Locations
Standing in line with at least 200 other players eager to gain entrance to the main ballroom I spotted the face of magic himself: Mark Rosewater. I apprehensively approached the godfather of modern magic and casually introduced myself. I had twittered him just the day before about Valakut The Molten Pinnacle and it's use of the term "other mountains" even though it isn't a mountain. I asked him about that. His response was that originally, many of the non-basic lands in Zendikar had the subtype associated with the color of mana they produced. Many in R&D liked that idea because it created more synergy within the block. It also would have made those individual cards that much better. In the end, the idea was nixed because it would have made those cards "too powerful" but the phrase "other mountains" remains on that card. I asked for a picture with the man (right), thanked him for his time and returned to my table.
[caption id="attachment_4940" align="alignleft" width="235" caption="I won't waste your time flaunting my loots."]
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I won't waste your time with all of the little details of my personal experience. I've never found that interesting on other MTG blogs so I wont waste your time with it here. For example, I won' t waste your time telling you about how I pulled a Sorin Markov in my very first pack of Zendikar ever opened. I certainly wouldn't bore you with the harrowing tale of my 3-1, 2nd place finish. And there's no way I'm going to brag about pulling all three planeswalkers in only 13 packs of Zendikar. Please- I would never stoop to such gross personal indulgence on this blog.
What you want and need to know about is the nature of limited Zendikar itself. I can pretty much sum it up in two words: Green Landfall. Of the top five players in my flight, roughly 100% (including me) played green as their main color. Walking around to the other table's and witnessing their final matches didn't change the aforementioned statistic. The #1 player at my table (and subsequently my only loss for the day) commanded an army of landfalling bal0ths and beast token generating enchantments. Couple those with Khalni Heart Expedition and some helpful, land-grabbing artifacts and it was more than possible to play mono-green with a splash of white or black. It remains to be seen how this would work out in a draft format (as opposed to sealed) where players are all fighting over the common/uncommon green cards. 
But in sealed, with six packs of Zendikar all to yourself, you'd have to be extremely unlucky not to pull two or three game changing, landfall, 4/4, trample creatures or at least two Timbermaw Larvas.
The normal elements of sealed were still present - big bombs on turn six or seven, small creatures every turn, and removal is worth its weight in gold. I think Zendikar hits all of those notes. It actually does so in every color but with mana ramping and larger, more common landfall creatures available to green, there was really no contest when choosing colors. Other than blue, I did see all of the other colors splashed into the staple green decks quite a bit. When I'm playing with a forty card deck and thinning my library of lands every other turn I feel like I'm about the be decked at any given time staring at the 19 cards left in my library. I was waiting for someone to bust out a couple of Hedron Crabs and an Archive Trap or two but alas, it was not to be.
I really enjoyed playing with the concept of choosing when to play lands. One of the most boring (and yet somehow still very convoluted) parts of magic the gathering is playing lands. At this tournament I had a great time trying to decide when to play my land for the turn, hold the land until next turn, or trigger my sac artifacts to throw more lands into play. Do I trigger my +2/+2 landfall ability x3 or do it once per turn? Should I play this creature and then play a land? We're all used to the old "play a land then play spells" archetype but Zendikar really got me thinking about when I was dropping those lands. Especially once you've got enough mana on the table but still had them in your hand. Sometimes it paid to just hold onto them for later. I really appreciated the "spicing up" of this normally mundane part of the game.
The other noteworthy aspect of sealed Zendikar is it's speed. My 50 minute rounds often were over in 15 minutes. While there is some removal in Zendikar, if you're not playing black or white alongside your green Baloths you're probably going to see an 8/8 + trample creature coming your way on turn five or six which is quite fast in a sealed format. Between searching for lands, putting lands into play from the top of your library and plain old mana acceleration, green at the helm of sealed Zendikar brings with it a speed that is faster than any other sealed format I've played in. This isn't to say that the other colors don't possess the normal attributes necessary for limited play. But 
I'm not sure I saw a blue card played the entire time I was at the pre-release. The bounce was there, the counters were even there, heck I even pulled a rare sphinx! But the bottom line for me (and everyone else it seemed) was that the combos you could pull off with equipment on common, giant, landfall, green creatures is just too much to pass up and it showed in the final rankings.
In the end I had a great time at the Washington State Convention Center that morning and would recommend this type of event to anyone. Zendikar looks to be a great set. Everyone was excited about Sorin, the pain-fetch lands and Day of Judgment. There are plenty of "tournament level" cards to justify grabbing that booster box next week. Also, I'd like to give a shout out to Robby from MTG Color Pie, whom I met up with at the event and taught me the ins and outs of Elder Dragon Highlander. He also has a very nice blog that has inspired many of my articles.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to confirm, once and for all that the rumor about "Priceless Treasures" being found in packs of Zendikar is 100% true. Someone at our event pulled a Tropical Island and I have seen the evidence first hand. The judges also informed us prior to the match that there may be "non-Zendikar" cards in our packs and that we could keep, but not play, with those cards. No one knows how rare these cards are, or how long they'll be available but for now, its possible to get a Mox Sapphire in a pack of Zendikar. I was very much a skeptic on the twitters when I first heard about this but this is one of those times I am so very happy to be wrong.
The Full Visual Zendikar Spoiler is now up and is also available in the Gatherer. Be sure to check it out before your next limited event as it gives you quite the advantage to know what you'll want to draft and what'll be coming at you in Zendikar.
