1 Sealed Deck, 3 Mindripper Authors!
[Ed. Note: In this three part series Zvi, Seth Burn, and I will all be taking a
look at a randomly generated MBC Sealed Deck card pool. Each of us will build
our own decks from these cards and present our reasoning for the various choices
that had to be made. It is our hope that by getting three different
perspectives, the readers can further their own knowledge of this deceptively
complex format.
Scott Johns
Mindripper Editor-in-Chief]
I haven't gotten that much chance to play non-team Sealed Deck with MM, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Two grains might not be a bad idea. What I did do was observe a significant amount at the PTQ, and I combined that with my past experience with both MM block (with or without the expansions) and previous Urza's Block Sealed Deck formats, as well as what I know from Booster and Rochester Draft. This isn't the only way to build a Sealed Deck, but it's definitely a solid way, and when I go to a Grand Prix this is how I'll do it.
This is the card pool you have to build from. If you want to get the most out of this series, I would highly reccomend building your own deck from this list now, as this will be your only chance in the series to approach this list with only your own thoughts.
Green:
Animate Land
Deepwood Wolverine
Fog Patch
Groundskeeper
Land Grant
Mossdog
Rushwood Herbalist
Sacred Prey
Seal of Strength
Skyshroud Behemoth
Skyshroud Ridgeback
Spore Frog
Squall
Stamina
Thresher Beast
Tranquility
Vine Trellis
Black:
Chilling Apparition
Dark Triumph
Deepwood Ghoul
Endbringer's Revel
Insubordination
Mind Swords
Molting Harpy
Parallax Dementia
Plague Fiend
Quagmire Lamprey
Whipstitched Zombie
Blue:
Brainstorm
Buoyancy
Darting Merfolk
Dehydration
Gulf Squid
Gush
Heightened Awareness
Rishadan Footpad
Rootwater Commando
Saprazzan Bailiff
Soothsaying
Tidal Bore
Withdraw
Red:
Battle Rampart
Flailing Soldier
Flowstone Wall
Furious Assault
Keldon Berserker
Kris Mage
Kyren Glider
Laccolith Rig
Lightning Hounds
Lunge
Magistrate's Veto
Rock Badger
Thunderclap
Zerapa Minotaur
White:
Armistice
Arrest
Charm Peddler
Disenchant
Excise
Jhovall Rider
Lashknife
Mageta's Boon
Moment of Silence
Nightwind Glider
Orim's Cure
Ramosian Rally
Rhystic Shield
Sword Dancer
Task Force
Thermal Glider
Topple
Voice of Truth
Artifacts:
[Article continues below]
To be honest, this is not a deck you want to see. It's one of the great assets of MM Block Sealed Deck that almost no one fails to get a playable deck, but some decks are more playable than others. This isn't one of them. The goal will be to try and salvage a setup that will let you outplay your opponents. As usual, the first step with a Sealed Deck is to determine what you know for sure, and what you know for sure is one color you're not playing and one color you are.
You're not playing Black, because you didn't get any. There's nothing there to justify it, with only four cards (Apparition, Triumph, Ghoul and Harpy) that are above filler. On the other side, you're definitely playing white. There's no way you're passing up Arrest, Topple, two Gliders and six other solid cards in a deck with no broken cards. Six other cards can go into the ‘probably in’ category: Voice of Truth, Mageta's Boon, Charm Peddler, Ramosian Rally, Disenchant and Orim's Cure. That's a solid base.
Green can be ruled out as a major color next. It has only one big creature (Thresher Beast) and that's just not acceptable for green. It could have had some selling point besides the creatures green is normally known for, but there's nothing like that here. Beyond the Beast there's only four green cards I'd want: Vine Trellis, Rushwood Herbalist, Groundskeeper and Seal of Strength. That's not going to be enough.
Blue has one high quality spell, Withdraw. Beyond that, blue gives you searching power: Brainstorm, Gush and Soothsaying. Then you get Footpad, Darting Merfolk and Dehydration. There's nothing too impressive there, but you do have a few solid single colored mana spells. Red on the other side is a solid second color. It gives you Kris Mage, Lunge and Thunderclap as removal, which is what is going to give your deck a decent chance. Its walls (Battle Rampart and Flowstone Wall) complement the white flying attack and so do the four solid ground creatures you get, which no other color can give you. You almost always have to play a number of solid ground creatures to have any shot at all, and often this forces your color choice. In this case, there's no question you play red and white.
If you play all the red and white cards that you want in the deck, that's 19 cards. The remaining choices available in those two colors are extremely poor and the deck does not yet have enough good stuff to be competitive, so you'll have to splash. Using blue would give you Gush, Dehydration and Soothsaying. It's possible you would also play Rishadan Footpad. If you used green, you would use Groundskeeper, Vine Trellis, Seal of Strength and Rushwood Herbalist. The question mark would be Thresher Beast. Normally you wouldn't even consider it, since Beast is double green. But this deck needs help, it needs a big creature, and it has Vine Trellis. The Trellis forces you to play enough green to have a solid shot at turn two green mana and gives you an extra green source. If this deck had one less card I wanted I would play the Beast if I went green. But right now it's a lot of solid cards and there isn't anything to cut.
So which way is better? Groundskeeper and Herbalist are green's selling points, while blue lets you thin your deck. If your deck was better, I would go blue for the splash to get to the good cards. But without game breakers, that strategy makes little sense. Instead, green should be the last color. That gives you twenty-three cards including a Vine Trellis. The last question is: Cut a card or play seventeen lands? The answer is that you cannot afford to play with eighteen lands plus a Trellis with your card quality and mana curve this low. Since seventeen lands would risk color problems, Vine Trellis doesn't survive. Thus this is the deck:
Arrest
Charm Peddler
Disenchant
Mageta's Boon
Nightwind Glider
Orim's Cure
Ramosian Rally
Thermal Glider
Topple
Voice of Truth
Battle Rampart
Flowstone Wall
Keldon Berserker
Kris Mage
Lightning Hounds
Lunge
Rock Badger
Thunderclap
Zepara Minotaur
Groundskeeper
Rushwood Herbalist
Seal of Strength
What do you do with this deck? You have no cards that win the game on their own, only a solid set of cards. You also have a splash to deal with, and most of your opponents will be playing with higher quality cards whether they have two colors or three. If you start winning, they'll be much better. You have two chances. One is to use your three flyers, two Gliders and a Voice, and fly over for the kill using your many tricks to deal with opposing blockers. That's a long shot, but it has a chance. The second option is to attack on the ground with red creatures using those same tricks, and that's a long shot too. A third option is to go lucky and either take advantage of a badly built deck or a bad draw, or ride Kris Mage. That's another long shot.
This brings up one last question. If you get this kind of deck at a PTQ, should you try to make it to the top eight? Or should you drop as soon as possible, saving both your rating and a ton of frustration? That comes down to a number of factors. For example, do you have anything better to do today? There's a lot to be said for playing side events instead. But if your rating isn't worth protecting (and anything under about 1850 isn't worth even thinking about in terms of the Pro Tour) then I'd say go for it. The deck may not be good, but it doesn't have any junk in it. Every card counts, and that's what matters most when playing against PTQ-level opposition. An active good rebel chain is going to kill you, as will true power cards - your goal is to use your removal to stop both of them. After that, hopefully you can outplay your opponents and take advantage of their mistakes, both in deck construction and in play. You'll give up five Swamps on the swap, and when the situation calls for it you can swap green for blue.
In many ways, this deck is terrible but it's a great sign for the format, because it is playable. If you had a deck this bad in Urza's Saga block you'd have no chance, and in Rath Cycle you would have less than no chance. Now it's even worth sticking around.
- Zvi Mowshowitz