Insert Column Name Here - How Do You Rank A Sealed Deck Pool?

Eli Kaplan article last week got me to thinking: How should someone writing on the Sealed Deck format rank their cards?

See, I have my cards that are “Solid Playables,” defined as “If I’m in that color, I’ll almost certainly play this card.” Eli, on the other hand, breaks them down into three categories of “Solid,” “Decent,” and “Poor” — which is slightly more accurate, but also has the disadvantage that it takes me more time to write my article when I’d rather be watching reruns of “My Name Is Earl” and eating Cheetos.

Ah, but it’s not always about watching Jaimie Pressly. Sometimes, you have to take some time to get things right.

See, Draft writers have it easy: they can list it as a “third pick” if they want to get back to laughing at Randy, Earl’s idiot brother. Hardly anyone blinks when you say “third pick,” even though people should be asking “third pick in what archetype?” But Sealed writers have it difficult.

Me, I tend to think in terms of legacy. As the editor-in-chief of a major Magic site, it’s not just my articles I want to improve; I want to find some format that will improve everyone else’s articles, some structure that other writers can use to show how they truly judge the playability of some cards.

The $50,000 question is this: How should Magic writers break down the cards within a color in a given card pool to show what they think of the card overall?

It’s a given, naturally, that some cards are better when played with others. Reality Acid rises in playability when you have Dream Stalker or Tolarian Sentinel; that’s so old that it’s almost clichÃ©. But is there a way of showing that in the way you list cards?

What I want is a way of showing people exactly what kind of weight you lend to each card. And yet this is a messy world; I gotta be honest, and tell you that I can’t spend seven hours writing each article. Sure, I could go through each card and think of a numeric ranking to assign it, but that would be far too much time for an article I’m not getting paid all that much to write.

So how can we break it up? Well, I guess I’m asking your help to brainstorm. Does anyone have a good solution that doesn’t take too much time to break down? Is Eli’s good enough? Is mine?

Let’s ask it here. I wanna know whether there’s some better way.

Oh yeah, and I have some cards for you.

Sealed Deck Pool

Ferrett Steinmetz

Test deck on 04-15-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (48)

Lands (2)

Spells (25)

White
Solid Playables: Aven Riftwatcher, Calciderm, Fortify, Momentary Blink, Saltfield Recluse, Soltari Priest, Stormfront Riders, Sunlance

Actually, that’s a pretty nice White — but like a kid opening up his presents on Christmas morning, I feel the urge to complain about what I didn’t get. Because I love Stormfront Riders, but why couldn’t I get another bouncy-critter like Whitemane Lion or Stonecloaker to go with it? Just to make it extra-crazy?

And then there’s the matter of Shade of Trokair. I keep seeing people playing it. According to an article search, both Eli Kaplan and Nick Eisel like it (and Kenji Tsumura ranks it the #2 White common), while I don’t. I might consider my skills on a par with Eli, but Nick? Probably he’s better. Just mmmaybe. And Kenji, well, I’m just gonna assume I’m gone.

Thus, I should probably at the very least start playing with it to see why it’s good. Which I shall. Film at eleven.

Plus, there’s some pretty decent Sliver action here. Generally, I dislike Slivers in Sealed unless I have some awesome Slivers, but Pulmonic’s enough to pull me into Slivers on its own. Plus, we have not one but two Watcher Slivers, allowing us to stay cool on the home front and then fly in for the attack with a Fortify. Hmm. Me like.

Soltari Priest, incidentally, is every bit as silly in Sealed as it is in Block. A lot of people play Red thanks to Red’s, you know, killing capacity, and thus it’s usually a very ugly clock if you can get it out on turn 2.

Blue
Solid Playables: Crookclaw Transmuter, Dream Stalker, Dreamscape Artist, Snapback, Tolarian Sentinel

A lot of mediocre cards here: Flying Men, Merfolk Thaumaturgist, Sage of Epityr. Those cards aren’t bad, but it’s not exactly a powerhouse lineup, either. And what we do have here are quasi-combo cards; aside from the Crookclaw and Snapback, most of the solid playables are designed to help other cards in their rush to victory. Thus, it ain’t great.

Though Reality Acid and Dream Stalker is always fun. You know how it is.

Black
Solid Playables: Cradle to Grave, Dark Withering, Kor Dirge, Midnight Charm, Urborg Syphon-Mage

Kor Dirge, as I mentioned last week, is rapidly becoming one of my favorite combat tricks. But I’m not sure about Melancholy; while it certainly does its job at keeping something large off of your back, it’s also pretty expensive and the one-mana upkeep can really hurt at times. I’m torn.

Then there’s Haunting Hymn. It’s a powerful effect, but at six mana I’m not sure if I want to play it all the time. In Two-Headed Giant? Sure. Cool. But though it decimates, the question of whether it’s good enough to warrant an automatic inclusion is still something I’m undecided on.

But just so you know, two cards have risen in my estimation. Cradle to Grave is definitely playable — it’s damn tricky at times, and maddening when you tap out at the wrong time and miss the opportunity, but it’s proven more useful than not. As the Japanese remind us, a Remove Soul is usually at least okay.

Then there’s Midnight Charm. At a single Black mana, it’s not as flexible or potent as some of the other charms, but that low price enables you to cast it when others wouldn’t work. And its ability to kill pesky Looter il-Kors and to emergency-drop a guy when you grant one of your critters first strike is very, very handolicious.

Red
Solid Playables: Blazing Blade Askari, Fury Charm, Flowstone Channeler, Goblin Skycutter, Jaya Ballard, Needlepeak Spider, Prodigal Pyromancer, Simian Spirit Guide, Volcano Hellion

Hmm. Interesting mix, this. On the one hand, we have some creatures that can deal out some solid devastation; Jaya Ballard is always sweet, and Volcano Hellion is a happy little firebreather. But then we have no actual creature kill; there’s not one Rift Bolt or Grapeshot to be found here.

What’s left is tricky, and indicates a further need for me to start splitting up how I rank the cards. Because while Blazing Blade Askari is technically a “solid playable,” that’s because it’s three mana for a 2/2 with an ability that comes in handy on occasion. I certainly don’t go, “Holy gosh! A Blazing Blade Askari? I’d better go Red!” Likewise, Goblin Skycutter, Flowstone Channeler, Needlepeak Spider, and Simian Spirit Guide all make the cut because they’re attractively-priced bodies for the early game, not because they’re anything special.

I like them because their bodies are cheap. And now I shall try very hard not to make an Anna Nicole Smith joke.

So when I look at this, despite what I’ve written above, I actually see The Rock and Steve Austin standing among a bunch of clerical workers. There are two awesome cards, and cards that merely do the job. How does one rank and make this distinction obvious?

That said, Jaya Ballard is awesome when she gets going, but she usually doesn’t. That’s the risk you take with potent cards on a 2/2 body. And Volcano Hellion is great, but the echo usually isn’t payable. So what I see are two very powerful sorcery-speed combat tricks, and me being completely vulnerable in combat for the rest of the game. Which is not good. I could go Red, but I wouldn’t like it.

Green
Solid Playables: Aether Web, Evolution Charm, Greenseeker, Havenwood Wurm, Healing Leaves, Mire Boa, Phantom Wurm, Thrill of the Hunt, Yavimaya Dryad

I have certain expectations of Green. This meets them. I mean, we have beef, three combat tricks, some early attackers, and of course the mighty Kavu Predator.

It’s good across the board. So what do we do?

And The Rest
Solid Playables: Necrotic Sliver, Stormbind

Hmm. In combination with Pulmonic? Not bad.

(EDIT: In the original version, I forgot to type in “Stormbind” as a playable, which obviously it is. That’s an omission of typing, not playing; as someone in the forums has helpfully remarked, not thinking of it as a solid playable at the least is “Pure Noobsauce.” I can only concur.)

Building The Deck
There are three basic routes to take here:

1) Go with a White/Black Sliver-based build, hoping to leverage the fantastich power of our White with a Necrotic Sliver/Pulmonic Sliver combo;

2) Go White/Green, eschewing the Necrotic action in exchange for some creature pumpability and some large fatties;

3) Go G/R, focusing on beatdown and efficiency and hoping that your removal — such as it is — can take care of the things you cannot beat in the Red Zone;

4) Go W/R and go for solid, fast beatdown.

Any of those are debatable; this is a pretty darned solid card pool. I, however, loves me some repeatable Sliver action, and thus I went with the W/B build. (My second choice? Probably the W/R.) My build that I used in the actual League was off by two cards; here’s what I should have gone with.

1 Island
7 Plains
1 Soltari Priest
7 Swamp
1 Aven Riftwatcher
1 Basal Sliver
1 Calciderm
1 Cradle to Grave
1 Dark Withering
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Fortify
1 Haunting Hymn
1 Kor Dirge
1 Melancholy
1 Midnight Charm
1 Momentary Blink
1 Necrotic Sliver
1 Pulmonic Sliver
1 Saltfield Recluse
1 Shade of Trokair
1 Skulking Knight
1 Stormfront Riders
1 Sunlance
1 Trespasser il-Vec
1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
2 Watcher Sliver
1 Zealot il-Vec

The two cards that I botched were putting in a Blightspeaker over Haunting Hymn — which was a mistake, but for some crazy reason I was thinking that fetching my few Rebels was more important than killing my opponent’s late game — and leaving out the Shade of Trokair for a Faceless Devourer. I told you I didn’t like that card, and that’s how much I didn’t like it. That’s my bad, since even if I didn’t like it I should have considered it in such a heavily-White deck.

(I put them in later and went 5-1 in fun games. And never drew Shade of Trokair to Suspend it. But I’ll assume that Kenji probably has some idea of what he’s talking about. And putting in Haunting Hymn makes me consider going up to seventeen lands, and then what do I take out, but hey. Another time, baby.)

That said, I went 4-1-3-2 in my League. How does one accomplish that, you ask?

Well, I dominated the first three matches, one against a relatively weak opponent, the rest against people who knew what they were doing. (My current theory is that you can tell whether someone is at least decent on MODO if they never forget to fill their storage land at the end of your turn.) The deck seemed to do what it should do, and I was siding in Haunted Hymn often enough that I maindecked it by the third match.

The fourth match, I was just outgunned; he too had Volcano Hellion and Numot the Devastator, and then when I went into Game 3 with a turn 2 Soltari Priest he surprised me with everyone’s favorite answer: Sulfur Elemental. Whoops. I like to say I’m outgunned, but let’s be honest and say that there was probably an element of outplaying me as well.

The fifth match, I had won my first game handily against a player who didn’t seem that strong, playing a U/R build. Then I opened my first seven cards on the play:

Plains, Plains, Soltari Priest, Swamp, Swamp, Necrotic Sliver, Calciderm.

That’s a pretty dang solid hand against this bounce-happy guy. So I clicked “No” when MODO asked me if I wanted to take a mulligan.

Except my hand trembled and I clicked “Yes” by mistake.

My next six? Two lands, neither of them in the colors I had. I went to five and died. And then, on game three, I had to mulligan to four (my five-card hand had a single Dreadship Reef as a land), and of course I lost.

I would have won, dammit. It wasn’t guaranteed, of course, but I know in my bones I could have done that. And I lost because of a stupid, stupid misclick. Grrrrrrr. Grrrrr.

The Weekly Plug Bug
Home on the Strange — it’s a webcomic I write, you may have heard of it — ostensibly deals with the travails of married nerd couple Tom and Karla. The focus has been off of them for awhile as we’ve dealt with the love lives of their friends… But this week, we see the cracks in the central Home on the Strange marriage as an argument of colossal proportions breaks out.

Well, sort of. It’s about a bear….

Signing off,
The Ferrett
TheFerrett@StarCityGames.com
The Here Edits This Here Site Here Guy