Insert Column Name Here - My First Conflux Sealed Deck!

I hate physical tournaments. The problem is that my multiplayer pals never want to go to wait between rounds at tournaments — why not just play at Adam’s house, where the next game always starts right away? So I don’t go to real tournaments enough to pick up real tournament friends, and as a result I’m the one twiddling thumbs between rounds, waiting for the next game to start, bored to tears.

I suppose I could, you know, talk to people. But I’m from New England. I don’t chat with strangers. Hell, if I could, I’d still be writing Serious Fun, for they wanted to engineer it more to a Kelly Digges-style of writing where you chat about the fun of meeting strangers.

For me, “The fun of meeting strangers” is kind of like “The fun of recluse spider bites” or “The fun of running out of toilet paper in a public stall.” I like people, I like friends, but that gulf between the time someone’s a stranger and when they mutate into a friend is like rubbing sandpaper on my taint.

So I dislike tournaments. But I like new cards! I like playing Magic! And so I set out reluctantly to the Conflux prerelease to see what Wizards had to offer, entertained by the fact that hey, their audience really isn’t affected by Superbowl Sunday.

Sealed Deck Pool

Ferrett Steinmetz

Test deck on 02-15-2009

Shards of Alara Limited

Creatures (35)

Lands (11)

Spells (33)

White
Yay! I got that Path to Exile I wanted for Christmas! Seriously, those things were going for four bucks apiece on SCG, and I was unwilling to pay that kinda cash for something I should open in games. And, you know, used properly? It’s strong in Limited.

That said, this is kind of a weird White, supportive of other colors without providing much for itself. Sanctum Gargoyle is just waiting for some good Esper cards to return, Rhox Meditant is longing for the shores of Bant, and Welkin Guide wants a big Naya momma to slap evasion on Eff Tee Dubya. So “What else we open” is really going to matter here.

I’ve grown less enchanted with Excommunicate the more I’ve played with it — it’s really good against decks that want to put counters or enchantments on creatures, but more often than not it’s just given me an extra turn to draw a land before I cede.

Asha’s Favor is an okay creature booster, but it doesn’t provide any bonuses to an existing power or toughness, so at three mana I’m a little loath to use it on something that still dies to a Dark Temper. I want my creature enchantments to make my mid-tier guys into monsters, not to turn my monsters into unstoppable juggernauts.

Blue
Woo, this is like a collection of thirteenth-pick Draft commons. It’s a shame when I have Sanctum Gargoyle, and the best I can hope to return is a Steelclad Serpent.

Unsummon’s not bad, though, and Controlled Instincts is a solid sideboard card (or, some argue, main deck, but I find that to be a tad enthusiastic for a card that still requires you to take the hit first). And Scornful Aether-Lich isn’t the worst card you can get for 3U, but since the White is situational, I sincerely doubt I’m going to get consistent WB to activate it even if I want to go Blue.

This is lame. How we doin’ in Black?

Black
Light on cards, high on quality. I do adore Absorb Vis for giving me a land in the early game and an eight-point life swing in the late game, and Drag Down is almost guaranteed to be an instant-speed -3/-3 in almost any Sealed deck. And I mentioned last week that I don’t like Infest all that much, but it’s still something to maindeck in Sealed if you can.

There are two cards here that are still unproven; many folks at my Prerelease liked Infectious Horror, and yes it’s nice that it does two damage pretty much just for being declared as an attacker, but it’s a four-mana 2/2 without evasion. How many attacks can you get in unless you find some way of gifting it with evasion — and if you can gift something with evasion, wouldn’t it be better to spend the extra mana and get a Kraniceros or a Mosstodon?

I’ll almost certainly be playing The Black.

Red
I just leaked in my undies a little. Predator Dragon is well-known for ending Limited games in stupidly short order, and Rakka Mar can provide many, many interesting things for Predator Dragon to eat. So we’re going Red regardless, and the addition of all-star early plays such as Dragon Fodder (how apropos!) and Ridge Rannet (get me that third land, dammit!).

I really wasn’t all that sold on Kranioceros, being a five-mana guy who dies to anything that looks at it funny; at the time, I thought it was great in Naya builds, not so much in other builds. However, in Sealed, where the goal is often to exhaust your opponent with as many stupid large guys as you can afford, I probably should have put this in.

Quenchable Fire? I said last week that I don’t think it’s right for most decks, and I’m not solid on it here. Likewise, we have not one but two Lightning Talons, but will they find a place in the final build? I only use the Talons in Sealed when I’m short on genuine monsters, and thus far we seem to be doing okay. How’s Green lookin’?

Green
….Hmm.

Honestly, I’m not sure how Green is lookin’. I like the dual Ember Weaver — I like almost anything for three mana with three toughness and reach — and Resounding Roar is okay. But…

Okay, Matca Rioters? Generally, it’s going to be an elephant token unless I really have a domain-centric build, so it’s not that great. The same with Spore Burst, which if I’m lucky I’ll pay four mana for three tokens, none of which have evasion. That’s nice for Predator Dragon, but not so nice if Mister Big Flying Dude doesn’t arrive in time, and we don’t have that many other Devour critters to make it worthwhile.

Sean McKeown plotzed over Paleoloth, which he saw as a Raise Dead on stilts, but I look at what I have thus far, and I see nothing aside from Kranioceros and the generally-uncast Ridge Rannet. Maybe my Gold cards will have Naya behemoths galore, but this is looking like a teeny deck… And when you don’t have that much to return, you’re looking at a 5/5 for six without evasion. Not great, but not a slam-dunk.

Gold
The Gold? The Gold has some monsters.

I’m a little cheesed to get Meglonoth, because I just ordered four from StarCityGames.com last week, and now it’s mocking me. Likewise, Woolly Thoctar is another Naya pick — I could go Nayatic, easily.

Rhox Bodyguard is… Well, I always like getting life, but I’m not sure I want to pay five mixed mana for a 2/3 body. Yeah, yeah, Exalted helps your other guys, but since he lacks evasion I’ll hardly ever attack with him, so even if I go go G/W/R this probably won’t make the cut. Besides, I have a lot of other five-drops.

Necrogenesis is, obviously, crazy on its own, shutting down Jundian antics and giving you men, and in combination with Predator Dragon it could be lethal. And Kresh the Bloodbraided is difficult on the mana, but potentially huge; I’ve never actually played with him in Limited, so I don’t know whether he’s good or not.

(I have a Jund scavenger deck for multiplayer that is highly inefficient, piggybacking on the deaths of everyone else’s creatures, but it is often fun. Kresh is in there. He does not often survive long.)

I guess this is gonna come down to the lands; what can I play?

Artifacts/Lands
Okay, I can pretty much play anything. That’s a nice selection of Panorama, so I’m set for everything. And, oh yeah, I have Relic of Progenitus, which is a great sideboard card in a lot of situations, but I have the Necrogenesis, which I can maindeck instead.

So What Did I Do?
First, I looked at a straight-up G/W/R Naya build, but it made me unhappy; outside of the conditional Soul’s Fire and the awesome Path to Exile, I didn’t have any way of removing creatures that got in my way. Those decks always look good on paper to me, but in practice they generally face some guy they can’t get past, and I just sit there with my thumb up my butt.

So I looked into splashing Black, just to get Infest and Drag Down, and the outside shot of Absorb Vis. But then I started having to figure out what to drop from the build; the two Rhox Meditants were easy, but then should the Kraniceros go? What I had then was something very top-end, where if I stuttered on mana or tempo, I’d be dead. And I didn’t want to lose Path to Exile.

“Hell with it,” said I. “I can go four-color. I’ve got an excuse!” So I went with this:

1 Dragon Fodder
1 Predator Dragon
1 Rakka Mar
1 Ridge Rannet
1 Soul’s Fire
1 Wandering Goblins

2 Ember Weaver
1 Resounding Roar

2 Absorb Vis

1 Drag Down
1 Dreg Reaver
1 Infest

1 Path to Exile

1 Meglonoth
1 Woolly Thoctar

1 Blightning
1 Goblin Deathraiders
1 Kresh the Bloodbraided
1 Necrogenesis

1 Obelisk of Esper
1 Obelisk of Jund

In retrospect, I almost certainly should have had something else in there over the Dreg Reaver — if I’m going for sheer top-of-the-curve power, then arguably Kraniocerous or Paleoth should be there. If I’m looking for a mid-curve drop, then this is going to be domainish enough to go with Matca Rioters. But apparently, the local judges give you only thirty seconds to build your pool.

…Okay, no, Matrix Warzone’s clock? It is fair. But before I knew it, the judge was saying, “Three minutes! Three minutes to complete!” and I was out of time. Well, that’s what happens when you don’t read spoilers in advance; you spend your time reading cards, not building decks.

As a result, my mana base was a huge, “WHUT?”

2 Ancient Ziggurat
1 Arcane Sanctum
1 Bant Panorama
1 Jund Panorama
1 Naya Panorama

2 Forest
4 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Swamp

Realistically, there is no way I should have had a pair of Ancient Ziggurats in a deck with two Obelisks and two Absorb Vis; it was just asking for manascrew. But I had three minutes, and I was wondering whether the Ziggurat would be as restrictive as I thought it would be, and yo, it was.

This isn’t balanced; it’s got some relative scale to it, but it could use a good sitting down with Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar formula to see whether it’s accurate. As it is, I struggled with a lot of manascrew.

So How Did I Do, Didgeridoo?
First round was against a nice opponent who was going for a domain build, but had packed his deck with a ton of land-fetchers; he may have had threats, but he never seemed to draw them.

I was glad of his mana problems, because the Ziggurats were shafting me something fierce. I mulliganed three times in two games because, well, a Ziggurat soured a marginal keeper into nada. I knew I was in trouble; this deck had power, but in both games it stuttered badly enough that almost anyone with tempo could have finished me.

Second round was against a guy who had a solidly-curved Blue/Black deck with a ton of bounce — which was not what I wanted to see. My mana problems weren’t terrible this game, but everything he had flew, and you may note that barring a Dragon and two Spiders, it pretty much just waves gaily at everything going overhead. He also had two Sedraxis Alchemists and a bunch of other bounce spells, making my life a living hell.

The first game, I died without having laid a finger on him. Second game was a lot closer thanks to my Kresh the Bloodbraided, and I almost made it through, but he bounced my Spiders and Kreshes three times and flew overhead for the win.

We played a third game for fun. This one was entertaining; a Kresh followed by an Infest, swelling Kresh to Krosan Cloudscraper proportions, but sure enough he bounced it before it could attack. The final fun game was close enough to be heartbreaking, but eventually he flew overhead and crushed my dreams.

I was feeling pretty icky — it was technically a 1-1, but I should have been an 0-2. Someone came by and said, “Anyone wanna draft? We have seven players!” and I thought, “Okay, I have no faith in this deck; I’ll drop and draft for fun. Because God, I hate waiting between rounds.”

I dropped and went to go draft. As it turns out, three idiots who’d said, “Okay, we’ll draft,” just left and went home, leaving me in the lurch to wait friggin’ more. Thanks, guys. Thanks a heap.

Fortunately, the owner was kind to me and let me back into the main event, at which point I went up against a nervous guy with a Jund deck that came out of the gates quickly. This deck? Slow against that sort of thing. I lost the first round in a trouncing as he curved out nicely into Predator Dragon, and mentally chalked up a loss…

…but I fought anyway. And lo, I stabilized against a field of guys in the second game to squeeze out a win thanks to his questionable usage of removal in the early game (he pulled the trigger too soon to remove a random Red guy and destroy my Ember Weaver, but I had a Woolly Thoctar waiting in the wings).

Then came the third game. He once again came out quickly, reducing me to four, and I feared Absorb Vis or Predator Dragon… But I got Rakka Mar out and began churning out elementals. The ground was gummed up good, but he kept pinging me in the air, seemingly safe at seventeen.

I wanted him to ping me in the air. He cast a Pestilent Kathari, and I willed that sucker to attack me. The Kathari turned sideways, and he laid down his last card, emptying his hand, and I pumped the fist.

“Predator Dragon, sacrificing everything,” I said. “Swing for eighteen. Good game.”

He looked so heartbroken. I wanted to hug him. And I figured hey, I’m 2-1 now, might as well play out the final two rounds. I went to report my results, then waited, and the owner announced the next round pairings.

I was nowhere to be found. I mentioned this. The owner looked at me sideways. “You’re in the draft, right?”

“No,” I said. “I’m 2-1 now. I was gonna stay in.”

He looked so pained that I just drafted. It was easier, and besides, I did wanna play with the new cards.

The nine-man draft itself was the usual terrible mess; I started with White and Black cards, but the second pack gave me a happy Banefire, which I cracked, and then the Red cards started flowing. I wound up with a very quick deck featuring the mad combos of multiple Aven Trailblazers/Darklit Gargoyles and Maniacal Rage, cleaning up with Banefire, and I went a clean 3-0, losing in the for-fun finals. Not bad.

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