Game 2 - Opponent chooses to play last, which I didn't notice. Woke up after getting 4 hours sleep to play in the PTQ only to get a truly god-awful pool and mull every single game, literally, including twice to 5, and still get screwed and flooded multiple times until I'm 0-3. Decided to tilt and play League after I lost the 3rd round in 15 minutes.
Just following up after some testing. 4 rounds so far trying out 3 different decks.
Round 1:
I first started with the WR deck for one round. Well, I never drew Relief Captain or Resolute Blademaster the entire round, and didn't curve out very well at all, but game 1 I had an okay start when he picked to play vs a slow controlling 3 color+colorless good stuff deck, and two Expedition Raptors in a row helped me get there, barely. Game two I got color screwed on red, and didn't do much until he played Ulamog off a scion from Eldrazi Skyspawner, Cultivator Drone and 8 land. Game 3, he mulls to 4 and concedes on 2 swamps after his 4th draw, though I didn't have a very strong start myself. I didn't have to mull this round.
Won Round 1, 2-1 with WR
Round 2:BR
Chose to play first, kept a slow hand that started on 3 mana, drew Ruins of Oran-Rief. His start was slow so I used that to bolster my guys and won a close game when he tapped his 3/3 awakened land to cast Clutch of Currents by accident and conceded, but I was likely winning with him still outnumbered and on 5 life and Devour in Flames to get another guy through if he had one answer.
Game 2, opponent plays, I mull once, hand is slow, he wins on turn 8 with Eldrazi Obligator
Game 3, I choose to play, he mulls to 5 and I run him over.
Won Round 2, 2-1 with BR
Round 3:BR
Game 1 - Opponent chooses to play, I mull to 6 and keep a questionable hand with 5 lands (all colors including Crumbling Vestige) and boulder salvo. I only draw 3 spells in 8 turns and it's not even close. I just hate mulling to 5 in decks like this and just preferred to try to get lucky with draws rather than risk getting anything besides 2-3 land and 2-3 spells, which would not even necessarily be very good.
Game 2 - I keep a 5 mana (all colors) 2 spell hand (Tar Snare and Kozilek's Shrieker[/card]). Despite drawing a lot of land and being in a very bad spot (dead on board, unless I chump block), I opt to attack so he think's something up and puts both his fatties on my Shrieker (with a +1/+1 counter from Ruins), I trade Reality Hemorrhage and Unnatural Endurance for his Tajuru Pathwarden and Endbringer, wiping his board while he's tapped out, and I am out of spells. He plays Netcaster Spider and Stalking Drone With exactly 7 land and having just drawn a boarded in Scour from Existence I opt not to use menace, and when he double blocks I blow him out. He must've been tilting pretty hard to do that block in this spot since it was unlikely I would kill him, and by only blocking with the Drone, he'd either force the trick out or they'd trade, instead he let me win again.
Game 3 - I realize my UG deck would be better suited to fighting his deck since he has a lot of blockers and fatties himself, and my BR deck just doesn't win fast enough and the sort of card advantage it can generate just can't deal with all his defense. I take over the mid-late game after taking out his Spiders by trading down with some fatties and get through with Gravity Negator and fatties.
Won Round 3, 2-1 with BR 1-1 and UG 1-0
Round 4:UG - Just feels like it has a more solid gameplan than "hope to curve out well and draw all the good synergy cards, or all the finishing cards at just the right time."
Game 1 - I win the roll and choose to play first with a decent hand, IslandCrumbling VestigeLoam LarvaHedron CrawlerUnnatural AggressionCloud MantaBirthing Hulk . I draw an island on the first draw and hope I can go for the Cloud Manta instead of having to Loam up a land. I get there with a forest. But I also draw a total of 4 spells in 16 draw steps, and lose while he's on 4 life (mostly due to the Cloud Manta which his deck was ill-suited to deal with, it seemed).
Game 2 - I stick with [mana]UG[/card], opt to play, mull once into a 2 land Loam Larva hand, and win handily off of two Gravity Negators followed by a Saddleback Lagac.
Game 3 - I start with a 6 spell 1 lander, mull, 2 lander with Deceiver of Form and only creature is a Gravity Negator, Mull into a 2-lander IslandForestNetcaster SpiderGiant MantisBirthing Hulk. Sigh, it's like a mull to 4, but, if I get 2 land quickly enough I have some decent blockers! Scry the Roilmage's Trick to the bottom some of my only card advantage.
But I get there quickly, hold him off, eventually get some damage in with flyers until he deals with the ones I've drawn. And then just when I think I'm getting a foothold again, he plays a pair of Kozilek's Pathfinders and starts wearing me down. With the help of Deceiver of Form I scry through most of my deck but he doesn't ever see the Roilmage's Trick I drew. I bait him into an alpha attack by over-committing on my side, with Void Grafter to protect my dwindling ranks. It works like a charm, he deals 2 damage off his one remaining Pathfinder and I swing back for the win.
Won Round 4, 2-1 with UG
So, yeah, my pool seems pretty bad still. I lucked out hard to get to 4 wins so far and I'm dreading the sort of beating I'm likely to get in Round 5. SAVE ME! What am I missing?
This sealed pool is tough. There isn't much removal and it's not that good. There are, however, lots of playables in each color, though none of them stands out as being particularly powerful. The quality gold cards are not bombs and they straddle different, albeit marginally viable, color combinations. Some of the color combos have awkward curves, but slightly more powerful cards, e.g. UB (with far too many 4 drops). I think that may be the least viable of the ones I'm showing for that very reason.
WR and RB have their unique perks. They have a decent amount of removal considering the pool and good curves. Then again, they are both playing dual Eldrazi Aggressors without a ton of colorless creatures (which I tend to dislike), but at least the decks have ways of making them better.
WR has tricks, support and Resolute Blademaster as a finisher. RB has a similar curve, but has more utility and card advantage generating creatures and tops off with the Deceiver of Form (which isn't that great in RB anyway, but is a bit too slow for the WR gameplan.
I expect WR to have a higher percentage of explosive draws that just roll over the opponent, but I would expect to have to mull more to get starts like that and then lose a good amount of that time to grindier decks that manage to hold the aggression off. I expect RB to have a slower start and end up in awkward stalemates without evasion more often, not quite getting the sort of synergy it might need in a timely manner and losing that way quite a bit, though it has decent enough ways of accruing card advantage and some higher-value plays.
I also made a UG deck splashing Roil Spout that has a decent number of ways to stall, flyers for some offense and Gravity Negators to get the green fat in the air, but it is short on removal, obviously. It's also pretty heavy on the 4cc spells, though nowhere near as back as UB might be. The main thing is it just can't deal with problem creatures, except if it gets a steam-rolling draw, or I get ahead enough early on to race. It can race well, especially by just leaving G back to untap and play both offense and defense, roil spout to put them on the back foot, Roilmage's Trick could be a blowout every now and then, and there are other ways to win a battle of attrition if they are also short on ways to deal my threats.
I honestly have no idea what is best here. Maybe they are all just sort of different. WR just feels kind of greedy - the sort of deck you have to get lucky for it to work and you give up too many games to not curving out perfectly or losing to the smallest amount of opponent-generated card advantage when being forced to trade 1 for 1. If they deal with my early creatures and I can't support chain I just lose. If they get ahead early I can lose easily too and it's easy for that to happen going second.
RB has the problem of playing lots of mediocre creatures that aren't made better by being support targets, and though it has an okay amount of removal and some card advantage, it couldn't deal with a decent tempo deck, or a good start from an aggressive deck that doesn't let it set up.
UG seems like it would most consistently be able to force the game to be played on its own terms, stabilizing and then swinging back with evasion or tricks as back up, but vs another deck trying to do something similar, chances are they have better cards doing the same thing, and again, not that many ways to deal with problematic creatures permanently.
Maybe I missed a good color combo. I can't seem to figure out any sort of 2 base-color splashing 2 colors plus colorless value-packed control deck, there just doesn't seem to be one and the non-basic lands don't support much of that anyway. Maybe it doesn't matter which one I pick because they all have strengths and weaknesses, but BR at least has a decent amount of removal, so maybe that's the way to go? Maybe red-white is stronger than I think?
Which deck? The one full of grey ogres that is sort of aggressive yet has inexplicable do-nothing walls with two actual threats in the entire deck, both of which die to the bazillion essence scatters, pacifisms, counters (which they can wait to play because I have no actual threats), doom blades/liturgies, and maindeck plummets that I would run into constantly, and no way to protect them, and has 2 of the worst removal spells as it's only removal?
If there isn't a severely underpowered deck in this pool, I'd like to see it so I know that you're not just trolling because that's my suspicion right now.
Ended up 3-3 dropping. Probably 4 or 5 opponents had significantly better decks though some of them had mana problems or mull problems as well. Some of that was self-induced. Went to game three every round except the last where my opponent seemingly only lost his two rounds to a multiples games of manascrew which he mentioned right before we began. He had a sick UR deck which had it all and the only remotely "bad" card he played was thunder strike by a long shot.
As far as my thoughts during deck construction: It seems obvious to play red just because of the dragons and shock. However, if I do end up playing red I also end up having to play a lot of mediocre cards. Not sure that's avoidable with any color combo, though and I needed finishers/psuedo-bombs. Scourge of Valkas was not amazing, given that it trades with multiple uncommon flyers, required RRR and is vulnerable to much of the removal available at common and people were maindecking plummets quite often.
As far as what I ended up pairing that with I don't want to influence any other opinions any more than my push for red.
WHITE
Angelic Wall
Archangel of Thune
Auramancer
Blessing
Celestial Flare
2x Dawnstrike Paladin
Fiendslayer Paladin
Fortify
2x Griffin Sentinel
Master of Diversion
Pay No Heed
Pillarfield Ox
Soulmender
2x Suntail Hawk
Wall of Swords
BLUE
Armored Cancrix
Coral Merfolk
Disperse
Divination
Essence Scatter
Frost Breath
Glimpse the Future
Nephalia Seakite
Scroll Thief
Sensory Deprivation
Tome Scour
Warden of Evos Isle
Wall of Frost
BLACK
Accursed Spirit
Blightcaster
Blood Bairn
Deathgaze Cockatrice
Duress
Festering Newt
Mark of the Vampire
Minotaur Abomination
Nightmare
Nightwing Shade
Sengir Vampire
Shrivel
Tenacious Dead
Vampire Warlord
2x Vile Rebirth
RED
Barrage of Expendables
Battle Sliver
Cyclops Tyrant
Demolish
Goblin Shortcutter
Lightning Talons
Pitchburn Devils
Scourge of Valkas
Shivan Dragon
Shock
Smelt
Striking Sliver
2x Thunder Strike
Wild Guess
GREEN
Advocate of the Beast
Briarpack Alpha
Elvish Mystic
Groundshaker Sliver
Giant Spider
Lay of the Land
Naturalize
2x Plummet
2x Ranger's Guile
Trollhide
ARTIFACTS
Accorder's Shield
Pyromancer's Gauntlet
2x Rod of Ruin
2x Sliver Construct
2x Staff of the Death Magus
Staff of the Flame Magus
Staff of the Sun Magus
Round 5: UG
Game 1 - I mull once and keep a hand with Island Forest Cultivator Drone 2xGravity Negator Giant Mantis. My first two draws are Plains and Ruins of Oran-Rief, followed by a Saddleback Laga. I'm getting counters on and beating down with my Gravity Negators and have ground defenders to deal with his 2/2s, 3/1s and 3/2s. He doesn't last very long to my 3/4 and 4/5 negators, and a timely Containment Membrane to hold him back and let me sacrifice 2 blockers to his Tajuru Pathfinder and Reality Hemorrhage which I had a strong feeling was the trick he had been holding.
Game 2 - Opponent chooses to play last, which I didn't notice. Woke up after getting 4 hours sleep to play in the PTQ only to get a truly god-awful pool and mull every single game, literally, including twice to 5, and still get screwed and flooded multiple times until I'm 0-3. Decided to tilt and play League after I lost the 3rd round in 15 minutes.
Kept a hand Island Crumbling Vestige Kozilek's Channeler Gravity Negator Stalking Drone Saddleback Lagac Giant Mantis. Probably a mull on the play, but like I said, oops. I draw a Tide Drifter and play the Stalking Drone off the Crumbling Vestige. Next turn I draw an Island and play Tide Drifter. Next turn I draw Unnatural Aggression and the following turn a Forest, and keep beating down with the Stalking Drone bolstered by the Tide Drifter. My opponent puts a Strider Harness on his Kor Scythemaster and I expect he might try to double-block the Stalking Drone with that and his Kor Sky Climber, which I can now Unnatural Aggression with my +0/+1 Gravity Negator in play, but he just blocks with the Kor Scythemaster, clearly not realizing the Tide Drifter gave the Stalking Drone +1 Toughness. He just throws it away. I have plenty of follow-up in a Saddleback Lagac and Giant Mantis and make short work of him.
Round 5, 2-0 with UG and 5-0 in the League! God, I just wish I got that lucky with my ubercrap pools these last two PTQs. /cry
Round 1:
I first started with the WR deck for one round. Well, I never drew Relief Captain or Resolute Blademaster the entire round, and didn't curve out very well at all, but game 1 I had an okay start when he picked to play vs a slow controlling 3 color+colorless good stuff deck, and two Expedition Raptors in a row helped me get there, barely. Game two I got color screwed on red, and didn't do much until he played Ulamog off a scion from Eldrazi Skyspawner, Cultivator Drone and 8 land. Game 3, he mulls to 4 and concedes on 2 swamps after his 4th draw, though I didn't have a very strong start myself. I didn't have to mull this round.
Won Round 1, 2-1 with WR
Round 2: BR
Chose to play first, kept a slow hand that started on 3 mana, drew Ruins of Oran-Rief. His start was slow so I used that to bolster my guys and won a close game when he tapped his 3/3 awakened land to cast Clutch of Currents by accident and conceded, but I was likely winning with him still outnumbered and on 5 life and Devour in Flames to get another guy through if he had one answer.
Game 2, opponent plays, I mull once, hand is slow, he wins on turn 8 with Eldrazi Obligator
Game 3, I choose to play, he mulls to 5 and I run him over.
Won Round 2, 2-1 with BR
Round 3: BR
Game 1 - Opponent chooses to play, I mull to 6 and keep a questionable hand with 5 lands (all colors including Crumbling Vestige) and boulder salvo. I only draw 3 spells in 8 turns and it's not even close. I just hate mulling to 5 in decks like this and just preferred to try to get lucky with draws rather than risk getting anything besides 2-3 land and 2-3 spells, which would not even necessarily be very good.
Game 2 - I keep a 5 mana (all colors) 2 spell hand (Tar Snare and Kozilek's Shrieker[/card]). Despite drawing a lot of land and being in a very bad spot (dead on board, unless I chump block), I opt to attack so he think's something up and puts both his fatties on my Shrieker (with a +1/+1 counter from Ruins), I trade Reality Hemorrhage and Unnatural Endurance for his Tajuru Pathwarden and Endbringer, wiping his board while he's tapped out, and I am out of spells. He plays Netcaster Spider and Stalking Drone With exactly 7 land and having just drawn a boarded in Scour from Existence I opt not to use menace, and when he double blocks I blow him out. He must've been tilting pretty hard to do that block in this spot since it was unlikely I would kill him, and by only blocking with the Drone, he'd either force the trick out or they'd trade, instead he let me win again.
Game 3 - I realize my UG deck would be better suited to fighting his deck since he has a lot of blockers and fatties himself, and my BR deck just doesn't win fast enough and the sort of card advantage it can generate just can't deal with all his defense. I take over the mid-late game after taking out his Spiders by trading down with some fatties and get through with Gravity Negator and fatties.
Won Round 3, 2-1 with BR 1-1 and UG 1-0
Round 4: UG - Just feels like it has a more solid gameplan than "hope to curve out well and draw all the good synergy cards, or all the finishing cards at just the right time."
Game 1 - I win the roll and choose to play first with a decent hand, Island Crumbling Vestige Loam Larva Hedron Crawler Unnatural Aggression Cloud Manta Birthing Hulk . I draw an island on the first draw and hope I can go for the Cloud Manta instead of having to Loam up a land. I get there with a forest. But I also draw a total of 4 spells in 16 draw steps, and lose while he's on 4 life (mostly due to the Cloud Manta which his deck was ill-suited to deal with, it seemed).
Game 2 - I stick with [mana]UG[/card], opt to play, mull once into a 2 land Loam Larva hand, and win handily off of two Gravity Negators followed by a Saddleback Lagac.
Game 3 - I start with a 6 spell 1 lander, mull, 2 lander with Deceiver of Form and only creature is a Gravity Negator, Mull into a 2-lander Island Forest Netcaster Spider Giant Mantis Birthing Hulk. Sigh, it's like a mull to 4, but, if I get 2 land quickly enough I have some decent blockers! Scry the Roilmage's Trick to the bottom
But I get there quickly, hold him off, eventually get some damage in with flyers until he deals with the ones I've drawn. And then just when I think I'm getting a foothold again, he plays a pair of Kozilek's Pathfinders and starts wearing me down. With the help of Deceiver of Form I scry through most of my deck but he doesn't ever see the Roilmage's Trick I drew. I bait him into an alpha attack by over-committing on my side, with Void Grafter to protect my dwindling ranks. It works like a charm, he deals 2 damage off his one remaining Pathfinder and I swing back for the win.
Won Round 4, 2-1 with UG
So, yeah, my pool seems pretty bad still. I lucked out hard to get to 4 wins so far and I'm dreading the sort of beating I'm likely to get in Round 5. SAVE ME! What am I missing?
WR and RB have their unique perks. They have a decent amount of removal considering the pool and good curves. Then again, they are both playing dual Eldrazi Aggressors without a ton of colorless creatures (which I tend to dislike), but at least the decks have ways of making them better.
WR has tricks, support and Resolute Blademaster as a finisher. RB has a similar curve, but has more utility and card advantage generating creatures and tops off with the Deceiver of Form (which isn't that great in RB anyway, but is a bit too slow for the WR gameplan.
I expect WR to have a higher percentage of explosive draws that just roll over the opponent, but I would expect to have to mull more to get starts like that and then lose a good amount of that time to grindier decks that manage to hold the aggression off. I expect RB to have a slower start and end up in awkward stalemates without evasion more often, not quite getting the sort of synergy it might need in a timely manner and losing that way quite a bit, though it has decent enough ways of accruing card advantage and some higher-value plays.
I also made a UG deck splashing Roil Spout that has a decent number of ways to stall, flyers for some offense and Gravity Negators to get the green fat in the air, but it is short on removal, obviously. It's also pretty heavy on the 4cc spells, though nowhere near as back as UB might be. The main thing is it just can't deal with problem creatures, except if it gets a steam-rolling draw, or I get ahead enough early on to race. It can race well, especially by just leaving G back to untap and play both offense and defense, roil spout to put them on the back foot, Roilmage's Trick could be a blowout every now and then, and there are other ways to win a battle of attrition if they are also short on ways to deal my threats.
I honestly have no idea what is best here. Maybe they are all just sort of different. WR just feels kind of greedy - the sort of deck you have to get lucky for it to work and you give up too many games to not curving out perfectly or losing to the smallest amount of opponent-generated card advantage when being forced to trade 1 for 1. If they deal with my early creatures and I can't support chain I just lose. If they get ahead early I can lose easily too and it's easy for that to happen going second.
RB has the problem of playing lots of mediocre creatures that aren't made better by being support targets, and though it has an okay amount of removal and some card advantage, it couldn't deal with a decent tempo deck, or a good start from an aggressive deck that doesn't let it set up.
UG seems like it would most consistently be able to force the game to be played on its own terms, stabilizing and then swinging back with evasion or tricks as back up, but vs another deck trying to do something similar, chances are they have better cards doing the same thing, and again, not that many ways to deal with problematic creatures permanently.
Maybe I missed a good color combo. I can't seem to figure out any sort of 2 base-color splashing 2 colors plus colorless value-packed control deck, there just doesn't seem to be one and the non-basic lands don't support much of that anyway. Maybe it doesn't matter which one I pick because they all have strengths and weaknesses, but BR at least has a decent amount of removal, so maybe that's the way to go? Maybe red-white is stronger than I think?
If there isn't a severely underpowered deck in this pool, I'd like to see it so I know that you're not just trolling because that's my suspicion right now.
EDIT: Accidentally a word
As far as my thoughts during deck construction: It seems obvious to play red just because of the dragons and shock. However, if I do end up playing red I also end up having to play a lot of mediocre cards. Not sure that's avoidable with any color combo, though and I needed finishers/psuedo-bombs. Scourge of Valkas was not amazing, given that it trades with multiple uncommon flyers, required RRR and is vulnerable to much of the removal available at common and people were maindecking plummets quite often.
As far as what I ended up pairing that with I don't want to influence any other opinions any more than my push for red.
WHITE
Angelic Wall
Archangel of Thune
Auramancer
Blessing
Celestial Flare
2x Dawnstrike Paladin
Fiendslayer Paladin
Fortify
2x Griffin Sentinel
Master of Diversion
Pay No Heed
Pillarfield Ox
Soulmender
2x Suntail Hawk
Wall of Swords
BLUE
Armored Cancrix
Coral Merfolk
Disperse
Divination
Essence Scatter
Frost Breath
Glimpse the Future
Nephalia Seakite
Scroll Thief
Sensory Deprivation
Tome Scour
Warden of Evos Isle
Wall of Frost
BLACK
Accursed Spirit
Blightcaster
Blood Bairn
Deathgaze Cockatrice
Duress
Festering Newt
Mark of the Vampire
Minotaur Abomination
Nightmare
Nightwing Shade
Sengir Vampire
Shrivel
Tenacious Dead
Vampire Warlord
2x Vile Rebirth
RED
Barrage of Expendables
Battle Sliver
Cyclops Tyrant
Demolish
Goblin Shortcutter
Lightning Talons
Pitchburn Devils
Scourge of Valkas
Shivan Dragon
Shock
Smelt
Striking Sliver
2x Thunder Strike
Wild Guess
GREEN
Advocate of the Beast
Briarpack Alpha
Elvish Mystic
Groundshaker Sliver
Giant Spider
Lay of the Land
Naturalize
2x Plummet
2x Ranger's Guile
Trollhide
ARTIFACTS
Accorder's Shield
Pyromancer's Gauntlet
2x Rod of Ruin
2x Sliver Construct
2x Staff of the Death Magus
Staff of the Flame Magus
Staff of the Sun Magus