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The Pro Perspective – An Exercise in Building a Scars Sealed Deck

Monday, November 29th – Download this week’s Sealed pool, and build your pool along with Raphael Levy! Compare your build to Raph’s and Antoine Ruel’s, get input in the forums, and download the pool for next week.

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Hello folks,

And welcome to the second installment of this new series about Sealed Deck.

Last time we worked on my Sealed Deck from GP Bochum. While not being extremely bad, it was far from stellar, as the pool was overall quite weak. We had a lot of options that could’ve proven to be good in a tournament running less than ten rounds.

This week, you’ll be working with a pool from a PTQ in Hasselt, submitted by PT London 2005 winner Geoffrey Siron:

Download the
MTGO .txt file of the pool here,
and build it on Magic Online before you proceed in the article! (If you don’t see the file, make sure to click “Local Text Deck” at the top left corner when loading decks.)

SOM Sealed Pool
Raphael Levy
Test deck on 12-05-2010
Scars of Mirrodin Limited
Magic Arena

Creatures (44)

Spells (40)

Magic Card Back


Power cards:


Hoard-Smelter Dragon:

By far the best card in the set. With only two commons dealing with it (Arrest and Turn to Slag), once it hits the board, it’s more than likely to single-handedly win you the game. It’s tough to imagine leaving it in the sideboard of a Sealed deck…


Tempered Steel:

In my list of best rares of the set in Limited, I’d put Tempered Steel in the third spot, after Hoard-Smelter Dragon and Carnifex Demon. It’s a situational card, meaning it might do nothing in the wrong setup when you don’t have any artifact creatures on the board. However when you do have some, the bonus they’re granted unbalances the game in your favor quite dramatically.


Embersmith /Myrsmith:

The bane of my last Sealed deck… and of many more.


Contagion Clasp:

One of my favorite cards in the set. Unfortunately, there’s not much to say about it. A two-mana removal artifact with an awesome ability is an auto-include in
all
Limited decks. So let’s move along and figure out the other 39 cards.

Removal:


Shatter
and
Turn to Slag:

With Hoard-Smelter Dragon and Embersmith, it would be a shame not to play red.


Instill Infection x2
:

A potential 2-for-1 is always welcome. Takes care of the Smiths.


Grasp of Darkness x2
:

Double black is often problematic…


Trigon of Corruption:

Even without black mana to charge it up, Trigon of Corruption is almost always an auto-include in Sealed Deck, unless you have a lightning-fast aggro deck that wouldn’t spend six mana to give a creature -1/-1. Along with Contagion Clasp, we probably only have to find the other 38 cards.


Sylvok Replica:

Without green mana available, this artifact creature won’t make the cut.


Arrest:

Arguably the best common removal.

Fixers:

Silver Myr, Gold Myr, Mox Opal.

Potential Synergies:


Poison and proliferate:

Two Cystbearers, two Corpse Curs, Tangle Angler, Ichorclaw Myr, Blackcleave Goblin, Ichorclaw Myr, and Carrion Call. Nine poisonous creatures, along with Trigon of Infestation, Throne of Geth, and Contagion Clasp to spread the poison, removal (counters that you can proliferate from both Instill Infection), unblockability (Tumble Magnet and Infiltration Lens), and Untamed Wild could make poison a viable option worth looking at.


Aggro white artifacts:

That’s a quite straightforward strategy: Play artifact creatures, potentially add even more artifact creatures with Myrsmith, support them with Tempered Steel. Double Carapace Forger and double Glint Hawk Idol should make for a fast deck.

Colors:


Blue:

Blue is the easiest color to sort: everything in the trash. While I like Darkslick Drake and Sky-Eel School, they’re both hard to cast (double blue in the cost) and not worth splashing for.


White:

White has Arrest, Myrsmith, two Glint Hawk Idols, and Tempered Steel as MVPs. Sunspear Shikari and Ghalma’s Warden are both fine cards, but it seems that white would do better with artifact creatures instead of white creatures.


Red:

We talked above about Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Embersmith, Shatter, and Turn to Slag. That’s pretty much all that red has to offer. In a set where you can fill your deck with artifacts, four red cards could be enough.

Furnace Celebration doesn’t really have a way to be abused in this pool, so let’s leave it out for today.


Green:

It’s rare to see a Scars of Mirrodin Sealed deck with so many cards of one color. Half the cards would fit a poison deck, and the other half… could very well complete other decks: two Carapace Forgers in an artifact deck, two Molder Beasts in a deck that needs to fill its five-mana curve.


Black:

Two Instill Infections and two Grasps of Darkness. That’s it. Worth playing as a main color? Or would you just want to splash for the two Infections? Or for the full package even with the double-black mana?


Artifacts:

There are enough quality artifacts to fill about any color combinations, including artifact creatures such as double Snapsail Gliders.

 

Let’s have a look at the synergies we spotted above. First, the poison deck. There are a lot of cards for the deck, and it’s interesting to check if it’s a viable option:


Deck 1:

Poison

Acid Web Spider
Blackcleave Goblin
2 Corpse Cur
2 Cystbearer 
Gold Myr
Ichorclaw Myr
Silver Myr
Sylvok Replica
Tangle Angler

Carrion Call
Contagion Clasp
2 Grasp of Darkness
2 Instill Infection 
Strider Harness
Throne of Geth
Trigon of Corruption
Trigon of Infestation
Tumble Magnet
Untamed Might

9 Swamps
8 Forest

There are a lot of ways to build this deck with a few more potentially playable cards:

Bellowing Tanglewurm
2 Wall of Tanglecord
Argentum Armor
Infiltration Lens
Sylvok Lifestaff

The biggest problem I see with poison is that once every two games, you won’t be able to give your opponent a single poison counter. With only one two-drop (Ichorclaw Myr), you’ll rely on Cystbearers and later Corpse Curs to infect your opponent. None of the sideboard cards solves that problem. Only more two-drops (Plague Stinger or Ichorclaw Myr) or a poisonous VIP like Skithiryx would make this deck really competitive.

That shows how hard it is to make a full-poison deck viable in Sealed Deck…

Let’s move on to the other build I had in mind when I first saw the pool:


Deck 2:

G/W Aggro

Acid Web Spider
Bellowing Tanglewurm
2 Carapace Forger
Ghalma’s Warden
2 Glint Hawk Idol 
Gold Myr
Myr Galvanizer
Myrsmith
Silver Myr
2 Snapsail Glider 
Sunspear Shikari
Sylvok Replica

Arrest
Contagion Clasp
Mox Opal
Strider Harness
Sylvok Lifestaff
Tempered Steel
Trigon of Corruption
Tumble Magnet
Untamed Might

8 Forest
8 Plains

This G/W deck is a very aggressive build, relying on its cheap creatures to beat. Eight two-drops including two Carapace Forgers and a Sunspear Shikari to a total of fifteen creatures.

You’re using equipments to pump your flyers and early beaters. So basically, you either swarm early and take the win by the air… or lose trying. You still have a few removal spells in the shape of Contagion Clasp, Trigon of Corruption, Arrest, and Sylvok Replica.

You have other building options: more equipment like Argentum Armor, more fatties like Alpha Tyrranax or double Molder Beasts (not quite good enough since you don’t have any Spellbombs).

I’m not a big fan of Argentum Armor. It gives you a chance to turn a game around if it happens to be stalled and your opponent is looking for a way to kill you. It’s unlikely that you ever manage to attack with it though, and having such a slow card in hand for most of the game isn’t what you want in a beatdown deck.

You win most games against an opponent struggling to get the right mana to cast his bomb, which is a fine strategy; however I’d rather have a bomb of my own. This is typically the kind of deck I want to build when I don’t have any. But since I do have access to bombs in my pool, I’d rather make the most of them. Not playing Hoard-Smelter Dragon is heartbreaking, and you’re not using Tempered Steel to its full potential.

It didn’t take much time to figure out these two options. If you can’t find any other decent build, the aggro W/G build could be your default deck. With today’s pool, there are other options, more viable and powerful than this one, with the cards we highlighted earlier. Building a W/R deck featuring both Smiths, Arrest, Shatter, Turn to Slag, and Hoard-Smelter Dragon is probably the way to go. Let’s have a look at what you could do:

You have a lock with the following cards:

Myrsmith
Embersmith
Gold Myr
Snapsail Glider
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
Contagion Clasp
2 Glint-Hawk Idol
Shatter
Tumble Magnet
Arrest
Trigon of Corruption
Turn to Slag
__

13 cards

Thirteen cards. Considering you’ll be playing at least sixteen lands, you have to figure out what the other eleven cards will be.

Geoffrey also submitted the pool to Antoine Ruel in order to find the right build. Here’s what he ended up with:


Deck 3:

Antoine’s R/W/G

Acid Web Spider
Embersmith
Gold Myr
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
2 Molder Beast
Myrsmith
Silver Myr
2 Snapsail Glider
Sylvok Replica
2 Wall of Tanglecord

Argentum Armor
Arrest
Contagion Clasp
2 Glint Hawk Idol
Mox Opal
Shatter
Trigon of Corruption
Tumble Magnet
Turn to Slag

4 Plains
7 Mountains
6 Forest

And here is what I ended up with:


Deck 4:

Raph’s R/W/b

2 Corpse Cur
Embersmith
Gold Myr
Hoard-Smelter Dragon
Ichorclaw Myr
Myr Galvanizer
Myrsmith
Silver Myr
2 Snapsail Glider

Arrest
Contagion Clasp
2 Glint-Hawk Idol
2 Instill Infection
Mox Opal
Shatter
Tempered Steel
Throne of Geth
Trigon of Corruption
Tumble Magnet
Turn to Slag

3 Swamps
7 Plains
6 Mountains

It’s interesting to see that while we agreed on what the core of the deck should be, the rest is very different.

The two decks have very different approaches of the game. Antoine’s is to build up defenses in order to establish control and win in the mid/late game with five-plus-casting-cost monsters, along with Argentum Armor. My deck is dedicated to attack on different angles, taking advantage of synergies, card advantage, and making the best off power cards.

Antoine’s deck relies on Wall of Tanglecord to stall the game and give him time to draw his Dragon or beat with his Molder Beasts. It’s packing Sylvok Replica and Acid Web Spider in addition to the RW removal arsenal. His deck seems really solid and has answers to most threats.

I wanted a deck that abused the most powerful cards of the pool and included Tempered Steel.

I decided to go for the black splash to take as much advantage of the Clasp as possible. Since there aren’t so many cards in red and white, the splash is affordable, and if you didn’t need more artifacts for the Smiths, the Idols, and the Tempered Steel, I’d gladly add a few Swamps and the two Grasps of Darkness (that is I guess, another build option… more black, no Steel). The black mana also gives you a chance to charge your Trigon of Corruption in the long games.

Then in order to make Tempered Steel broken, you have to choose which extra artifact creatures you want to play. I’m in favor of going with the poison plan with Ichorclaw Myr and Corpse Curs rather than filling with Neurok Replica, Razorfield Thresher, and Soliton.

Corpse Cur provides you with potentially endless artifact creatures when you have the two of them out (bring one back when one is in the graveyard, then keep it in hand until the second dies; repeat). They don’t necessarily constitute your main plan to win the game. Double Glint Hawk Idol and double Snapsail Glider are the creatures you’re going to rely on to deal most damage.

You’re missing blockers on the ground, and the Corpse Curs provide what you might need to give you time to fly over your opponent’s defenses or wait for your two bombs, pretty much what the Walls in Antoine’s deck do.

You might think that attacking on both boards—poison and life—is a stupid idea. As I said, winning with poison is not plan A. Look at it this way: Curs are like walls, and they might give you another win condition. As far as I know, Walls of Tanglecord don’t attack on any board.

On one hand, you have a very cheap blocker that’s likely to survive for a long time and on the other hand, a more expensive ground blocker that’s also a potential win condition. It doesn’t take that many hits to die from a 4/4 infect creature.

In that build, Sylvok Replica is also playable. Since you’ll be running Mox Opal—better than a seventeenth land since your deck is very cheap and you need that extra artifact for metalcraft and Smiths—you’ll have access to the green mana. Probably not often enough so you can reliably count on the Replica to destroy an enchantment but definitely a strong sideboard option against equipment heavy decks or Volition Reins. Neurok Replica is probably even better since you have a second source of blue mana thanks to the Silver Myr.

Corpse Curs, Ichorclaw Myr, Contagion Clasp, Tumble Magnet, and double Instill Infections made me wonder about Throne of Geth for a long time. It works great with all the -1/-1 counters, and you have fodder with the Curs and Myrsmith tokens. There’s a lot of synergy with this card, and I believe it’s definitely worth a slot in the deck.

The deck also seems very solid, and I can definitely see it finish games with a lot of cards left in hand, ready to take care of any threat/blocker your opponent could play thanks to the card advantage it can generate.

 

Antoine has a different take on Scars of Mirrodin Sealed Deck than I. He says that
“raw power is more important than synergy,”
when I say
“look for synergy and card advantage wherever you can.”

I believe we both have solid points. In this case, I’d agree with his statement if the cards I was trying to abuse were really hard to take advantage of. Since I found a good compromise to make everything work, I’d probably still play my build if I had to play the deck.

What about you? What did you do with the pool?

Raph


For next week, download


this Sealed pool,


and build it on MTGO, and compare your build to Raph’s!