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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 2:27PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jun 24, 2008
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This thread is for discussion of this week's Limited Information, which goes live Tuesday morning on magicthegathering.com.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 9:13PM
#2
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Date Joined:
May 18, 2002
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I went to a local prerelease, and confirmed that RoE is a set I simply cannot be any more apathetic about. Ten rounds of largely nothing followed by "Crusher, go" really doesn't seem to be a good Sealed environment. However, I did see a guy finagle up a neat aggro-ish build around Siege-Runners and Kiln Fiends. This set could end up going horribly wrong, which would be funny as hell to watch.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 9:24PM
#3
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i had a very similar experience to steve's at the prerelease. i put together a red/white aggro deck and i was consistently crushed by late game finishers. once i got on the bandwagon and ran my own red/green eldrazi ramp deck things went a lot better for me, and i had a lot of fun.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 9:30PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Mar 16, 2010
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I must respectfully disagree. I think that this set is worth all the insane build-up. Deal with it, Aggro. You had your days - the Eldrazi are here and I am loving every minute of it.
I ended up going forth with a Naya-Eldrazi/Defender deck. I was lucky and pulled several Overgrown Battlements, Vent Sentinels, and Battle Ramparts in my sealed pull (No Wall of Omens, though. Oh, well), along with 5 whopping colorless Eldrazi (Including Emrakul and Spawnsire). Green and Red saw a lot of defenders (7 in total) and a few other spells for making Spawn tokens. When it came to big creatures, I used a pair of Rapacious Ones (vicious little buggers, those), as well as 2 Hands of Emrakul, who were quite easy to get onto the board early on. The card that one me the most games, however, was Hellion Eruption. This card screams "USE ME WITH ELDRAZI SPAWN!" and doing so is highly rewarding. The look on my opponent's face when I turned a Vent Sentinel, a Kozilek's Predator, and 5 Eldrazi Spawn into 28 points of power was a beautiful thing to see indeed.
White was good to me for other reasons. Smite saved me three times, from an creaturized Gideon Jura, a Rapacious One, and a Kozilek. Oust was also useful - I used it on high-level creatures with totem armor more than once, and the result was rewarding. I went 3-1 in the Sealed, and only lost the first round because my opponent managed to get Ullamog out early in both games, and I had no answers to him when he came.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 9:35PM
#5
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The following is based off of just one sealed experience, so take it all with a gigantic grain of salt. And I am by no means a pro, just offering thoughts. My GRb Token deck (Hooray for Lavafume Invoker  and Broodwarden  !) got me 4th/33, although it got completely destroyed by fliers, which thankfully people weren't quite savvy enough to play (or perhaps just not enough fliers in their pool). This makes me think Spider Umbra and the 1/5 spider are incredibly important for green decks - at least sideboards. Creatures that aren't good in the late game or helping you with a plan lose a lot of value. Hill Giant  might be good, but Lagac Lizard  is not. Kozilek's Predator  is Good though if you can use the tokens. As much as I've heard people whine about the 8/8 common, Eldrazi were never the be-all-end-all of my games. They're really good, but there are plenty of ways to handle them in the set that people just need to pay attention to. Bounce, Oust  , Vendetta  , Narcolepsy  , tokens swarms, and so many other big creatures to double-block them. The other thing I heard people complaining about was, "Totem armor is so f-ing good!" The one Armor deck I played against showed me that, yup, totem armor is good, but the auras naturally keep themselves in check because they need a creature to be played on. Having too many auras means losing the game, because you need to wait those extra turns for the mana to play your guy and your aura on the same turn and hope they don't have Vendetta in response (which I did). The last lesson I learned is that having a plan - much like a constructed deck instead of the usual vague "aggro" or "control" archetypes of old limited - and being able to curve into it is very good. Someone on MTG mentioned "having a plan" in Eldrazi limited, and I took that to heart. Instead a WB Leveller deck with the likes of Student of Warfare and several totem armors and lots of removal, I was afraid of having too few creatures and opted for the token deck. Even within my GR options I had to cut good cards (5/3 trample? bye) for more situational or "worse" cards, because I knew I could make them good. Curving into token generators and following that up with a way to use them (Invoker, Hand of Em, Broodwarden, or some other big creature  on turn 5) won me all of my games. The match I lost was to someone curving out with a flying leveler every game that I simply had to remove... then he just replaced it with another one. Sounds like a good plan to me. Anyway, looking forward to hearing your thoughts and everyone else's in the weeks and months to come. I've never drafted any set more than a couple times, but I loved my RoE prerelease so much that I'll definitely be back for more, in which case I'll be looking for more advice. PS. Ditto on Hellion Eruption  . I had no idea how amazing that was until I was attacking for 36 damage. During another match my opponent attacked me for 40 with that card; it didn't matter that I lost, that card's awesome whoever plays it!
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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 9:42PM
#6
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i played a blue-green sealed deck at prerelease (splash black for removal), it managed to get me to a 3rd place finish. I'd have to say that my MVPs were, bar none, my Aura Gnarlid and my Champion's Drake. I only had 4 levelers but generally my more defensive Halimar Wavewatch was ignored so that the Champions Drake was a Air Elemental most of the late game. The second place finisher of the event also made use of blue beats with distortion smite so I'm thinking blue my be a strong contender for a relatively aggresive color, sheerly because it ignores all of the defenders.
Aura Gnarlid is unblockable by most walls as well and since it feeds off every umbra and aura on the board can make your opponents umbras not as bad. Also the fact some removal (guard duty narcolepsy domestication) strengthens him is gravy. Also, eel umbra in response to Forked lightning is a blow out on a Gnarlie. As is snake umbra if you can make it stick (or bear if you get one). I expect that if a green midrange deck makes an appearance he will feature a part in it.
And either I dodge eldrazi decks or they aren't that bad (mythic ones not withstanding) because I answered every eldrazi cast by my opponent.
More Generally the level up mechanic worked wonderfully, Every most of them are threats, from the now infamous Student to the lowly Wavewatcher. while the seald format was pretty slow (or would have been for me but evasion trumps) I think there is a powerful aggro deck lurking in the cards. I think it will be very dependent on a certain cluster of card but since draft is triple RoE it can happen.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 9:42PM
#7
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I saw a lot of decks successfully outracing eldrazi with a U/W leveller-based Skies strategy; I think that deck, not the bomby Eldrazi, is really the format-definer, as you need to be able to either kill them or outrace their air guys to win, and the latter is really tough.
I had two games go drastically different than expected: in one of my sealed matches, an opponent had mnaged to fully level their Transcendent Master and gotten up to 61 life. But I had enough chumps to stay alive until I fully leveled my Null Champion, and I leveled up a Grul Draz Assassin and Brimstone Mage; between the three (making Master smaller so he only gained 5 life per turn, blocking and regenerating, and then shooting my opponent with Brimstone Mage), I was able to keep the life gain down, and eventually I started getting guys I was able to attack with, and a short stack of Spawn tokens from various little effects. I ended up finishing the game with a couple of 25-plus point attacks from a team of dorks buffed by Lavafume Invoker activations.
On the other hand, I managed to lose a (draft) game where I cast Kozilek twice; my opponent bounced it the first time, Narcolepsy'd it a second time, and the eight cards didn't bring me the removal I needed to bring down his team (backed by a Time of Heroes that was inordinately awkward for me).
Overall, I'm not sold on sealed (which seems like it'll have a couple of different types of excellent pool and a lot of mediocre pools), but draft looks like it'll be absolutely fascinating; I'm looking forward to it a ton...
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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 9:46PM
#8
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My final deck ended up like this:
Colors: Red/Green
2 Naturalize
2 Joraga Treespeaker
2 Kozilek’s Predator
2 Flame Slash
2 Hand of Emrakul
1 Conquering Manticore
1 Snake Umbra
1 Ulamog’s Crusher
1 Awakening Zone
1 Kargan Dragonlord- Foil, lucked out on that one.
1 Beastbreaker of Bala Ged
1 Growth Spasm
1 Spawning Breath
1 Brood Birthing
1 Heat Ray
1 Traitorous Instinct
1 Dreamstone Hedron
1 Forked Bolt
10 Mountain
7 Forest
I would have to say, the two biggest threats here were my naturalizes, my Conquering Manitcore, and a lone Traitorous Instinct. Awakening Zone also seemed to help pull up my resources, with Joraga Treecaller not too far behind on the ramping. Naturalize was important because it allowed me to take out Totem Armored creatures, which essentially made it removal. MVP goes to the Manticore and the Traitorous Instinct, as one game ended with me hard casting a Hand of Emrakul, and also Token Casting the other. My opponent plopped down an Ulamog's Crusher to stall, which I promptly Threatened and swung for the win. Manticore also managed to steal me a Sphinx of Magosi which my opponent had been pumping all game, which hit him back in the face. Kargan Dragonlord found his own moment to shine, with my opponent being at 4 life, which I promptly leveled up and wiped out. Dreamstone Hedron is just that, a dream card. It's what you need it to be when you need it, very similar to the levelers. Kozilek's Predator is a very nasty limited card, and dropping one turn four, and another turn five really applies a lot of pressure. The deck brought me all the way to the final match undefeated, which my opponent and I ended up splitting first. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better pool to build with, as this deck's removal and ramp were very consistent. This format is insanely fun, as there are a lot of options to choose from.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 9:57PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Mar 19, 2006
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In my prerelease matches, four rounds and nine games, not a single colorless Eldrazi attacked. I went 2-1-1, having been lucky enough to get Sarkhan the Mad and Tuktuk the Explorer in my packs. I played UBR:
1 Sarkhan the Mad
1 Skywatcher Adept
1 Hada Spy Patrol
1 Venerated Teacher
1 Frostwind Invoker
1 Zulaport Enforcer
1 Null Champion
1 Gloomhunter
1 Tuktuk the Explorer
2 Runed Servitor
2 See Beyond
1 Deprive
2 Regress
2 Lay Bare
1 Vendetta
1 Flame Slash
1 Staggershock
2 Heat Ray
1 Prophetic Prism
6 Island
5 Swamp
5 Mountain
I believe I won every game in which Sarkhan the Mad entered the battlefield. In one of my games, my opponent had a Sarkhan the Mad too, in foil no less, but I managed to kill him off before playing my own. I comboed Sarkhan the Mad and Tuktuk the Explorer at least twice. Most memorably, I had Sarkhan the Mad with only one loyalty counter remaining, a single dragon token on the battlefield, and an opponent at ten life. I won by playing Regress on Sarkhan the Mad on my opponent's end step, replaying him, using his ultimate, and attacking with the token.
I might have done better, but I initially did not have See Beyond in the deck. Runed Servitor seems quite good - it gets in for some early damage and then replaces itself when it finally goes. In retrospect, having five card drawers in the deck was key to finding Sarkhan the Mad and winning. The prerelease was quite fun for me - I hadn't been to one since around Lorwyn and was glad to be able to go.
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3 years ago ::
Apr 19, 2010 - 10:05PM
#10
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I'm amazed you didn't mention anything about Dawnglare Invoker  . Looks like the best card in the pack to me. In fact, I have a hard time walking away from white what with that guy, the Student of Warfare  and 3 copies Guard Duty  in a format that is low on removal. Except for the Corpsehatch  (which looks like the other best card in your pool), your black is just some small fliers. Consuming Vapors  looks terrible for an environment filled with 0/1 tokens. Especially with the Vent Sentinel  I would've gone white/red. You've got win conditions in the Sentinel, Invoker, several Eldrazi... and lots of removal/defenders to let you live long enough to cast it all.
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