Last weekend, I played in the M10 Limited tournament: Grand Prix: Brighton. Today I will reveal how I would build a sealed deck in this format, and analyse the sealed pool I had on the day.
If I open a sealed deck in M10, I first look at the most powerful cards in all the colors. This includes Rare and Uncommon bombs, as well as most removal spells and other cards that help you win the game by themselves. All the cards not identified as such cards should be handled as filler cards. As the format is very bomb-oriented, you want to be able to deal with your opponent’s bombs as well as play as many of your bombs as possible.
This list of the powerful cards should give a good overview, helping you to exclude whole colors from your deck, and enabling you to choose a main color (or even both main colors). If you have an outstanding color, you should figure out which of the other colors with a fair amount of powerful cards can support your main color. This is where you should start to concern yourself about mana curve, synergy, and stability.
A few words on the filler:
I want my filler to be cards that can win the game by themselves on occasion, but are often weaker cards than the other cards you could play instead. I would often main deck all the color hosers, like Mold Adder, Flashfreeze, Emerald Onyx, or Celestial Purge rather than play a card like Runeclaw Bear or Sage Owl. The color hosers might have not have impact on every game, but if they do impact the game, they are very good, while the other cards have little impact in every game thanks to the bomb-dominated nature of the format.
I will analyse my sealed pool from last weekend, using the advice I outlined above. This is my sealed pool.
Sunpetal Grove
Coat of Arms
Kraken’s Eye
Pithing Needle
Whispersilk Cloak
Angel’s Mercy
Armored Ascension
Blinding Mage
Excommunicate
Glorious Charge
Guardian Seraph
Harm’s Way
Holy Strength
2 Pacifism
Palace Guard
2 Siege Mastodon
Silvercoat Lion
Solemn Offering
Stormfront Pegasus
Veteran Armorsmith
White Knight
Divination
Djinn of Wishes
Flashfreeze
Ice Cage
Merfolk Looter
Mind Spring
Phantom Warrior
Ponder
2 Sage Owl
Telepathy
Acolyte of Xathrid
2 Child of Night
Consume Spirit
Diabolic Tutor
Disentomb
Drudge Skeletons
Duress
Howling Banshee
Kelinore Bat
Megrim
Mind Rot
Sign in Blood
Tendrils of Corruption
Vampire Aristocrat
Warpath Ghoul
Weakness
Zombie Goliath
Act of Treason
2 Berserkers of Blood Ridge
Canyon Minotaur
Fiery Hellhound
Goblin Artillery
Goblin Piker
2 Kindled Fury
Lava Axe
Lightning Elemental
Mana Barbs
Seismic Spike
Trumpet Blast
Viashino Spearhunter
Wall of Fire
2 Acidic Slime
Bountiful Harvest
Centaur Courser
Elvish Visionary
Emerald Onyx
2 Entangling Vines
2 Fog
Giant Spider
Mist Leopard
Mold Adder
Overrun
Rampant Growth
Runeclaw Bear
…
Reasons to play White:
Armored Ascension
Blinding Mage
Guardian Seraph
Harm’s Way
2 Pacifism
Reasons to play Blue:
Djinn of Wishes
Merfolk Looter
Mind Spring
Reasons to play Black:
Consume Spirit
Diabolic Tutor
Tendrils of Corruption
Reasons to play Red:
Goblin Artillery
Seismic Spike
Reasons to play Green:
The Red has by far the worst reasons to play the color, and not too many filler cards which you would like to play. This is the easiest color to cut from the pool.
The Green probably has the most powerful card in the pool: Overrun. The two Acidic Slimes are really powerful in Sealed, as they can screw your opponent from a splash color, making them unable to play their Fireball-type cards. Or they can simply handle an Equipment or Pacifism-like card. In addition, the Green gives us a great opportunity to splash White, with both Rampant Growth and Sunpetal Grove. The Green filler cards are not spectacular, but they are still fine creatures, like Centaur Courser or Giant Spider.
The Black seems really hard to include in a list with Blue when still looking to splash White, as your Black cards really want you to have a Black-heavy base. Aside from Tendrils of Corruption and Consume Spirit, you would also be running Sign in Blood. In a Black / White base deck, you would need to run something like nine sources of each mana, which could lead into awkward situations if you have draws like 3 Swamps plus 1 Plains and White Knight or Armored Ascension, or even the exact opposite. Your Diabolic Tutor also wouldn’t be able to fetch the most powerful cards in the pool (Mind Spring, Djinn of Wishes, and Overrun), which would lead the Black to a Green/Black splashing White deck that looked something like this:
9 Swamp
7 Forest
Plains
Sunpetal Grove
2 Child of Night
Consume Spirit
Diabolic Tutor
Duress
Howling Banshee
Kelinore Bat
Mind Rot
Sign in Blood
Tendrils of Corruption
Warpath Ghoul
2 Acidic Slime
Centaur Courser
Elvish Visionary
Emerald Onyx
Giant Spider
Overrun
Rampant Growth
The White seems really powerful at first glance, but with double Pacifism and Harm’s Way being excellent splash cards (especially in a Green deck which has Sunpetal Grove and Rampant Growth as fixing), the number and the quality of the cards that make you want to play White shrinks to the same amount as you have in Blue and Green, only slightly lower in quality. Combining the White with Green would lead to a creature-based deck which gets outclassed vey easily. You would need to relay on drawing Overrun, or, if your opponent doesn’t have a removal spell, Guardian Seraph or Armored Ascension. As I don’t want to combine the White with the Black for the reasons outlined above, it would lead us to a White / Blue based deck.
Armored Ascension
Blinding Mage
Excommunicate
Guardian Seraph
Harm’s Way
2 Pacifism
Palace Guard
2 Siege Mastodon
Silvercoat Lion
Stormfront Pegasus
Veteran Armorsmith
White Knight
Divination
Djinn of Wishes
Flashfreeze
Ice Cage
Merfolk Looter
Mind Spring
Phantom Warrior
Ponder
Sage Owl
The Blue cards are by far the most powerful, with Djinn of Wishes and Mind Spring as pure bombs in Sealed, and Merfolk Looter, a card that wins the game most of the time if you play him early and he is not removed. Make sure that, unless you are digging for lands, you should activate your Merfolk Looter at the end of your opponent’s turn to avoid it being Assassinated or Entangling Vined. Some of the filler cards are of a pretty good quality as well, including Divination, Ice Cage and Flashfreeze.
Discussing Blue in this Sealed format in general:
I think Blue is the most underrated color in this format. Cancel, Negate, and Essence Scatter are all cards that can turn a game in your favour, as they can easily deal with your opponent’s bombs. Card advantage like Divination, or library manipulation like Ponder, help you fetch your bombs. Thus, you are able to cast them more often than your opponent. I was able to take a look at PV’s sealed pool from GP: Boston, and I probably would have played the Blue instead of the Green. All Green gave him was access to some fat, while the Blue would perfectly support his double Serra Angel with some countermagic, double Ponder, and Divination to fetch them, in addition to Mind Control, which I think was the best card in his pool.
8 Island
7 Forest
2 Plains
Sunpetal Grove
Divination
Djinn of Wishes
Flashfreeze
Ice Cage
Merfolk Looter
Mind Spring
Phantom Warrior
Ponder
Sage Owl
2 Acidic Slime
Centaur Courser
Elvish Visionary
Emerald Onyx
Giant Spider
Mold Adder
Overrun
Rampant Growth
Runeclaw Bear
I chose to run the Blue / Green deck, even though it has the worst filler and I have to play cards like Sage Owl and Runeclaw Bear. It does let me play the most powerful cards, and the most bombs, in my pool, and not many ways to deal with bombs are let behind in my sideboard.
I went 3-3 with the deck, losing to every single Black-based deck I faced, and winning against all the others. The deck had a lot of trouble winning when they could deal with my Djinn of Wishes in a way other than Pacifism, as I was easily able to deal with Pacifism thanks to double Acidic Slime. Against all the Black-based decks, I chose to sideboard in more White, in the form of White Knight, Whispersilk Cloak, and Guardian Seraph instead of a Sage Owl, Runeclaw Bear, and another card depending on what I faced. This also meant cutting an Island for a Plains. My deck featured enough card draw that I would eventually draw into the double White in order to cast those spells, which are also able to win the game instead of the Djinn.
Do You Play or Draw With The Deck?
Against Black-based decks, I was definitely drawing first with the deck, as the extra card would really help me recover from heavy removal draws. Against Green/White based decks, I wanted to play first, as a start with good curve could easily put me under pressure. I don’t think playing first or drawing first is the best choice in the abstract; it often depends on your deck and the match-up.
Selected sideboard cards from my pool:
Pithing Needle
A card I would bring in against every Planeswalker I saw on my opponent’s side of the table. I’d also side it in if my opponent had a pair of Blinding Mages, Prodigal Pyromancers, or a Goblin Artillery. Pithing Needle is a very good sideboard card, as there are so many good cards shut down by it.
Whispersilk Cloak
A card I would bring in against every removal-heavy deck which can easily kill your main kill condition (in this deck, Djinn of Wishes). The card is no main deck card in my pool, as I have too few cards to stall the board. I do like the card in this sealed format, as it is one of the filler cards that can win you the game.
Entangling Vines
If my opponent has a lot of evasion, which this deck has a fair amount of trouble handling, I would board in Entangling Vines. This card also makes the main deck a fair amount of the time, but as I am running very low on creatures and I don’t want to cut any of the non-creature spells I am running for an Entangling Vines, it didn’t make the main deck in this case.
Fog
The most effective counterspell to Overrun in the format, as it will tap all your opponent’s creatures most of the time. Aside from Overrun, the card has a very few applications.
Holy Strength
An unfair way to deal with an opponent’s Ice Cage, and it’s also able to deal with an Illusionary Servant. I wouldn’t board it in if my opponent only shows one of those cards, but if he has several, the card becomes really good.
Tier 2 sideboard cards:
Unholy Strength, Jump, Oakenform, Panic Attack
All of these cards are very good on dealing with both Ice Cage and Illusionary Servant. Obviously you would rather run one of the enchant creatures than Jump, as killing an Ice Cage with one of those seems pretty unfair. Panic Attack has the advantage of being able to kill multiple guys in this fashion.
Regenerate
Not only does it kill Ice Cage and Illusionary Servant, it’s also a counterspell to all the Black and Red removal in the format. This is a card I really want in my sideboard if I am playing Green, especially in a draft.
And finally, something about Fireball you might not have known…
If you Fireball an Illusionary Servant and a Stampeding Rhino, you have to only spend 6 mana to kill both those guys. As the Illusionary Servant dies when you target him, all the damage is dealt to the Stampeding Rhino.
That’s it for the week. Thanks for reading!
Manu B