Dies to Removal

Other than just with my brother or with some kids at school, I haven't played paper Magic since Game Day. I'm pretty sure the only cards I own from BNG are 3 Temple of Enlightenment.

Thats why you go to pre release, where everyone is even and the only deciding factor is the power of your awesome deck building skills!

Signed up (shop agreed to trade 3 rav remands and a foil rav remand for entry).. Playing white because: White pride nation wide motherfuckers!

Can't wait for the pre-release. I honestly think they're super fun. People aren't stressing about being uber-competitive. Very relaxed atmosphere.

I'm always super competitive at pre-releases.

Get on my tryhard level.

I've crushed every prerelease I've attended (all 2), but I've never won a Game Day. I need that playmat!

I'm always super competitive at pre-releases.

Get on my tryhard level.

I'm the same way. I want that box!

For me, it's more along the lines of I 0-2 dropped twice playing black devotion and vowed to never lose a tournament again.

Think Zolo on one-piece after he gets beat by Mihawk.

I've only done one sealed event (RTR); any advice for this release if I can make it?

Competitive douchers ruin prereleases.

I bet you're the type to make the junior high kids cry!

"You're not allowed to manaweave, fucking kid. You're cheating!"

Poor kid. He just wanted some semblance of a social life.

I've only done one sealed event (RTR); any advice for this release if I can make it?

I couldn't tell you what colors to play, but when you start building, set aside your bombs, set aside your mana fixing, then color sort.

You want to look for the 3 deepest colors and cut the other 2. This is where your mana fixing and bombs if any come into play. Try to build the deck that plays most of your bombs and see if your mana-fixing allows splashes. After that, build all combinations of your 3 different decks seeing what they have to offer and try to pick the best one.

Generally, the curve is least important since most decks have shitty curves in sealed. Unless you have the nuts aggro deck, you don't want to be playing mana bears or 1-drops. The games
go longer because everyone's deck has access to removal and you want an emphasis on card advantage and fat creatures. You want all your cards to be good in the mid and lategame since you have to plan for the average game to go till turn 8-10.

Also, to save time, after you color sort, cut all the unplayables. Examples of unplayables are cards like fleshmad stead, setessan battelpriest, and thassa's bounty. Cheap guys that are horrible topdecks and expensive cards that don't affect the board. If however you can't make a good lategame deck, it's worth reevaluating your pool and trying to put together the aggressive RW deck or whatever that's all in on traveling philosopher beats. Just because aggro is normally bad doesn't mean it's always bad.

Most importantly, while I don't know what the new format looks like, the previous formats where very tempo based. That and bestow was OP. People who play more sealed then myself can obviously provide better info. Hope this helped.

Good post LP. How heavily do you prioritize removal?

Depends on how you mean. As far as having it in my deck, it's possible I misbuilt my GP sacramento pool by going with the 3 asp, 3 naid deck instead of the GB deck with hero's downfall and pharika's mender that could splash for naids and/or mnumonic wall.

As far as in game goes, I'm much better at BUILDING sealed pools then playing them, so I could be wrong, but I'll usually hold removal for a bit waiting for my opponents bombs. It definitely depends on the way your opponents deck is build though. Like, I'm asphyixating a wingsteed rider asap most likely and am generally more inclined to fire off removal more liberally vs. W and red based aggressive decks. Vs the slower decks though, it's probably better to wait and try to develop your board more.

I meant in building it.

One of the top priorities.

You need a good smattering of creatures, but I'm priortizing Bombs then removal then everything else. I guess if you want to generate a sample pool, we can build from there.

Sure, that could be cool. I generated this picking white for the prerelease:

[deck]
1 Dawnbringer Charioteers
1 Skybind
1 Akroan Phalanx
1 Heliod's Emissary
1 Reprisal
2 Ajani's Presence
3 Akroan Mastiff
1 Battlewise Valor
1 Harvest Guard Alseids
1 Hold at Bay
1 Lagonna-Band Trailblazer
2 Oppressive rays
1 Oreskos Swiftclaw
1 Scholar of Atheros
1 Setessan Battle Priest
1 Silent Artisan
2 Supply Line Cranes
1 Sage of Hours
1 Fated Infatuation
1 Gainsay
1 Meletis Astronomer
1 Whitewater Naiads
1 Cloaked Siren
1 Crackling Triton
2 Godhunter Octopus
2 Prescient Chimera
1 Sigiled Starfish
1 Thassa Devourer
1 Voyage's End
1 Wavecrash Triton
1 Brain Maggot
1 Cutthroat Manuever
1 Keepsake Gorgon
1 Sanguimancy
2 Feast of Dreams
1 Felhide Brawler
1 Nyx Infusion
1 Nyxborn Eidolon
1 Rotted Hulk
1 Servant of Tymaret
1 Sip of Hemlock
1 Weight of the Underworld
1 Labyrinth Champion
1
Cyclops of Eternal Fury
1 Flamespeaker Adept
1 Forgeborn Oreads
1 Knowledge and Power
1 Wildfire Cerberus
1 Deathbellow Raider
1 Fall of the Hammer
1 Lightning Diadem
1 Magma Spray
1 Nyxborn Rollicker
1 Pensive Minotaur
1 Rage of Puphoros
1 Satyr Hoplite
1 Satyr Rambler
1 Starfall
2 Wild Celebrants
1 Hydra Broodmaster
1 Consign to Dust
1 Karametra's Favor
2 Market Festival
1 Nessian Courser
1 Nylea's Presnce
1 Oakheart Dryads
1 Pheres-Band Centaurs
1 Ravenous Leucrocota
1 Snake of the Golden Grove
1 Swordwise Centaur
1 Xenagos, the Reveler
1 Chronicler of Heroes
1 Horizon Chimera
1 Underworld Coinsmith
1 Opaline Unicorn

[/deck]

what sort of question is prioritizing removal in sealed?

it's sealed. you don't prioritize anything.

just pick white green or blue and target things with things

I'll look over this more when I get home, but it's pretty shitty that all the multi-colored cards are double green and the green sucks. Also, this site needs to update it's card library as i don't know the names of the new cards

My guess is that Red is the deepest color and the green isn't that good but has mana fixing and with red, Xenagos. I decided to go with white since it had more removalish things and ways to protect a bomb. I might over valuing the heroic cards in the deck, but I figured that the 1 drop centaur is at least an early wall.

[deck]
Creatures (13)
1 Lagonna-Band Trailblazer
1 Nyxborn Rollicker
1 Satyr Hoplite
1 Satyr Rambler
1 Opaline Unicorn
1 Nessian Courser
1 Pensive Minotaur
1 Labyrinth Champion
1 Ravenous Leucrocota
1 Wildfire Cerberus
1 Pheres-Band Centaur
1 Cyclops of Eternal Fury
1 Hydra Broodmaster

Spells (8)
2 Ajani's Presence
1 Magma Spray
1 Oppressive Rays
1 Fall of the Hammer
1 Nylea's Presence
1 Reprisal
1 Market Festival

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Xenagos, the Reveler

Land (18)
7 Forest
8 Mountain
3 Plains
[/deck]

There's a lack of quality 1 to 3 drops to hold off any heroic
decks that might pop up. That makes me nervous. The deck also looks like it's weak to flying as nothing flies or has reach. Perhaps going RUG or WU or RW would be better.

Sooo unmotivated to play MTGO - curse you JOU

On that note it seems that Junk is picking up in the 5-3-2-2 queues.

Rules? Fuck rules. We're a bunch of pirates, mate!

I'm the mod here. If someone has a rules question I will answer it. From the official DtR Rules Compendium:

Rules? Fuck rules. We're a bunch of pirates, mate!

There you go.

Also, the answer of what color to play in Magic for every format has always been and will always be "red because fuck it."

My advices for the prerelease are : don't splash unless you are forced. If you can play 2 colors, even if you have to put in the deck 2-3 suboptimal cards. This format , as other stated, is very tempo oriented (at least theros and born of the gods were), so you generally don't want to bother losing time with manafixing. I disagree with who said that the curve is not important. In my experience this is a format where having a turn 2 drop is really important, and if you hit your curve you are in very good shape.

Wait...we can use more than one color in our deck? I've always piled up all the red cards in my pool with some Mountains and gone to work!

I just pocket the packs, grab 40 Mountains, and play them very slowly and deliberately while mean-mugging my opponent. The power of Mountain gives me the strength to win without cards.

Rules? Fuck rules. We're a bunch of pirates, mate!

I'm the mod here. If someone has a rules question I will answer it. From the official DtR Rules Compendium:

Rules? Fuck rules. We're a bunch of pirates, mate!

There you go.

Also, the answer of what color to play in Magic for every format has always been and will always be "red because fuck it."

Sage advice.

Hey guys. It's hard on your back to move 18 tons of dirt in two days. It's also hard on the arms.

And hard on the wallet... Dirt's not cheap.

But mostly it's just hard.

Ain't it hard when it ain't?

You wanna know what else is hard?

I'm at work today and I've literally done nothing for 5 and half hours. I actually have a weekend off for once and this day can't get over and done with fast enough. Is this how normal people experience Fridays?

I was hoping to be the one to make a "hard" joke, but I'm late to party.

At prerelease, play white or black. You'll thank me later.

See you at the party, Richter! *throws severed arms*

i'm just gonna throw my hands in the air

I'm at work today and I've literally done nothing for 5 and half hours. I actually have a weekend off for once and this day can't get over and done with fast enough. Is this how normal people experience Fridays?

Its like a race to finish all the things I need to do before I run out of fucks.

I'm at work today and I've literally done nothing for 5 and half hours. I actually have a weekend off for once and this day can't get over and done with fast enough. Is this how normal people experience Fridays?

I've had days like that. How I spend my time is based on the need of the project I'm assigned to. If they don't have anything for me, I'm supposed to go ask for work. But after being here for so long, experiencing how bat-shit crazy it can be when it's actually busy, I take time to enjoy the quiet moments. Cause I know that some engineer is just waiting around the corner to give me some insane task that needs to be done IMMEDIATELY. Kind of a "hurry up and wait" atmosphere around my work.

Whelp, I'm all done for the day. Zero fucks were given. Now to start my weekend off.....with a lengthy nap. Doing nothing is tiresome work.

i'm just gonna throw my hands in the air

Why not throw your opponent's severed hands in the air while you're at it?

For anyone wondering some generalized sealed tips:

17-18 lands
23-22 spells
6 non creature cards
17 dudes
14 CMC3 or 4

Anything over CMC5 or more needs to really add value to deck
Each targeted enchantment wants 4 targets to make sure you aren't drawing the enchant but no target
Your best cards may never get played. Bombs are useless if you can't field another 21 cards around them.

I shift the guidelines a bit by set but thats my general baseline.