Rodrigo's Dragon's Maze Pre Release Experience

First things first: Rakdos Guildgate Foil is the most beautiful card of all times.

Okay, now about my tournament:

I picked Boros, but my ally was Azorius. So I couldn't end up doing a good Aggro deck. My Boros rare was Assemble the Legion. I thought that it would be alright for the games, but in the end it wasn't. Although, I pulled Supreme Verdict from the Azorius pack, so from then I knew what I had to build. My other rares were Gaze of Granite, Sire of Insanity, Blood Scrivener, Plasma Capture and a Foil Skylasher.

My Sealed Pool:

So, as you can see, very messy pool. Due to that, I've considered going 4 colors: Esper splashing Red for those bombs I pulled. The deck ended up looking like this:

First Deck: WUBr Control:

I thought this was solid enough, it was very hard in my pool to do something better (I probably could though, if I had more time to build the deck). A card that stood out for me was Ascended Lawmage. SO happy I pulled it. It won me some games by itself, with the help of the 2 pump enchantments I have (Holy Mantle is ridiculously powerful).

First match was against some sort of control deck, iirc the same colors as me. I went 2-0, both of the games were won by overwhelming with the Lawmage and the guy got mana screwed in the second game. Also, in the second game I got to use Blood Scrivener to its best.

Second match I lost miserably to Naya Aggro, Fencing Ace is just ridiculous with Rubblebelt Maaka and in the second game I drew nothing good. Didn't get a chance to use Supreme Verdict in this match.

After this, we had the lunch break, and I realized my deck was too messy. I had to cut one of the colors. As much as I love Madcap Skills and Blast of Genius (this one saved me from a lot of trouble...), Red was the color to go. The deck then ended up looking like this:

Esper Control:

This felt a lot safer to play with. My win condition was not only Ascended Lawmage now, it was also Debt to the Deathless.

The third match was against Esper Mill. First game was an easy win for me backed on Lawmage, and the second game I lost because I didn't draw my fliers and he had Wind Drake with Paranoid Delusions ciphered, plus Mind Grind. The third game I was faster than his mill too, and this was the first showing of how powerful Extort was for me on Tithe Drinker.

Me and my opponent decided to draw the fourth match so both of us would go to the Top 8 (yeah, we only had 4 rounds).

On the top 8, I believe I had my best 2 games of the event. First game was me having all the answers to my opponent's problems AND to his answers as well, and I finished him with Extort. The second game was priceless: I asked him if he had a counter, as his hand was of only 1 card. Obviously, no one is forced to say what they have in their hands, and they could lie too. But he said he didn't have a counter. I didn't give it a second thought: I tapped out for Debt to the Deathless with X=6 and won.

We didn't play any further. The shop owner had to go and we agreed to share the boosters to give 3 to the losers in the top 8 and 5 to the winners. I opened my 5 boosters and got:

Renounce the Guilds
Trait Doctoring
Steam Vents
Breaking // Entering
AEtherling
Boros Battleshaper

At the end of the day, it was such a fun pre release. Great laughs with the people there, have seen lots of good pulls and I was also one of the 4 "winners". Shame my pulls of the prize packs aren't very impressive bar Aetherling and Vents, but I'm happy with everything.