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I'm not sure what precedence there is for this sort of article, but I usually just find an interesting sealed pool to write about. Just because the following pool was used as a “Firestarter” in Brian David-Marshall's most recent article doesn't mean that it isn't fair game. After all, I'm essentially going to discuss the card pool, and that's the purpose of a Firestarter, I'm sure.
Let's get into a brief card-by-card analysis here.
White offers up a smattering of decent creatures across the mana curve. We have early drops in Caregiver, Veteran Armorer, and the aggressive flier Shrieking Grotesque. While Shrieking Grotesque might not offer up the card advantage in (for example) the Boros deck as compared to how it's played in the Orzhov/x deck, it's still quite a capable flier when not enhanced with Black mana. In the four mana slot, we have another flier in Screeching Griffin (once again, still playable without access to Red mana) and Absolver Thrull, a card that should rise in power level with the introduction of the Magemark cycle to the Sealed environment.
As far as spells are concerned, White gives us a decent trick in Guardian's Magemark and a so-so trick in Wojek Siren. The Wojek Siren becomes more powerful when it can be used to double the damage of a Saproling alpha strike, but we'll have a look at that when we get there. Last but not least, we have a Wrath of God effect in Hour of Reckoning. While costing a hefty seven mana, it can be convoked out in a jiffy and saves your own token guys to boot.
To break from tradition, I'm going to look at the various White/x guilds available to us, to help us put the mono-White cards in context. Red/White offers a single Rally the Righteous — great as a finisher in the hyper-aggressive Boros Draft deck, not to mention its use in Selesnya-based token decks. Once again, we'll get to that when we look at the Saproling-generating powers available in our Green cards.
Green/White offers up a single Seeds of Strength. We were certainly looking for something a little better to help us use our token-friendly cards — something like Selesnya Evangel would've hit the spot perfectly. Seeds of Strength is still a very serviceable combat trick in any deck that can hit the requisite GW to cast it.
Orzhov gives us three cards of varying Limited playability. Castigate (and other Coercion effects) are never cards that I am happy running in my typical Sealed Decks. I'm never comfortable with a card that could possibly have no effect on the board. Drawing Castigate in a topdeck war is close to as bad as it gets, and drawing it early can rip a hole in the opponent's curve — granted, this can be pretty good, but I'd rather something more consistently good. A similar point can be made about Conjurer's Ban — sometimes awesome, but often just awful.
Our final Orzhov card is quite great, however. Pillory of the Sleepless takes out a guy and will occasionally drain the opponent's life total away, or otherwise just add a point to the clock that your evasive creatures have established. Note the “occasionally” — I'm not saying that the card is bad; it's merely that, with the large number of sacrifice outlets available to the average Sealed deck, it probably won't stay in play for as long as you had hoped. It could become a bit of a liability as maindeck Disenchant effects become the norm (if ever), but that is to be expected.
Moving onto Green, to see if our Saproling strategy could be viable, gives us Fists of Ironwood and Scatter the Seeds. Given these two cards, it's a little disappointing that our pool has not given us any strong Convoke creatures to accompany our two token generators. A Siege Wurm or Conclave Equenaut would really make our little Saprolings feel a little less irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Looking at our Green one-drops, Guildpact gives us Skarrgan Pit-Skulk and Starved Rusalka. The Rusalka fills a similar role to Caregiver — it acts as an early drop to facilitate Green/White cards like Selesnya Evangel or to convoke out creatures like the aforementioned Siege Wurm. (Note that our particular pool lacks these sort of cards.) Not to mention that the Rusalka can be a relevant sacrifice outlet too. The Pit-Skulk is a card I've seen in a few decks, but I'm not sure why you'd want to run him. Sure, he's quite insane with Moldervine Cloak or Sunforger equipped, but most creatures are. Personally, I like my guys to be relevant before I draw these bombs too.
Carven Caryatid is quite a good creature in a vacuum, but I often find it hard to run in decks. We're headed more and more into three-color category, often without being solidly in Green. Of course, if you can't cast it until turn 6 or so, it's still got a large five-toughness and immediately replaces itself in your hand. So I guess what I'm saying is that this card can be run in most base Green decks. Which is reasonably self-apparent.
Our four slot gives us Greater Mossdog and Gruul Scrapper. The Mossdog has been already received a decent amount of play in pure Ravnica sealed as a Hill Giant with recursive properties, so there's not much more I can say on the matter. The Scrapper, on the other hand, is decidedly subpar as a four-mana 3/2. When we start looking at him as a 2RG Vulshok Berserker, he looks quite a bit more attractive. Having the option of casting it as a vanilla 3/2 is nice, but I wouldn't be happy with him in a deck without Mountains.
As far as five-drop creatures are concerned, our pool gives us Ghor-Clan Savage and Scatter the Seeds. Alongside the Fists of Ironwood I mentioned earlier, the Scatter the Seeds helps facilitate the various token-friendly cards. Ghor-Clan Savage is great as a five-mana 5/6 — easily smashing the other common creatures. If your deck can force damage through (perhaps via the Saproling swarms we may be capable of generating), this guy will be great. In a similar manner, putting him in a Blue or White deck alongside plentiful fliers is a wonderful feeling.
Our curve is topped off with Gruul Nodorog and Root-Kin Ally. Gruul Nodorog is slightly under the curve as far as its stats are concerned, but with a quasi-evasive ability, he can be rather good. Especially when it means that your opponent has to risk two-for-ones by running into various combat tricks like Gaze of the Gorgon or Wildsize in order to block. Root-Kin Ally goes up in power with the size of your Saproling hordes, but isn't necessarily unplayable in other decks.
We've looked at what Green/White has to offer us already, so let's take a foray into Golgari territory. Here we have Golgari Germination — a card that is quite effective in a Dredge-heavy deck. When we've got Shambling Shells dancing between in play, the graveyard and our hand, it's nice to be churning out Saprolings too. Otherwise, it'll just make a few irrelevant 1/1s when your relevant creatures are dying. Given the lack of dredgables in our card pool, I'm assigning it the latter role in this deck.
Our other Green/Black card is a nice five-mana 5/4 with a relevant ability (which acts as a sacrifice outlet too). Clearly it's obvious I'm talking about everyone's favorite Zombie wriggler — Golgari Rotwurm. Although I'm sure Carrion Wurm has a diverse fanbase of its own, not that this is particularly relevant. Play this card in any deck that can reliably cast it. Even when not sacrificing Saprolings to slowly drain your opponent, this guy is a great beater.
The other Green/x guild is the newly introduced Gruul Clans. Here we have a reasonable one-drop in Wild Cantor. Just the other day, I was mashed by a third-turn Rumbling Slum facilitated by this guy. Now, I'm not going to promise that such a card will churn out such craziness all the time, but when looking at 1/1s, you can do far worse than an accelerator and mana fixer rolled into one.
The other two Gruul cards available are both playable. Weighing in at similar stats as the fearsome Kodama of the North Tree, we have Streetbreaker Wurm. While less difficult to deal with as our ever-friendly Northside, there's just something about a Signet-enabled turn 4 wurm with mighty stats (6/4). Our other card is the less exciting Burning-Tree Bloodscale. As with many of the other Bloodthirst cards, this guy is quite poor when you haven't managed to bash the opponent. As an intelligent Hill Giant with relevant abilities, it's a card you'd be happy running. Its power is dependent on your deck — judge it accordingly.
It seems natural too segue into the Red part of our pool at this point, so that's what we'll do. As far as creatures are concerned, we have a great pinger in Viashino Fangtail, assuming that we can manage the RR in its mana cost. After this, we have Barbarian Riftcutter, which we can play in a pinch, and Stoneshaker Shaman, which I will happily play another land over.
The spells are mostly unimpressive. We have Dogpile, a narrow burn spell, and Flash Conscription, the most recent in a long chain of Red Ray of Commands. Unfortunately, as many other writers have pointed out, the hefty converted mana cost of six is usually easy to spot — making this a Ray of Command variant that is reasonably easy to play around.
The powerful cards in Red seem to be mostly in the Izzet camp. Here we have our wonderful burn spell in Electrolyze, as well as a great finisher — Invoke the Firemind. Both of these are cards we'd be happy to run if able. Izzet Chronarch works well as a Scrivener and Anarchist mashed together — if we've got good spells and can manage to cast this guy, he's probably making the cut. Petrahydrox is just a good Hill Giant variant with built-in protection. Admittedly, he's pretty poor against the likes of Benevolent Ancestor or Viashino Fangtail.
This leads us into Blue territory. Considering the articles on StarCityGames.com in the past week, this Drake Familiar is powerful in the recursion of the comes-into-play Auras, but this pool seems to be lacking in them. Perhaps this efficient flier can be boarded in the get tempo from your opponent's Magemarks? You certainly don't want to be bouncing your opponent's Galvanic Arc, that much I know for sure.
After this, we have some conventional fliers. Snapping Drake is an aggressively-costed flier, while Tattered Drake fulfils an opposite role in defensive U/B/x decks. Stratozeppelid seems like the newest flier with “[this] can block only creatures with flying” — like many of the other ones before it (e.g. Stronghold Zeppelin, Hoverguard Observer) it's very playable. After all, when you have an efficient 4/4 flier, it's quite likely that you'll be turning him sideways often.
Torch Drake is a reasonable flier, even if considering its overcosted fire-breathing ability. Like many of the other cards with off-color activation abilities, this guy obviously gets a lot better when running Red mana. In a reasonably heavy Red deck (which this specific card pool will not be able to support), it could swing for quite large chunks of the opponent's life. In a deck with a Red splash (or no Red at all), it's still a playable evasion guy. All in all, Blue seems to have given our pool quite a flying army. Even Flight of Fancy can help some of our ground-pounders take to the air.
Vedalken Entrancer is a decent defensive guy, playing fine as a slightly overpriced Horned Turtle that can turn into a Millstone win condition in cases of a total board stall. I'd be happy running this, especially given our need to lock up the ground so our fliers can smash face in the air. Terraformer, on the other hand, isn't quite as impressive, but is often a necessary evil to fix up the curve in your typical Blue/x deck. It's also worth mentioning that this can power our Torch Drakes or can help out other cards we may be splashing.
In a mostly Blue deck, Gigadrowse can act as a Falter effect, tapping down each of the opponent's creatures so that you can send in with your army for the win. In effect, it's a more Blue-intensive Choking Tethers equivalent, but with greater versatility. It can also act as a single-shot Icy Manipulator, shutting down a Streetbreaker Wurm (or similar) for a turn, so that your fliers can go the distance. While it's not a card that I have had a chance to play yet, it looks to be quite good.
Naturally, let's head on towards Blue/Black. Here we have Consult the Necrosages, a playable Counsel of the Soratami, but it's certainly no Compulsive Research. We also have a hard-to-cast Grey Ogre in Dimir Cutpurse, and unreliable countermagic in Perplex. Simply put, our Dimir cards are very unimpressive. Then again, outside of the rare slot, there's not much other than Moroii that you'd be looking for in the Dimir cards.
Black gives us Thoughtpicker Witch as yet another one-drop not entirely useless sacrificial outlet. In fact, I've been duly locked down with Thoughtpicker Witch and Golgari Brownscale. While this is a little extreme, the Witch is still quite playable. The other Black creature is Mortipede, a creature we'd be happy running in a Green/Black deck. Useful as a Falter effect if you can get a 4/1 to stay in play for long. Alternately, it works quite well with Strands of Undeath attached, I hear.
Let's look at what we came to Black for — the removal spells. With two Last Gasp and a Douse in Gloom, we've definitely got removal in spades. With potential Izzet Chronarch recursion, alongside the Electrolyze and Invoke the Firemind in a Blue/Red/Black deck, it's no wonder that Brian David-Marshall suggested that such a deck would be viable with this card pool.
Now that we're done with the card-by-card analysis of the Sealed pool, let's first take a look at the two decks that BDM suggested in his brief introduction to the pool: Green/White/Black and Red/Blue/Black.
The G/W/B token-based deck would happily run cards like the Golgari Rotwurm and the Hour of Reckoning along with the Fists of Ironwood and Scatter the Seeds. Let's take a look at what else our card pool can do for this color combination. Firstly, it should be understood that Black will be our splash color for this deck. With the strength in Black almost solely being its removal spells, this seems like the best path.
The method of mana curve presentation that Sean McKeown utilised in his article, Magical Hack: Bird's Eye View, seems to be one of the better methods of presenting the deck.
1cc:
Caregiver, Starved Rusalka, Thoughtpicker Witch, Wild Cantor
2cc:
Veteran Armorer, Fists of Ironwood
3cc:
Shrieking Grotesque, Carven Caryatid
4cc:
Absolver Thrull, Screeching Griffin, Greater Mossdog, Gruul Scrapper, Mortipede
5cc:
Ghor-Clan Savage, Scatter the Seeds, Golgari Rotwurm}
6cc:
Gruul Nodorog, Root-Kin Ally
Spells:
Festival of the Guildpact, Wojek Siren, Hour of Reckoning, 2 Last Gasp, Douse in Gloom, Pillory of the Sleepless, Seeds of Strength
This gives us twenty-six playable cards. Cutting Festival of the Guildpact and Starved Rusalka are relatively easy to do, but an argument exists for cutting the Wojek Siren over the Festival or cutting the Thoughtpicker over the Rusalka. While Black is going to be our splash color, the Thoughtpicker Witch's effect is really much more relevant than Starved Rusalka's. And Wojek Siren, despite not being a cantrip, is a stronger effect than the defensive Festival. Finally, we'd probably cut Mortipede as it is a fairly mediocre creature in our splash color.
As far as the mana base is concerned, we'd want to run the Golgari Signet, as well as all of our non-basic land. The Sacred Foundry and the Gruul Turf will help to power up the Gruul Scrapper and the Gruul Nodorog, not to mention that the bounce lands do provide card advantage. This leaves us with a deck like the following:
| BDM Pool, Take One Featured by Brandon Lau on 2006-02-12 (Ravnica Limited) | ||
Artifacts 1 Golgari Signet Creatures 1 Absolver Thrull 1 Caregiver 1 Carven Caryatid 1 Ghor-Clan Savage 1 Golgari Rotwurm 1 Greater Mossdog 1 Gruul Nodorog 1 Gruul Scrapper 1 Root-Kin Ally 1 Screeching Griffin 1 Shrieking Grotesque 1 Thoughtpicker Witch 1 Veteran Armorer 1 Wild Cantor Enchantments 1 Fists of Ironwood 1 Pillory of the Sleepless |
Instants 1 Douse in Gloom 2 Last Gasp 1 Scatter the Seeds 1 Seeds of Strength 1 Wojek Siren Sorceries 1 Hour of Reckoning Basic Lands 6 Forest 5 Plains 2 Swamp Lands 1 Gruul Turf 1 Sacred Foundry 1 Selesnya Sanctuary | Stats: Average mana: 1.95 Average creature mana cost: 3.50 Average creature power: 2.36 Average creature toughness: 2.50 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 32.50% Creatures: 35.00% Instants: 15.00% Lands: 7.50% Enchantments: 5.00% Sorceries: 2.50% Artifacts: 2.50% |
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Looking at the R/B/U deck in much the same manner gives us the following:
1cc:
Thoughtpicker Witch, Wild Cantor
2cc:
-
3cc:
Terraformer, Dimir Cutpurse
4cc:
2 Torch Drake, Snapping Drake, Vedalken Entrancer, Viashino Fangtail,
Petrahydrox
5cc:
Stratozeppelid, Barbarian Riftcutter, Izzet Chronarch
6cc:
-
Spells:
Electrolyze, Invoke the Firemind, 2 Last Gasp, Douse in Gloom, 2 Gigadrowse, Flight of Fancy, Flash Conscription
Essentially, we find ourselves with a much strong suite of removal spells, but a little lacking in the number of playables, especially playable creatures. In fact, the cards above only add to twenty-two. Running both of our Signets and cutting Flash Conscription will help out with our mana curve, but it leaves us with a deck with lots of removal and lots of fliers... and not much else.
| BDM Pool, Take Two Featured by Brandon Lau on 2006-02-12 (Ravnica Limited) | ||
Artifacts 1 Golgari Signet 1 Izzet Signet Creatures 1 Barbarian Riftcutter 1 Dimir Cutpurse 1 Izzet Chronarch 1 Petrahydrox 1 Snapping Drake 1 Stratozeppelid 1 Terraformer 1 Thoughtpicker Witch 2 Torch Drake 1 Vedalken Entrancer 1 Viashino Fangtail 1 Wild Cantor Enchantments 1 Flight of Fancy |
Instants 1 Douse in Gloom 1 Electrolyze 1 Flash Conscription 1 Gigadrowse 2 Last Gasp Sorceries 1 Invoke the Firemind Basic Lands 7 Island 6 Mountain 3 Swamp Lands 1 Gruul Turf | Stats: Average mana: 1.88 Average creature mana cost: 3.62 Average creature power: 2.23 Average creature toughness: 2.38 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 40.00% Instants: 15.00% Artifacts: 5.00% Creatures: 32.50% Lands: 2.50% Sorceries: 2.50% Enchantments: 2.50% |
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From these two decks alone, I'd have to choose the Green/White/Black deck, as the latter R/B/U deck seems like it could get easily run over by a single Siege Wurm. I definitely like the huge flying army better than the Saproling horde, but as far as each deck works holistically, it would seem that the G/W/B deck is just better.
Can we do a better job than this? What I have been thinking about is a base G/U deck — after all, these are the two deepest colors in our card pool. And while these two colors don't share a guild yet, they do have a bunch of powerful cards that we could splash for. Let's have a look over the cards that are available to us in a G/U/r/b deck.
1cc:
Starved Rusalka, Wild Cantor, Thoughtpicker Witch
2cc:
Fists of Ironwood
3cc:
Carven Caryatid, Terraformer, Dimir Cutpurse
4cc:
Greater Mossdog, Gruul Scrapper, 2 Torch Drake, Snapping Drake, Viashino Fangtail, Mortipede, Petrahydrox, Vedalken Entrancer
5cc:
Stratozeppelid, Izzet Chronarch, Ghor-Clan Savage, Scatter the Seeds, Barbarian Riftcutter, Golgari Rotwurm
6cc:
Gruul Nodorog, Root-Kin Ally
Spells:
2 Last Gasp, Douse in Gloom, Electrolyze, Invoke the Firemind, 2 Gigadrowse, Flight of Fancy
This leaves us with about thirty playable cards to mess about with. First cuts would be Dimir Cutpurse, Thoughtpicker Witch, Mortipede, and Viashino Fangtail. These four creatures are all in our splash colors and either contain too much colored mana like the Fangtail, or they simply don't justify warping the mana base further. In a similar way, the Riftcutter pales in comparison to the better Green five-drops, and should be cut accordingly. We can free up the four-mana slot further by cutting the Petrahydrox.
We can then cut Root-Kin Ally, as is it is less than effective in our current deck if we don't draw our Saproling generators. Starved Rusalka is a little too weak to make the cut, as before, and cutting the Chronarch lets us free up the five-mana slot further. This leaves us with twenty-three cards. Cutting the Flight of Fancy to allow room for both of our Signets leaves us a deck like the following:
| BDM Pool, Take Three Featured by Brandon Lau on 2006-02-12 (Ravnica Limited) | ||
Artifacts 1 Golgari Signet 1 Izzet Signet Creatures 1 Carven Caryatid 1 Ghor-Clan Savage 1 Golgari Rotwurm 1 Greater Mossdog 1 Gruul Nodorog 1 Gruul Scrapper 1 Snapping Drake 1 Stratozeppelid 1 Terraformer 2 Torch Drake 1 Vedalken Entrancer 1 Wild Cantor Enchantments 1 Fists of Ironwood |
Instants 1 Douse in Gloom 1 Electrolyze 2 Gigadrowse 2 Last Gasp 1 Scatter the Seeds Sorceries 1 Invoke the Firemind Basic Lands 6 Forest 5 Island 2 Mountain 2 Swamp Lands 1 Gruul Turf | Stats: Average mana: 1.95 Average creature mana cost: 4.00 Average creature power: 2.62 Average creature toughness: 2.92 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 37.50% Creatures: 32.50% Lands: 2.50% Instants: 17.50% Sorceries: 2.50% Artifacts: 5.00% Enchantments: 2.50% |
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I feel a little uncomfortable with only having sixteen lands in a four-color deck, so I might toy around with cutting a Gigadrowse for another land. What this deck would give for a Civic Wayfinder, eh? Anyway, despite possible mana issues, this deck allows you to run the best cards in your mana pool. The low count of Red and Black sources seems acceptable, given that all of the decks creatures (with the exception of the Rotwurm) can be casting using only Green or Blue mana. Not to mention the two Signets and the Wild Cantor.
However, there are many powerful cards in this card pool. Not only have we ported the Black removal of double Last Gasp and Douse in Gloom from the G/W/B deck, we've also coupled it with Electrolyze and Invoke the Firemind. Invoke the Firemind, in particular, provides us with another win condition as well. Essentially, this build lets us run our Blue flying army alongside our Green ground-pounders, with space for Red and Black removal.
Well, as always, let me know how you would have built the deck in the forums. Which of these builds is the best? Is there some other build that I may have missed? And so on. Hopefully, this article will provide some sort of insight into what is considered when deciding what colors to run in a Sealed Deck.
Until next time,
Brandon
