Pro Perspective - The Planar Chaos Prerelease

Planar Chaos Prereleases are now behind us. Like some of you, I took part in them, and I would like to share my experiences here. I’m not going to tell what happened in my games in details, as local tournament games aren’t always so fun to read about. I’m going to tell you a bit about deck construction, and share my thoughts about both deck building decisions and the new cards in general.

I love Sealed Deck. In fact, it’s probably my favorite format. Most people tend to think it’s the most luck-based format around… and once again, most people are wrong. Sure, a bad player can open the Nut Sealed: six bomb rares in two colors. They just have to add lands to the mix to have the best deck in the room. What are the odds? Probably much lower than those of the kid who is going to netdeck and post a 7-0 at his Constructed tournament only facing his good matchups. The “bad” openings, the pools you can do absolutely nothing with, don’t represent more than 7-10%. At a Grand Prix, when I hear someone complaining about his opening, I sometimes check his deck and see if he could have done better. And about 90% of the time, there’s a way to have it work out. But as usual, it’s much easier to complain than to make the effort!

Building a Sealed Deck is a hard exercise. It requires good format and card evaluation, as well as a sharp intuition. I will list below the two pools I opened (I played in two prereleases). I will explain how I built them, step by step. You may have read something similar in the past, written by someone else, about the basics of building a Sealed Deck. As I’m not sure what you’ve already read, and as I probably have a little new stuff to add, I’ll go through it all over again. Skip the explanations if you’re already familiar with the process.

I’ll give you my first thoughts about the new cards I played along the way. Feel free to rebuild the decks. The best idea would be that you build the decks before checking how I built them.

Saturday, January 20th.
Tarbes, Prerelease #1

Planar Chaos Prerelease 1

Raphael Levy

Test deck on 01-28-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (58)

Lands (2)

Step #1: Cut the Crap!

The first thing you have to do when you build a Sealed Deck, after sorting everything by color, is to cut all the cards you don’t want to deal with later in the process. For each color, cut the unplayables. If you’re not sure about one card, keep it in the playables. Dealing with fewer cards is always easier. When you’re done, you will already have a better idea of which colors you will play.

Step #2: Put Aside the Color(s) You Won’t Play

In this pool…

Green is quite weak.
There are not enough good Green cards that would make me play the color. The Dustwasps require two Green mana to hardcast, and I0 don’t want to splash them. As Green won’t be one of my main colors, I won’t be able to suspend them every time on turn 2.

Utopia Vow is a decent card, but unworthy of a splash.

I also believe Citanul Woodreaders is really good. Coupled with Dream Stalkers or White rescuers (Whitemane Lion, Stonecloaker), they can give U/G or W/G the card advantage they need in the late game.

Black isn’t appealing enough.
Most of the Black cards are very average, but two of them are worth looking at. The most obvious one is the Blightspeaker. With four quality rebels in White, and a Rathi Trapper, I would want to include that little guy in my deck if I’m running White.

The other one was one of my favorite card in Tempest when it was Green: Null Profusion (a Timeshifted Recycle). I’ve seen many inexperienced players misunderstanding just how game-breaking this card can be. What happens is that, from the second it comes into play, you will draw between two and four cards a turn. The bad thing is that you’re likely to lose if you get Mindstabbed. In short, play carefully against Black.

Red is quite weak.
It has a couple of tempting cards: Prodigal Pyromancer, Stingscourger and Orcish Cannonade.

Overall, we can see that White and Blue have all the good cards. At the end of this step, you have thrown away the unplayables, the Green, and the Black, and kept the Red on the side in view of a possible splash.

Step #3: Tinker Around

Now comes the difficult part of deck-building. You need to find out if cards in your pool have synergy, and which colors go best together. This is where you should try all the possible builds.

Remarkable facts:

The pool doesn’t offer many removal spells. Red only gives you Orcish Cannonade (RR), and Prodigal Pyromancer.
Both White and Blue good cards require WW or UU.
There are no real mana fixers (only one Terramorphic Expanse), so you won’t be able to make a balanced three-color deck. You won’t be able to dig through the cards you threw away earlier to find combos either.

The Blue/Red build has only twenty playables.

The White/Red build has a pretty bad curve, no long term plans, and no real synergy.

A three-color deck wouldn’t support the UUs and WWs.

I ended up with the obvious W/U combination, which had the best synergy and the best cards.

Step #4: Make it 40.

I’ll give you the list of the deck I ended up with, and discuss the last cards I cut:

Planar Chaos Prerelease 1 - Deck

Raphael Levy

Test deck on 01-28-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (17)

Lands (17)

Spells (6)

Relevant cards I left aside:

Magus of the Tabernacle
Dream Stalker
Sage of Epityr
Quilled Sliver
Venser’s Sliver
Poultice Sliver
Reality Acid
Gossamer Phantasm

The card I was the most unsure of was Magus of the Tabernacle. For now, I think it is a great card if you have ways to deal with creatures with spot removal. It can buy you a lot of time to draw into your late game cards, but it doesn’t help you to deal with the threats that are already on the board. While you can hold the ground with him, it won’t stop the flyers, pingers, and all kind of “fear” creatures. He will also slow you down, as you will have to pay for his upkeep and for the rest of your team. In a non-weenie deck, with removal, it’s a great card. The best archetype he could be in would probably be Black/White, where you don’t really want to take care of all the creatures (there’ll usually be a lot). With him in the mix, you only need deal to use your removal on the major threats – the Magus takes care of the rest.

I did consider Reality Acid, even if it does look quite bad and slow. The problem with my build was that it was lacking removal. Only Temporal Isolation and Shaper Parasite could take care of creatures (and Ixidron too, in a way). The combo with Tolarian Sentinel is insane, but it felt way too slow. Had I had more ways to take advantage of Dream Stalker – I usually love that guy, but not in this deck – I would probably have given it a try. You probably need at least two Dream Stalker and a Tolarian Sentinel to make it work.

With very few removal spells, both White slivers would have probably been more useful for my opponents than for me.

I wasn’t sure how good Gossamer Phantasm could be. I think it’s much better than I originally thought. It’s comparable to Skulking Knight, expect that it’s cheaper. The problem with the Knight is that you have to invest your third turn (or three mana) into it, without being sure it would last too long. Two mana is a fairer price for such an unreliable creature. I guess if I had to change something in the main deck, I would cut the Saltfield Recluse for this one.

The manabase: while I’m become less and less of a fan of Terramorphic Expanse in two-color decks, I’m sure it’s better than an Island here. With so many double-color spells in the deck, I’d rather have the option.

Dismal Failure is the best counterspell Limited has seen since Exclude. The milling part of Induce Paranoia wasn’t exactly appealing. The discard part of this spell makes it a great card. When you draft counterspells, you’re never really sure you’re going to play them. Unless you really have no room in your deck, I don’t really see myself leaving this card in the sideboard if I’m Blue.

Overall, the deck was pretty good, but far from being insane. Its lack of removal makes it very vulnerable to fast flying or fear assaults, and to pingers or annoying creatures.

Probably a 6.5 out of 10.

Score on the day: 4-2

Sunday, January 21st
Toulouse, Prerelease #2

Planar Chaos Prerelease 2

Raphael Levy

Test deck on 01-28-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (62)

Lands (1)

1 Saltcrusted Steppe

Spells (27)

Here we have a pool with unplayable Green and Black (again).

Red offers a lot of good removal spells, while Blue and White offer solid cards.

It seems that we may have to choose between Red/White and Red/Blue.

However, the Blue pool a lot more solid than the White one. White has Calciderm, Magus of the Disk, Castle Raptors, and Sunlance, where Blue has Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Aeon Chronicler, and more than ten other quality cards.

I ended up with this:

Planar Chaos Prerelease 2 - Deck

Raphael Levy

Test deck on 01-28-2007

Time Spiral Limited

Creatures (16)

Lands (17)

9 Mountain
8 Island

Spells (7)

Relevant cards I left aside:

Boom / Bust
The second Dreamscape Artist
Castle Raptors
Sunlance

As it is, the deck has everything it needs: A good curve, solutions to almost every threat, bomb rares, and a stable mana curve. The only thing I could have wanted is a Fathom Seer or a Shaper Parasite to really take advantage of the Shapeshifter. But the deck was good enough already.

The thing is, I thought for a long time about splashing White, adding a Plains and a second Dreamscape Artist – a card that, in case you haven’t seen him in action, is a much-enhanced version of Greenseeker – for Castle Raptors and Sunlance. As I said above, the deck was already good enough in terms of quality cards, and I didn’t want to screw up my manabase for a couple of cards that would raise the card level of the deck.

I had planned to board in Boom / Bust against Green mages, or owners of White Akroma. It’s probably a maindeck card in fast weenie decks.

I remember writing a lot about Argothian Wurm in Constructed when I was still playing LLL, concluding that it was too circumstantial. I thought a lot about whether or not I should play it. I gave it a try and it ended up being really good. I would sideboard it out on the draw against really aggressive decks, but it’s just too good on the play, and definitely worth having it as a dead card in the late game, as it’s just dominating if you have it in the first 5 or 6 turns.

Veiling Oddity was also one card I wondered about in general. In this deck, with cheap three- and four-power creatures, it can deal eight or ten damage easily. In Blue/Black decks, I’m not sure it’s a VIP.

Overall, this is probably an 8.5+/10 deck.

Score of the day: 6-1

As I’m writing this, I don’t think I would change anything else in the main decks I played (except, maybe, for the Gossamer Phantom in deck #1).

I don’t really have any idea how draft will be affected with Planar Chaos, as I haven’t drafted yet. I’ll keep that for the next issue!

If you have any questions regarding Sealed Deck, or if you believe there are cards I should have played, share your suggestions and thoughts. I’ll be answering on the forums.

Until next time,

Raph.

Pro Perspective – The Planar Chaos Prerelease

Creatures (58)

Lands (2)

Spells (28)

Creatures (17)

Lands (17)

Spells (6)

Creatures (62)

Lands (1)

Spells (27)

Creatures (16)

Lands (17)

Spells (7)