I recently played in a M12 release event, and on my way to a 4–1 record, I learned quite a bit about the format. M12 Limited seems to be a format that favors aggression, and Red seems to be the power color. Each player was given six packs of Magic 2012 to build a Sealed deck. This was my pool:

Artifacts

• Greatsword
• Kite Shield
• Kraken's Eye
• Scepter of Empires ×2

Black

• Bloodrage Vampire
• Blood Seeker
• Brink of Disaster
• Dark Favor
• Diabolic Tutor
• Disentomb
• Doom Blade
• Duskhunter Bat
• Gravedigger × 2
• Hideous Visage
• Sorin's Thirst
• Taste of Blood
• Warpath Ghoul
• Zombie Goliath

Blue

• AEther Adept
• Aven Fleetwing
• Azure Mage ×2
• Djinn of Wishes
• Flight
• Jace's Erasure
• Levitation
• Merfolk Mesmerist ×2
• Mind Control
• Mind Unbound
• Phantasmal Bear ×2
• Phantasmal Dragon
• Unsummon

Green

• Bountiful Harvest
• Brindle Boar
• Carnage Wurm
• Dungrove Elder
• Fog
• Garruk's Companion
• Gladecover Scout
• Llanowar Elves ×2
• Plummet
• Reclaim
• Runeclaw Bear
• Sacred Wolf
• Stampeding Rhino ×2

Red

• Blood Ogre
• Bonebreaker Giant
• Combust
• Crimson Mage
• Fiery Hellhound
• Fireball
• Goblin Arsonist ×3
• Goblin Piker
• Goblin War Paint ×2
• Gorehorn Minotaurs ×2
• Manabarbs
• Slaughter Cry
• Stormblood Berserker

White

• Aegis Angel
• Alabaster Mage
• Armored Warhorse
• Assault Griffin ×2
• Auramancer
• Benalish Veteran
• Guardians' Pledge
• Gideon's Lawkeeper ×2
• Griffin Sentinel
• Lifelink
• Mesa Enchantress
• Oblivion Ring
• Pride Guardian
• Stave Off

The first thing I did was evaluate the strengths of each color:

Black – The strength of my Black is the removal: Doom Blade and Sorin's Thirst. It also has six decent creatures: Duskhunter Bat, Blood Seeker, Warpath Ghoul, Bloodrage Vampire, and two Gravediggers. Depending on what bombs and removal I end up with, Diabolic Tutor could be pretty strong also.

Blue – My Blue has excellent creature control: Unsummon, AEther Adept, and Mind Control. It has good evasion: Djinn of Wishes, Levitation, Phantasmal Dragon, and Aven Fleetwing. It has card advantage: Azure Mages and Mind Unbound. It even has great 1-drops in the form of Phantasmal Bears.

Green – It has six solid creatures: Runeclaw Bear, Garruk's Companion, Sacred Wolf, Dungrove Elder, and the two Stampeding Rhinos. The problem is that it doesn’t have anything else, not even some creature pump. So Green is pretty much not happening in this pool.

Red – It has eight good creatures: Stormblood Berserker, Goblin Piker, Crimson Mage, Blood Ogre, Fiery Hellhound, Bonebreaker Giant, and the two Gorehorn Minotaurs. The Slaughter Cry is a strong combat trick, and the Fireball is a bomb that’s almost impossible not to play.

White – My White has good flyers: Griffin Sentinel, Aegis Angel, and the two Assault Griffins. It has good aggressive creatures: Alabaster Mage, Armored Warhorse, and Benalish Veteran. It even has good creature control: Oblivion Ring and two Gideon's Lawkeepers.

A huge factor in deciding what colors to play is the fact that I have a strong preference for playing two colors. This makes a strong case for Blue/Red, since Blue has ten cards I really like and Red has twelve cards I really like. Blue/White was also worth considering, since White has nine cards I like, and then I would have both strong flying and strong creature control.

The deciding factors for me were Mind Control and Fireball, both cards I consider bombs that can break a game wide open. In addition, with twenty-two cards I’m really happy playing, I only needed to find one more card to play in order to have forty cards with seventeen land. I’ve discovered that when I play eighteen land in Limited, I generally get mana-flooded too often. Some formats/decks may have the card advantage to avoid mana-flood consistently, but this didn’t appear to be one of those times. In Scars Block, I prefer to run sixteen lands, but I usually have an extremely low curve, very minimal color-specific requirements, and some mana-helpers like Myr, Spellbombs, and/or Wellsprings.

The last card to be included in the deck took some experimentation. First, I tried Greatsword. I found several problems with it. First, three of my creatures can’t even use it since they are Illusions. Second, most of my opponents had lots of creature control, making creature-enhancement weaker. Third, I found tempo important and Greatsword to be too slow, especially if my opponent used instant removal on my creature after I’d invested a total of 6 mana to get it equipped.

The next card I tried was Scepter of Empires. Not only does the Scepter not care about creature control, but it’s great for pumping up creatures with Bloodthirst. The problem with it is that I can’t really afford to spend 3 mana on a card that doesn’t affect the board and/or give me card advantage.

In the end, I settled on using one of my Goblin Arsonists. First, it gave me another way to activate Bloodthirst quickly. Second, I’ve found there are lots of 1-toughness creatures in the format. Not only can it trade with a 2/1 or 3/1, but I can take out another creature while I’m at it.

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

1 Aether Adept

1 Aven Fleetwing

1 Blood Ogre

1 Bonebreaker Giant

1 Crimson Mage

1 Djinn of Wishes

1 Fiery Hellhound

1 Goblin Arsonist

1 Goblin Piker

1 Phantasmal Dragon

1 Stormblood Berserker

2 Azure Mage

2 Gorehorn Minotaurs

2 Phantasmal Bear

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

1 Slaughter Cry

1 Unsummon

1 Fireball

1 Levitation

1 Mind Control

1 Mind Unbound

[/Spells]

[Lands]

8 Mountain

9 Island

[/Lands]

[/cardlist]

For the most part, my deck worked really well, and I finished 4–1 in five rounds of Swiss. My one loss was to the player who built his deck across from me: He had two Fireballs, two Incinerates, a Shock, and a Chandra, the Firebrand. Not only did he use Chandra to shut down my 1-toughness creatures and Illusions, but he also used it to copy a Fireball and kill two of my big creatures at once. He played three colors with two rares to help smooth his mana: Birds of Paradise and Solemn Simulacrum. In contrast, my two-color deck got color-screwed when I played him. I had some hope in Game 1, because I drew my Mind Control. Unfortunately, the next two creatures he played were a pair of Sacred Wolf. My consolation for my mana problems is that the matchup may have been bad enough that I would have lost even with good draws.

The impression the event left me with is that M12 Limited is very aggressive. The combination of Illusions, Bloodthirst, and large amounts of good burn makes playing slower, more deliberate strategies very risky. I found that in most games, Mind Unbound was too slow. I only used Azure Mage’s ability twice, and I only used the Djinn of Wishes ability twice.

The Illusion drawback and the Bloodthirst drawback have the result that the creatures that have these abilities are bigger and more dangerous than are normal for their casting costs. Given the number of creatures with these abilities in the format, the environment tends to be fast and aggressive. Not only are people playing these types of creatures, they’re also motivated to play with creatures like Goblin Arsonist!

If you want to play control, you’re probably going to need lots of creature control and lots of good early blockers. Cards like Gideon's Lawkeeper and Unsummon are excellent for this. They both kill Illusions and they both can help either prevent a creature from getting its Bloodthirst activated or deal with it after it’s received the bonus. Illusions get much worse against permanents that target, like Lawkeeper and AEther Adept. Bloodthirst obviously gets much worse if you’re having trouble doing early damage. Creature control is also good in aggressive decks, too, for getting blockers cleared for your early damage or for dealing with creatures like Gideon's Lawkeeper. So, like most other Limited formats, removal is important/very powerful.

One of the things that make this format special is the amount of removal that’s in the form of burn. This is another reason that control is a little scary to play. It also means that even control decks need to be able to win in a hurry. Even if you can keep an aggressive deck’s creatures under control and your life total reasonably high, playing against decks with Red is still dangerous. If your opponent has enough time to keep laying land and drawing more burn, suddenly it’s end-step Incinerate you, untap and either Fireball or Lava Axe you for the win.

With the copious amounts of burn in the format and the lack of Infect, life gain will probably gain more importance than usual. While White is usually the first color that comes to mind when discussing life gain, in this case, Black may be the color that benefits, with high-quality life-gain commons like Child of Night and Sorin's Thirst. In Draft, mono-Black might be especially exciting, because uncommons like Vampire Outcasts and Consume Spirit are really well-suited to the environment. Consume Spirit is especially cool, because it both gives you the effect of a Fireball as a potential finisher and also helps protect you from Fireball because of its life-gain property.

For now, plan on making your M12 Limited decks very strong in the early game with as much creature control as possible. If you’re drafting, consider being open to mono-Black and always be open to Red. If Red and Black are being cut off, be sure to load up on threatening creatures that match up well with decks full of Red and/or Black removal.