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It's been a while since I've done some Limited, so I hereby put my prerelease deck and cards up for perusal. Hopefully I can learn something new based on other people's views on what I should've played or left out.

On the whole I wasn't entirely satisfied since I felt I lacked strong in-color bombs. I played Selesnya and often felt I just didn't have enough solid token producers to make use of populate. I tried a black splash, but ended up with something that I felt scooped to Selesnya who just outpopulated me or Golgari who had the edge in longer games and whom I couldn't really pressure until I got my token production going. (Selesnya and Golgari were the most played guilds at my prerelease)

I got some very good colorfixing though, and ended up with a WGur build which did okay once I'd finetuned it a little. My MVP's were definitely the Selesnya and Azorius guildmage.

Here's what I ended up with:

Spoiler: Show

16 lands

Transguild Promenade

Grove of the Guardian

Selesnya Guildgate

Izzet Guildgate

Forest x5

Plains x5

Island

Mountain

15 creatures

Gatecreeper Vine x3

Archweaver x2

Centaur's Herald

Azorius Arrester

Towering Indrik

Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage

New Prahv Guildmage

Sunspire Griffin

Centaur Healer

Seller of Songbirds

Hover Barrier

Drudge Beetle

4 Token-producing noncreature cards:

Eyes in the Skies

Knightly Valor

Call of the Conclave

Coursers' Accord

 5 Instants / Sorceries / Enchantments

Arrest

Trostani's Judgment

Dramatic Rescue (perhaps a bit cute ; the idea here was to set back Selesnya opponents by bounce-killing their biggest token, buying time/gaining life against Rakdos opponents or punishing Golgari players who got greedy with scavenge)

Explosive Impact

Mizzium Mortars

Unused / Sizeboard:

Spoiler: Show

White & Green:

A few notes here: I drew a lot of support cards for populate such as Growing Ranks, Rootborn Defenses and Phantom General, but since the token-producing plan wasn't working, all of these lost value dramatically. Growing Ranks in particular never produced a single token for me, since I'd either draw it but no token-producer, or a token-producer, but not the Ranks.

Trained Caracal x2

Rootborn Defenses (I planned on siding this in if it ever looked like I need more populate cards or if I knew my opponent was playing sweepers, neither of which ever happened)

Phantom General

Growing Ranks

Sundering Growth  x2 (I wanted to play with this, but artifacts and enchantments were barely played)

Keening Apparition (same rationale)

Security Blockade (almost assuredly should've played this)

Selesnya Sentry

Heroes' Reunion

Giant Growth x3

Axebane Guardian (I completely overlooked this card until now, which would have worked fine with my three gatecreepers, although I wouldn't be too happy about adding yet another 0-power creature to my deck)

Urban Burgeoning x2

Horncaller's Chant (the casting cost proved to be too much of a stumbling block, so after the umpteenth time that this card failed me, I ditched it)

Rubbleback Rhino x2

Gobbling Ooze

Stonefare Crocodile

Aerial Predation

Blue:

Chronic Flooding x2

Downsize

Dispel

Doorkeeper

Soulsworn Spirit

Stealer of Secrets

Skyline Predator

Syncopate

Red:

Gore-House Chainwalker x2

Traitorous Instinct x2

Minotaur Aggressor

Cobblebrute

Viashino Racketeer

Pursuit of Flight

Black:

Sewer Shambler x3

Cremate

Drainpipe Vermin

Stab Wound

Thrill-Kill Assassin

Grave Betrayal (I played this for some time, but I didn't have the right removal to make it work, since neither arrest nor trostani's judgment would work. The double-black also dissuaded me from dipping semi-deep into black and red for burn. Maybe I should've ran it, even without destroy spells, in a WBG deck. Not sure.)

Artifacts:

Izzet Keyrune (the UR splash was a late addition to the deck and I forgot about this card since I initially binned it for being off-color on both fronts. I'd have maindecked it otherwise.)

Multicolor:

golgari:

Dreg Mangler

Sluiceway Scorpion

Corpsejack Menace

rakdos:

Carnival Hellsteed

Skull Rend

izzet:

Goblin Electromancer x2

Mercurial Chemister

Chemister's Trick

Sep 30, 2012 -- 2:17PM, Kensan_Oni wrote:

I will agree that Salvage is easily splashable, and I will agree late game it's marvelous, but I will add the caveat that you have to be able to get to the late game first. There are a lot of ways of applying pressure relevantly and early, and the only games I lost were due to those decks that could put up more early pressure than I did.

While I saw people use cards with Salvage, I never had seen a Salvage ability be used at any table I was at, or next to. I am very happy some people got a chance to see it, but from what I could tell, Salvage saw less play at my prerelease than Populate did.

Populate, when it worked, was awesome, though. I'd build around that, for sure. I also wish I had had more than 3 detain cards so I could say how awesome they were... but in sealed, the detain was so-so, and got me in occasionally.

It's the Trestle Troll and Sluiceway Scorpion that are the big players for pathing the way to the late game. I'm calling those as important picks for Golgari.

Sep 30, 2012 -- 7:41PM, IYankemDDS wrote:

Sep 30, 2012 -- 7:30PM, orin02 wrote:

Played again today and went Rakdos. Much better than my first attempt. I was 4-2 with my losses coming to Selesnya. I am amazed how different locations are. Selesnya is by far the best deck as far as I can tell. I played against 4 of them out of 6 rounds. The 8/8 token with vigilance is stupid when combined with populate. I also am tired of seing Centaurs everywhere. I thought Radkos was very good.

I keep hearing this, but I felt like the Selesnya matchups were pretty easy, often easier than the Azorius matchups.

I also played against them Saturday with my Golgari deck and Selesnya just was better.