Well, it's the end of the prerelease weekend - and as you might guess, I have a few things to say about the green token-generating cards. I'll talk about those and some other Odyssey Limited subjects after I describe the results of the Prerelease. At the end of it all will be the most recent IBC progress report.

Odyssey Prerelease – Bombs Away!
The day went very well— here's what I ended up playing:

The Bombs:

• Time Stretch (8UU, take two extra turns)
• Overrun (Tempest reprint, 2GGG, gives all your critters +3/+3 and trample until the end of turn)
• Ivy Elemental (XG, has X +1/+1 counters)
• Roar of the Wurm (6G, flashback 3G, put a 6/6 Wurm token into play)

It was hard for me to think of these last two as being bombs, since I'm used to creatures being fragile commodities like they are in Constructed formats. As the day wore on, it became apparent that the Elemental and the Roar were complete beatings, since there are very few regenerating blockers or other removal in this set.

The rest, by CC:

1: Chatter of the Squirrel, Druid Lyrist
1X: Syncopate (that's right, I countered a spell or two. Can't say I'm proud of it)
2: Cephalid Scout, Skyshooter, Escape Artist, Wild Mongrel
3: Nantuko Elder, Cephalid Looter, Krosan Avenger, Leaf Dancer
4: 2x Mystic Zealot, Krosan Archer, Repel, Dematerialize, Aven Fisher, Concentrate.

When I opened the packs, it became apparent that black and red were unplayable, but I was blessed with many green and blue creatures (not to mention the bombs). I actually had to make"cuts" and not play some good sealed cards, most notably the Nantuko Disciple (3G, 2/2, tap to give something +2/+2).

The two mystic Zealots were the only white cards in the main deck, although one each of the pilgrims were in the sideboard. Looking back, I'm still glad I put the white splash in, even though the mana or the cards got in the way a couple of times. The Zealots never affected the outcome of a game, mostly because I had a lot of trouble getting Threshold.

Round 1: I have little idea what happened here except that I went 2-0. I didn't actually take notes on matches until my Round 4"Duel with Gabriel" (that phrase sounds so cool), when it became apparent that my deck could actually go the distance.

1-0

Round 2: I win 2-1, with the loss being game 2 to total manascrew. My opponent is a formerly avid player who now just plays prereleases in order to acquire extra cards for her husband. Still, her deck looked very solid.

2-0

Round 3: This young player has a couple of copies of Zombie Infestation (at least it seemed that way, since he played it on the second turn both games.) While that card has Constructed potential, in Limited I was very happy to see him throwing away two cards to make 2/2s that weren't really threats. This was over fairly quickly, since he couldn't deal with a large Elemental in game 1 or two 6/6 Wurms in game 2. Can you blame him?

3-0

Round 4: Gabriel Wilson, one of the big-name players present.

Game 1: I spend a few turns with only green mana, but manage to hold him off with creatures until the blue card-drawing can show up (that Cephalid Looter rules in Limited). Time Stretch, and then Overrun on my second extra turn, wins the game. (Brutal, huh?)

Game 2: This game was just a big creature standoff until I found my overrun again. Gabe commented on the luck that I drew it in both games — I suppose he had a point, but I did draw over half my deck in both games, too.

At this point I'm 4-0 and up at the top tables. I'm wondering how my deck is pulling this off, since I still hadn't recognized how broken the Roar and Elemental are.

Round 5: Mark Satten, whose deck had a lot of similarities to my own.

It was G/U and tended to end games with a huge attack. He had two of those"tap all nonflying creatures" instants (don't get me started about those) and the Nantuko that doubles a target creature's power. Those, plus his own Mongrel and some other fatties, were enough to end my game 1.

Games 2 and 3: I pretty much just rushed him, but I think I might have taken my"two extra turns" brokenness in one of those duels.

5-0

A pattern was developing that makes a lot of sense — if I cast Overrun or Time Stretch in a game, I win that game. Go figure.

Round 6 vs. the eventual winner of the event. I didn't take down his name, but he obviously knew what he was doing.

Game 1 is a very long one that is ended by my taking two extra turns and breaking through.

Game 2: Then, after his comment on the little time remaining, I made a huge strategic mistake and increased my speed of play to make sure there was no appearance of stalling. That led to a whole slew of questionable plays and an easy win for him.

Game 3 was no contest — the high quality of his draw and the poor quality of mine made it a quick win for him.

By the way, his deck was U/B - the only nongreen one at the top tables. I found that interesting. It seemed to have a lot of Whispering Shades, Zombie Assassins, and flying blue stuff.

At this point, I'm stalled at fifteen points (which would get me only three packs) and I really want to get to eighteen points and earn eighteen packs.

Round 7: This guy was in the same boat as me, but wasn't as lucky.

Game 1, The Elemental/Wurm tokens did a tag-team and ran him over.

Game 2 was nearly the same, but included me taking two extra turns after Repelling one of his blockers. Then the Wurm did its work. Had I not cast Time Stretch, he could possibly have stabilized and won with the Beast Attack and Elephant Ambush he was holding in hand.

6-1, 3^rd place, 18 packs. A good day. That, and my Limited rating is now probably a lot higher.

Afterwords
After the main event I managed to get into a side draft before they ended for the evening. I drafted a G/B/r deck with lots of fatties, Grave Robbers, and a Vampire Dragon (a 5/5 flyer with a creature-damaging ability). I ended up ID-ing in the finals after my opponent and his friends pestered me about it. Five packs instead of six didn't sound too bad if I got to go home an hour earlier, though.

Odyssey's Impact in Limited
It's obvious from the start that, in limited, green is a bomb factory. So much so that the side-drafts at the prerelease ran out of forests to give people, and folks had to scrounge for them. All of the token generators with flashback shine in an environment where there is little removal, and what there is of it is either conditional or expensive. I can't believe they printed so many of these cards — Elephant Ambush, Beast Attack, Chatter of the Squirrel, Roar of the Wurm, Call of the Herd, and of course"Pounding of the Opponent" once a few of these see play.

Overrun is an uncommon, as is the Roar of the Wurm. Gorilla Titan and Bearscape have a good synergy. The Nantuko Elder is great mana acceleration as a common, and will help with the initial or flashback costs of your fatties.

A blue mage that can get all the common bounce cards at the draft table would be a major power as well, since a lot of tokens should be around. Aether Burst in multiples greater than two will break games if you have any pressure. And what about Standstill? Three cards for two mana? It's Constructed-worthy, and with its conditional requirements it will likely spawn even more of these nightmarish U/X tempo decks, but these in Standard.

There are bombs in other colors, of course — Kirtar's Wrath in white, the Dragon in B/R, Time Stretch for Blue, and Maybe Volley of Boulders in Red, from what I've seen. How about that pro-everything Angel and the Cephalid who can Tap all non-flying creatures, or the blue instants that do that, too? Yeesh — brutal stuff.

Odyssey in Constructed
What about Constructed? Well, the tokens probably won't rule there. Once people are able to gather multiples of the blue bounce and black recursion/discard, I think those will be the forces to reckon with. How about Last Rites (discard cards for multiple Coercion effects) in a Constructed B/X flashback or beatdown deck? Sounds tough to me.

An amazing thing to note is that the flashback counterspell may actually be balanced for Limited, and thus unplayable in Constructed.

And, of course, we can't discuss a new set without a section dedicated to

Crap Rares:
These are just the ones I've seen. I'm sure there are more:

White:
Cantivore (hmm, a Lhurgoyf for enchantments—yep, pretty sure that's a bad idea)
Prianna, Nomad Captain (wasn't this a Tempest uncommon, but then with Shadow?)
Lieutenant Kirtar (this guy deserved better, being the main character in white)

Blue:
Shifty Doppelganger (hey, they remembered the"f"—I suppose you could combo with this somehow)

Red:
Chance Encounter (don't have an encounter with this card in your rare slot)
Mine Layer (holy cow — how many 4-cost 1/1 dwarves are in this set? Poor guys)
Molten Influence (giving your opponent options isn't a good play)

Green
Stone-Tongued Basilisk (no, it is NOT playable - tell your younger siblings not to trade for it)

Black:
Tombfire (I guess they had to make it, didn't they?)

IBC Updates
Well, the NYC and DC attacks, as well as family issues, prevented me from going to the last qualifier in Seattle. It's probably a good thing I didn't go, because my"Quick Nishoba" build got crushed by Liquid Tempo at FNM in Portland last week. I won't waste your time by listing it, since it went nowhere. My newest tries will probably be a modification of the deck Knobloch played in Denver. I'll try and smooth out the mana and add two Vindicates to get to four. Next weekend's qualifier in Seattle and the Sunday one in Portland look like the last shot at New Orleans.

Good luck to everyone in the coming weekend.

joel