At the Avacyn Pre-Release, it was my first draft so I drafted what I knew, WG angels and went 2 Ws, 2 Ls, and 1 T. This time, I decided to play against type and try red/black, but I made some pretty elementary mistakes in the construction of my deck. This time, I went 2 Ws and 2 Ls. Next time, I intend to do far better, and will be practicing drafting at home to get it down.
My strategy was about getting moggs or tormented souls on the battlefield to swing for lethal damage or use Sands of Delirium. Believe it or not, I did mill a guy out with and got the victory I needed.
The enchantments and rings worked well to help me buff up my creatures, especially Tormented Soul, and swing for lethal damage.
I used krenko's command and vile rebirth to try and compensate for my lack of solid monsters.
The trumpet blasts weren't worth it because I could never get the creatures I needed on the battlefield.
The biggest obstacle to my victory? I didn't have enough monsters. Some more experienced players reccommend I use the moggs I drafted and I took the bait. It might've worked out if I had ran red/green, allowing me more creature support for the moggs, but I wanted to try running black (which I felt was my strongest single color).
I wish I had gone with my original plan to play black/green. It would've gave me the creature support I needed and I probably would've had even more mana to mill people out with the Sands of Delirium.
I did enjoy the black exalted cards and really liked the Sands of Delirium. I am thinking of making a black deck of some kind with M13. Maybe black/white or black/green. Might do a mill deck with sands of delirium.
I welcome any thoughts about my terrible drafting here and would love some advice about what to do next time.
I normally play some combination of Naya colors during our FNM drafts, but I opened a lot of Blue and Black during the M13 Prerelease. Among them, I got a good number of flyers, and two copies of Murder.
RavenHusky's Sealed Blue Black Fliers
43 Cards
17 Lands
1 Evolving Wilds 7 Island 1 Plains 8 Swamp
16 Creatures
1 Arctic Aven 3 Bloodhunter Bat 1 Faerie Invaders 1 Fog Bank 1 Giant Scorpion 1 Merfolk of the Pearl Tridant 2 Ravenous Rats 1 Vedalken Entrancer 1 Veilborn Ghoul 1 Welkin Tern 2 Wind Drake 1 Xathrid Gorgon (At my shop, we are not allowed to use the participation promo, but I opened one in my sealed pool)
10 Other Spells
1 Blood Reckoning 1 Disentomb 1 Encrust 1 Kitesail 1 Mind Sculpt 2 Murder 1 Sign in Blood 1 Sleep 1 Tricks of the Trade
Since I opened an Arctic Aven and an Evolving Wilds in my pool, I decided that it was worth it to put in a planes to give it the +1/+1 and lifelink, which did help out a couple times, although most of the time, it was essentially tapping for 1 colorless.
The Rats and Merfolk were there as cheap 1 and two drops, which I did not pull many of in my colors other than the Welkin Tern.
The Vedalken was in as a pseudo-wall on the ground, as well as a millstone on a stick, which managed to get rid of an opponent's answers to my cards a few times.
Xathrid Gorgon was the manditory rare in my deck, as the only other rare in my colors (Mythic in this case) was Omniscience, which was too expensive to be worth playing.
All the flyers are self explanitory.
I was at 43 cards as I could not decide what to cut.
I wound up going 3-1 with this deck.
My first match was against a deck that had a horrible pool available, which I won 2-0.
My second match, I lost against a Red-Green Aggro deck,0-2
My third match, I beat a Green-White? deck, which had Yeva in it. 2-0
My last match was against an attempted Door to Nothingness Deck, which never went off during the afternoon, winning 2-0.
While opening packs, the person across from me opened both Chandra, and a Foil Ajani, and one of the younger players opened a foil Nicol Bolas in his prize packs.
Considering this is the day after I pull two copies of Griselbrand at FNM the previous night, one during the draft, and a foil one in my prize packs, in addition the one I pulled buying a couple of packs the previous week.
I won the prerelease I went to, and there were 36 people there, so the deck must have been alright. I went 4-1-1 in the initial rounds (six people were guaranteed spots in the top eight if we agreed to draw, so we all did; my only loss was in the fifth round). The top eight was single elimination, and I won all three rounds, obviously.
The whole sideboard came in whenever I was facing green, basically. Those Sentinel Spider s were really, really bad for me. Against green, Safe Passage isn't that helpful a trick with my little guys, so it came out, along with Watercourser and Silvercoat Lion since green can deal with them too easily. I also took out a Plains and an Island, so I netted an extra land when I used my sideboard.
This tournament's lesson: Play Evolving Wilds even if you're only in two colors!!!
The night before going to the pre-release I looked at the card database, and decided that I would do my best to make an exalted deck. I was able to pull great cards with exalted and was very excited. My last (and first) pre-release I had gone to was the avacyn restored, and the same thing happened in regards that I wanted to play soul-bond. I went 4-1 that event, and was hooked to sealed deck events.
JDogTheDog's Black/White exalted beatdown
40 cards
Creature (20) 1x Ajani's Sunstriker 1x Bloodhunter Bat 1x Duskmantle Prowler 1x Duty-Bound Dead 1x Giant Scorpion 1x Guardian Lions 2x Guardians of Akrasa 1x Knight of Glory 1x Knight of Infamy 2x Liliana's Shade 1x Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis 1x Ravenous Rats 1x Serra Avenger 1x Vampire Nighthawk 1x Vampire Nocturnus 1x Walking Corpse 1x War Priest of Thune 1x Zombie Goliath
Land (17) 1x Evolving Wilds 6x Plains 10x Swamp
Sorcery (1) 1x Duress
Enchantment (1) 1x Angelic Benediction
Artifact (1) 1x Kitesail
I was going for an exalted/hoard of creatures deck
I can't remember the exact games, but I did go 5-0 total. (This was surprising and very exciting to me seeing as this was my second sealed deck event/pre-release ever)
Nighthawk won me a few games, as did the nocturnus.
Nefarox sealed the deal a few times as well.
The Duty-bound dead was a great turn one open a few times.
angelic benediction worked perfectly with my two knights and I could often get my damage through.
At my prerelease, the talk of the store was BW exalted. Everyone wanted Sublime Archangels and Nefarox's. I, having been to a fair number of prereleases, knew that I would not, in fact, get any of the super bomb rares in the set, and I decided to play what the packs gave me. I ended up building UW Fliers:
1x Unsummon 1x Essence Scatter 1x Sleep 1x Talrand's Invocation 1x Switcheroo 1x Oblivion Ring 1x Captain's Call 1x Elixir of Immortality 1x Ring of Evos Isle
I list them as non-creature spells, but Talrand's Invocation and Captain's Call were some of the best creatures in my deck. 2 2/2 Fliers for 2UU is very powerful, and won me most of my games. This deck took me 3-1, and my one loss was partially from bad play on my part, but also partially from very severe mana screw. Game 1 I kept drawing 0 or 1 land hands, and had to mull to 4 before keeping a 1 land hand, and then getting mana-screwed at 2 plains and 0 islands. Game 2 I won, and then Game 3 I couldn't keep ahead of his Liliana's Specter.
My other matches were relatively easy victories, 2-0 each time. My first was against BGr beatdown, which had extensive mana issues. My second was against RB, but his red creatures were not strong enough to handle all of my white first-strikers. My third (the one I lost) was against UB control, and was disappointing because my deck was the best for dealing with his. His primary win condition was Sands of Delirium, but between Elixir of Immortality, Serra Avatar, and Oblivion Ring, I had plenty of ways to answer a mill deck like his. Unfortunatey, his black creatures were enough to overwhelm me. My last was against UB Exalted, and though he had a very powerful pull, and I did not have a whole lot of ways to deal with that 2/1 Exalted Pro-White black knight, I was able to stablilize around 10 life both games and pull out the victory. In the end, the UB mill deck won the prerelease, and I got second. Can't complain too much!
I did not really sideboard much with this deck. I had a few forests around in case I needed to splash for Naturalize, but that ended up not being necessary. Essentially, I occasionally sided in 1x Negate or 1x Divine Verdict.
Overall, there was only one card I felt was truly missing from this deck: Pacifism! My kingdom for a Pacifism!
In general, I found that the Mastiff did very little, but Attended Knight was amazing. I only cast Ajani's Sunstriker once, and it was relatively underwhelming. Also, Switcheroo is an interesting card. In my deck, it usually meant exchanging a Soldier token for my opponent's best creature. In one game, though, my opponent's switcherood helped me more than him! Against UB Exalted, he used the card to take my Aven Squire (for the exalted), but he gave my Bloodthrone Vampire in exchange! The ground had been severely locked up for five turns now, and I was slowly poking damage through with my drakes in the air. With the vampire, though, everything changed. Suddenly, my ground creatures wer useful again! I guess I should say that Switcheroo is good in the right deck, but be careful because it can also benefit your opponent. And if you are playing someone rather inexperienced, you should probably hope they are running it in case they maek a bad trade.
I hadn't played in 16 years. Went to the FNM the night before pre-release for an AVR draft. I had played some DotP on the xbox but that's about it.
So my first ever pre-release event and I have little to no experience with sealed at all. Here's what I built, and here's what was in my pool. I'd love to hear some feedback about how I did on my first time building.
I didn't fare well, going 0-4 in a 4 round swiss. I only managed to win 1 game in the 4 rounds. A couple times I had both mana screw and mana flood, but I'm pretty sure I could have done better with my pool. But experience was all I was after, the time to figure out how to get better is now. I sideboarded in things like Erase, Naturalize, and Plummet as I felt necessary as well as Kitesail if I ran into lots of fliers. I should have used the other ring too I think.
I hope to get some feedback as this was my first time and I have a lot to learn.
Going into the Pre-Release, I hadn't quite payed attention to most of the commons and uncommons in the set. So when it came to opening my packs I immediately seperated them into piles according to color and went back to see what I had exactly pulled and almost built my deck without a second thought on what I was playing.
40 Cards
18x Land 1x Evolving Wilds 8x Plains 9x Swamp
9x Creature 1x Aven Squire 1x Bloodhunter Bat 1x Guardians of Akrasa 1x Shimian Specter 2x Silvercoat Lions 1x Sublime Archangel 1x Vampire Nighthawk 1x War Priest of Thune
8x Sorcery 1x Angel's Mercy 1x Captain's Call 2x Disentomb 2x Essence Drain 1x Mind Rot 1x Wit's End
4x Instant 1x Faith's Reward 2x Public Execution 1x Vile Rebirth
1x Enchantment 1x Divine Favor
I managed to go 4-0 and take first that day. I noticed right away that most people didn't do anything to go against creatures with flying, so Vampire Nighthawk ultimately became my best friend. Attach the exalted from the other creatures and they were stuck on a clock that ran up quickly. The only match that had me on end was the last round, because my opponent was running several creatures that needed to be answered immediately, but other than that, I never really faced too many problems coming across what I needed when I needed it.
I challenge Steve (or anyone else) to put together a good deck from this. I went 2-2-1, and I think that was an achievement.
The trouble with M13 sealed is that you seem to be able to get flooded with tricks and auras with nothing to cast them on, and my removal was aces against anybody playing */1 creatures, but weak after that.
I got owned by some guy playing mono fatties, and by another who had mono bombs.
I'm trying to recall the other cards I pulled (I'm currently 6 commons and 3 uncommons short).
17 Lands 8 x Plains 8 x Forests 1 x evolving wilds
11 Creatures
1 x war falcon 1 x attended knight 2 x ajani's sunstriker 1 x knight of glory 1 x guardians of akrasa 1 x silvercoat lion 2 x sentinel spider 1 x Primal huntbeast 1 x chronomatron
14 Spells
1 x Faith's Reward 1 x Predatory Rampage 2 x plummet 2 x pacifism 2 x titanic growth 2 x Show of valor 1 x kitesail 1 x ranger's path 1 x ring of thune 1 x ring of kalonia
Sideboard
1 x battleflight eagle 1 x stuffy doll 1 x Vastwood gorger 1 x pacifism
I was forced to go into White and Green as I had basically no blue creatures and very few spells for black and red. This was a little annoying as my best cards from the packs were Hellion Crucible and Nicol Bolas, but I decided to go for the safe side and went for a strategy that relied on removal of enemy bombs with combat tricks and my removal spells. This turned out to be very important as I played two decks that had Sublime Archangels, and in both rounds they got played in 2 out of 3 games (thank you pacifism! thank you people that don't draft erase!). Faith's Reward and Predatory Rampage were my fallbacks, and they did win me one game as I was able to clear the board which had been full of black creatures that were about to swarm me for the kill.
In the end however I finished the day 3-3, as I ran into some bad matchups as I initially worked my way up the rankings. My first loss was to a white red combo deck which used 2 trading posts me stop me stone dead (2 goats a turn, and 4 life gain every turn from Healer of the Pride) while he used Staff of Nin to knock out my creatures one by one. My second loss was mainly due to bad luck, as I somehow drew 7 of my nine plains and nothing else. This was after I used evolving wilds to shuffle my deck as well...
My final loss however was a reminder in pain, as my opponent had been lucky enough to get 4 rancors from his packs. His green and red beatdown took advantage of the recurring +2/+0 trample bonus to simply beat me into the ground (Question: What was the reasoning behind this reprint again? Especially since Doom Blade is going out of standard!). If I had drawn my pacifisms I might have survived, but I was unable to draw them, or the stuffy doll I had included just to face this guy. On the other hand, this might have been my own fault, as I only realised when I drew plummet that I had forgotten to sideboard this flying-only removal spell for the pacifism in my sideboard...
