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It’s crunch time. The GP weekend is finally here. You’ve practiced building decks from Sealed pool after Sealed pool; you crushed everyone at the Scars of Mirrodin Prereleases and launch parties with your untamed might. Your conviction is true! Your confidence is not unlike tempered steel! Nothing stands in your way!
Three hours later you’re out of contention for Day 2. All that time and effort has gone to waste. Your hopes shattered, dreams turned to slag, and your psyche is molten.
This was true of so many people at GP Sydney a few weekends ago. That’s part of both the beauty and ugliness of Sealed format Grand Prix and Pro Tour Qualifiers. Everything comes down to the six packs of cards that you’re given to build your deck from. Scars of Mirrodin is a rather difficult format to evaluate for players who’ve been raised on the colour-heavy (yes, I spell colour with a ‘u’, deal with it) formats of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor and Alara Block Sealed. Everyone is a slave to their colour requirements; you have to juggle your mana carefully and precisely so you’re able to hit your bombs.
All of a sudden, players are vaulted skyward into this unknown world of Scars of Mirrodin Sealed. Instead of having 20+ cards in each colour to build a
deck from, Scars Sealed presents a format where you may have less than five cards in a particular colour. One Sealed pool I saw in a Prerelease had
zero
cards in blue. Absolute zilch! To further complicate things, your pool has upwards of thirty cards that have no coloured mana costs at all. You’re trying to juggle your coloured mana cards against all these awesome artifacts that don’t need coloured mana. That’s daunting especially for a person who hasn’t previously experienced the plane of
Ravager Affinity
Mirrodin.
I’m one of those people. I’m Baz, and I’ve been playing Magic competitively since the release of Alara Reborn. I’ve always been a dabbler, a PTQ here, a Prerelease there, but I’ve never been as seriously into Magic as I am currently. Like a lot of people, I have dreams of playing Magic at the highest level and want to put the work in to make it happen (although other people would provide a stoic rebuttal). I’ve missed two consecutive Day 2s at Australian GPs finishing 5-3 both times, losing to some great Australian players on the way. These things happen. The only thing you can do is seize the initiative, learn from your mistakes, and move on.
Magic Weekend Paris 2011 is sure to be an amazing time for everyone who is going, Wizards is pulling out all the stops with the first experimental PT/GP weekend. I’m sure a lot of people are going to want to be there to experience it firsthand. Therein lies the painful quandary. To be on that plane to Paris, blue envelope in hand, you need to do two things: do well in Scars of Mirrodin Sealed, and then do very well in Scars of Mirrodin Draft. I’m going to help you do the first part today. I’ve studied so many Scars pools to the point I’m almost sick of the set already and can’t wait for Mirrodin Besieged to come out and shake things up.
There are a number of things I’ve noticed about players building decks from Sealed pools that I think are totally incorrect. Hands up if you’ve been taught some of these basic rules about playing Sealed.
- Try to keep your mana base to as few colours as possible.
- Try to play your removal colours if possible.
- Keep to seventeen or eighteen land.
- Pay attention to your rares and mythic rares.
- Watch out for the powerful, swingy effects.
These are all common rules that many players are taught early on. A lot of these rules actually wind up being broken in Scars Sealed. Some are broken for the correct reasons, some are broken for the wrong reasons, and some are broken because people (like me) enjoy punting their chance at GP Day 2s.
I’ve seen many people building Sealed decks in this format who think that because their artifacts are so flexible on their mana requirements, they can run as many colours as they want and not worry too much about their mana base. If you think this, you deserved to be subjected to my all-star list of groan-inducing puns (“Isn’t my board presence just Myr-aculous?”). Your mana base is still one of the most important things in this format. You still want to be able to cast your coloured cards because in many cases they’ll be much better than your colourless ones.
Try to stick to your two colours. I’d recommend that you only splash removal such as Galvanic Blast, Arrest, Arc Trail, Revoke Existence, and Shatter. Just like in the original Mirrodin Limited format, Shatter is still insanely powerful. Don’t splash for your big, expensive bombs. You’ll doom yourself to failure.
I’ve seen a lot of people try to splash lands to obtain the full value out of Spellbombs, especially Horizon Spellbomb and Origin Spellbomb. In most cases this isn’t the smart play. The card draw isn’t often that important, and the potential for drama to occur to your mana base during the game isn’t worth it. Horizon Spellbomb is the only Spellbomb that most decks should almost always run. Even without the green mana for the card drawing. Mana fixing is still fixing, and it’s at a premium in this set. Other off-colour Spellbombs that are worth running are Flight Spellbomb and Panic Spellbomb in the B/G Infect builds. Aside from that, most Spellbombs should be kept to their own colours and even then aren’t that impressive all the time. Nihil Spellbomb is terrible in general and only has niche applications in Sealed (pretty solid sideboard card in a Trinket Mage deck though).
The original cycle of mana Myr from Mirrodin have been reprinted and are just as awesome in Sealed as they were before. However too many people just treat these guys as lands and subsequently cut too many lands from their deck, or, even worse, forget they’re mana sources and wind up with awkward decks of seventeen lands and five or more mana Myr. Then they find themselves stuck with no action spells and just a pile of 1/1s that aren’t doing anything. I generally only play a mana Myr if it’s producing one of my main colours or splash colour. If you’re splashing a colour and have a mana Myr in that colour, I stress that it doesn’t replace a land of that colour. Never rely on your mana Myr for splashes. People are beginning to get wise to the power of the Myr and are killing them on the spot.
If I have multiple mana Myr that I want to play, I generally only cut one land for every 2-3 mana Myr I want to play (starting at a base of eighteen land), and I never go below sixteen lands. It’s simply suicide. I spit fumes whenever I see a Sealed deck with five mana Myr and only fifteen land, only to have the person complain about all these awkward one-land, three-mana-Myr hands. In decks like this, the Myr are simply lands that cost two to play and die to every removal spell in the set. As good as the Myr are, they have big red targets on their little metal heads due to their ability to mana fix and accelerate. They can be used early on to blunt the assault, to discourage attacking, and to defend against the infect decks, as they can be rather slow, and trading with mana Myr isn’t exactly part of their game plan.
In Limited, especially in Sealed, lots of people unleash their inner Timmy and dream big of splashing for some insane game-turning bomb like Liege of the Tangle or Carnifex Demon in their low-curve R/W aggressive beatdown deck. This sort of behavior needs to stop. If you want to win that blue envelope, you need to arrest those thoughts of splashing for Skithiryx and turn aside those dreams of going big with Genesis Wave. Yes, cards like Carnifex Demon are extremely powerful and can change the game, but at what cost to your mana base? As I said before, when I was discussing multiple splashes, you really shouldn’t blindly throw every bomb in your deck and make the mana do all the heavy lifting for you. You don’t need to play all of your rares at every single opportunity. It’s simply bad Magic.
At GP Sydney, I fell victim to the temptation of my big rares like Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, and Geth, Lord of the Vault. I splashed them in a Sealed pool that really wanted to play R/W Metalcraft beatdown. While the red wasn’t particularly heavy in my deck, I was essentially splashing for two big mythics that necessitated a heavier splash than my red, leading to many awkward hands of Swamps and red spells or vice-versa.
If I could do my GP Sealed Deck all over again, I’d certainly resist the grasp of darkness that included Skittles, Geth, and… Grasp of Darkness. Sure this course of action would’ve forced me to play with some more Myr-diocre cards but the tradeoff in mana consistency would’ve been worth it. Instead of falling victim to the allure of powerful mythics and finishing with a 5-3 record, I could’ve played a more consistent deck and continued playing in the GP on Day 2.
The situation I described above sums up a lot of peoples’ mistakes in this format. Splashing for strange cards that don’t really gel with what the rest of the deck is trying to do, which causes their mana bases considerable harm and their chances of victory to disperse into nothing. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
I’ve had plenty of Sealed pools in this format I’ve considered absolute stinkers and I’ve reluctantly put together a deck fully expecting to be out of contention after the first round. Yet, the pools and subsequent decks I consider bad are turning out to be the ones with which I’m achieving the 4-0 records or winning GPT Trials.
2 Auriok Sunchaser
3 Chrome Steed
1 Darksteel Sentinel
1 Gold Myr
1 Hoard-Smelter Dragon
2 Iron Myr
1 Sunspear Shikari
1 Vulshok Replica
1 Arc Trail
1 Arrest
1 Darksteel Axe
1 Dispense Justice
1 Galvanic Blast
1 Glint Hawk Idol
1 Infiltration Lens
1 Origin Spellbomb
1 Revoke Existence
1 Strider Harness
1 Tumble Magnet
1 Turn to Slag
Sideboard (No particular order):
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Neurok Invisimancer
1 Lumengrid Drake
1 Turn Aside
1 Scrapdiver Serpent
1 Vault Skyward
3 Plated Seastrider
1 Volition Reins
1 Skinrender
2 Tainted Strike
1 Painful Quandary
1 Exsanguinate
1 Plague Stinger
1 Psychic Miasma
1 Blackcleave Goblin
1 Flesh Allergy
1 Necrogen Scudder
1 Soul Parry
1 Seize the Initiative
1 Salvage Scout
2 Flameborn Hellion
1 Molten Psyche
1 Melt Terrain
1 Kuldotha Rebirth
1 Tunnel Ignus
1 Vulshok Heartstoker
1 Turn to Slag
1 Slice in Twain
1 Blunt the Assault
1 Carrion Call
1 Copperhorn Scout
1 Tel-Jilad Defiance
1 Untamed Might
1 Withstand Death
1 Contagion Clasp
1 Vector Asp
1 Razorfield Thresher
2 Panic Spellbomb
1 Neurok Replica
1 Necrogen Scudder
1 Heavy Arbalest
1 Golem’s Heart
1 Echo Circlet
1 Golden Urn
1 Moriok Replica
1 Ichorclaw Myr
1 Trigon of Corruption
1 Memnite
1 Myr Propagator
1 Sylvok Replica
1 Snapsail Glider
1 Culling Dais
This decklist is available on the Mothership as part of the GP Sydney coverage and won GP Trial #5. The sideboard was only public to people who’ve seen my Twitter feed. I had to beat several strong players from the AUS/NZ region to get there in the end. I felt so down about this pool when I received it, because I had this twisted image of opening up a bomb-laden pool with Steel Hellkites or planeswalkers, and this pool depressed me. I reluctantly put 24 cards together, grabbed my 16 lands, and five hours later, I was hollering out across the hall in victory. Sure, my results the next day weren’t as positive, but let’s focus on the lessons to be learned.
You don’t need a multiple-bomb pool to go 5-0 and achieve good results in this format. Having several bombs can certainly help, but as the pool above proves, sometimes strong, solid commons and uncommons backed up by single Hoard-Smelter Dragon are all you need. Too many other people are falling into the trap of aiming for a longer game and playing expensive, unwieldy rares and awkward splashes. You can capitalize on these errors by playing a low, aggressive curve and slicing your opponents in twain before they have a chance to play anything.
In Scars of Mirrodin Sealed, you really want to be the aggressive deck. There are very few cards, such as Wall of Tanglecord, that can stop you early. In most cases, the control decks have lots of problems stopping you without having some obscene amount of removal. Aggressiveness can be a very subjective thing and every colour but blue has aggressive options. Red, white and green can go the metalcraft route with strong commons and solid removal options, while black and green tend towards the infect route with powerful synergies between the infect mechanic and equipment/pump spells. Any deck with blue is going to lean towards a controlling style deck, and, as such, will have a hard time in this format without extremely strong bombs and removal.
The above decklist has fourteen artifacts in it. This is the sort of number you need to effectively achieve metalcraft. There have been times, however, where I’ve played decks with ten and still been fairly consistent in hitting the magical three-artifact threshold. You shouldn’t play bad artifacts to artificially increase your chances of hitting metalcraft. Playing bad cards decreases your chances of drawing a good card when you’re in a pinch. Creatures like Myr Propagator are certainly great at enabling metalcraft, but he’s still only a 1/1 and requires a large mana investment to complete his mission. When you’re trying to be as aggressive as a runaway
Wurmcoil Engine
freight train, Propagator just ties up your mana like nobody’s business.
When it comes to metalcraft creatures, the creatures that count toward the three-artifact requirement are much better than those that aren’t. Chrome Steed will always be better than Ghalma’s Warden, for example, despite the Warden’s better base stats. Darksteel creatures like the Sentinel are very powerful at keeping metalcraft totals high, since aside from infect and the odd exile spell, they’re very hard to kill.
The infect deck is one of the harder decks to assemble in Sealed due to the inherent randomness of your packs. Unlike metalcraft which can be rather flexible in its requirements, you need to have a number of key enablers to really make the deck hum. Cards like Corpse Cur are a necessity, and Plague Stinger and Blight Mamba are the best two-cost guys you can possibly have. You also need a way to increase their power to put your opponent under the required pressure. Untamed Might is an all-star in this deck and can appear to win games from out of nowhere.
Trying to infect your opponents is one of the trickier plans to put into action as the temptation may be there to play some really strong non-infect creatures. This can lead to awkward situations where you’re splitting your focus between two distinct life totals. Granted some creatures like Liege of the Tangle can lead to hilarious plays where you have them on nine poison and hit them for 100 life with your animated land army. However cards like Chrome Steed (giddy-up) that are consistently awesome at attacking life totals become irrelevant when you’re trying to hit for ten poison instead of twenty life.
If you choose to play non-infect guys, make sure you have a way to give them infect with either Tainted Strike (so good on Precursor Golem) or Grafted Exoskeleton (expensive but underrated). You generally need at least twelve infect creatures, with the right enablers to truly be a toxic concoction. Most infect creatures are rather weak on their own so you have to prioritize cards like Accorder’s Shield and Withstand Death to help keep them alive and swinging.
Of course that isn’t to say the opposite is true. If you’re the unfortunate recipient of a pool with strong black but not enough infect creatures, Skithiryx is still acceptable to play as he’ll end a game in three hits. Ichorclaw Myr is so seemingly unimposing in some games he can have your opponent up to five poison counters and leave himself open to a sudden Untamed Might. Infect creatures are very solid on defense where they function as wither creatures.
Scars of Mirrodin Sealed is one of my favorite Sealed environments ever. It’s very skill intensive, very fun, and can lead to some great stories to tell your friends. I hope you can dispense justice upon all your opponents and become the grand architect of your own inexorable tide of PTQ victories. I hope you’ve had as much
pun
fun reading this as I have had writing it.
Until next time, watch out for drop bears.
Baz
@thatdamnaussie
on Twitter
BazD on Magic Online
ThatDamnAussie on YouTube