MTG Salvation

My Rares were garbage for Limited (Harsh Mentor [no red support], Anointed Procession [seemed slow], Irrigated Farmland, Shadow of the Grave, Cut // Ribbons, Pyramid of the Pantheon) or in colors that I couldn't play but my white and green were deep in quality commons and uncommons and I was able to build a pretty crazy exert/trials/cartouche deck.



This went 2-0-2 (split final match for prizes, first match went a bit long as I was playing against control and I don't have much evasion but I was favored to win game 3)

Had the white cartouche and would side in the 3rd green one for some matchups.

Picking up the trials was a big game and the white trial giving vigilance is big game in the world of exert, and repeatedly getting a 4/2 was pretty good too.


Fan Barrer was pretty darn good and having 2 meant I had one almost every game. My removal was great. My opponent round 2 had a pool with 3 gods (WUB) and played them all. I was able to deal with all of them with my removal. While I had a decent amount of embalm I didn't use it too much. I was pleasantly surprised with Oketra's Monument. One game I held out till turn 3 and was able to play 3 white creatures and make 3 tokens on turn 4 with a trial of solidarity to follow.

Got an opponents evolving wilds by flashing in my promo Aven Mindsensor

With a graveyard heavy set, the god may be pretty good since you can cast the graveyard half of the instance and sorcery cards and even cast some creatures from the graveyard being without cards in hand doesn't limit you as much as you would think. The one drop with some looting/rummeging effects could be really good (a wheel effect would be pretty crazy as well).

Is mythic really that much harder to come by? 1/6 packs contains 1/15 mythic where as the other 5/6 contains 1/60 or so rares so getting a particular rare seems just as unlikely as a particular mythic??? I suppose it is slightly rarer but both are around 1% chance, so in either case buying 100 packs to get one card seems crazy wether it was rare or mythic.

What pulled you into blue? I don't see any huge payoffs so I'm wondering if there was better cards that could have been picked up instead. Also panharmonicon seems like it is only getting extra energy but no real energy payoffs. Also too many 4+ drops, this format seems to be faster than this. There are many ways to pump up small creatures (goggles, pump spells) and decent amount of removal to beat slightly larger ones so try to draft more 2 and 3 drops. What were your other picks? Maybe you could have lowered your curve some.

You also don't seem to have enough unconditional removal or evasiveness to go with the lockdown type you have. Like the previous poster said try to draft a plan not just a deck of cards.

my sample size is small (one draft) but my curve seemed loaded at 3 drops and topped out with 3x 5 drops. I started with 17 lands but would frequently add in a random 2 drop for a land post board and maybe cut a 5 drop for another trick or sideboard card, or some cheap equipment and it seemed to play better at 16 lands. Most of the 5 drops are not extremely better than some 3 drop wearing googles so they don't really stabilize you so going lower curve with 16 seems better.

Based on what I read it sounds like within on box they concentrate on one package but the type of package varies from box to box so in draft how would you know which you would "want" in order to pull a mythic. If there are enough drafts going on mix a few boxes worth of packs together and you could solve the problem.

Got some fairly crappy white rares such as 8 mana angel of deliverance, 7 mana providence, 7 mana bruna, which I figured I couldn't realistically cast, to go with the 2 mana spirit that can make the team industructible(seems fairly good), so instead I built a BR aggressive deck.

Went 2-0-1 (split the final game so I could go home and sleep) in the midnight prerelease.



I was on the draw every game but managed to be the agressor every game as well. I think the format can be quicker than most realize as I was not punnished too hard for running 2/2's and 2/3's. Red has some decent burn even if it is sorcery speed. Collective Defiance is a beating everytime I played it.

Was considering going WB Delirium but think this turned out better as my removal would have been far worse and would have had to play for the long game which I didn't think my pool could support. But with this many discard spells I think reanimator could be done in draft.

I ended up playing an aggressive RB deck which had my creatures top out at 4 mana for a Mindrack Demon which I never got to actually play. But there are so many discard outlets in these colors madness will be even more of a thing now I think.

Cards that always did good things:
Olivia's Dragoon: 2/2 for 2 with fairly good upside. Enables madness, can fly over stalled boards, enables delirium always happy to play it.
Alchemist's Greeting: Killed pretty much what ever needed to go and was great with madness enabelars. Never had to pay 5 for it so may have just been the deck making it good.
Incendiary Flow: To the suprise of no one 3 damage for 2 is good. Sorcery is unfortunate but kills a thing and can go to the face.
Smoldering Werewolf: Didn't get to kill a thing on entry because it made my opponent use up a pump spell to save his creature. So it 0 for 1 just casting it, and got bigger later allowing me to throw it in to kill some stuff and whatever ends up blocking it.
Thermo-Alchemist: My deck was supposed to be Aggro but this card was great even in that deck. With this on board, throw a incendiary flow at their face plus 2 activations of this is a lava axe for 1R. Holds the ground while your other guys get in.
Collective Defiance: Top performer. Usually only activated the last two abilities bur for 2RR kill a creature and then 3 to the face is a great rate. Again too bad on the Sorcery part but can't have it all.

Cards I thought would be better:
Collective Brutality: Always wanted to do other things than this when I had a choice because -2/-2 didn't let me do what I wanted at the time. If this was an instant that would be probably good but they couldn't do that because the discard mode so while it should have been good it was always wanting and the escalate cost was too high even in a deck that could use discard sometimes.
Skirsdag Supplicant: Was an ok blocker but the ability just was too scary to use in a board stall which is when it should shine, though it can be inevitability allowing me to send guys in to die just to get opponent to 2. Just don't over estimate the ability and it will be ok.

Cards in my pool I wish showed up to try:
Liliana's Elite: This could have been huge as I would actively trade my guys or force my opponent to make trades so this could have gotten big, but there were some times where I was ahead where drawing a 3 mana unruly mob would probably not been good and slowed me down. Probably worth it though.

Cards opponents played that seemed good:
Blessed Alliance: all modes seem pretty good and in board stalls, kills the one flyer that could get in.
The emerge crab that gets back a spell: The 5 toughness was difficult for my red deck to deal with and getting back business spell is the business.

This set seems much more aggressive than I had originally expected. Maybe just since agro is good when a new set is released but it seems like a viable strategy to me.

Drafted a RW equipment agro deck tonight which went 3-0 fairly easily. I had 5 one drops (could have run 6). Got pushed into it because everyone was drafting removal so high I realized I just needed a bunch of dudes that I can suit up and getting the Missionaries that when equipped exiles something I just forced it. Didn't really have much removal but took anything that made spirits when it died or the combat trick that makes a 1/1 human. Thraben Inspector is an all star in this type of deck as it is a cantrip creature but once it holds some equipment its a must kill or trades for real cards. Its not the deck I wanted to draft but if it's open it's pretty strong and under drafted because the creatures look terrible... until you slap a sword on them!

Cohort is difficult to make work in sealed. All my best cards wanted to use it but it's hard to count on enough ally's to trigger it. Crush of Tentacles is extremely hard to surge out. Set seems much more aggressive so skew towards 2 drops than 7 drops. Lots of complicated board states because of the many weird eldrazi activated abilities.

Kozilek is a trickster so this may be a big trick on early spoiler leaks. Wouldn't be surprised if there were other versions leaked as time goes on.

As for colorless lands. I don't see what is wrong with it, it just means there is a cost to add powerful colorless spells to your deck, (splash a "color" to use it). Many cards require other cards to work, or work well. It's basically a build around but the build around is a land, not so bad and it incentivizes you to build more colorless spells into your deck to go along with your more powerful <> spells worst case the waste taps for 1 to help cast your truly colored spells.

The only real downside I see is the logistics of getting these lands into the draft format to support the cards that will require it, so the real issue is mainly a logistical one.

Also, I never understood the term "parasitic" in terms of magic cards. Is it supposed to be an alternate word for narrow?

I love that you can put a bunch of janky multi card combo's into the same deck since you can dig for all the pieces quite easily.

I was thinking about draw burn/control with all those card draws. Something like words of war or words of wind with a jace's archivist activation after bouncing all the opponents permanents to draw back up. Kind of mana intensive but sounds like fun.

My board of a nettle drone and kozilek's sentinel against my opponents board of eldrazi skyspawner and ulamog's nullifier. I'm at 14 he is at 17. He swings in with the fliers to bring me to 10, and second main phase taps out and sacs the scion token to cast breaker of armies and is feeling pretty good about himself... I tap nettle drone to bring him to 16 on his end step. Main phase tap nettle drone to bring him to 15 and cast... turn against stealing breaker of armies untapping nettle drone and adding +1 to the sentinel to attack for lethal.

I ended up 1-1-1.

I was playing a 4 color ramp deck with Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger at the top end. Lots of early 1/4's and */5 to go with ramp and some red removal.

Match one got beat by a tempo UB devoid build. He had a lot of 1-3 drops and kept bouncing or killing my 1/4 blockers so I could never stabilize to get to the late game. My draws were not great but I think his deck was just better. Was worried 7-10 drops might not be playable, but it's a prerelase so stuck with the deck.

Match 2, Radiant Flames got me a 3-1 in both games against RG landfall. Was able to ramp out to Ulamog and that was fun.

Match 3, Against UG ingest. We were going back and forth but again Radiant Flames did some work taking out his Scions and such. Top deck Ulamog after laying down my land the turn before to get me to 10 mana and sealed the game. Game 2 he got out a dampening pulse which turned all my 1/4 to complete crap cards. He then slowly ground me down in the air with his 1/2's which took forever so we ended up going to time in game 3 so we ended up drawing which is what I asked for before the match since it was late anyway.

All in all pretty fun and got 2 packs. Wish my deck had a little more synergy than it did but can't complain since I got a ton of fixing and was able to play most of my good cards which is what prerelease is all about.

I found that drafting 3 toughness plus some equipment to be quite viable. While the 1/3's don't trade often they do bounce off the 2/2's that the aggro decks are dropping unless they waste a removal spell or combat trick on your 2 drop, your pretty happy because its one less removal spell your big creatures don't have to play around. Then just giving your 1/3's a +1/+1 makes it nearly impossible for your opponent to attack in, then later in the game you can throw it on your evasive flier to get extra damage in.

In regards to the opening poster, don't be afraid to block as you will usually at least trade 1/1 (provided it's not a chump block) then just drop another blocker. Draft enough creatures so that losing one doesn't completely kill your board.