The other day I was in my local shop, Fanboy 3, in Manchester, just hanging out like I always do, and my friend Guy comes in. He’s been playing in sealed leagues on MODO and couldn’t figure out why he kept losing. So he asks me what I have learned from my whole experience, going to PTQs and writing about them for this fine site. I was stumped. What had I learned? What lessons can be drawn from my experience? What good is it to StarCityGames readers who followed my shenanigans? I’ll try to pull it all together at the end of this article.
First off, though, the last PTQ of the season. By the time you’re reading this, Saviors of Kamigawa will be used in Limited decks everywhere. By the time the countdown and Last Chance Qualifiers for London roll around, Saviors will be old, stale and boring and CoK-CoK-BoK will be but a distant memory. Nostalgia will set in. Empires will rise and fall. Presidents will cheat their way into office and get mysteriously re-elected. Long story short, this article is about a format as dead as the dodo. As dead as the Dojo. On the other hand, CoK-BoK-SoK shouldn’t be all that different, and even if I was writing about Mirage block sealed it should still retain some relevance.
So last Sunday I travelled 270km to Newcastle. 33 players showed up. Now, for those who don’t know English geography very well, Newcastle is in the English equivalent of Alaska. It’s miles and miles from anywhere. If you were that far north anywhere else in the country, you’d be in a different country, Scotland. Some people will travel far and wide to go to PTQs, but to many of them Newcastle is just a little too far and too wide. Nice place, though, even if it is full of Geordies. On to the card pool I was handed for six rounds of battle.
Red
1 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
1 Sokenzan Bruiser
1 Cunning Bandit
1 Pan Kami
1 Hearth Kami
2 Blademane Baku
1 Battle-Mad Ronin
1 Frostling
1 Sowing Salt
1 Ire of Kaminari
1 Stone Rain
1 Honden of Infinite Rage
1 Glacial Ray
1 Crack the Earth
1 Unnatural Speed
Black
1 Kami of Lunacy
1 Deathcurse Ogre
1 Crawling Filth
1 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
1 Marrow-Gnawer
1 Scuttling Death
1 Hired Muscle
1 Ashen-Skin Zubera
1 Bile Urchin
1 Pull Under
1 Devouring Greed
1 Horobi’s Whisper
1 Rend Flesh
1 Distress
Blue
1 Higure, the Still Wind
1 Quillmane Baku
1 Soratami Mirror-Guard
1 Kami of Twisted Reflection
1 River Kaijin
1 Floating-Dream Zubera
1 Soratami Cloudskater
1 Teardrop Kami
1 Heed the Mists
1 Minamo’s Meddling
1 Hinder
1 Counsel of the Soratami
1 Toils of Night and Day
1 Dampen Thought
1 Psychic Puppetry
1 Squelch
White
1 Silverstorm Samurai
1 Mothrider Samurai
1 Kitsune Healer
1 Genju of the Fields
1 Pious Kitsune
1 Silent-Chant Zubera
1 Split-Tail Miko
1 Kami of False Hope
1 Scour
1 Heart of Light
1 Cage of Hands
1 Blessed Breath
Green
1 Vine Kami
1 Scaled Hulk
1 Harbinger of Spring
1 Iwamori of the Open Fist
1 Sosuke, Son of Seshiro
1 Order of the Sacred Bell
1 Kami of the Hunt
1 Orochi Sustainer
2 Traproot Kami
1 Joyous Respite
1 Roar of Jukai
1 Commune with Nature
Artifacts and Lands
1 General’s Kabuto
1 Honor-Worn Shaku
1 Lantern-Lit Graveyard
1 Pinecrest Ridge
Hello, Kumano, nice to see you for a change. I guess I’ll be playing Red, then. Fortunately, he has good support from a Ray, a Honden and some nice aggressive guys. The Blue has some good cards, but is a bit shallow and doesn’t really make the most of its best cards. There aren’t any two-power guys with awesome abilities, such as Wicked Akuba and Ninja of the Deep Hours, in this pool, so the Mirror-Guard isn’t all that and Higure doesn’t have many ninja in support. So, once again, we’ll write off the Blue. White has some good stuff, though again not that much. It does however offer ways to protect Kumano with Split-Tail Miko and Blessed Breath. Green has three awesome 4-drops and an Orochi Sustainer to get them out on turn 3. Very tempting.
Black, however, has Devouring Greed and several great arcane removal spells. Who wouldn’t want to play Rend Flesh with Horobi’s Whisper and Glacial Ray spliced? So this one’s a no-brainer, we throw together the Black and Red cards, add the General’s Kabuto and end up with this monstrosity:
Creatures (15)
1 Bile Urchin (S)
1 Frostling (S)
1 Battle-Mad Ronin
2 Blademane Baku (S)
1 Ashen-Skin Zubera (S)
1 Hearth Kami (S)
1 Pain Kami (S)
1 Hired Muscle [S]
1 Cunning Bandit [S]
1 Sokenzan Bruiser
1 Scuttling Death (S)
1 Okiba-Gang Shinobi
1 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
1 Kami of Lunacy (S)
Other Spells (7)
1 Glacial Ray (A)
1 Honden of Infinite Rage
1 Rend Flesh (A)
1 Horobi’s Whisper (A)
1 General’s Kabuto
1 Devouring Greed (A)
1 Pull Under (A)
Lands (18)
1 Lantern-Lit Graveyard
8 Mountain
9 Swamp
Spirits: 9+2
Arcane: 5
This is the pile I played. A no-brainer? Definitely. I might not have to play the countdown qualifiers had I actually used my brain looking at this. Why 18 land? Is it because of the high mana curve? Nope, this doesn’t have a high mana curve. Is it because of the awkward color requirements? That does contribute; having both flippers is nice but can make the mana difficult. The actual reason is that there was no 23rd card I was happy with. Distress would have made the color requirements even worse. Marrow-Gnawer and Crawling Filth would both have ruined the mana curve and are awfully mediocre at best. In hindsight I probably should have played Marrow-Gnawer over the 18th land. Giving the Okiba-Gang fear is definitely not a bad thing.
The other option of course would be a splash. I considered a White splash of Cage of Hands and Mothrider Samurai, or a Blue splash of Soratami Mirror-Guard. As I said before, the Mirror-Guard isn’t really at his best here, and the cage isn’t really needed either, as there is plenty of removal already there. The main reason I didn’t splash, though, is that this deck is rather powerful and I wanted to go for the most consistent build possible. Everyone who looked at my deck agreed it is absolutely awesome and should easily make Top 8. It didn’t. In fact this deck is horribly misbuilt and it is no wonder it didn’t succeed. It’s not really a deck, just a collection of good cards. The early game is easily stopped, there is no midgame, and the late game all comes down to Kumano and the flippers. The removal is great, but the threats are weak. Removal on the other side of the table is almost always lights out, and if my removal doesn’t match the threat, the threat will go all the way because effective blocking just ain’t gonna happen. No matter how good Devouring Greed is here, I should have combined the Red with a color that has a midgame and just splashed some Black. Something like this.
Creatures (17)
2 Traproot Kami (S)
1 Frostling (S)
1 Battle-Mad Ronin
2 Blademane Baku (S)
1 Orochi Sustainer
1 Hearth Kami (S)
1 Pain Kami (S)
1 Cunning Bandit [S]
1 Kami of the Hunt (S)
1 Sosuke, Son of Seshiro
1 Order of the Sacred Bell
1 Iwamori of the Broken Face
1 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
1 Sokenzan Bruiser
1 Scaled Hulk (S)
Other Spells (6)
1 Commune with Nature
1 Glacial Ray (A)
1 Honden of Infinite Rage
1 Rend Flesh (A)
1 General’s Kabuto
1 Pull Under (A)
Lands (17)
7 Mountain
1 Lantern-Lit Graveyard
1 Swamp
7 Forest
1 Pinecrest Ridge
Spirits: 9+1
Arcane: 3
Awful mana, for sure, but this deck isn’t reduced to rubble when they kill your Blademane early or your Kumano late. Or perhaps something along these lines.
Creatures (16)
1 Frostling (S)
1 Kami of False Hope (S)
1 Battle-Mad Ronin
2 Blademane Baku (S)
1 Split-Tail Miko
1 Silent-Chant Zubera (S)
1 Hearth Kami (S)
1 Genju of the Fields [S]
1 Pain Kami (S)
1 Cunning Bandit [S]
1 Kitsune Healer
1 Mothrider Samurai
1 Kumano, Master Yamabushi
1 Sokenzan Bruiser
1 Silverstorm Samurai
Other Spells (7)
1 Blessed Breath (A)
1 Glacial Ray (A)
1 Honden of Infinite Rage
1 Cage of Hands
1 Rend Flesh (A)
1 General’s Kabuto
1 Pull Under (A)
Lands (17)
7 Mountain
1 Lantern-Lit Graveyard
2 Swamp
7 Plains
Do these decks want 18 lands? I think they’re torn between 17 and 18, unlike the B/R deck, which definitely wants 17. Why would I play one of these decks full of, let’s face it, awful cards over the B/R deck full of awesome removal? The answer is deck cohesion. The R/G/b build has a midgame and can keep up the early beatdown more effectively with the likes of Iwamori. Commune with Nature gets the bombs more reliably as well. The R/W/b build has better defensive cards and can protect Kumano with healers and Blessed Breath. The B/R deck sputters in the face of some snake tokens and if Kumano is killed there is often no coming back. I haven’t even mentioned the propensity for mana flood. Let’s have a look at what happened at the PTQ.
Round 1 vs. Alex Lisle (U/W)
When you’ve got a deck that looks awesome but isn’t, you don’t want to be facing a player who’s only been playing for six months and misbuilt his deck in such a way that it can’t possibly deal with your deck. His deck had no two-drops and the only card in U/W that can effectively deal with Kumano is Heart of Light. On top of all that, he mulliganed down to five in game 1 and was color screwed game 2. I show him he would be better off with a B/W deck from his card pool, so he sideboarded into that in later rounds and was very happy with it. Unfortunately, all this did nothing to shatter my delusions of having an absolutely awesome deck that doesn’t need any transformational sideboarding.
1-0
Round 2 vs. Richard O’Neill (W/B)
This man is quickly developing into my nemesis. In Manchester (see Sealed Luck #2), he beat me, and we finished in 9th and 10th place. We joked that this would happen again today. He’s not really confident in the ability of his deck to go all the way, whereas I still am at this stage. Game 1 I mulligan and keep a 5-land hand. I know I need to be the beatdown against him but I don’t think my chances of getting a good beatdown draw on five cards is much better than my chance of drawing out of the manaflood. Guess what, I lost that game horribly. Game 2 I have a God draw. Turn 3 Cunning Bandit, turn 4 Ray his Waxmane, turn 5 Kumano, turn 6 General’s Kabuto and Bile Urchin, flip Cunning Bandit, turn 7 equip the Kabuto to Kumano, shoot one of his creatures, steal the other, swing for ten. Had he not conceded I would have stolen his Kami of the Painted Road again next turn, sacrificed it to Devouring Greed and just generally killed him.
In game 3 I had an awesome beatdown draw with just enough land to play my stuff. Of course this is the game where he drops Ghostly Prison. I finally find my fifth land so I can cast Kumano, he however finds his 8th land the following turn and drops Myojin of Cleansing Fire. Bye bye Kumano. I manage to deal with the Myojin with Pain Kami, but he has Soulless Revival and I succumb to the 4/6 indestructible dude. Turns out we were both wrong about our decks – his was great and mine wasn’t.
1-1
Round 3 vs. Craig Barnes (B/W)
Game 1 I mulligan and have no Swamps early on. I play Kumano off five Mountains and a Swallowing Plague for five immediately kills him. Things are looking bleak but I find a Swamp just in time and wipe out his board with a Rend Flesh splicing Horobi’s Whisper. After that I very slowly kill him. Game 2 I mulligan, keep a sketchy hand and he has the answers to my few threats. Game 3 I don’t see a single piece of removal, while he always has one ready whenever I play a worthwhile creature. I was hoping to pull off the Azamuki, Treachery Incarnate – Devouring Greed combo, but he killed the Cunning Bandit on sight and got rid of the Greed by ninjutsuing the Okiba-Gang. He didn’t have many creatures, and one or two removal spells would have easily swung this game in my favour. Apparently B/W has more removal than B/R, though.
1-2
Round 4 vs. Kriss Johnson (B/W/G)
Game 1 I get beaten down by Moss Kamis and Scaled Hulks and fail to find any answers to them. Game 2 he gets some early beats in, but then I manage to flip a Hired Muscle and he attacks with everything and even though I had no tricks, the only creatures on the board after the dust cleared were my Scarmaker and Cunning Bandit. He realized he was screwed and hoped to fool me into letting a creature through so he could get in there with a Throatslitter. Unfortunately for him I was at five life and couldn’t risk letting anything through. Game 3 I bury him with a God draw.
2-2
Round 5 vs. Marco Reece-Heal (G/B/r)
Game 1 he flips an early Nezumi Graverobber. On turn 5 I hold back Kumano and play Hired Muscle instead. He plays Rend Flesh on it. Next turn I play Kumano and thankfully he doesn’t have another removal spell or else I’d be facing my own Kumano. Kumano kills Nighteyes quickly and Marco soon thereafter.
Games 2 and 3 are a comedy of errors and bad judgment calls. Game 2 he has early beatdown and at one point the board is almost empty, while I have a hand full of removal spells. Instead of killing his Kami of the Hunt, I’m hoping he’ll play another creature so I can splice Horobi’s Whisper onto Pull Under. Eventually I’m on two life and need to blow the Pull Under anyway. I get General’s Kabuto on Kumano and have him on a two-turn clock, but only after several turns of holding back Kumano, being paranoid about a removal spell. He was using Journeyer’s Kite during his upkeep, obviously digging for something to finish me off. I deduce it must be either Devouring Greed, Glacial Ray or Yamabushi’s Flame. I look at the Devouring Greed in my hand and think it would be a good idea to play it just to gain 2 life, as that would put me out of range of any of these cards. In the end I decide to risk it and play Scuttling Death instead, so I can gain four life next turn. So of course he topdecks the Greed that turn and kills me. He had three cards in hand, but they were all land, no spirits or arcane spells that could have let him do me four with Greed or Ray.
Game 3 I Rend Flesh Orochi Eggwatcher before combat which allows him to play Rend Flesh splicing Horobi’s Whisper in combat, killing Azamuki, Treachery Incarnate and Hired Muscle. Had I played Hired Muscle first instead of Cunning Bandit, he couldn’t have ever killed it. I also forgot to remove the last ki counter from Azamuki to gain control of his Petalmane until end of turn and removed the two ki counters from him, which would have allowed me to play Bile Urchin that turn and would not have allowed him to play Pull Under on my Kami of Lunacy before it killed him, as he was light on land and needed three counters from the Petalmane. This whole match is easily a contender for the most epic screw-up of the season.
2-3
Round 6 vs. Ben Coleman (U/G)
He got me down to three life in game 2, but neither game ever really seemed close. I found out the hard way last week that U/G tends to auto lose to any deck with this much Black removal.
3-3 (18th)
That’s it, a disappointing end to a disappointing season. The focus of this series was always meant to be on sealed deck, but I did hope that I’d have a few more Top 8 drafts to cover than just two. Well, time to get back to that question posed earlier: What did I learn about Kamigawa block sealed deck?
Colors
Blue and Red are hardly ever playable, whereas the other three almost always are. When Blue is playable, then it’s usually very good and can be taken as a sign of a good card pool. Playable Red on the other hand tends to send me running for the hills. The reason for this is that Blue is full of solid to awesome flyers and Red is full of, in the words of Glenn Goldsworthy, “special men”. The cards that draw you into Red are generally burn spells or the odd bomb, but if you play it as a main color your creature base on the whole is going to be rubbish. There are exceptions to this, of course, and some of you may disagree with me, but I am not happy playing Red as more than a splash.
White varies widely from pool to pool, but almost all White creatures are playable in the right kind of deck, and the White combat tricks are second to none. Not to mention that White can have a fair bit of removal with Cage of Hands, Reciprocate and the like, and it is almost always a consideration. Above average White is hence also a sign of a strong card pool, as average white tends to be better than other colors.
Black is the big daddy of colors. More often than not it is the best color in the pool and the reason for this is the balance of removal and creatures with good power-to-cost ratios. Sure, they have drawbacks, but who cares about 1 life a turn when a Bleeder is smashing their face. It’s like Red, except deeper and with men who aren’t “special”.
Last but not least my favorite color, Green. I am often biased towards Green as much as many others are biased against it, but the creatures are great, the tricks solid and the mana acceleration and fixing often vital. Green creatures are like Black ones, except tougher and without drawbacks. Green is also most often the deepest color. I often see people splashing five cards to make their B/W decks work, where a B/G deck could’ve gone for a minimal splash and have a Kodama’s Reach to find the splash more easily. Green is so undervalued; I almost always draft it as it’s so deep and most people don’t like it, so it tends to be criminally underdrafted.
Creatures vs. Spells
Back when I started playing Limited Magic, around the time of Stronghold, and for many years afterwards, it was set in stone that a Limited deck should contain about 18 creatures, 5 other spells and 17 lands. If you were loaded with removal you could go down to 16 creatures. In recent years, however, these counts have become more and more flexible. Onslaught block required 18 lands. In Mirrodin block you never played more than 16 lands and even so 14 was a common creature count. People have become so used to the flexibility, you see people playing 16 lands here, 13 creatures there in Kamigawa block. I think it is time for a return to more traditional values and counts. Some people seem able to win with 14 creatures, but I don’t see how they do it. I find decks with only 15 creatures hard to stomach, it seems like a gamble whether you draw enough creatures or not. For me at least the results support favouring high creature counts. My two Top 8 finishes had creature counts of 16 and 18, my two ninth place finishes 18 and 17. The only times I had vague success with lower creature counts was when I had triple Honden, and even then I probably should have cut some non-creature, non-Honden cards for more creatures.
At GP: Birmingham last year, I played 19 creatures in my Mirrodin-Darksteel sealed deck, which is almost unheard of. I frequently won games when, after some trades and some removal spells, we’re both in topdeck mode and I kept drawing creatures while my opponents kept drawing equipment without having a creature to put it on. Having lots of solid or better creatures is the best and easiest way to success. Some players can turn sh** to gold, and they are likely the ones who succeed with 14 creatures, but they don’t need my advice. If you are reading this you should probably try to up your creature count.
Tim Aten and others claim that creature quality doesn’t really matter, but I’ve found that trying to contain Order of the Sacred Bell with 2/2s while holding that awesome Rend Spirit to be far more difficult than if it were a Harsh Deceiver.
Lands
Some people advocate 18 lands as if this were Onslaught block. Personally I find the best argument for trying to stick to two colors rather than splashing is that it is easy to get away with playing 17 lands. This is also another reason I love Green, as Green can splash without having to play 18 lands thanks to manafixing.
Splashing and 3-Color Decks
I have rarely seen true 2-color decks at the top tables and sometimes players get away with “splashing” things like Blood Rites. I find myself sort of converted to splashing most of the time, though on the other hand my two Top 8 finishes were with a deck that only splashed for a dragon and a deck that was straight 2-color. Those were somewhat exceptional though, as they were considerably more powerful than most of the other decks. Rule of thumb: don’t splash unless you have to. Unfortunately, 80% of the time you have to.
Archetypes
B/W and B/G are the standard, default archetypes, and they are both very solid and will usually do well. Any archetype involving Red is to be treated with suspicion, but G/R and W/R can both work in the right card pool. I hate B/R, it tends to have very few quality creatures, and is way too reliant on its removal. Combining oodles of removal with crappy men was a great strategy back in Invasion block when the removal was much more universal and the creature quality on the whole not that high. However, these days I find it quite unreliable and suffering from wrong-answer-syndrome. U/W can work fine with its usual mix of flying hordes and ground control with tappers and big butts. B/U is the ultimate combination of tricksiness, having access to all ninja, and is hence the scariest archetype to play against. Fortunately it doesn’t happen very often. I can’t really comment on U/R as I haven’t yet come across a card pool that seriously supports it.
Finally we come to the two much maligned, largely removal-free archetypes, G/W and U/G. G/W tends not to work without a splash, as it will die to annoying utility creatures. There aren’t that many in the format, though, and there’s nothing as devastating as Sparksmith or Timberwatch Elf, at least not in the common slot, so G/W is actually reasonably viable with its combination of solid creatures and tons of combat tricks. Finally, we come to my favourite archetype, U/G. Yes, the only removal you’ve got is Mystic Restraints, unless you lucksack a Shuriken, which truly shines in this archetype even more than it does in U/B. U/G combines the best ground creatures with the best flyers, and the combination of ninja and pump spells can give any opponent a headache. Another thing I love about this archetype is that you don’t need to find space for removal spells. Seriously, they only detract from the things that make a Limited deck great.
Attitude
If you blame every loss on manascrew, stop it right now, because you’ll never get anywhere with that attitude. Instead, try to improve your deck building and mulligan skills. That is not the limit of bad attitude, however. Many people lose because they think their card pool is weak and don’t really try because of it. Other times, they have card pools that are so good that they play them on auto-pilot and then lose to better players who squeeze every ounce out of a mediocre deck. In Peterborough, StarCityGames,com featured writer Quentin Martin opened one of the worst sealed decks I have ever seen, but he still managed to Top 8 by pulling out all the stops. I still don’t know whether I should be in awe or disgust of the way he essentially manipulated his opponents into beating themselves. The point is, no matter how bad your card pool is, you can still win the tournament with the right attitude and tight play. If you’re not careful, though, you’ll end up beating yourself.
Well, those are my closing thoughts on this season, this departing format and this series of articles. Please chime in on the forums with how useful you found this series and why, and what could be improved in a similar series in the future. I hope y’all enjoyed reading ’em, my chronicles of failure, I definitely enjoyed writing ’em, and I also hope you gained some insight and opportunities to improve your game.
I’ll be back in a few weeks taking a look at the impact of Saviors on the format. There may not be many important tournaments using the format, but there’s at least the countdown qualifiers and LCQ in London. It does seem rather silly that there isn’t a limited season that uses the full block.
Thanks for listening,
Martin
martin underscore dingler at hotmail dot com