Like everyone else in the Magic universe who doesn’t work at Wizards of the Coast, this past weekend was the first opportunity I had to play with Avacyn Restored. For my part, I was gunslinging at San Diego Games and Comics, a great local store that had a solid turnout for the prerelease events—a turnout that would have been even higher, I’m sure, had they not sold out their first ever midnight event the night before! It seemed like everyone was excited for the new set, as well as the "Open the Helvault" promotion.
Before I delve too much into my thoughts on playing with the set itself, I want to comment briefly on the Helvault promotion. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the event on Twitter since the weekend, and they kind of blow my mind. It seems a lot of people were unhappy with the contents of the Helvaults or at least of their particular Helvault.
For those of you who weren’t keeping up with the story, it seems that while the majority of the Helvaults contained the standard assortment of promo cards, custom dice, tokens, and oversized versions of the new legendary creatures from the set in the style of the Commander generals, some lucky stores got promo versions of Angel and Demon themed cards like Exalted Angel, Demonic Tutor, and Decree of Justice.
The most common threads I’ve heard running through the complaints were that the standard contents of the Helvaults were a letdown after the amount of hype the promotion had received and that it was unfair that some stores received the "upgraded" Helvaults while others did not. Personally, I find these complaints pretty absurd. What were people expecting the Helvaults to contain? Foil mythics for everyone? Solid gold? A million dollars?
Some people have said that WotC shot themselves in the foot with Zendikar’s "Priceless Treasures" because it set the bar too high and caused unrealistic expectations for future promotions. I asked on Twitter what people who were disappointed in the Helvault felt it should have realistically contained to meet the hype surrounding it, and I got a bunch of answers ranging from foils of tournament-level rares and mythics to booster packs for everyone. Do people really expect WotC to have a Prerelease promotion—in addition to the usual promo cards, mind you—that just gives away boxes upon boxes of the new set they’re promoting?
Seriously, people: the Helvaults were about creating an experience, not fattening your wallets. The various achievements and tasks that were supposed to be done to open the Helvaults were a lot of fun for a lot of people. During the Helvault event at the store where I was battling, the owner announced every time a new seal was broken and pulled it off with self-made crackling and crumbling sound effects; people had a blast with it.
From the pictures I’ve seen floating around online of Helvault cakes and statues and Avacyn cosplay and the like, it seems like lots of people got into the spirit of the event. Perhaps oversized commander generals and new tokens aren’t what you personally wanted to get out of the Helvault, but maybe you should reconsider whether you’re really the target audience for a promotion that includes the challenges "talk in a monster voice" and "high-five a player with a legendary creature in play" before you get upset and complain about it.
As for the "unfairness" of some stores getting beefed up Helvaults with extra promos—are we really so selfish that we can’t be happy that someone else got something cool because we didn’t? It’s clearly unrealistic for WotC to include high value promos in every Helvault kit, since it would massively devalue the cards and reward unscrupulous retailers like the ones who opened the Helvaults early and posted their contents online. (And for those of you who did that: seriously, you suck. Did you open all of your siblings Christmas presents early just to tell them what they were getting when you were a kid?)Â
The stores that did receive the upgraded Helvaults got them because of their status as Advanced stores in the Wizards Play Network, essentially as a reward for being great stores that promote Magic well. I don’t know the specific details of the program, but I think that’s a great incentive for WotC to provide to stores to build good communities. The communities that build up around game stores are perhaps the most important factor in Magic’s ability to grow, since it’s how so many players are introduced to the game. I’m all for finding ways to reward the good ones.
Anyway, enough about what was inside the cardboard Helvaults—it’s time to talk about what was inside the real one. Or the real imaginary one. Or whatever. You know what I mean.
Most of my gunslinging was done with a sealed deck I built from the typical Prerelease pool, though mine of course had multiple mythic rares because that’s just how I roll. I opened an Avacyn, Angel of Hope and a Temporal Mastery to go alongside a Restoration Angel, Zealous Conscripts, Spirit Away, and Descendants’ Path. I was excited by the prospect of playing with the Angelic pair, but they were close to my only playable white cards; I had triplets of Cathedral Sanctifiers making up the bulk of the rest of the color, and while I certainly wanted to find ways to drag out the game to play Avacyn, I didn’t feel like that was really what I was in the market for.
While everyone has said that the format is a slow one, the deck that I ultimately built was a very aggressive U/R build. Then again, perhaps it speaks to the pacing of the format that a deck that even has seven-mana cards can be considered aggressive. I played both Spirit Away and Temporal Mastery, the former because I figured it would be a good way to steal huge opposing bomb creatures and the latter because hey, it was a Prerelease and I was gunslinging and it would certainly at least be fun, right? Â
In reality, Temporal Mastery was terrible for me all day. This is of course biased by the results of my small sample, but it was essentially a mulligan whenever I drew it in my opening hand (and was that much worse when I mulliganed into a hand containing it). I drew it several times on my second turn before I had two lands in play, and several more off of my Gather the Components or Mad Prophet activation. I only actually played it for its miracle cost twice—once essentially just as a cantrip when I was drawing off the top in a stalled board, and once as a cantrip that dealt three damage because I was able to attack with a flier that I was otherwise holding back to block.
I don’t think anyone really expected Temporal Mastery to be a Limited bomb—I certainly didn’t and wouldn’t have played it blind outside of a Prerelease—but I think the ponderous nature of the format leads to the Time Walk effect being even worse than it might be elsewhere. As I said, my deck seemed aggressive by the standards of the format, but even it wasn’t able to set up amazing boards to Time Walk on.
If you’re sufficiently far ahead that getting a second attack phase is going to be extremely profitable, great, but you want cards that are going to get you to that point, not cards that are already good when you’re winning. If you’re looking to try to find fun moments that you’re able to miracle Temporal Mastery for a blowout and you’re not concerned with winning, go ahead and play it, but I wouldn’t pick it except to sell it before its inflated price plummets in a few weeks.
Spirit Away was also disappointing. I suppose I was duped by all the talk of how slow the format was into thinking that a seven-mana Mind Control would be good. Again, perhaps this is biased from my experience of playing against primarily Sigarda for bomb rare Angels, but it just didn’t impress me. While Volition Reins was an extremely popular card early in Scars, it became a later and later pick as the format progressed.
Control Magic style effects are very powerful, but as they get more expensive you have to take more and more powerful things to make their effect worthwhile. Each additional mana makes them substantially harder to cast. Spirit Away does have the added benefit of turning whatever creature you take into a Dragon essentially, even if it wasn’t already, but at seven mana you’d still better be getting something big to make it worthwhile.
As for cards that I did like—well, like I said, my deck was a beatdown deck. Perhaps the biggest standout was Riot Ringleader, which led to my most explosive draws. I actually had multiple games in which I had huge attacks out of nowhere thanks to Riot Ringleader and Lightning Mauler (who is conveniently a Human). With a board of two innocent looking two-power Humans, I suddenly attacked for twelve damage!
Zealous Conscripts was consistently impressive, especially once I realized that temporarily stealing my opponent’s creature broke its soulbond forever. He was one of my amusing combos with Havengul Skaab, the other being Fervent Cathar. The Skaab was a lot better than he looks, since he enables a bunch of tricks with enters the battlefield triggers and allows you to reset your own soulbond creatures. In one game, I was able to repeatedly bounce by Fettergeist (who is also awesome, by the way) so I never had to pay upkeep on it despite my board full of creatures, and thanks to my Lightning Mauler I was still able to attack with him every turn. Pretty sweet.
All in all, I had a lot of fun playing Sealed. I haven’t had a chance to draft yet, but I’m sure I’ll do quite a lot of that over the next week. I’m currently in the air somewhere over the Atlantic on my way to Barcelona, where I’m going to meet up with the rest of the team to prepare for Pro Tour Avacyn Restored; that’s going to mean quite a few drafts along the way. Figuring out a new format is always a lot of fun, and I don’t expect this one to be any different.
That’s all I’ve got for this week. I’ll be back next time with a glimpse into our testing process direct from Barcelona as I go for back-to-back wins!
Until next time,
bmk