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I was going to open this article by explaining in length why I have not written an article in a quite a while. I imagine, however, that this wouldn't exactly be the best way to grab the attention of readers. So, without any further hesitation, I'm going to look back and see what I've learned about this current Sealed environment and, with any luck, this retrospective journey may be of use in upcoming Pro Tour Qualifier events.
Sealed Pool #1:
Firstly, let's look at a card pool. Most of the card pools that I analyse will be generated using Apprentice, so appreciate that the decks that I have constructed are usually done in less time than at most Sealed tournaments. Here's the first card pool for your perusal:
A quick look at this card pool tells us that the strongest cards are almost exclusively gold cards – for instance, Niv-Mizzet, Moroii, Golgari Rotwurm, and double Streetbreaker Wurm, as well as a handful of playable cards in Boros (Skyknight Legionnaire, Thundersong Trumpeter and Boros Guildmage). At this point, we are trying to select the color combination that will maximize the power of our Sealed Deck without screwing over our mana base.
Looking into our mono-color cards to see what is present to support our gold ones shows that White is incredibly shallow and the removal colors, Black and Red, are lacking reasonable creatures and also a little low in quality removal. The final two colors have enough solid cards to make a decent base to splash our bomb creatures, so we have the skeleton of our deck already.
Now that we have decided this, we really have to let our good cards in Boros and Orzhov go, as it will put a large strain on our manabase to expect to be able to cast cards with RW or WB in their upper right corners when our land base will be mostly Forests and Islands. Not to worry though – there are plenty of powerful cards in the remaining guilds to make up for these losses.
Let's take a look at our options at this point.
Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind – 2UURR
Electrolyze – 1UR
2 Streetbreaker Wurm – 3RG
Moroii – 2UB
Golgari Rotwurm – 3BG
Looking at the power and colors of these assorted cards tells us that a Red splash could be quite beneficial to add to our G/U deck skeleton. This would also give us Dogpile and Fiery Conclusion to add to our pseudo-removal spell Gaze of the Gorgon. Note that such a splash is supported by a nice on-color bounceland: Izzet Boilerworks. Taking the deck in this direction is definitely something to be considered.
Alternately, considering the Black cards as our splash allows us to avoid the heavy color commitment of Niv-Mizzet. However, this also is a large trade-off in power as we lose the ability to run double Streetbreaker Wurm – something that our single Golgari Rotwurm does not make up for. Additionally, being unable to play Electrolyze (or the so-so Red burn spells) means that such a deck would be very low on removal.
(Note that it is also possible to run the Red splash without Niv-Mizzet, thereby giving your deck the power of double Streetbreaker, Electrolyze and burn spells, but without the slight worry of the double R in Niv-Mizzet's cost. However, considering the power that this Dragon Wizard gives you – I don't believe that one can leave Niv-Mizzet on the bench once we start sleeving up Mountains alongside Islands.)
Here's the deck that I greedily ran with:
| Sealed Deck Featured by Brandon Lau on 2006-03-12 (Ravnica Limited) | ||
Artifacts 1 Spectral Searchlight Creatures 1 Carven Caryatid 1 Centaur Safeguard 1 Dimir Guildmage 1 Elvish Skysweeper 1 Ghor-Clan Savage 1 Golgari Rotwurm 1 Gruul Scrapper 1 Moroii 1 Siege Wurm 1 Silhana Ledgewalker 2 Streetbreaker Wurm 1 Terraformer 1 Transluminant 1 Vedalken Entrancer Instants 1 Electrolyze 1 Gaze of the Gorgon 2 Wildsize |
Legendary Creatures 1 Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind Sorceries 1 Compulsive Research 1 Train of Thought Basic Lands 6 Forest 5 Island 2 Mountain 2 Swamp Lands 1 Golgari Rot Farm 1 Izzet Boilerworks | Stats: Average mana: 2.05 Average creature mana cost: 3.81 Average creature power: 3.06 Average creature toughness: 3.00 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 37.50% Creatures: 37.50% Lands: 5.00% Sorceries: 5.00% Instants: 10.00% Legendary Creatures: 2.50% Artifacts: 2.50% |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
The use of basic lands in splashes has been frowned upon in recent articles on StarCityGames, and I do think that the “double Mountain, double Swamp” in my mana base represents a slight paranoia regarding color screw. However, I'm not entirely sure that the deck actually needs more Islands or Forests. I played a couple of games with this deck, both against opponents and goldfishing, and found that the mana base was surprisingly durable.
Playing this deck made me realize a few things:
- I really can't wait until Dissension comes out and releases the Simic upon us.
- Train of Thought, while usually quite a good card, is probably less usable in a deck that is running four colors. I'm not saying I'd necessarily cut it from the deck – I'm saying that a great many cards in this format are incredibly deck dependent.
- Playing on Apprentice makes me do silly things, like leaving Gather Courage in the sideboard in a deck that features Green as one of its main colors.
Of these points, the second is probably of the most use and deserves further attention. I'm aware that other writers have touched upon this subject, but it's worth mentioning again: you cannot judge the strength of cards in a vacuum. Many, many cards will have power levels that fluctuate depending on the deck that features them. This is often as simple as manabase considerations, but can also be viewed in terms of your deck's overall plan. Some examples to illustrate this point:
- Many powerful Boros cards are at their best in the early game. As such, these cards go down in power in decks that feature R/W as a splash, rather than as main colors.
- Pyromatics and Train of Thought may appear splashable upon a brief glance at their mana costs, but are only truly of value when they can be replicated with ease.
- A card like Guardian of the Vitu-Ghazi becomes much less powerful without Saprolings or other swarms of creatures.
- This has been mentioned in a recent Draft article. The choice between Drift of Phantasms and Snapping Drake is largely a deck dependent decision.
I know that many of you may find this point a little obvious, but I have made mistakes in judging the value of cards in many decks because of inaccurate judgments, and I have also seen others making similar mistakes. This is more relevant in Draft, granted, but can also affect your Sealed deck construction.
However, the main point I want to draw attention to with this particular card pool is the balance between power and consistency. As is apparent above, selecting the correct colors for your deck (or even stretching your mana base to include another color) will mean that more powerful gold cards will become available to your deck, in turn boosting your deck's power. Unsurprisingly, the guild block rewards decks that can take advantage of greater numbers of guild cards.
What I did with the deck was sacrifice some amount of consistency to up the power of the deck. It is what I consider to be the best build of this Sealed pool, but feel free to chime in on the forums if you think differently.
Izzet Draft Action:
(No, not a pun.)
To help break up the monotony of putting so many card pools next to each other, I'll present to you the deck that I used to win the only RRG Draft that I have taken part in. I'm not exactly qualified to be handing out Draft advice with so little experience in the format, but perhaps the deck that I managed to build may help others see what is possible with the U/R/x archetype(s).
My memory is a little patchy, but I'll try to recall some of the early picks of the Draft. The first pick was Snapping Drake in a pack containing Golgari Rotwurm and Siege Wurm, and was followed up by Mark of Eviction and a Plague Boiler. Throughout this first pack, I was picking up late Boros Garrisons in the hope that I would be able to grab some Skyknight Legionnaires or whatnot. Unfortunately, none came around.
The second pack saw me open a Plague Boiler and stupidly pick it over cards that were actually relevant to the deck. Finally, in the Guildpact booster, I opened Electrolyze and picked Savage Twister and Invoke the Firemind second and third – not bad for the first three picks. I wasn't able to pick up a Gruul Turf to support this splash, but I ran with it anyway (as most people would, I'm sure).
| RRG Draft Deck Featured by Brandon Lau on 2006-03-12 (Ravnica Limited) | ||
Creatures 1 Drift of Phantasms 1 Izzet Chronarch 1 Lurking Informant 1 Ogre Savant 2 Snapping Drake 1 Surveilling Sprite 1 Terraformer 1 Vedalken Dismisser 1 Vedalken Entrancer 1 Wee Dragonauts 1 Wojek Embermage Enchantments 1 Flight of Fancy 1 Galvanic Arc 2 Halcyon Glaze 1 Mark of Eviction |
Instants 1 Electrolyze 1 Gigadrowse 1 Peel from Reality 1 Repeal Sorceries 1 Invoke the Firemind 1 Savage Twister Basic Lands 2 Forest 8 Island 4 Mountain Lands 2 Boros Garrison 1 Izzet Boilerworks | Stats: Average mana: 1.78 Average creature mana cost: 3.75 Average creature power: 1.67 Average creature toughness: 2.42 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 35.00% Sorceries: 5.00% Instants: 10.00% Lands: 7.50% Creatures: 30.00% Enchantments: 12.50% |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
As I have mentioned in the forums, I discovered Gigadrowse to be fairly unimpressive, even considering the high count of Blue mana sources in this particular deck. This probably isn't the best example of an Izzet/X aggro deck, but it is something to compare against the more controlling deck that Nick Eisel presented in his Draft walkthrough. If you've had any experience with the two main Izzet Draft archetypes, I'd be interested in hearing about it on the forums.
Sealed Pool #2:
Here we have another Sealed deck that I messed about with on Apprentice. This one was built a bit more recently and is more challenging, as far as the selection of colors is concerned. Here, have a look at the card pool for yourself:
While less dominated by gold cards as the previous card pool, there are still relevant considerations in the multi-colored cards. Powerful gold cards present here are Debtors' Knell, Drooling Groodion, Gelectrode, and double Streetbreaker Wurm. None of these are particularly strong enough on their own to push us in any direction, so now we will examine the mono-colored cards present here.
Each color has a few gems present:
White: Conclave Equenaut, Divebomber Griffin, Faith's Fetters
Blue: Vedalken Dismisser, Vedalken Entrancer, Steamcore Weird
Black: Brainspoil, Disembowel, Douse in Gloom, Dimir House Guard, Mausoleum Turnkey
Red: Viashino Fangtail
Green: Gruul Nodorog
Essentially, we have the choice between R/G/x with subpar mono-colored cards, but the power of the Gruul cards, or we can go with W/B/x. The Gruul/x deck clearly suffers in its mono-colored playables, but double Streetbreaker and Burning-Tree Bloodscale help that out. W/B/x gives us a deck with the bomb of Debtors' Knell and potentially allows us to splash for Drooling Groodion and Seeds of Strength.
Before we go any further, I'll present you with the deck that I ended up building.
| Sealed Deck 2 Featured by Brandon Lau on 2006-03-12 (Ravnica Limited) | ||
Artifacts 1 Gruul Signet 1 Selesnya Signet Creatures 1 Absolver Thrull 1 Burning-Tree Bloodscale 1 Centaur Safeguard 1 Conclave Equenaut 1 Divebomber Griffin 1 Droning Bureaucrats 1 Elves of Deep Shadow 1 Gruul Nodorog 1 Gruul Scrapper 1 Mourning Thrull 2 Streetbreaker Wurm 1 Veteran Armorer 1 Wild Cantor |
Enchantments 1 Debtors' Knell 1 Faith's Fetters Instants 1 Gaze of the Gorgon 1 Scatter the Seeds 1 Seeds of Strength 1 Wildsize 1 Withstand Basic Lands 6 Forest 4 Mountain 6 Plains Lands 1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree | Stats: Average mana: 2.10 Average creature mana cost: 3.71 Average creature power: 2.71 Average creature toughness: 2.43 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 40.00% Creatures: 35.00% Enchantments: 5.00% Artifacts: 5.00% Instants: 12.50% Lands: 2.50% |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
I'm not certain that this is the best possible deck. After all, all the best cards in the deck that I constructed are all available to the W/B/x deck, with the exception of the double Streetbreaker Wurm. I'm not saying that the above deck is particularly bad – the array of tricks (Wildsize, Seeds of Strength, Withstand, Gaze) work particularly well with the aggressive creatures present in this deck. However, this deck does have its problems – Debtors' Knell is surprisingly difficult to cast in a deck that doesn't have both White and Black, and the deck is low on removal.
In hindsight, it becomes clear that, when building this deck, I was too busy trying to utilise the Gruul cards to their fullest, sacrificing more powerful mono-color cards to do so. While cards like Blind Hunter and Shrieking Grotesque are sorely missed, a W/B/g deck manages to make the most of the card pool in question. I mean, consider a deck like the following:
| Sealed Deck 2.1 Featured by Brandon Lau on 2006-03-12 (Ravnica Limited) | ||
Artifacts 1 Selesnya Signet Creatures 1 Centaur Safeguard 1 Conclave Equenaut 1 Dimir House Guard 1 Divebomber Griffin 1 Droning Bureaucrats 1 Drooling Groodion 1 Gruul Scrapper 1 Mausoleum Turnkey 1 Mourning Thrull 1 Roofstalker Wight 1 Sadistic Augermage 1 Thoughtpicker Witch 1 Veteran Armorer Enchantments 1 Debtors' Knell 1 Faith's Fetters |
Instants 1 Disembowel 1 Douse in Gloom 1 Scatter the Seeds 1 Seeds of Strength 1 Wildsize 1 Withstand Sorceries 1 Brainspoil Basic Lands 3 Forest 7 Plains 6 Swamp Lands 1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree | Stats: Average mana: 2.03 Average creature mana cost: 3.54 Average creature power: 2.38 Average creature toughness: 2.00 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 40.00% Enchantments: 5.00% Creatures: 32.50% Instants: 15.00% Artifacts: 2.50% Sorceries: 2.50% Lands: 2.50% |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
At the very least, the deck is comparable to the first one that I thought of. The missing Streetbreaker Wurms are made up for with more removal spells and a far better chance of breaking open the late game with Debtors' Knell. It's also possible to run Necromantic Thirst in this deck, making something reminiscent of a Dimir evasive aggro deck, using the Thirst on a flier or House Guard to recur the likes of Thoughtpicker Witch or Sadistic Augermage.
I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that the first deck you think of will not necessarily be the best possible deck for the Sealed pool you have opened. I made the above G/W/r deck very quickly, mistakenly considering this Sealed pool as being obvious. Had I applied a little more thought, I would not have ended a game with Debtors' Knell stranded in hand, or lost to fliers that I couldn't deal with.
A different way about thinking of this process is the realization that you will have good cards left in your sideboard after you've finished building your deck. Whether it's as extreme as the Glare of Subdual that you can't fit into your U/R/b deck, or something more mundane like double Streetbreaker Wurm, remember that there will be something of worth that won't make the cut.
Final Note:
I know the article's been going on for a while yet, so let's end it on a fairly simple note. Let's say that you've opened up a fairly ridiculous card pool and have selected the following twenty-three playable cards. Given that your pool has both Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion and Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree, but no bouncelands (of any kind), what would your land base look like?
Bloodscale Prowler – 2R
Goblin Spelunkers – 2R
Viashino Fangtail – 2RR
Skarrgan Firebird – 4RR
Shrieking Grotesque – 2W
Silhana Starfletcher – 2G
Ghor-Clan Savage – 3GG
Scatter the Seeds – 3GG
Boros Guildmage – {r/w}{r/w}
Skyknight Legionnaire – 1RW
Flame-Kin Zealot – 1RRW
Razia, Boros Archangel – 4RRWW
Burning-Tree Bloodscale – 2RG
Streetbreaker Wurm – 3RG
Skarrgan Skybreaker – 4RRG
Terrarion – 1
Boros Signet – 2
Selesnya Signet – 2
Bathe in Light – 1W
Seeds of Strength – GW
Withstand – 2W
Wildsize – 2G
Faith's Fetters – 3W
Should anyone have Sealed tournaments to attend, I wish you the best of luck.
Until next time,
Brandon Lau
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