GP Denver Sealed Walkthrough

Do you know what time it is right now? It’s that magical time when new cards are put on MTGO for all of us to enjoy limitless Limited events.
Given how many of you are probably playing Mirrodin Besieged release events right now – I thought this would be a great time to talk in
depth about my Sealed deck from Grand Prix Denver and how to build the best possible pool.

Sealed Pool

Brad Nelson

Magic Online World Championship on 02-13-2011

Scars of Mirrodin Limited

Creatures (51)

Lands (2)

I want those of you who are interested in learning how to build MBS/SOM Sealed pools to build the deck before continuing.

Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to finish.

Done? Good!

As you can tell, this pool is not that impressive – so building it correctly is extremely important. Take some extra time to analyze all the
questions that arise when determining the starting 40; there are a ton of lessons to be learned.

The first step in figuring out the best way to build a Sealed pool is to identify all of your bombs and all of your cards that can’t kill opposing
bombs. It’s so important to be able to kill bombs in this format because there are just so many of them!

Bombs

Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon

Skithiryx is not only the best card in the pool, but it’s also one of the best cards in the format – since it can easily win games on its
own, and only a select few cards can actually kill it when you have regeneration mana up. Even without any other infect or creature enhancements,
Skithiryx only has to deal damage to an opponent three times for you to win the game, making it very good in any race situation. I really want to play
this guy every time I open him up in a Sealed deck.

Thrun, the Last Troll

Thrun is a very interesting card in Limited play. Unlike most creatures, Thrun is almost always going to be there when you untap (don’t need to
worry about anyone removing this troll!) – making play decisions with him tends to be pretty easy.

Playing your spells in the correct order is incredibly important in Limited. On the one hand, you want to play the highest impact cards first, since
they’ll give you the best chance to win quickly, but casting your best cards too early means that your opponent will have a good chance of having some
removal in their hand to deal with your scariest cards. It might seem a little bit counterintuitive, but holding your best spell for last is a good way
to win a lot of Limited games.

That said, Thrun really doesn’t care what they have in hand…

Removal for Bombs

Phyrexian Rebirth

Most people think that this card is an absolute bomb, since all wrath effects tend to be in Limited. Initially, this was what I thought as well. While
Phyrexian Rebirth was always a decent card for me, it was only really amazing against fast decks. There really aren’t many of those out there.

Scars Sealed is all about trades. The format is filled with metalcraft and infect _– which means getting cards off of your
opponent’s side of the board is very important. There are also a ton of evasion creatures and ways to deal with them, so players tend to use a
good amount of their removal instead of stockpiling burn and banishing effects in their hand. This means that the perfect situation for Rebirth comes
about very rarely – even if you’re trying to sculpt a situation.

You usually end up getting a three-for-two with Phyrexian Rebirth. It will generally create a 3/3 or a 5/5; it’s always in the caster’s best
interest, but the token it leaves can easily be trumped by one of the many big creatures in this format.

This makes this the type of card I’ll always play if I already want to play white, but it will never swing me into the color.

Flesh Allergy

Flesh Allergy is one of the only removal spells I don’t actively want to play. Card advantage is very hard to come by in this format, so playing a card
that almost guarantees card disadvantage is the kind of thing that I want to stay away from whenever possible.

Corrupted Conscience

This is a great card in Sealed play. Not only will it take a bomb creature off of your opponent’s side of the board, but you get one yourself.
Everyone has a couple of great creatures in their deck – so finding relevant targets is not that difficult. This is the type of card that can put
me into a color if a deck is in need of a great removal/threat.

Viridian Corrupter

This is the only spell in the deck that kills artifact creatures. While Viridian Corrupter isn’t quite on the same level as Oxidda Scrapmelter in
Sealed –it’s pretty darn close.

Yup, that’s all I got in my Sealed pool. Green and black bombs, with white and blue ways to kill them.

Obviously, we won’t be able to play all four of the colors, so it’s time to figure out the best mix.

The first thing I tried with this pool was to see if infect was at all a possible strategy because both of our bombs and one of our best removal spells
work well with the strategy. We also have some very good infect creatures…

Plague Myr

Corpse Cur

Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon

Scourge Servant

Viridian Corrupter

Tangle Angler

Blightwidow

Cystbearer

These are all very good infect creatures. Most of them have abilities that make them relevant on their own, and the rest are just huge. The problem is
that there are only eight of them so finding more spells becomes important.

Phyrexian Digester is not the best infect creature in the world but could very well make the cut in this deck if we end up with a very aggressive
build, or if we’re desperate for another infector.

Virulent Wound is a decent spell because it gives an infect deck the reach it needs to inflict those last couple of counters. Pistus Strike is also a
very good spell to have in an infect Sealed deck because it does everything you want it to do. It kills a decent number of bombs (since most of them
fly), and it helps you inch your way towards that magical tenth counter. I would’ve really liked to have one of these in the pool.

Grafted Exoskeleton is actually a possibility. Don’t get me wrong; this card is terrible. Everyone plays almost all of their artifact removal, and
there aren’t many targets in an infect deck. It also sets up quite a few two-for-ones for your opponent and, like I said before, setting up card
disadvantage is not what you want to do.

What this card does is helps mise the wins this pool might very well need. We don’t have the best creatures in the world – so we might have to
put something risky together to get the wins.

This is everything that we have that can poison our opponents. It’s not a lot to work with. Time to see if anything else looks good.

It’s easy to see that the red cards just aren’t there. We have Crush and Burn the Impure… and nothing else of note in the color.
Galvanoth is only good when you have good spells to rip into (and actually cast). This pool does not have anything to go with this card. Red can
however be a splash since Burn the Impure and Crush are both great cards that only cost a single red.

No one needs to be told that Burn the Impure is good – we’ve been first-picking this type of card for years – but Crush is difficult to
evaluate. I’d consider Crush a sideboard card in Draft and, until recently, I thought that it also belonged in the sideboard of most Sealed decks. This
has changed since I’ve had the opportunity to play a bunch of Sealed Deck games with and against the card.

There’s no way to control what type of cards you get to play with in Sealed. Most pools will have 16-20 cards a player wants to play with, and the
final deck will be filled out with random cards. This means that the non-creature artifacts that typically collect dust in the sideboards of draft
decks will often start in Sealed.

Trigon of Thought

Sylvok Lifestaff

Trigon of Rage

Tumble Magnet

Bladed Pinions

Accorder’s Shield

This list goes on, but the most important reason is that it kills a number of cards that are really good, like the living weapons. These spells make
their way into every deck, and almost all of them are starters. This means most opponents will have at least a couple targets for Crush, and some of
them will actually be creatures, effectively.

Moving onto white makes me think back to how bad Day of Judgment was in Zendikar block. This Limited format was all about fast aggressive decks.
Everyone was attacking and attacking hard. This made playing Wrath effects very awkward at times. The best place to be in this format was casting a
creature on turn 2 and rinse-repeating until the game was over. You only took time out of doing so to kill something in your way. Going dude, dude,
Wrath was not the best strategy.

This is exactly what the white in this pool looks like. A decent number of very aggressive creatures but no removal to keep up the pressure.
Banishment’s Decree is exactly the type of spell this deck would want if it could beat down fast enough – but that is very difficult to do
in Sealed play. Our white is pretty much nothing but dudes and a wrath, which makes it a very poor choice in this Sealed environment.

Blue looks really good at first glance. But it really only has a good early game. It has everything you want to be able to cast the bombs in the format
– but there are none to be had. Blue is the best support color because it has many cards that buy you time or help you dig to find your bombs.

But this pool just doesn’t have those bombs. Quicksilver Gargantuan is a pretty good spell, but it’s the only good finisher in the color. We
don’t even have a Hexplate Golem to bash some peoples’ faces in with.

Also, our poor Trinket Mage only has Nihil Spellbomb to dig for. Blue is very depressing.

So we have to go back to infect and do everything we can to make it work. Black and green seem to be the only colors that are deep enough to build a
decent deck. Problem is we’ll have to deal with the problem every G/B Sealed has. Do I kill them with Poison, Damage, or Both?

Let’s take a look at the non-infect creatures.

Clone Shell

Peace Strider

Strandwalker

Copper Myr

Leaden Myr

Myr Sire

Palladium Myr

Tangle Hulk

Moriok Reaver

Thrun, the Last Troll

Molder Beast

The non-creature spells

Accorder’s Shield

Bladed Pinions

Ichor Wellspring

Nihil Spellbomb

Instill Infection

Morbid Plunder

Flesh Allergy

Tel-Jilad Defiance

Unnatural Predation

Wing Puncture

Looking at everything that G/B has to offer shows that the deck will have to go both ways. There’s no opportunity for us to just play creatures that
have infect or don’t. The all-infect deck would have nine infect creatures, a couple mana Myrs, and a very bad Grafted Exoskeleton. This deck doesn’t
look like it will win any games.

Understanding that games will be very awkward is important. So many pools are built improperly because the pilot wants to attack with only one type of
creature and will sacrifice playing really good cards to achieve this goal. The best way to approach this now is to ignore which creatures have infect
and which creatures don’t to see what our best curve could be.

Copper Myr

Plague Myr

Leaden Myr

Viridian Corrupter

Palladium Myr

Cystbearer

Tangle Angler

Thrun, the Last Troll

Corpse Cur

Blightwidow

Molder Beast

Clone Shell

Strandwalker

Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon

Scourge Servant

Spells that will most likely make the deck

Flesh Allergy

Instill Infection

Virulent Wound

Morbid Plunder

The deck is starting to take form, and we can already see that this deck doesn’t look like it’s going to be very aggressive. There are a ton of
big guys that can hold down the fort or generate card advantage over the course of a long game. This means cards like Phyrexian Digester and Unnatural
Predation don’t fit the theme very well.

This is about the best (Sealed) deck for Peace Strider since gaining life will often come in handy. I still don’t think it will be needed since the
curve is already too high, and our other creatures are just better. It can be a good sideboard card against some decks though.

Myr Sire is not needed in the maindeck since board stalls will happen frequently, and drawing a card like this is going to be very bad for us the
majority of the time –even if we draw it on turn 2!

Tangle Hulk seems very bad in this deck. There are not many targets for artifact removal in this deck, and since everyone will have some, it will
almost always die. This is something not many people think about when building a Sealed.

It’s very important to be aware of the number of artifacts in your deck. Cards like Hexplate Golem go from terrible to amazing depending on that
number. This is because everyone plays as much removal as possible in Limited, and there’s a ton of artifact removal in this format.

This makes colored creatures (dinosaurs) very good. Fangren Marauder is the best of this bunch, but even Alpha Tyrranax is very good. These are the
creatures people have the most problem with, and they also blank most of their removal when they’re facing them down. The only real way to help an
opponent out of this situation is to drop a Golem Artisan on the table when you’re trying to Dino them out. This just gives them a target for the
otherwise dead removal spell(s) in their hand.

This is not something you should always concern yourself with – but there are plenty of times that a decent artifact creature should remain in
your sideboard. Sure, it can make a guest appearance in game two or three if you think they took some of the removal out, but that doesn’t mean
it should start.

The easiest way to think about this is: you can either overload your opponents with artifacts that they want to, or need to, Shatter, or you can blank
their Shatters by not playing any artifacts.

After leaving those artifacts in the board, our total spell count is now up to 19.

Blackcleave Cliffs makes it much easier to splash the Burn the Impure and Crush. I don’t know if I’d normally splash these cards, but this pool is in
desperate need of some good removal.

Cantrips are a great way to fill holes in decks like this. We want to be drawing our best cards – so why not have cards that help us get to them?
Tel-Jilad Defiance is the best card in our pool for this because it’s a combat trick and can also “kill” a living weapon when we’re trying
to be aggressive.

Nihil Spellbomb and Ichor Wellspring pretty much do the same thing in this deck (unless we’re playing against a deck with graveyard recursion). Neither
of these cards is that impressive, and I’ll only go back to them if I become very desperate.

There’s an interesting equipment package in this pool. Unfortunately, it isn’t that impressive (and we don’t have the other artifacts
needed to direct removal away from them).

Accorder’s Shield

Bladed Pinions

Grafted Exoskeleton

Brass Squire

Gold Myr is starting to look more impressive, but the deck already has a splash and four other mana Myrs.

Moriok Reaver is, well, a Moriok Reaver.

Glissa’s Courier is, well, a Twisted Imaged Moriok Reaver.

Time to just go back to the start, since the deeper we look, the more embarrassing things get.

After looking at all the options, it seems that Burn the Impure, Crush, Tangle Hulk, and Tel-Jilad Justice are the four cards that make the cut. Even
though I dislike the Hulk, it seems we’ll need him to help close out games. It also gives this deck a consistent source of damage. He’ll be very hard
to kill in the games he gets online.

Final Draft

1 Copper Myr

1 Plague Myr

1 Leaden Myr

1 Viridian Corrupter

1 Palladium Myr

1 Cystbearer

1 Tangle Angler

1 Thrun, the Last Troll

1 Corpse Cur

1 Blightwidow

1 Molder Beast

1 Clone Shell

1 Scourge Servant

1 Tangle Hulk

1 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon

1 Burn the Impure

1 Crush

1 Flesh Allergy

1 Instill Infection

1 Morbid Plunder

1 Strandwalker

1 Tel-Jilad Defiance

1 Virulent Wound

1 Blackcleave Cliffs

2 Mountain

8 Forest

6 Swamp

Cards that will most likely come in.

Wing Puncture

Ratchet Bomb

Peace Strider

Bladed Pinions

Nihil Spellbomb

Lead the Stampede

This won’t be the best deck in the room but is probably the best way to build this pool. My favorite part about Sealed is that it’s almost impossible
to be completely right. I always want to second-guess myself with every deck and ask all of my friends to help build it.

What would you do differently with this pool?

Brad Nelson

Creatures (51)

Lands (2)

Spells (31)

Bombs

Removal for Bombs