I recently received a terrific belated birthday present: a trip to GP: Nashville. It turned out to be one of the best presents I’ve ever received. I got to play in a premier event, see my best friend Rob finish twelfth, enjoy some beautiful weather in a great city, have good times with friends, and watch my girlfriend nearly make Day 2 in her first Grand Prix.

While my 6–3 finish wasn’t quite good enough to push me into Day 2, it was nice to play some matches against good competition, and I had some experiences worth talking about. The toughest challenge I faced that weekend was probably determining how to best build my Sealed pool.

The first thing I did was check out my green:

"Green Sealed Pool"

• Creatures (14)
• 1 Briarpack Alpha
• 1 Festerhide Boar
• 1 Grave Bramble
• 1 Hollowhenge Scavenger
• 1 Kessig Recluse
• 1 Kindercatch
• 1 Predator Ooze
• 1 Somberwald Dryad
• 1 Village Survivors
• 1 Young Wolf
• 2 Dawntreader Elk
• 2 Grizzled Outcasts

• Spells (5)
• 1 Crushing Vines
• 1 Hunger of the Howlpack
• 1 Ranger's Guile
• 1 Mulch
• 1 Wreath of Geists

Buy This Deck

Usually at this point, I put my green aside. I’m looking for evasion, removal, and bombs in Sealed, and these are not hallmarks of green. In this case, my green is somewhat tempting. I have seven creatures that are 3/3 or bigger, I have help against flying (Crushing Vines and Kessig Recluse), and I have some solid pump. Perhaps best of all, I have two Dawntreader Elks, which means I can ramp and smooth my mana, trigger morbid, and put creatures into my graveyard if I need them there. While I’m not a fan of green, when I play it, I like R/G, so I next I checked out red:

"Red Sealed Pool"

• Creatures (8)
• 1 Afflicted Deserter
• 1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
• 1 Crossway Vampire
• 1 Hinterland Hermit
• 1 Night Revelers
• 1 Russet Wolves
• 2 Torch Fiend

• Spells (8)
• 1 Burning Oil
• 1 Fires of Undeath
• 1 Infernal Plunge
• 1 Rolling Temblor
• 1 Scorch the Fields
• 1 Traitorous Blood
• 2 Furor of the Bitten

Buy This Deck

It seems that I could have had a decent R/G deck. Red would help the early part of my curve and give me some removal for small creatures, and the Traitorous Blood could be an excellent finisher for the suite of creatures I have. Big creatures and flyers could be a problem for a R/G build, and the Rolling Temblor isn’t a great fit for a deck without flyers and so many small creatures in the early curve. To take advantage of red’s many 2-drops, I would probably want an even more aggressive build, so it was time to look at my white.

"White Sealed Pool"

• Creatures (6)
• 1 Elder Cathar
• 1 Elgaud Inquisitor
• 1 Gallows Warden
• 1 Gavony Ironwright
• 1 Thraben Heretic
• 1 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

• Spells (6)
• 1 Break of Day
• 1 Feeling of Dread
• 1 Midnight Haunting
• 1 Purify the Grave
• 1 Skillful Lunge
• 1 Gather the Townsfolk

Buy This Deck

Given how much I like white in this format, this is a bit of a disappointment. It’s not very deep, and it’s lacking in bombs. If I end up with good and/or deep enough blue, the white becomes a little better because of Feeling of Dread. Even so, I think Feeling of Dread is usually much better in Draft than Sealed—Draft is usually more of a tempo-oriented format.

"Blue Sealed Pool"

• Creatures (6)
• 1 Civilized Scholar
• 1 Relentless Skaabs
• 1 Shriekgeist
• 1 Stitcher's Apprentice
• 2 Makeshift Mauler

• Spells (9)
• 1 Bone to Ash
• 1 Frightful Delusion
• 1 Griptide
• 1 Lost in the Mist
• 1 Thought Scour
• 1 Artful Dodge
• 1 Chant of the Skifsang
• 1 Curse of Echoes
• 1 Spectral Flight

Buy This Deck

While this lacks the flying that’s typical for a good blue pool, it has some other nice qualities. It has some quality, big creatures in the form of the Maulers and the Relentless Skaabs. It also has a lot of ways to fill the graveyard for them. It even has some answers to big creatures. While not as deep or fast as the red, it seems that it would synergize nicely with the green. Perhaps black should be considered, though:

"Black Sealed Pool"

• Creatures (6)
• 1 Black Cat
• 1 Diregraf Ghoul
• 1 Markov Patrician
• 1 Typhoid Rats
• 1 Unbreathing Horde
• 1 Vengeful Vampire

• Spells (7)
• 1 Tragic Slip
• 1 Undying Evil
• 2 Gravepurge
• 1 Gruesome Deformity
• 1 Heartless Summoning
• 1 Skeletal Grimace

Buy This Deck

Not only is black lacking in depth, but it lacks removal—usually one of the reasons to play Black. In the right deck, I might consider splashing for Gravepurges, but the black definitely isn’t good enough to be a main color. I do have a couple nice artifacts, though:

"Artifact Sealed Pool"

• Creatures (1)
• 1 Galvanic Juggernaut

• Spells (5)
• 1 Avacyn's Collar
• 1 Chalice of Life
• 1 Ghoulcaller's Bell
• 1 Mask of Avacyn
• 1 Warden of the Wall

Buy This Deck

I like Galvanic Juggernaut in almost any Limited deck, and it goes really well with Stitcher's Apprentice andDawntreader Elks. It also goes well with removal, but that’s something in short supply in this pool. This pool has a lot of expensive creatures, but not many flyers, making Warden of the Wall also pretty exciting. My lands aren’t really helpful for this pool:

"Lands Sealed Pool"

• Lands (3)
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 2 Isolated Chapel

Buy This Deck

If I were playing white and wanted to splash black or vice versa, the Chapels would be pretty exciting, but it’s unlikely I would use more than one of those two colors. This is the deck I ended up going with:

"U/G Sealed Deck"

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Briarpack Alpha
• 1 Civilized Scholar
• 1 Festerhide Boar
• 1 Hollowhenge Scavenger
• 1 Kessig Recluse
• 1 Kindercatch
• 1 Relentless Skaabs
• 1 Stitcher's Apprentice
• 1 Village Survivors
• 2 Dawntreader Elk
• 2 Grizzled Outcasts
• 2 Makeshift Mauler
• 1 Galvanic Juggernaut

• Spells (7)
• 1 Griptide
• 1 Hunger of the Howlpack
• 1 Ranger's Guile
• 1 Thought Scour
• 1 Mulch
• 1 Chant of the Skifsang
• 1 Warden of the Wall

• Lands (17)
• 8 Island
• 9 Forest

Buy This Deck

The reasons I went in this direction are:

• It has the best collection of late-game creatures with six good 4-drops, four good 5-drops, and two good 6-drops.
• Thanks to morbid and a desire for creatures in the graveyard, the colors synergize nicely. The blue likes Mulch and the Elks, while the green appreciates the Apprentice.
• Between pump, blue creature control, and large creatures of my own, it’s well prepared for opposing large creatures.

It turns out this deck was just a little bit too slow. My 4- and 5-drops were big enough and plentiful enough that I should have left out both of my 6-drops in favor of Somberwald Dryad and Crushing Vines. It’s also possible I should have maindecked the Ooze in spite of the needed for it. The other answer would have been for me to run R/G with a lower curve, but I think both cases would have been only a slight improvement. Of course, Magic is all about slight improvements, and given my record, my slight misbuild was probably a crucial error.

My Round 4 opponent’s deck was well designed to exploit my deck’s weaknesses. He was running an aggressive R/W deck with some flying and a Devil's Play. In both Games 1 and 3, he won by playing Devil's Play twice when I had otherwise started to take control. The problem with my build was that it was almost inevitable that I’d fall behind every game I played, and then I had to slowly come from behind and take over. This isn’t always going to work, especially against a good deck in the hands of a good player.

The situation had gone from glorious victory to seemingly hopeless. If I didn’t attack, he could just starting making a 3/3 every turn, which would be impossible for me to overcome. If I attacked with everyone, he could block with everyone but the Doomslayer and the Mage and be able to counterattack for the win. My only remaining choice was subterfuge. I decided to attack with everyone but my Briarpack Alpha. This accomplished two important things:

1. By not attacking with my Alpha, I was acting like someone who expected the game to go on for at least another turn or two. This suggested that I had another potential blocker in my hand.
2. With this is mind, it made sense for him to make blocks designed for a game that wasn’t about to end. By attacking with my Recluse instead of the Alpha, I gave him a creature that seemed safe not to block—since he was at 3 life.

I was able to win three of my last four rounds, but that wasn’t enough to put me into Day 2. While this was a less successful Grand Prix for me than many I have attended, I was really glad I went. The site was an amazing resort that evoked thoughts of Disney or a Grand Casino without any gambling. The weather was perfect, the people were nice, and there were thousand-dollar Drafts to play in on Day 2. The fact that I learned some valuable Sealed lessons didn’t hurt. Rather than be discouraged by my performance with that deck, I was pleased to be able to get a decent result with such an unexciting pool. Even that pool was good enough for me to make Day 2, though—I just needed to raise my game slightly more . . . especially during deck-building.