2 Mulch

3 Skeletal Grimace

1 Rotting Fensnake (never been a fan of the “crocodile” card in Limited but I know many good players who like the card type)

1 Infernal Plunge

1 Curse of the Pierced Heart

1 Vampiric Fury

1 Sensory Deprivation

1 Paraselene

1 Graveyard Shovel

In addition red is very short on playables:

2 Crossway Vampires

1 Tormented Pariah

1 Night Revelers

1 Feral Ridgewolf

1 Harvest Pyre

None of these cards with the possible exception of Harvest Pyre are worth splashing a color and it will be unlikely that we need mediocre removal so badly that we end up making our mana base more inconsistent just to include it. We therefore end up focusing more broadly on green black white and blue.

At first brush green looks like a fine sealed color.

3 Grizzled Outcasts

1 Villagers of Estwald

1 Make a Wish

1 Ambush Viper

1 Kindercatch

1 Orchard Spirit

1 Festerhide Boar

2 Caravan Vigil

A 4/4 for five mana (Grizzled Outcasts) is a decent Sealed body and the ability to become a 7/7 is much more likely to trigger later in the game when fewer spells are being cast. Further it has some recursion (Make a Wish) some pseudo-removal (Ambush Viper) and some mana fixing (Caravan Vigil). In fact my impression is that we'll end up running green if our best cards are so dispersed that we can't build a consistent two- or two-splash-one color deck especially since we have a Traveler's Amulet.

Black is significantly deeper with removal utility and some decent creatures.

1 Bump in the Night

1 Moan of the Unhallowed

1 Falkenrath Noble

1 Victim of Night

1 Morkrut Banshee

1 Markov Patrician

1 Diregraf Ghoul

1 Walking Corpse

1 Altar's Reap

1 Typhoid Rats

1 Ghoulcaller's Chant

1 Screeching Bat

Our spells are reasonable; Bump in the Night provides a Lava Axe impression if we're running red but since we're not it's pretty underpowered unless we're highly aggressive. Victim of Night is actually better in Standard than in Limited where many more creatures are Vampires and Werewolves and Altar's Reap is a decent draw spell with token generators (as we have in white).

However black's real draw in this pool is the creatures—granted Diregraf Ghoul would be better if the pool were more aggressive but others such as Screeching Bat Falkenrath Noble Moan of the Unhallowed (yes technically a spell but it's four mana for four power/toughness with the opportunity to rebuy later) and even Typhoid Rats and Markov Patrician are solid.

Blue is probably the second strongest color in the pool.

1 Silent Departure

1 Spectral Flight

1 Armored Skaab

1 Lost in the Mist

1 Claustrophobia

1 Moon Heron

2 Stitcher's Apprentice

1 Stitched Drake

1 Battleground Geist

1 Makeshift Mauler

1 Dissipate

1 Sturmgeist

The creatures are unusually “beefy” for blue led by Sturmgeist most likely a 3/3 flier for five mana in Sealed with the potential to get out of control thanks to the Ophidian ability. Makeshift Mauler and Stitched Drake both are undercosted for their size and it's easy to make decisions about trading creatures early when we know that those blocks/attacks will yield incremental advantages.

We also have several counterspells (Dissipate and Lost in the Mist) both of which probably are playable though we wouldn't run two copies of Lost in the Mist in most sealed decks. Because of the “tap this creature” clause on Claustrophobia it often should be treated as a legitimate removal spell somewhat akin to Arrest in core set drafts. It's a deceptively strong card.

Finally Stitcher's Apprentice is a very deck-based creature. Sometimes it's awesome and sometimes it's okay. At the very worst it can replace itself with a 2/2 token to provide fodder for a blue Zombie (i.e. Stitched Drake) and it can replace any creature targeted with removal with a 2/2 as well. It also can be part of an ‘engine' deck (more on this later).

Because of the quality of the cards and the presence of several rares White probably is the best color in the pool.

1 Rally the Peasants

1 Spare from Evil

1 Thraben Purebloods

2 Feeling of Dread

1 Moment of Heroism

1 Smite the Monstrous

1 Slayer of the Wicked

1 Silverchase Fox

2 Unruly Mob

1 Spectral Rider

1 Mausoleum Guard

1 Voiceless Spirit

1 Mikaeus the Lunarch

1 Mentor of the Meek

Mikaeus the Lunarch is an amazing Mythic and he can completely change the tide of a game functioning as either a Glorious Anthem effect or as a very large beater.

Similarly Mentor of the Meek generally will be excellent in a white deck especially since he doesn't have the clause “nontoken” meaning that Spirit tokens can be cantrips. Mausoleum Guard is a deceptively powerful creature providing four power for four mana over the course of the game two of which fly.

Slayer of the Wicked will almost always have a target as black green blue and red are full of Vampires Werewolves and Zombies. He's not quite on the same power level as Skinrender but he's more easily splashed and can flat out take down a 7/7 Werewolf without leaving his trophy room.

Moment of Heroism is a good trick because it not only screws with “combat math” it also messes with “life total math” turning a lethal alpha strike into Magic's version of the Green Hornet.

Finally Unruly Mob is “okay” as a singleton I think in decks that can't abuse him because even a one-sided version of that ability (as opposed to the two-sided version found on most cards) is decent. However when paired with cards like Stitcher's Apprentice he can become a significant role-player.

Finally we get to the artifacts and lands.

1 Demonmail Hauberk

1 Wooden Stake

1 Traveler's Amulet

1 Cobbled Wings

1 Mask of Avacyn

1 Blazing Torch

1 Trepanation Blade

1 Woodland Cemetery

1 Sulfur Falls

1 Nephalia Drownyard

The strongest card here in a vacuum is probably Blazing Torch because it functions as removal with Mask of Avacyn coming in as a close second. Although the cast/equip cost pairing is a bit prohibitive hexproof is an awesome Limited mechanic (a lesson borne out by Swiftfoot Boots) and the Holy Strength stat buff is gravy.

Trepanation Blade seems like it'll be very good but as (very loosely) a 42.5% chance of any given card milled from a Limited deck will be a land it is closer to an expensive Shuko or Bonesplitter. Because of how the human mind perceives remembers and categorizes things we'll likely remember the times that it gave our creature +5/+0 while forgetting the ten other times that it provided a meager +1/+0.

I actually wrote off Demonmail Hauberk at the Prerelease because sacrificing a creature seems so much more restrictive than sacrificing an artifact (a la Piston Sledge) and it doesn't provide the initial equip cost for free. However it might actually be an “okay” card in a deck with a lot of token generation/leaves play effects.

Deck Construction

Because many of the good black spells in this pool require BB to cast I realized that splashing black with my two “best” colors wasn't going to be a viable option if I wanted to avoid mana issues throughout the tournament. My first build therefore focused on a U/B shell with a white splash for two bombs (Mikaeus the Lunarch and Mentor of the Meek) and two pieces of removal (Slayer of the Wicked and Smite the Monstrous).

Deck 1:

1 Moan of the Unhallowed
1 Falkenrath Noble
1 Victim of Night
1 Morkrut Banshee
1 Markov Patrician
1 Altar's Reap
1 Typhoid Rats
1 Screeching Bat
1 Silent Departure
1 Claustrophobia
1 Moon Heron
1 Stitched Drake
1 Battleground Geist
1 Makeshift Mauler
1 Dissipate
1 Sturmgeist
1 Mask of Avacyn
1 Blazing Torch
1 Traveler's Amulet
1 Slayer of the Wicked
1 Smite the Monstrous
1 Mikaeus the Lunarch
1 Mentor of the Meek
7 Swamp
7 Island
3 Plains

This deck has ways to interact with the opponent's board (both removal and bounce spells) a bit of card draw and reasonable creatures with evasion. On the downside there are a lot of spells that require either UU or BB to cast and we're splashing another color as well. Traveler's Amulet helps especially since the curve on this deck is a little high but there is still a risk of being locked out of an important spell at a key time. Because of these concerns I moved to a slightly less powerful but potentially more consistent deck focusing entirely on U/W.

Deck 2:

1 Voiceless Spirit
1 Mausoleum Guard
1 Makeshift Mauler
2 Unruly Mob
1 Battleground Geist
1 Stitched Drake
2 Stitcher's Apprentice
1 Silverchase Fox
1 Moon Heron
1 Slayer of the Wicked
1 Mentor of the Meek
1 Mikaeus the Lunarch
1 Sturmgeist
1 Spectral Rider
1 Mask of Avacyn
1 Smite the Monstrous
1 Claustrophobia
1 Moment of Heroism
1 Blazing Torch
1 Lost in Mist
1 Trepanation Blade
1 Dissipate
9 Island
8 Plains

As I noted earlier Trepanation Blade was disappointing at best and I should have run Silent Departure or even Wooden Stake / Demonmail Hauberk over it. Because sealed-format matches often are a grind even with the amount of evasion that this deck provides (seven creatures with evasion or that provide creatures with evasion on death) I want to have mechanics that provide inevitability. In this case:

2 Unruly Mob

2 Stitcher's Apprentice

1 Mentor of the Meek

The ability to pump one or two copies of Unruly Mob each turn for each copy of Stitcher's Apprentice that I have in play is very powerful and when Mentor of the Meek is added into the equation games quickly become very unfair. Mask of Avacyn frequently protected the non-redundant combo piece from removal and this combination of cards flat-out won me six games on the day out of a six round tournament. Is that better than the base U/B deck would have been? Honestly I don't know. The U/B deck looks better on paper (at least to me) but the U/W deck played very well and felt like it was in control even when ostensibly behind on the board.

Observations and Deck Performance

The U/W deck ended up going 4-2 in matches losing once in a nail-biter game three against Garruk when I mulliganed to five and once in the penultimate round to Invisible Stalker equipped with a Silver-Inlaid Dagger attacking on turn 3. In fact I have to say that one of the cards that impressed me the most for this sealed format is Silver-Inlaid Dagger. For a moderate cost of three mana most of the white creatures in the format get +3/+0. While it's debatable that might be better than Bonesplitter in this sealed format (and Bonesplitter was awesome in Mirrodin sealed). Given the general “lackluster” nature of many of the pieces of equipment in this set (a deliberate design decision to reflect the “found” nature of the weaponry in this world we're told) Silver-Inlaid Dagger is a diamond in the rough and can provide some serious beatings.

Similarly Invisible Stalker is nigh-unremovable and in conjunction with a reasonable piece of equipment approaches “bomb” level of power in this sealed format. If you can't outrace him there's very little that can be done to stop him.

All in all this is a very fun sealed format—full of multi-card interactions and the ability to generate engine-based game states (i.e. milling for flashback milling as a win condition creature synergies as per my U/W deck). This should be a fun PTQ season!