1 Double strike turning into a 4/4)
Was given Dimir box, but ended up playing Boros from the packs inside instead. Pulling Gideon, Champion of Justice, Frontline Medic, Spark Trooper and Five-Alarm Fire it was a no-brainer. Hadn't lost a round until the final match when I went against a good Orzhov deck. I had Gideon out both games, but he had several Kingpin's Pet and he was swinging at Gideon with a Lord of the Void, so Gideon didn't live long. Final game I had both the Five-Alarm & the Spark Trooper in hand & couldn't pull a second mountain even though their were loads of them in the deck. End up 3-1.
I ran two maindeck. They were almost never dead cards. those "protection from multicolored" enchants were very scary - removing them at key moments meant I got rid of two threats for one card. another guy ran equipment that gave +1/+2. That was rather obnoxious and had to go. I was very lucky I had that opportunity.
I'm sorry, but your deck on the previous page looks pretty bad, and those protection from multiple color creatures are unplayable. Seems like your competition was pretty sparse.
I keep two naturalizes in my sideboard, and never but them in. I was grull tho, so I had the removal to deal with creature enchantments.
Had many games where Skyknight Legionnaire made for surprise battalions. Gift of Orzhoval saved my bacon a couple games enchanting Warmind Infantry. Only got Boros Reckoner into play once, but it kept the Gruul player from crushing me with bloodrage.
First round was Boros, last three rounds were Gruul. Saw one Simic deck make it into the final round 3-0, everyone else was Boros or Gruul. There were a lot of grindy Orzhov games going on though - I'm fairly certain Dutiful Thrull would have ruined my day.
My wife went 5-0 with Boros. She had the red Primoridial and the 1/1 Goblin with haste. I went Gruul, and 3-2. I think Boros is probably the best overall choice, although pools may vary of course.
Ended up with one loss tonight, against the eventual winner of the tournament. He's dimir, I'm simic, and I've got him to 2 life compared to my 11, and he's facing down a twice-evolved Elusive Krasis. He activates the first ability on Duskmantle Guildmage and subsequently begins to sacrifice his creatures with Undercity Informer. First time, top card land. Second time, top card land. Third time, top card land. Fourth time, exactly enough nonland cards off the top to kill me.
My best card of the night was aetherize - this card is huge against pretty much anyone but Orzhov and was way underrated in every set review I saw.
EDIT: Forgot to mention another huge player in the deck - Wasteland Viper with Pit Fight. Not only does the Viper have 2 toughness, allowing you to trigger evolve on your one drops, but paired with Pit Fight it also can answer a ton of pesky threats. I pulled no bomb rares, but anytime my opponent played one I could answer it with this combo.
Picked Boros,pulled a lot of orzhov plus a lot of fatties and high costing stuff. It was disheartening seeing only 3 battalion cards n hardly any boros cards. I eventually played naya and moved to an all color deck just for fun since there was hardly any interaction in my RWG pulls
All I can say after my prerelease is, this set is really awful. Just dreck (at least in limited)
The lack of removal is embarrassing, and it all being concentrated in B & W make Simic and Grull pretty much completely unplayable. Out of the 30 or so people there, the Simic and Grull players were universally getting trouced and going 0-2 drop.
this set has far more removal that RtR, and it's nowhere near limited to black and white...
I'm sorry, but your deck on the previous page looks pretty bad, and those protection from multiple color creatures are unplayable. Seems like your competition was pretty sparse.
I keep two naturalizes in my sideboard, and never but them in. I was grull tho, so I had the removal to deal with creature enchantments.
It's a one mana protection from multicolored enchant, not a creature. I saw seven played against me and I was able to remove them in every instance I needed to.
I saw a friend of mine use agoraphobia, but I did not play against him. I saw artifacts and enchantments in nearly every game. two mana removal is good, especially when you lack effective creature kill and rely on counters...
My competition may have been sparse, yes, but it was a midnight prerelease, so they had all the excuses in the world for playing poorly. I did go 5-0, with my matches as follows: 2-1, 2-0, 2-0, 2-0, 2-0.
If my decklist doesn't look all that great, perhaps the consistency of its performance says something. Oftentimes the local meta requires some different choices. In any event, I'm glad to say that Simic can win rather handily. I'm looking forward to trying out Boros Sunday, to get the guild letter and box.
Went with Dimir (mostly...ok totally because of flavor). I knew milling wasn't gonna be viable given the scarcity of mill cards that I probably would be getting. Decided that it was gonna be more control and did was not disappointed. Got the second to last Dimir box and got pretty lucky with a good deal of removal but no bomb mythics (other than master biomancer). I think a good strategy with Dimir isn't necessarily to mill the opponent to death, rather mill when you can to pump spells like Death's Approach (which is disgusting BTW) and Consuming Aberration while hopefully getting rid of threats before they even reach the other player's hand!
Anyway went 3-1. First game was simic and blew the opponent out with Dimir Charms, Death's Approach and Killing Glare. Second game was against Boros and got kind of mana screwed...which sucked because the opponent mulled to a hand with plains, mountain, TWO Wojek Halberdiers and TWO Madcap Skills. Got wrecked before I could get stream...also didnt help that I played Death's Approach as an instant...
Third game against Gruul was scary but the other player didn't really play the bloodrush mechanic to its fullest...which is scary in its own right. We were 1-1 and I was getting my head pounded in with one of his two RUbblehulks but I topdecked Stolen Identity and Ciphered it on the specter copying rubblehulk twice SO SWEET.
Last game against Dimir mirror....won pretty quickly because I think most Dimir players wanted to go the mill route, but there are just not enough cards to do it with in Sealed. Beatdown is def the way to go.
Overall I absolutely love this set and prerelease. I think the flavor is awesome and there are some serious contenders for standard play.Simic was actually the most popular guild at my store, which may not be surprising given awesome creatures like Cloudfin Raptor...although I think the scariest to play against are Boros and Gruul. Having an opponent attack into you with mana open is pants-wetting scary. Both decks can easily kill around turn 5...but I still like my Dimir. Great fun today!
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Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir Mono-U Control
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Went Dimir, placed second (got beaten down by Boros last round).
Pool was decent; it had a fair amount of Dimir friendly stuff (I went for a largely unblockable cipher strategy, with a few big bombs to win late game), but it also had a lot of good Gruul stuff. Pool could've been more focused, but I made out with what I had.
One of the funniest things is that I pulled the GiantAdephage, which naturally is basically an instant win if you can get it out and going. I was blue black but had splashed green (five forests) to eventually play that card. It was a dead draw every one of my 11 games (3 of the 4 rounds went to 3 games).
Still, second place was far far better than I've ever done before.
As I recall, there were 2 Gruul players, and 2 Orzhov players out of something like 25 people. I saw 3 Dimir, although one of them got pool screwed so badly that they ended up in Boros. The rest were a fairly even split of Boros and Simic.
Cipher + unblockable was an amazingly effective strategy; one game it got me 3 copies of my opponent's Consuming Aberration
i did a midnight pre-release with orzhov, went 3rd and on the prize boosters i got an obzedat, ghost council and decided to go for another round the next morning, again i went with orzhov and won the whole thing, mostly because my rares were much better and i got another obzedat to play, the organizr even asked me to show him the 2 cards on round 3 ause someone was complaining that i was playing with cars from the previous Pre-release.
the funniest thing was when i had to play one of my teamates and he was simic (bant) and drew only whit cars, but no plains the whole game, when i won he threw the deck against the wall... we all were like WTF? because the guy is very pleasant and has ever been a sore loser before
Went 4-0 today playing Orzhov on a whim. I fully intended to run Boros, but when I saw how many other people had the same idea, I changed my mind for a the chance of opening Obzedat.
Of course, with the luck I have with opening packs, that wasn't gonna happen, but I did end up with a brutal deck that was slapping down Boros players left and right. Lord of the Void was an all star for me, with Keyrunes, Knights of Obligation, and and an awesome removal suite all working hard to get me there.
Extort ended up being such a fun guild mechanic to play with, and multiple triggers going off every turn was backbreaking for most decks. This was quite honestly the most fun prerelease I have been to. The guilds interact so well with each other, and I honestly found these guild mechanics way more compelling to build decks with in limited than the ones in RtR. I was super down on this set for the majority of spoiler season, but after playing a ton on Cockatrice and today, I feel like it's actually one of the more interesting sets in a while.
I picked Gruul because I wanted to go RG with a splash of white. Had a total of 8 w or r/w cards so I went Gruul/Simic and was that combination beast. Two of the best cards of the day were Madcap Skills and Way of the Thief. I was able to get those on the Drakewing Krasis and Skarrg Guildmage then also added the Hands of Binding and also using Bloodrush
I ended up 4-1 but only lost the last match because of a play mistake and forgot Elusive Krasis wouldn't deal damage when I attacked with Hands of Binding attached... I was going to bloodrush but forgot and tapped my mana to play another spell. Or else I would have gone 5-0. All 4 of my wins were 2-0 and the loss was 1-2.
Here I was, thinking I'd have some crazy token manipulation.
Guild Pack: Biomass Mutation
Pack 1: Molten Primordial
Pack 2: Biomass Mutation
Pack 3: Fathom Mage
Pack 4: Signal the Clans
Pack 5: Luminate Primordial
From my card pool I only had two creatures with evolve... Cloudfin Raptor and Adaptative Snapjaw.
Well...............................
Aggro Beatdown it is.
Ended up in top 8 out of 100. Take that haters.
Ripped a Godless Shrine, Aurelia's Fury, and an Alms Beast. Extort is not that exciting. Evolve, however, is balls to the walls insane. Fathom Mage is INSANE. One guy bioshifted 7 +1/+1 counters onto his fathom mage and drew 7 cards. Also traded a foil Mind Grind for a foil Ogre Slum Lord.
By the way, Fathom Mage + Ivy Lane Denizen is bonkers. They're both pretty bonkers. Simic for the win.
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[15:21] <@CC> Remember, if you argue, you are an idiot.
Untrophied Wins:
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My friends say I'm very limited.
Grisly Spectacle, Death's Approach, and Devour Flesh can all easily be played by Orzhov, however. Dimir gets a bit of extra value out of Spectacle, sure, since it powers up Aberration and milling is a legitimate plan B for most Dimir decks, but it's plenty good for the Church of Deals. Dimir's only exclusive removal spells are Undercity Plague, Soul's Ransom, and Dimir Charm (two rares and an extremely narrow uncommon), compared to Executioner's Swing, Orzhov Charm, High Priest of Penance, and One Thousand Lashes, plus Orzhov gets to play Smite and Angelic Edict.
Glad to see you got good value and effect out of Dimir though
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I ran two maindeck. They were almost never dead cards. those "protection from multicolored" enchants were very scary - removing them at key moments meant I got rid of two threats for one card. another guy ran equipment that gave +1/+2. That was rather obnoxious and had to go. I was very lucky I had that opportunity.
My deck:
1 Boros Charm
1 Foundry Champion
1 Angelic Skirmisher
2 Boros Guildgate
1 Boros Reckoner
2 Skyknight Legionnaire
1 Daring Skyjek
1 Act of Treason
1 Wojek Halberdiers
3 Smite
1 Midnight Recovery
1 Holy Mantle
2 Bomber Corps
1 Knight of Obligation
1 Sunhome Guildmage
1 Fortress Cyclops
1 Firefist Striker
1 Assault Griffon
1 Basilica Screecher
I ended up 4-1, which is the best I've done at an event in awhile.
Through the course of the day, I went against 2 Simic, 1 Orzhov, 1 Gruul, and 1 other Boros player. My one loss was in the Boros mirror, though Gruul gave me a tough time.
I like Orzhov's colors, as well as extort, and almost went that route, but after seeing what an Orzhov mirror match looks like I'm glad I didn't.
Pulled a Gideon out of my prize packs; pretty happy with the evening
UBW Sharuum
BR Olivia Voldaren
UR Jhoira
URG Riku
U Vendilion Clique
Your decklist kinda produced my question. I've played lotsa drafts online and pretty much never mainboarded artifact/enchant removal. I guess sealed has lower power level than draft so more artifacts and enchants see play?
Did anyone play Agoraphobia? Kinda hard to judge. XP is needed.
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Most amusing match i had was with a dimir who had me chump blocking his 15/15+ aberration with all my ****. He played a duskmantle seer, and then proceeded to kill himself seeing as his deck has almost twice my deck's average CMc.
i have to say, Martial Glory has to be my MVP together with Boros Keyrune. (nobody ever blocks the 1/1 Double strike turning into a 4/4)
went 4-0
I'm sorry, but your deck on the previous page looks pretty bad, and those protection from multiple color creatures are unplayable. Seems like your competition was pretty sparse.
I keep two naturalizes in my sideboard, and never but them in. I was grull tho, so I had the removal to deal with creature enchantments.
7x Plains
2x Boros Guildgate
1x Foundry Street Denizen
1x Firefist Striker
1x Sunhome Guildmage
1x Wojek Halberdiers
1x Boros Reckoner
1x Frontline Medic
2x Skyknight Legionnaire
3x Warmind Infantry
1x Firemane Avenger
2x Assault Griffin
1x Towering Thunderfist
1x Foundry Champion
2x Martial Glory
1x Massive Raid
1x Arrows of Justice
1x Prophetic Prism
1x Gift of Orzhova
Had many games where Skyknight Legionnaire made for surprise battalions. Gift of Orzhoval saved my bacon a couple games enchanting Warmind Infantry. Only got Boros Reckoner into play once, but it kept the Gruul player from crushing me with bloodrage.
First round was Boros, last three rounds were Gruul. Saw one Simic deck make it into the final round 3-0, everyone else was Boros or Gruul. There were a lot of grindy Orzhov games going on though - I'm fairly certain Dutiful Thrull would have ruined my day.
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Currently playing Knight of the Reliquary - Retreat to Coralhelm Combo
My best card of the night was aetherize - this card is huge against pretty much anyone but Orzhov and was way underrated in every set review I saw.
EDIT: Forgot to mention another huge player in the deck - Wasteland Viper with Pit Fight. Not only does the Viper have 2 toughness, allowing you to trigger evolve on your one drops, but paired with Pit Fight it also can answer a ton of pesky threats. I pulled no bomb rares, but anytime my opponent played one I could answer it with this combo.
My custom sets:
Caeia Block (Released - Beta)
Generals of Dareth (In Design)
Went 3-3-1
this set has far more removal that RtR, and it's nowhere near limited to black and white...
It's a one mana protection from multicolored enchant, not a creature. I saw seven played against me and I was able to remove them in every instance I needed to.
I saw a friend of mine use agoraphobia, but I did not play against him. I saw artifacts and enchantments in nearly every game. two mana removal is good, especially when you lack effective creature kill and rely on counters...
My competition may have been sparse, yes, but it was a midnight prerelease, so they had all the excuses in the world for playing poorly. I did go 5-0, with my matches as follows: 2-1, 2-0, 2-0, 2-0, 2-0.
If my decklist doesn't look all that great, perhaps the consistency of its performance says something. Oftentimes the local meta requires some different choices. In any event, I'm glad to say that Simic can win rather handily. I'm looking forward to trying out Boros Sunday, to get the guild letter and box.
Anyway went 3-1. First game was simic and blew the opponent out with Dimir Charms, Death's Approach and Killing Glare. Second game was against Boros and got kind of mana screwed...which sucked because the opponent mulled to a hand with plains, mountain, TWO Wojek Halberdiers and TWO Madcap Skills. Got wrecked before I could get stream...also didnt help that I played Death's Approach as an instant...
Third game against Gruul was scary but the other player didn't really play the bloodrush mechanic to its fullest...which is scary in its own right. We were 1-1 and I was getting my head pounded in with one of his two RUbblehulks but I topdecked Stolen Identity and Ciphered it on the specter copying rubblehulk twice SO SWEET.
Last game against Dimir mirror....won pretty quickly because I think most Dimir players wanted to go the mill route, but there are just not enough cards to do it with in Sealed. Beatdown is def the way to go.
Overall I absolutely love this set and prerelease. I think the flavor is awesome and there are some serious contenders for standard play.Simic was actually the most popular guild at my store, which may not be surprising given awesome creatures like Cloudfin Raptor...although I think the scariest to play against are Boros and Gruul. Having an opponent attack into you with mana open is pants-wetting scary. Both decks can easily kill around turn 5...but I still like my Dimir. Great fun today!
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir Mono-U Control
Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath
Sen Triplets
Mizzix of the Izmagnus
Derevi Stax
VolThrun
Marchesa, The Black Rose
Olivia Voldaren, Vampire Tribal
Modern: Fish, JUND/Junk
--------
RIP Twin
Pool was decent; it had a fair amount of Dimir friendly stuff (I went for a largely unblockable cipher strategy, with a few big bombs to win late game), but it also had a lot of good Gruul stuff. Pool could've been more focused, but I made out with what I had.
One of the funniest things is that I pulled the GiantAdephage, which naturally is basically an instant win if you can get it out and going. I was blue black but had splashed green (five forests) to eventually play that card. It was a dead draw every one of my 11 games (3 of the 4 rounds went to 3 games).
Still, second place was far far better than I've ever done before.
Pool rares:
Gruul Ragebeast
Diluvian Primordial
Stolen Identity
Blind Obedience
Giant Adephage
Rubblehulk
Prize rares:
Realmwright
Rubblehulk Again :\ (Traded it for Molten Primordial and Ogre Slumlord)
Boros Reckoner
Breeding Pool
As I recall, there were 2 Gruul players, and 2 Orzhov players out of something like 25 people. I saw 3 Dimir, although one of them got pool screwed so badly that they ended up in Boros. The rest were a fairly even split of Boros and Simic.
Cipher + unblockable was an amazingly effective strategy; one game it got me 3 copies of my opponent's Consuming Aberration
the funniest thing was when i had to play one of my teamates and he was simic (bant) and drew only whit cars, but no plains the whole game, when i won he threw the deck against the wall... we all were like WTF? because the guy is very pleasant and has ever been a sore loser before
Chile!
Of course, with the luck I have with opening packs, that wasn't gonna happen, but I did end up with a brutal deck that was slapping down Boros players left and right. Lord of the Void was an all star for me, with Keyrunes, Knights of Obligation, and and an awesome removal suite all working hard to get me there.
Extort ended up being such a fun guild mechanic to play with, and multiple triggers going off every turn was backbreaking for most decks. This was quite honestly the most fun prerelease I have been to. The guilds interact so well with each other, and I honestly found these guild mechanics way more compelling to build decks with in limited than the ones in RtR. I was super down on this set for the majority of spoiler season, but after playing a ton on Cockatrice and today, I feel like it's actually one of the more interesting sets in a while.
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Playing:
Death's Shadow Jund
Played:
Kiki Chord, Zoo variants, Goblins, Burn
I ended up 4-1 but only lost the last match because of a play mistake and forgot Elusive Krasis wouldn't deal damage when I attacked with Hands of Binding attached... I was going to bloodrush but forgot and tapped my mana to play another spell. Or else I would have gone 5-0. All 4 of my wins were 2-0 and the loss was 1-2.