Welcome back. I hope you got the chance to enjoy a Magic 2012 prerelease and/or release event over the past weekends. I am very lucky to live near a store that runs two prerelease events as well as a release event, and thus have had the privilege to open three sealed pools. Much to my surprise, I actually did fairly well at both prerelease events, breaking my curse of sucking at them (I hope!). I am going to talk today about one of my pools and the decision-making process that I went through when building the deck.

Here is my pool in full. If you would like to use this as a learning experience, I suggest trying to build a deck for yourself from the cards before reading on. One of the most interesting things about this pool, I think, is the absence of obvious bombs—and yet I managed to go 4–0 with it before I.D.ing in the final round (I won the friendly).

White

• Armored Warhorse
• Assault Griffin ×2
• Benalish Veteran
• Elite Vanguard
• Gideon's Lawkeeper
• Griffin Sentinel
• Lifelink
• Mighty Leap
• Pacifism
• Pride Guardian
• Roc Egg
• Spirit Mantle
• Stave Off
• Stave Off
• Timely Reinforcements

Blue

• AEther Adept
• Amphin Cutthroat ×2
• Aven Fleetwing ×2
• Azure Mage ×2
• Cancel
• Chasm Drake
• Coral Merfolk
• Divination
• Harbor Serpent
• Ice Cage
• Mana Leak
• Master Thief
• Merfolk Looter
• Phantasmal Bear
• Ponder

Black

• Blood Seeker ×2
• Brink of Disaster
• Child of Night
• Deathmark
• Doom Blade
• Drifting Shade
• Duskhunter Bat
• Onyx Mage
• Wring Flesh

Red

• Blood Ogre
• Bonebreaker Giant ×2
• Chandra's Phoenix
• Combust
• Crimson Mage
• Firebreathing
• Fling
• Goblin War Paint
• Gorehorn Minotaurs
• Incinerate ×2
• Lava Axe
• Lightning Elemental
• Reverberate
• Slaughter Cry
• Stormblood Berserker
• Warstorm Surge ×2

Green

• Bountiful Harvest
• Dungrove Elder
• Garruk's Companion
• Giant Spider
• Gladecover Scout
• Greater Basilisk
• Jade Mage
• Lure
• Lurking Crocodile
• Naturalize ×2
• Plummet
• Sacred Wolf
• Stampeding Rhino
• Stingerfling Spider

Artifacts

• Angel's Feather
• Crumbling Colossus
• Dragon's Claw
• Druidic Satchel
• Thran Golem

Lands

• Drowned Catacomb

Unless the pool is exceptional, I expect to be running two main colors with the option of splashing a third. After many attempts at Sealed, I discovered it’s all about being very greedy. I assume everyone uses different methods to evaluate their Sealed pools; I like to take each color in turn and consider the strengths and weaknesses. Often, I can reject one color outright. In this case, my Black seemed obviously weak. Onyx Mage and Drifting Shade were the only standout creatures, and while Doom Blade is excellent and Deathmark is okay, I could splash for them if I need the removal. I just wasn’t going to get enough playable cards from it for it to be a primary color, so I put all but the Doom Blade aside.

I was very excited about my Green. I had opened a Jade Mage that I had been looking forward to playing. Alongside the Mage, I also had a bunch of Hexproof creatures, including Dungrove Elder, who could be strong if I could run enough Forests. As such, I curved out my playable Green as a maybe. By this I mean stuff good enough to be played in the main; I left Lure, the Naturalizes, Plummet, and Bountiful Harvest to one side. Some of these are fine ’board cards, but I don’t want to consider them for the main deck right now.

I opened a lot of Red cards, including Chandra's Phoenix, another card whose impact on Limited I was excited to see firsthand. To go with the Phoenix, I had double Incinerate, Fling, and Lava Axe. Although Lava Axe is clunky, it could be worth it for the synergy with the Phoenix, and it will function as a finisher. I also opened Stormblood Berserkers, one of the strongest bloodthirsty creatures in the set as well as Blood Ogre and Gorehorn Minotaurs, which are all good value when cast with Bloodthirst. Warstorm Surge, I have to confess, I ignored. I have been corrected that it can be a potentially strong card in Sealed, so I shall have to try it out at some point; however, I was assured the format was fast and therefore a 6-cost enchantment was probably not what was called for. I also curved out my Red cards, leaving the Surges, the Reverberate, and the Firebreathing aside.

My Blue cards actually struck me as the strongest of my colors. With Divination, Ponder, and two Azure Mages, I had a lot of card-draw. I also had an AEther Adept which is a great tempo-stealer, as well as Aven Fleetwing, who looked like a potentially powerful flyer, and a Chasm Drake. With two counters to round it off, it looked like a great package to be one of my two main colors. The cards in Blue that didn’t impress me much were Amphin Cutthroat and Coral Merfolk, who could provide warm bodies if necessary but are poor value. Ice Cage is okay as removal but is easy to negate. Phantasmal Bear is obviously aggressively costed, and if I had the right pool, it would definitely make the deck. Last, Merfolk Looter . . . sorry, people, I was advised it was bad. I have since learned my mistake, but it was put aside early.

Last to consider was White. Gideon's Lawkeeper is a very strong card that I would be happy to run. I also had a couple of flyers as well as Spirit Mantle, who would definitely like to hang out with my Hexproof creatures, creating an essentially unkillable creature. It also included Pacifism and Timely Reinforcements. Again, Timely Reinforcements was a card I wanted to see in action, and Pacifism is a respectable piece of removal. Lifelink and Pride Guardian never made it to the table.

Artifacts-wise, I had one playable artifact, which was Druidic Satchel. This card looked like it was going to be amazing in Limited and was going to make the cut in any deck I made.

Okay, so I had curved out in front of me all my colors except Black, and I had put the weakest cards from each aside. Now what? I was fairly certain my strongest color was Blue, mostly due to double Azure Mages. From there, I started trying to pair my colors up, keeping in mind I could splash Doom Blade. I started with U/R due Chandra's Phoenix, but I couldn’t make it work. The Blue wanted a long game and the Red bloodthirsty creatures wanted an aggressive game. I mentioned in my previous article the dangers of playing the bloodthirsty creatures in a nonaggressive deck, and I realized that was what I was trying to do. I tried to see if I could support an aggressive deck with Red and a different color, but the creatures just weren’t there; even my Green was lacking an aggressive curve. So, with a tear in my eye, I cut the Red. The Incinerates I held on to, as I could splash them instead of the Doom Blade.

As I was excited about playing Jade Mage, I tried the Green next. I can’t pin down exactly why I wasn’t happy with this combination of colors. Mostly, I felt I was lacking the cards that really make Green tick. I didn’t have the big fatties that opponents can’t deal with. The Hexproof creatures had no love in terms of auras. I didn’t have an Overrun, or an Acidic Slime, or any Arachnus Webs. Basically, in the end, I concluded my Green was solid but nothing special. It’s possible I could have run a half-decent G/R aggro deck, but that wasn’t going to cut it for me, so I turned to White to find a friend for my Blue.

And a friend I found. The flyers from White complemented the Blue flyers to the point that I felt I had a good number to be closing games with. White also provided removal, and Spirit Mantle was going to be great if I got it on an Aven Fleetwing. Roc Egg was going to hold the ground a bit and then become an awesome aerial attacker to join the squad. So in the end, I went with U/W. I actually splashed the Incinerates over the Doom Blade. I think this may be a personal preference. Doom Blade is obviously better in terms of being hard removal, but I always like the option of using my removal spells as finishers instead, plus they deal with Cudgel Troll, who could have been really annoying for me. I was prepared to sideboard into the Doom Blade instead if I really needed it.

Here is my final build.

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

2 Assault Griffin

1 Gideon's Lawkeeper

1 Griffin Sentinel

2 Aven Fleetwing

1 Master Thief

2 Azure Mage

1 Chasm Drake

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

1 Timely Reinforcements

1 Spirit Mantle

1 Roc Egg

1 Pacifism

1 Stave Off

1 Cancel

1 Mana Leak

1 Ponder

1 AEther Adept

1 Divination

2 Incinerate

1 Druidic Satchel

[/Spells]

[Lands]

3 Mountains

8 Islands

6 Plains

[/Lands]

[/cardlist]

I’m not going to go for an in-depth analysis of the games, but I do want to spend some time on what cards performed well and why. Aven Fleetwing was way better than I expected and was responsible for wining most of my games. I won one game entirely from ten turns of Aven Fleetwing beatdown as my opponent couldn’t find a blocker, and his removal was dead against it. Azure Mage was also ridiculous. Too many people made the mistake of not killing it. I’m sure people will get better at this as they gain experience with the set. Spirit Mantle was another all-star—even without going on an Aven Fleetwing. I took one game just by enchanting a Griffin Sentinel, thus managing to effectively hold off my opponent’s entire team and get in for 2 each turn. It eventually died to a Consume Spirit; seems good to me. Timely Reinforcements was great for my deck as long as I didn’t have the Satchel out. I generally tended to be behind in terms of guys and life, and this spell completely righted this issue. Stave Off was also very good. I always struggle to include cards like this, as they are very situational, but it was well worth it, and several times, I used it to save my key creatures. The Satchel was excellent at simply out-tempoing my opponents by making dudes to gum up the board and/or chump with, or by just helping my mana out. One game, I missed my fourth land drop and played the Satchel. Turn five, I activated it, putting a land into play, and turn six, drew another land, so I was only one land drop behind and right back in the game I would probably have otherwise lost. Master Thief is well worth main-decking in Sealed, as I think all pools had an artifact I was happy to take off my opponent’s hands.

Sealed does not seem to be as fast as people were predicting for Magic 2012 Limited. I can definitely see that you can draft wicked fast B/R decks, but Sealed is always a bit more restricted in how dedicated your deck can be. That’s not to say you can’t get an aggressive pool. I saw some very scary Bloodthirst or flyer aggro decks. However, there were plenty of decks playing the longer game, with more midrange beatdown or control. Also . . . bomb rares are still good.

That’s all for today. Hope you found it useful.