Theros Prerelease Woes and Wins

So, pre-release today, I left this morning not actually knowing a large number of the cards off hand which is really unusual for me as I've always learned the whole set for every other pre-release. I had my spike hat on, however, and was set on winning.

I went with Blue for my special pack/box thing, and was one of the eight people who's names got pulled from a hat that actually got to play it, since they were running low on Blue from the night before.

My pool looked really mediocre but I thought I saw a decent Blue/Black control shell and went with that.

After I got crushed in my first two rounds by what were really pretty mediocre decks I realised I had to seriously re-think my strategy, and at 0-2 down I decided I would "go greedy or go home".

I messed around a bunch with numbers and settled on a very sweet 5 colour control deck that I was just ecstatic to play (seriously). As everyone knows by now, I love sweet decks and this was one of them, at least imo.

So, after having a quick practice game with a friend, and winning very decisively I was happy to leave it as it was and play out the rest of my rounds.

From then on, I felt really good in all my rounds, I was actually doing powerful things with powerful cards and winning games came easy with the large power from cards like Nessian Asp, Mnemonic Wall and Shipbreaker Kraken, with a ton of removal to back them up. I ended up only losing 1 game in my last 4 rounds, putting the deck at an impressive 8-1 game record (10-1 including friendly games).

A few last notes:
- 18 lands is almost necessary in this format for hitting monstrosity mana, and the large amount of scry seriously helps reduce flooding
-Greedy mana base.dec is surprisingly good with some of the green fixing in this set
-Shipbreaker Kraken is f****** insane
-Words of wisdom from a friend: "As soon as you stop concentrating so hard, you see the best deck."

Without further ado, my awesome 40:

Creatures:
1 Sylvan Caryatid
1 Returned Phalanx
1 Meletis Charlatan
1 Nessian Courser
1 Reaper of the Wilds
1 Breaching Hippocamp
1 Nessian Asp
1 Mnemonic Wall
1 Prescient Chimera
1 Horizon Scholar
1 Shipbreaker Kraken

Spells:
2 Nylea's Presence
1 Lightning Strike
1 Read the Bones
2 Griptide
1 Divine Verdict
2 Lash of the Whip
1 Rage of Purphoros
1 Sip of Hemlock

Lands:
1 Temple of Mystery
1 Mountain
4 Swamp
5 Island
7 Forest

Sweet plays of the day:
-Breaching Hippocamp untapping my Caryatid to give me Red mana for Lightning Strike and blocking another x/3
-Winning from 19 life down (24 to 5) with a Shipbreaker Kraken going monstrous
-Locking me and my opponent out of the top of our decks with Griptide, Meletis Charlatan and Mnemonic Wall and 12 mana.
-Keeping Island, Swamp, Mountain and 4 green spells and drawing a Forest.


Yeah, my pre-release was great fun. Didn't open a ton of great stuff, but from my prize packs I got Hero's Downfall, Swan Song, Hero of the Pantheon (And Agent of Fates but he's not very good). Traded my Temple of Mystery for a Temple of Triumph, also opened a Reaper of the Wilds and Sylvan Caryatid (both in my deck). No other cards really worth anything though, unfortunately. Oh well.

Theros also looks like it'll be a weird set to draft and I look forward to it.

Congrats on a good time

5 color at a prerelease. I don't think I would be able to do it. Awesome deck

What other cards did you end up having in your pool?

Not a lot of good.

I originally had 2 Vapor Kins, a Nimbus Naiad and an Insatiable Harpy in the deck, along with a few other bad or awkward cards (like the Annul I cut because it was just too eh).

The other stuff I had that was playable was just really really unfocused.

Had no other green playables. Had no other black playables. Had no good white midrange-y cards, just a bunch of heroic stuff and nothing to trigger them. Virtually no other blue playables except aggressive fliers. Red was ridiculously shallow/bad too.

Really decent. There's a lot of good removal in the set, and playing 5-colour green looks like a good Sealed idea. Probably would have been awesome to get a Sea God's Revenge (probably the best blue uncommon) in your pool, but that's wishful.

Oh, I actually did have that in the blue/black deck I was playing beforehand.

And it underperformed like hell and I have no idea how.

I should explain that by the end of round 2 I was in a rotten mood because of how my day had started, and I was really pissed off with how bad Sea God's Revenge had been, so it's very possibly it could have been in the deck. Overall, not really disappointed in not having it though, since it's another 6 mana card.

Yeah, your six-slot is a little cramped; probably sticking to your line-up is best. Surprised it performed badly though before. The general consensus of a lot of Theros Prerelease stories was sort of Voltron wars or an army race, which made mass bounce really good.

Damn, I really want to try 5-colour. This looks hilariously fun.

The problem is, with the control archetype I was trying to play, I was playing a bunch of really mediocre guys that get easily outclassed by whatever they played, and I couldn't swarm the board either, so I never had lethal if I bounced 3 of their guys, and sometimes they never even had 3 guys and it wouldn't do anything to get me ahead anyway. I valued it really high prior, and I'd still value it really highly now. I just had an unfortunate experience with it and like I said I was pretty badly on tilt so my judgment was skewed.

5-color control...I remember when my friend Nick, who's the head of our collegiate Magic club, went five-color gates and ended up going 2-2 because Doorkeeper and Axebane were laugh riots.

Theros Sealed has been pretty a** across the board, honestly. The draft format looks way better because we know what cards actually matter and we can justify appropriately when we know what colors and things we're going for. Meanwhile, it's give-or-take on opening a good sealed pool. A guy at the prerelease this afternoon where I am dropped as soon as he opened his sealed and discovered his options were so scattered and so unfixed (no mana dorks or fetching in sight) that it was completely unplayable.

Really wish I could have gone to this pre release. The format looks extremely fun, so fun that you could make a 5-color control deck and perform very well.

Kyousuke Kousaka wrote:5-color control...I remember when my friend Nick, who's the head of our collegiate Magic club, went five-color gates and ended up going 2-2 because Doorkeeper and Axebane were laugh riots.

Theros Sealed has been pretty a** across the board, honestly. The draft format looks way better because we know what cards actually matter and we can justify appropriately when we know what colors and things we're going for. Meanwhile, it's give-or-take on opening a good sealed pool. A guy at the prerelease this afternoon where I am dropped as soon as he opened his sealed and discovered his options were so scattered and so unfixed (no mana dorks or fetching in sight) that it was completely unplayable.

Sealed looks alright actually for Theros. Your promo should account for a lot (I mean, you're already off to a fighting chance choosing Blue or White). I blame that guy's circumstance on extreme bad luck (I mean, seriously, there is a damn load of fixing and mana in this set. I imagine that Sealed in Theros is just way more fluid; it's a mile away from Ravnica because the archetypes in Theros are really quite vague. They're definitely there, but you gotta work with your pool.

.Rai wrote:

Kyousuke Kousaka wrote:5-color control...I remember when my friend Nick, who's the head of our collegiate Magic club, went five-color gates and ended up going 2-2 because Doorkeeper and Axebane were laugh riots.

Theros Sealed has been pretty a** across the board, honestly. The draft format looks way better because we know what cards actually matter and we can justify appropriately when we know what colors and things we're going for. Meanwhile, it's give-or-take on opening a good sealed pool. A guy at the prerelease this afternoon where I am dropped as soon as he opened his sealed and discovered his options were so scattered and so unfixed (no mana dorks or fetching in sight) that it was completely unplayable.

Sealed looks alright actually for Theros. Your promo should account for a lot (I mean, you're already off to a fighting chance choosing Blue or White). I blame that guy's circumstance on extreme bad luck (I mean, seriously, there is a damn load of fixing and mana in this set. I imagine that Sealed in Theros is just way more fluid; it's a mile away from Ravnica because the archetypes in Theros are really quite vague. They're definitely there, but you gotta work with your pool.

It's "alright." The problem is that sealed is a particular give-or-take format where if you obtain certain options and have decent-enough synergy, then you'll do well. Sealed's also the guinea pig in figuring out what will be good in draft, so there's that to remember as well.

Personally, I think that the colors that really took the format were the America colors. Black and Green are kinda slacking this time around. Red/Blue synergize incredibly well with White if you know where to look. Also, blue/white have damn good bodies, which means there's something to look to for if you can't somehow grab the tempo/aggro options.

While I think Black is the worst colour in the set (and not by much, mind you) I don't think you can really measure any real disparities between the colours especially just from sealed. One could attribute it to somewhat like GTC limited, where everyone stayed away from blue decks yet those blue decks had some of the higher win rates because of that, and if the limited format does go that way (although in this case the neglected colour is more likely to be black) then it's still going to be good all round.

Should also be noted, in draft RB Minotaurs are a thing and are insane when you can get a couple Kragma Warcallers.

Also, Green/Black gives you almost unarguably the best multicolour uncommon in the set, along with all the best removal and most efficient creatures.

Pharika's Mender is the best multicolor uncommon? That's new to me.

I did say arguably.

Gravediggers tend to be good, and a 4/3 Gravedigger for 5 mana has to be at least a bit better.