Thanks for the fun challenge! This is what I came up with in 50min. I built blue red first because of balmor and good top of curve blue creatures. Looking at that deck I felt it lacked quality removal, and many of the creatures were questionably stated. So then I jumped to white black for the great removal, decent curve, and graveyard recursion. I felt much more confident about this build. Open to any feedback! 1 Abyssal Harvester 1 Armasaur Guide 1 Bake into a Pie 1 Banishing Light 1 Claws Out 1 Evolving Wilds 1 Felidar Savior 1 Gutless Plunderer 2 Helpful Hunter 1 Hungry Ghoul 1 Infernal Vessel 1 Infestation Sage 1 Joust Through 1 Luminous Rebuke 8 Plains 1 Prideful Parent 1 Raise the Past 1 Resolute Reinforcements 1 Rogue's Passage 1 Serra Angel 1 Skyknight Squire 2 Stab 7 Swamp 1 Vanguard Seraph 1 Zombify
@Mr_Dylll Fantastic build! I am curious did you use your entire build time, or did you stop with time to spare? I went through this identical progression at the start of my build with laying out izzet first and then jump to orzhov. Thank you for sharing that you started izzet and pivoted here. That was useful information. I think your reasons for going leaving izzet to jump into orzhov are sound. I think the interaction that these two colors have in this pool are hard to walk away from. It also allows you access to the Abyssal Harvester which is one of the best cards, if not the best, in the entire pool. I like your thought process a lot here. I have a few things that I think you should consider with this build. First, Raise the Past is a really medium here. You don't have enough 1 and 2 drops to justify this card, and I think it'll be more awkward than good. Don't get me wrong, I like the card because of the Skyknight Squire but not being able to consistently hit 3 or more targets makes it a little medium. I love that you included Rouge's Passage. Well done on that! I think you overlooked one of your absolute best cards in this build, the Squad Rallier. I think this card is a must include as it has so many targets for you to hit and gives you access to repeatable value. I'd swap out the Vanguard Seraph for the Squad Rallier. I will let you know that although our progression was the same up to this point, I did not end here. I kept going with multiple iterations after orzhov. There were several reasons I didn't stay here. You seem really skilled so I'll ask you, why would you think this build would worry me? Why would I chose to leave this build? It has a more than reasonable curve out, reasonable interaction, plus a good card or two. What do you think it is missing? What is its weak spot? Did that worry you too? I challenge you to find this deck's weakest spot and make it so it isn't a problem. This is really advanced stuff. I think this deck you've built is one of the best options this pool has to offer. It might be one of the best 2 color options for sure, but it does have a problem with it. It would not be crazy to say I see that problem and I'm just going to hope it is never an issue. You could run this deck and take that risk. Although, I want to make sure you know what that weak point is. It's important that you saw it too, but it is okay if you decided it was acceptable (as long as you know it's there). Thanks for sharing your build!
@@mtgmonster8755 Thank you so much!! I used about 30 min to build and decide to pivot from izzet, then 10 min to build orzhov, and then spent the last 10 min overthinking my cuts and trying to decide if I wanted to splash anything. I did this pretty late last night and my brain was reading Raise the Past as return all creatures POWER 2 or less. Knowing how the card works now makes me see its pretty bad here. And I like the Squad Rallier swap! To answer your question I would say the lack of big threats is something to worry about here. At my prerelease there was a decent amount of removal going around, so if my okay top end creatures or Harvester are removed I wouldn't have much goin on. Also I see that my creatures are still fairly weak in stats so big toughness creatures early on, or a curve out with better stats would get uncomfortable quick. With that in mind I'm looking at blue again for big impactful bombs. From watching your channel I'm guessing you ended up in more than 2 colors, and I was tempted to splash for the Harvester and Bake into a Pie, but I felt more comfortable with this azorius build: 1 Archmage of Runes 1 Banishing Light 1 Claws Out 1 Elementalist 1 Erudite Wizard 1 Essence Scatter 1 Evolving Wilds 1 Felidar Savior 1 Fleeting Distraction 1 Grappling Kraken 2 Helpful Hunter 7 Island 1 Joust Through 1 Luminous Rebuke 2 Mischievous Mystic 8 Plains 1 Prideful Parent 1 Resolute Reinforcements 1 Rogue's Passage 1 Scrawling Crawler 1 Serra Angel 1 Skyknight Squire 1 Squad Rallier 1 Tolarian Terror 1 Uncharted Voyage Better bombs and synergy here I think. Excited for your feedback! I'm finding this very helpful. Edit: For some reason I thought Erudite had flying, I would swap that out for something else. Splashing black is looking more enticing.
@Mr_Dylll So I think your Orzhov build was comparable to this build. (specrtal sailor should be in your build list here) To me both builds suffer from the same problem though, which I think you're starting to get at which is this pool is lacking end game bombs and finishers (the end game is non-existent/ weak). This new Azorius build gives you a bit more evasion for chip in and a wider board potentially, but neither of the two decks deal with the larger problem of the pool in general. Which is if a game goes long, winning could become completely out of reach for you pretty quickly. What can you do to protect yourself from that problem when you just don't have an end game plan in any color? Most of the time control can take care of that, which is why I said the Orzhov build was maybe the best 2 color build of the pool. You could theoretically play it perfectly knowing you have to save your removal for things you can't trade off with. But that has risks. This pool is lacking great control (board wipes, lots of exile, removal with value, etc) in all color pairs. Orzhov maybe edges out Azorius... Neither are where they would need to be in sealed to make that a fool proof plan. So the only thing left you could do to protect yourself from the bomb heavy pools with good curve outs is try and win faster. It took me 30 minutes of build time with this pool to realize that is the real hurdle this pool needs you to overcome. What deck can you make that wins the fastest here? It's really tough to recognize when a fast win is necessary to prioritize above all else. I think one of the most common traps in sealed is running a mid range pool that has a good curve out, decent synergies, but not enough bombs at the end to actually win against that broken pool you face at the end of the night. The dreaded perpetual 3-1, 2-2 build. Good enough to win more often than not but when you face the pool with 7 rares it just feels unbeatable, and you're left wondering how does anyone beat that!? We've all been there including me. lol and you're right I did run more than 2 colors. That's the other more advanced thing in sealed is being able to recognize when you actually do NEED to go to 3 to get what you need. The weaker the pool and the more even split the cards are across the colors like seen here, the more likely it is that stretching into 3 colors is necessary. Food for thought! Glad you've found this helpful.
@Mr_Dylll Build is posted in video details I want you to know I really liked your BW build. It wasn't a line I considered but after looking at your list it looked solid. I ended up stretching for the black removal anyways but your build was an option with no stretching required. Thanks for sharing.
@nickmtg-v7l Thanks for posting. Nice build! I like several things about your build. First being that it has a really clear win con, and it's extremely aggressive. That being said, there are more than a few choices that don't fit your win con and this could slow you down just enough to not cross that finish line before your opponent stabilizes. The Gleaming Barrier in particular stands out as a card that this deck should not be running. The last thing your aggro deck wants is a 2 drop that can't swing in. With Axgard Cavalry still in the board and in your 2 colors for me that is an easy swap out. I also wonder why not both Goblin Surprises? Only one copy seems to go away from your win con. It's 2 bodies when you have none and later game if you have a wide board it's a potential win con. I like your attempt to try and include the Raise the Past. It's a very specific card but can be powerful in some match-ups. Which leads me to my final question, do you feel like you could have stretched further for more synergies and bigger pay offs here? This list is quite vulnerable to lifelink match-ups and the mirror where your op opened more good rares than you like a Chandra or a big dragon. It even might struggle against an elf deck that goes wide and then ramps to a big creature early. There's lots of decks in this format that can make this build have no good attacks. There aren't too many ways you included for you to get around that, especially if you were on the draw. Leaving both Mischievous Mystics in the side board, Spectral Sailor, and Balmor, Battlemage Captain seem like big loses here. Especially with Raise the Past hitting all 4 of those targets, and all 4 giving substantially more synergistic payouts than just Boros gets you. Not to mention more card draw, more creatures, and better buffs including trample. I am worried that because you only have 2-3 problematic cards in this Boros build that any interaction and you could find yourself short of win cons. The lack of evasion and lack of card draw makes this build a little vulnerable to stalling out. So much so that I would run 16 lands and not 17 here. I'd also consider a Thrill of Possibility too to mitigate that problem. But I think my biggest overall feeling I'm left with from your build is that it's a safe build. Maybe too safe? idk that's debatable, but for me the worry is it isn't enough to compete with the best pools at the event. Maybe you'll get lucky and out aggro 1-2 opponents, but 3-5 opponents in a row? In best of 3? Where they can sideboard in to deal with your plan better... It's a risky deck to run, not because it's bad but because the power level ceiling is quite low. When your sealed pool is so weak it is sometimes necessary to stretch to get some more power in there somehow, or some higher payouts for synergies, or more interaction. This sealed pool has quite a few options for fixing. Is there a reason you like playing it safer here? Would you be willing to sideboard in game 2 to stretch for more power? What would that look like for you? Great build thanks for sharing.
@@mtgmonster8755 Thanks for the feedback! Ya I think synergies could've been better as you mentioned and the swaps you pointed out make sense for what the deck was trying to do. I also agree that I wouldn't necessarily see it winning a lot of the time. I only considered including two colors when building this mainly because that's what I've heard be recommended as a rule of thumb and I'm pretty new to limited. If I was going to consider more than two, I'd want to look over the pool again to consider everything in that context.
@nickmtg-v7l When you are newer to mtg sticking to two color builds is safest. I completely understand that reasoning for why you didn’t stretch for more power in this low level pool. It’s a very good reason to keep it simple! Also, traditionally aggro builds want to be as few colors as possible. Both are good reasons not to stretch here. My challenge for you is I want you to push your comfort level and practice making a more complex deck with more cross synergies and higher pay-offs. You’ll want to be purposeful in every card choice to make sure you’re supporting your win cons further than you can in just two colors. Don’t lose focus. Make sure if you go to three colors you’re making it count, and you’re actually adding significant power levels and not just making it more complicated for no reason. I like to ask myself how do I make my deck more difficult for my opponent to disrupt my win cons? How can I do what my deck wants to do anyways more or better? Further, can I prevent them from getting their win cons going as well? Can I do all of these things in the same deck? I think for someone newer to mtg your Boros build was quite good. You should be proud. Like I said only a few cards out of place so if you are that new that’s not bad at all! Great job. Keep it up.
oh this is really interesting! and i've got some free time rn! and congrats on going 5x0! I've only really dabbled in draft, and mostly play commander, so limited is pretty much out of my league. I'll try it anyways! It seems like the pool didn't come with any maaajor bombs. I'd guess blue is your strongest color with archmage, tolarian terror, 2 of the guy who makes faeries and spectral sailor, although i love the +1/+1 counters and cats, I'd try to build izzet. if the pool had any eaten alive i'd maybe try splashing black with the dismal backwater? but i'm not too confident that the black is good enough for a splash... the new Kykar or empyrian eagle would've been awesome here, i think! Sadly my izzet build only reaches uhh... 19 playables, and i think i would rather play the good white 2drops than the remaining red-blue cards, especially because the helpful hunters draw cards for the mischievous mystics... and I think evolving wilds and secluded courtyard naming cats when i draw them would help make it possible, hopefully 😅 here's what i got! 1 Archmage of Runes 1 Balmor, Battlemage Captain 1 Boltwave 1 Electroduplicate 1 Elementalist Adept 1 Essence Scatter 1 Fiery Annihilation 1 Fleeting Distraction 2 Goblin Surprise 1 Heartfire Immolator 1 Icewind Elemental 1 Spectral Sailor 1 Thrill of Possibility 1 Tolarian Terror 1 Uncharted Voyage 2 Mischievous Mystic 1 Mocking Sprite 2 Helpful Hunter 1 Skyknight Squire 1 Luminous Rebuke 1 Secluded Courtyard 1 Evolving Wilds 7 Island 6 Mountain 2 Plains edit: i don't think i'm in love with either erudite wizard or clinquant skymage, but maybe it would've been right to include them? i also think i glanced over the scrawling crawler which also fuels the card draw :P
@mymarshlands This is a really solid start. Let's work off this and push it even further to maximize your win cons and minimize your risks. I think with 4 white 2 drops that want to land early in the game it would be important to factor that into your mana ratios. You want white to be more than an afterthought here with the deck as is. Right now your white is one of your ONLY hard removal spells, and your interaction is on the light side which makes it even more important to have access to white. Without a top end bomb rare it's important you find ways to deal with problems that more powerful sealed pools will have. Your 1/1 fairies, cats and goblins won't be able to trade up with anything great on your op's board. Your creatures are too small for that, and you don’t have enough pumps to waist for early trades for common creatures your ops drop. Factor that into your build. How do I win when someone drops a 1/3, 2/3, or a 3/3 early in the game and I’m on the draw? Find more ways to maximize your 2 Mischievous Mystics if that's the win con you're going for. 100% bring in that Scrawling Crawler. But also push it further, am I FAST enough or wide enough to race? Is there a way I race better faster? Can I win a longer game? If not can I always win a faster game? Where are these lines taking me? Think about what you NEED each turn to win? How to maximize your win con support? This is a very good build, but as is I think it would lose to the decks that have a good curve out and a stronger top end than you do. It would suffer on the draw. Think hard about how you plan on winning against those predictable scenarios and edit this build. That's something I always ask myself in sealed, how do I win against x,y, and z? Am I weak to anything? Can I make myself have more answers to probable scenarios? Can I make those not a problem? Anyways, great start! Thanks for sharing. This was a good line to take with this pool, but a little more refinement and I think you can find a slightly more synergistic and robust build that can tackle more problem situations.
@mtgmonster8755 thank you!!! that's super insightful, I'll keep it in mind and try to update the deck like you mentioned. Something i've felt with foundations is that it seems really risky to go into multiple colors, especially when compared to duskmourn where the 13lands became untapped duals after the first few turns. Even with green, you're either using llanowar and archdruid to add more green mana, or grow from the ashes which feels really slow and only really at home in the simic build with koma/tatyova/ghalta?.. ruby adds red, but also locks you into green/red in the first place. Otherwise you're having to rely on goldvein pick and gleaming barrier for treasures. Maybe goldvein would've been an option? but i haven't played enough to know if it's worth it. Thinking about it, with fliers it does help ensure they connect to make the treasures.
@mymarshlands I really hope you found my comments helpful. The goal is to make you better at analyzing your own build here, not necessarily pushing you into what I did. I want you walking away with a deeper understanding of your own build process and what you like about it or want to get better at. It's about the journey here not the final deck. I think if you want to play 3 colors in this format you absolutely can in any combination. You are correct that there is no "green creature that is also fixing" just ramp! So that does limit your fixing options. Burnished Hart does fix and ramp. The Goldvein Pick also fixes and ramps. I think with a flying heavy deck it is reasonable to run at least one Pick for fixing in this format. That isn't crazy. Those treasure would help, and it does potentially add an extra point of damage as well! I think you are right to leave the rudite wizard and clinquant skymage out of the build. I think those were some excellent hard calls to make. I think you are correct that blue and red have too many filler cards that aren't worth it and you need to go elsewhere to get enough playables. I found myself thinking similar things as you somewhere in-between my mental break down over how bad this pool was and pure shock in the first 5 minutes of building time. I just kept saying to myself there just aren't enough of the playables I want here, as I frantically rearranged and tried every combination this pool had to offer. You are also correct this pool is well, kind of lacking any bomb to build around. This is why I think your biggest thing that maybe you didn't ask yourself enough through your first edit was, what do I do when my op starts dropping their bombs? In sealed you MUST assume they will do that. There are good removal choices in the three colors (jeskai) you have to work with at the moment, but perhaps your original thought of izzet is blinding you to your more important white removal options this path gives you? And maybe a better path for the build all together? Like I said I took all of the build time in store with this pool. My journey of building with this pool was full of twists and edits and re-edits. It is not an easy pool. There is no one answer here. You're doing great. I look forward to seeing your carefully thought out changes to see if we can end up somewhere you are happier with, or if you think your first attempt was more correct?
@mymarshlands build posted in video details I think you were one of the closest builders to what I had. In fact, I had a sideboard option where I took out black completely and went jeskai aggro with less removal. I only used that in one match up, but I thought your build was a great line.
This is just like something I did with my friends when Bloomburrow launched! OK but one unpleasant part I forgot: how the heck do you deckbuild online from a (sealed) pool? I remember I've settled on Archidekt because it was the only site I've found that allowed me to select multiple cards and move them to a different bucket (column) - albeit it's not smooth at all. I then exported it to moxfield to look at mana curve, decide lands and do cuts. I did remember mostly how to wield the site but this challenge definitely took me more like 70 minutes - hard to judge how much of it was technical difficulties, though. I'm considering just booting up Tabletop Simulator next time, even though I'm not sure how I'd export/share it after I'm done... (I suppose it's not a problem when doing this with friends) Here's my deck: 1 Abyssal Harvester 1 Bake into a Pie 1 Banishing Light 1 Dismal Backwater 1 Electroduplicate 1 Evolving Wilds 1 Fiery Annihilation 1 Gutless Plunderer 1 Heartfire Immolator 2 Helpful Hunter 1 Icewind Elemental 2 Island 1 Luminous Rebuke 2 Mischievous Mystic 3 Mountain 6 Plains 1 Raise the Past 1 Resolute Reinforcements 1 Scrawling Crawler 1 Secluded Courtyard 1 Serra Angel 1 Skyknight Squire 2 Stab 3 Swamp 1 Thrill of Possibility 1 Uncharted Voyage 1 Zombify
Deck creation process: I've sorted everything into categories (one of which was just "everything removal and otherwise auto-include"). The biggest categories were ~15 aggro/raid, ~15 blue-ish bomb/engine and ~13 good ETB/dies effects and cards to activate them. First aggro pile had the fewest non-commons and they were not really doing anything to guarantee closing a game so I deemed it too risky. Second pile was simic and, well... the removal/auto-include pile was severely lacking in blue/green. I still looked at what blue actually does there and threw away green. Didn't really make for a deck so I scratched that as well. Third pile was white-heavy and the cards seemed too valuable to pass up with a lot of options for removal and branching off, so that's where I've settled. In the end, I've centered it around firing-and-forgetting good effects, hopefully churning so much that I can get an advantage even while chump-blocking - white, black, red. Flyers for actually dealing damage (or blocking their fliers) - blue from previous pile really wanted to pitch in here. No idea if it works...
OMG, reading the other comments now and I completely overlooked Squad Rallier. I didn't fully understand how to play it and what category/strategy it falls under (literally the only card in the whole pool) and it ended up in the "trash" pile - whoops! Definitely something I should've included. Anyways, this was a lot of fun!
@buttonasas Okay! This is a lot of deck to process. You really went for it! This may take me a while to work through and I'm sure I will miss some talking points because there's a lot here. I want to make sure I hit on the main things I see as much as possible. First, I like that you are trying to support the synergies and actions of your best cards rather than just being blinded by what colors the cards are. This is a really hard thing to focus down on, and I can see where you were trying to go with this and why. Second, I think you got scared to lean into those synergies even more. You backed off a few of the best synergies you had, and backing off of those would hurt your build in the end. If you have a central idea of how you want to win lean into that more, not less. This way when you start reaching for that 3rd and 4th colors you are doing it with even more purpose, not just because it's a good card too. Lastly, if you want to run this build you need to bring in at least one more piece of fixing at minimum, preferably 2, and that secluded courtyard has to go! You can't have that land take up a colorless spot for most of the spells in your deck. You are running 10 spells so that's always going to be a colorless land for those... So, let's talk about how to sort out what you should be focusing on vs what is just a good filler card because that's hard to do! As your build currently stands it would be important to reassess why you are running each color to see if there is at least one that could be cut or if you are missing out on a great card that you overlooked in the three color pairs because you were too focused on jamming in those great cards. Are there synergy cards that are good in 3 colors that you missed that could replace your 4th color choices? I can easily spot several cards that want to get into this deck and you could easily rebuild it with only 3 colors while keeping the essentials of what your plan is. So I'd start there. Then once you have 3 that you're happy with you can re-look and see if running extra fixing is actually going to be worth it for you to stretch even further into that 4th color or if the 3 color stretch was enough. MOST of the time the 3 color stretch is enough. I think you need to identify how you want this deck to win. Focus on that and let that lead to your cuts and reassessments. Right now you're pulled across a lot of different win cons with your creatures. You should decide how you actually want to win? What is your strongest win con? What wins the fastest? Right now you are in this middle zone of making small creatures early game with no plan on how to push them through, you have some control midgame, and then hoping a 4/4 flyer is big enough end game. I think your deck would do better if you focused on your good go wide synergies/ draw make a 1/1 fairies here more, and supporting the go wide win cons as much as possible. I don't think your deck is as far off from great as it seems at first glance. It's actually got some good ideas going here, but as is I think it would be difficult to do everything you're trying to accomplish well and it would fall flatter than anticipated. Focus on bringing in some fixing. Focus on supporting your go wide strategy better and see where that puts you! I'm excited to see this edit! I'm looking forward to it.
@@mtgmonster8755 Honestly, my strategy was mostly just "remove all those Ashroot Animists (that my opponents got so many copies of) until they run out of cards" :'D But even then, not everything I put in actually does execute exactly that strategy, so... there's absolutely a lot I can change :) Commenting as I go: Stabs must go (they don't beat animist). Without stabs, only one black removal left and both best black cards need TWO black, so that's a rather obvious whole colour to cut since it stretches it so much. - everything black I had Goblin Surprise in the pile and I didn't add it because it felt like I was just adding two tokens that I wasn't going to use in any way. I completely forgot about the other parts: it being an instant and a pump :'D so that's definitely a way to really lean into actually attacking with all the guys I'm generating. + Goblin Surprise + Goblin Surprise + Prideful Parent Pivoting to wide strategy further and further: + Balmor + Claws out (though, I'm really not a fan of this card - it feels like an expensive inflexible Goblin Surprise... actually, I didn't even notice how many cats I had!) - Serra Angel - Icewind elemental + Fleeting Distraction I kept adding and removing Burnished Harts yesterday but I don't really have many outlets for that much mana - and they're slooooooooow. Same for Goldvein Picks. + Joust Through - Secluded Courtyard (I still love it but now I am spell-heavy) Looking through red creatures, they seem very mediocre at what they do and awful topdecks - Gorehorn Raider can be a one-and-a-half-for-one but it feels too expensive. + Squad Rallier + Armasaur Guide Looking at blue creatures: no changes with 2 Mischievous Mystics - I am not rushing to cast any of them (especially not the cheaper ones, they're trash) and neither Tolarian Terror nor Archmage of Runes seem to compliment my strategy (even with all the triggers). Now to cut: ... this is the part that I agonise over the most. I kind of want to cut to 16 lands but this deck really does want to play on-curve. Still, I am going to do it and just hope the card draw will help when I'm down lands. I really don't want to flood and I should be able to play white or red 2 and 3 mana cards just fine. - land - Luminous Rebuke (this and Joust Through are situational removal so one needs to go but this one is worse for my strategy, I think... also, Joust Through has a chance of beating Animist before it attacks... and yes, I'm still thinking about it XD I got burnt, ok?) Now balance basic lands - blue cards can wait so there's fewer - aaaaaaaaand moxfield bugged out and lied about the card count in deck LOL + land (back to 17 - I'm tired now, can't be bothered to think much more about this) 1 Armasaur Guide 1 Balmor, Battlemage Captain 1 Banishing Light 1 Claws Out 1 Electroduplicate 1 Evolving Wilds 1 Fiery Annihilation 1 Fleeting Distraction 2 Goblin Surprise 1 Heartfire Immolator 2 Helpful Hunter 3 Island 1 Joust Through 2 Mischievous Mystic 6 Mountain 7 Plains 1 Prideful Parent 1 Raise the Past 1 Resolute Reinforcements 1 Scrawling Crawler 1 Skyknight Squire 1 Squad Rallier 1 Thrill of Possibility 1 Uncharted Voyage
@malasdair Good to see you submitted a deck! Your deck is a cool build. I like your mana base. I think it is well thought out. I can tell you did a good job of making sure you had an extremely functional deck. great job! Your deck has some good synergies it is focused on building around and a great curve out, but it lacks 2 key things evasion and power level. This is a mid range deck in a sealed pool with no busted end game win cons. That's a pretty big problem. One of the most difficult things to recognize in sealed is when your build falls into the midrange, not fast enough to be good aggro, not powerful enough to be good grindy late game, and not enough control to deal with your opponent's busted pool. I like to call this the sealed midrange abyss. This is a major reason why I thought this pool was one of the most interesting ones I've opened in a long time and I thought it had a lot of study value in it. This pool has many synergies you can build around, but no good late end game. It is also lacking great control. So no matter what you choose, it is going to be extremely vulnerable to this mid-range doomed to lose to another deck's better bombs scenario. This isn't because you built a "bad" deck. Quite the opposite. You built a good functional deck, but in competitive sealed this would not be enough to win against the top table. You would win a few games on the night, but eventually fall to a late game opponent that opened better rares than you. When I have such a low power pool one of the questions I always ask myself is how do I lose, and how do I win? How can I minimize they types of decks I am vulnerable to losing to? Can I help myself win more games than I currently am by playing a different strategy? How can you build your sealed pool to prevent you from losing to the bomb heavy sealed pools? Yes, the Sylvan Scavenging is a nice engine, but it is on the slower side. It would force this build into a grindier match-up. Do you think that your build would win in a game that goes over 10 turns long? I think this deck is fundamentally sound. I honestly have no complaints about it's structure or composition. It has a good removal to creature ratio. The curve out is good. There is technically nothing wrong with the build, but I do not think it would go 5-0. To do that with this pool you would need to build a deck that can win faster than this one. I think it's interesting you said blue made you feel like you were falling into the spell slinging prowess trap? This is interesting. What made you uncomfortable with it in particular? What did you feel was the trap there? What were you specifically unsure of in that color that made you go away from it? Was it lacking something you felt it needed? What kind of support or win con was it not providing? I'd love to hear a bit more on that.
@@mtgmonster8755 "technically nothing wrong but ... not 5-0" is exactly the problem I have lmao. It's definitely kind of low to the ground but also grindy in a way that doesn't mesh, mid-range abyss nails it. The Gnarlid Colonys granting trample was the closest to a plan for evasion I had, but I don't think it has quite the depth of counter-spreading that it would need for that strategy to work consistently. In a game that goes long I can see a boardstall that gets broken by mana-sinking into the Snarespinners, and tbh i figured the Sylvan Scavenging would be pumping out a 3/3 each turn by default. This was the densest removal I could find among color combos too. Even as I hit the button to comment I thought "I should probably swap Armasaur Guide for Serra Angel and the Beast-Kin Ranger for the Frenzied Goblin" which would have brought up the evasion, and landfall was another angle I cut to make room, I didn't think the elf giant or the lizard were swingy enough for their costs. I think I instinctively avoid the UR builds in limited that focus on instants and sorceries (not just because of Bloomburrow lol). This pool had a pretty good amount of draw but I feel like spellslinging almost inevitably runs out of gas in a 40-card format. Thinking about speed I can imagine a deck that gets there off of Clinquant Skymage, Balmor, and Mischievous Mystic maybe? It felt too magical xmas land without the Archmage of Runes out (and getting him out and keeping him also felt that way!) and I was still only coming off with maybe a dozen non-permanents when I threw something together. Looking at the other decks in the replies I'm thinking the 5-0 deck is somewhere in the white-blue section!
@malasdair Yes, exactly! This is why I said it's a hard thing for a lot of players to recognize when their deck is in the mid-range abyss. It's maybe the most difficult deck building assessment to learn. Let's work on getting you out of the mid abyss in sealed for the future! You've got this. I will share what I think are without a doubt the strongest cards in this pool are: Spectral Sailor, Balmor Battlemage Captain, Heartfire Immolator, x2 Mischievous Mystic (if these, then x2 Helpful Hunters as well), Skyknight Squire, Abyssal Harvester, Scrawling Crawler, Joust Through, x2 Stab, Fiery Annihilation, Goblin Surprise, Bake into a Pie, Luminous Rebuke, Banishing Light, and Sylvan Scavenging So when I start building I like to see how many of my best cards I can realistically fit into the same deck. Then start seeing what synergies I have the most support for. Then what win con is the best one or two in the card group. Then support that further. Then final cuts. The reason why I wanted to talk about your immediate desire to shy away from blue is that there is only 1 green card on this list, but many blue cards. Spell slinging can be a difficult build to wrap your head around for sure, but in this pool some level of spell slinging is nearly unavoidable if you want to play many of the best cards. Balmor with double Goblin Surprise is reason enough to want to make Izzet at some compacity work. Same with Skyknight Squire and Rebuke plus Banish. Those 3 make white really hard to say no to. double stab, baked into a pie and Harvester make black extremely compelling. I think if you started to play around with cutting your green for either blue or black you might find that your build not only wins faster, but also has more consistency, more impactful cards overall, and the removal is better. Just better cards along your curve out as win cons in general. *This set loves aggro. Logged on yesterday for my first draft (video later today) but easy trophy with low to the ground Boros.
This might have taken longer than 50 minutes. Mainly due to struggling to use the online deck builder. I would have finished just fine with physical cards in front of me. I started Blue/Red, Tried Green/White/Black, and settled on Blue/White. 1x Archmage of Runes 1x Banishing Light 1x Claws Out 1x Clinquant Skymage 1x Erudite Wizard 1x Essence Scatter 1x Evolving Wilds 1x Fleeting Distraction 1x Grappling Kraken 2x Helpful Hunter 8x Island 1x Joust Through 1x Luminous Rebuke 2x Mischievous Mystic 1x Mocking Sprite 7x Plains 1x Prideful Parent 1x Raise the Past 1x Resolute Reinforcements 1x Rogue's Passage 1x Scrawling Crawler 1x Skyknight Squire 1x Spectral Sailor 1x Tolarian Terror 1x Uncharted Voyage
@anonymous-ki5wn Thanks for giving the extra effort to go through the build process even though it was more challenging with online deck building tools. It's okay that you exceeded the time limit. That is just there to remind you that at events you won't have days to build, and I didn't want people posting decks that they worked on for days. It's supposed to be a quick exercise. Being able to build quickly is an important skill, so it's good to practice it. It's 100% okay if you took a little extra time because the interface was difficult to work with. I understand. I like your build quite a lot. It has a decent curve out and some good interaction. I think you have included the strongest 6 card cross synergy in the pool which is Spectral Sailor, 2- Helpful Hunter, Scrawling Crawler, and 2- Mischievous Mystic. You also have The Skyknight Squire which is one of the best cards in the pool. You fit a lot of good things into your 2 color build. Those 7 cards are a great base start to any deck! Just like the Orzhov deck that got posted you missed the Squad Rallier. That card would be great here, and it's a must include for this build in my opinion. You can hit almost all your best creatures off of it so it's a great late game mana sink for added value. I want to point out that I think this build has a strong start but the mid and late game has a lot of filler. Clinquant Skymage, Mocking Sprite, and Erudite Wizard are not my favorite cards. They do have synergies here but that doesn't eliminate that they can be risky top decks in a close match. I'd consider running something else over those if you had the option. I also think Tolarian Terror is pretty weak in your deck. Don't misunderstand me, it's still okay to include, but you will most likely be casting it for 5 or even 6 mana here so it isn't at its best. Similarly the Raise the Past is not at its best. Although the 7 targets it can hit are great you probably will only expect to get 2 creatures back in most games. I want to discus with you in more detail your path to get here. It sounds like you struggled to find a build you were 100% happy with. Are you happy with where you ended up here? What was it about every build you did before this one that made it not good enough? Did you solve the problem you saw with the other builds you tried first with this one? With more time was there something else you would have explored? What would that be and why? There's no denying that you've come up with a fundamentally sound build. The ratios are in a good range, but I think it is a build that would worry me in sealed. This deck would not finish last at an event, but it also wouldn't take 1st. I challenge you to try and make this a deck that can win more games and potentially take 1st. I always ask myself how does this deck win the tournament? What could you do to this deck to make it less susceptible to losing? How can you make this deck better? What is it weakest to? Can you make it so that its weak spot is no longer there? How would you go about making this deck have less filler? Can you support your win con even further than you already have? I think you got to a safe build that works, and ran out of time. If you push this line of thought further you could end up somewhere even better than this. So I challenge you to go back and find a way to improve upon this good start.
@@mtgmonster8755 So Blue/Red seemed good for spellsling. After building it, the creatures seemed weak, and the card draw/removal was lacking. Green/White/Black: White and black had decent removal. I was heavier on Green/White, and the 2pip Abyssal Harvester and Bake Into a Pie just didn't seem right. I would have liked to explore White/Green/Red. I like the Sylvan Scavenging and the Treetop Snarespinners. Kicked Grow From the Ashes has also been working well for me. As far as the deck I've posted. It's hard for me to be 100% happy in limited. Many times, a deck I think will win the tournament gets absolutely squashed. And the ones I am merely okay with go much further than expected. Clinquant Skymage is nice in my eyes if I can keep it alive for a couple turns, but in my experience, its got a target on its back and removed quickly and cheaply. I don't think I have enough Instants and Sorceries to make Mocking Sprite, Tolarian Terror, and Archmage of Runes very effective. Splashing in Red would add some good instants in Fiery Anihillation, Thrill of Possibility, and Goblin Surprise, but I would struggle manawise with that build. Oh, and I definitely read Raise From the Past wrong. I was thinking it returns Power 2 or less, not Mana Value, so I now see why that is not viable. I will explore the White/Green/Red and Blue/White/Red builds. If I come up with anything playable, I'll post them. But for all intents and purposes I will settle with this Blue/White deck and my 'final' deck, as i have exceeded build time lol. Thanks for taking the time to respond! It's good insight and a good learning experience.
Here what I came up with for Green/White/Red. I know that Gnarlid Colony is almost unplayable. But I'm hoping to be able to get plenty of +1/+1 counters on the board to give my bigger creatures Trample. I feel a little better about this deck than the previous one posted. My fear is having to mulligan and relying on +1/+1 counters to make any decent sized creatures. 1x Banishing Light 1x Blossoming Sands 1x Evolving Wilds 1x Felidar Savior 1x Fiery Annihilation 6x Forest 1x Giant Growth 2x Gnarlid Colony 1x Goblin Boarders 2x Goblin Surprise 1x Grow from the Ashes 1x Heartfire Immolator 2x Helpful Hunter 1x Luminous Rebuke 4x Mountain 4x Plains 1x Prideful Parent 1x Resolute Reinforcements 1x Rogue's Passage 1x Ruby, Daring Tracker 1x Scrawling Crawler 1x Skyknight Squire 1x Sylvan Scavenging 2x Treetop Snarespinner 1x Wildwood Scourge
@anonymous-ki5wn I think this is an interesting build, but its lack of evasion is where I think this would be less good than your UW build. I also agree with your mana worries and I would opt to not run rouge's passage here and instead go for the even split giving you access to one more colored mana. I want to back up to you thinking UR looked like a good splash, but after building it the creatures seemed weak, and the card draw/removal was lacking. I think your UW build screams for that red splash. Balmor, Battlemage Captain and double Goblin Surprise alone can replace some of the more filler blue cards and bring in more pumps to get rid of the small creatures worry. It's not uncommon for someone to come up to me and say exactly what you just said to me, "Many times, a deck I think will win the tournament gets absolutely squashed. And the ones I am merely okay with go much further than expected." I think a lot of this has to do with people building what they think is a good curve out deck with a few good cards, synergies, and saying great. It'll win the first few matches, but eventually it will get to the sealed pools that are amazing, and have the best win cons and the late game that is unbeatable. Once your deck gets there it loses, and you're left wondering who can beat that deck I just faced? It's impossible! That person's pool was just too good. I thought I had a great pool but theirs was better... Sound familiar? This normally happens when you do have a good deck but it is not broken good in the late game. Your deck isn't aggro and it isn't uber control so it allows both you and your op to get to each other's most broken cards you opened in sealed. This can lead to you sometimes having the best cards, but sometimes your opponent does and the later you go in the tournament the more likely they have something better than you. Further, ones you didn't think would do well outperform. Why? Most of the time this is because those decks that are less bomb heavy, and you focused on winning faster. Therefor you skip the whole end game show and tell of each other's best cards. If you don't go to the late game against those cracked decks then they are matching their curve to yours and sometimes you can squeeze in a better curve than them and win more games. In this pool it's important to recognize its greatest flaw is that it has no late game that can win out every time. It also lacks extreme control to make any late game win con viable. So what are you left with? YOU MUST WIN FAST. It's the only method have left to realistically take on the best pools. So when I built I just asked myself how can I win in the fewest amount of turns and then I went from there. It's a good question to ask yourself in the future in sealed... I always try and identify what my pool is doing better than any other pool in the format. This pool has some amazing wide flyers. How do you maximize that and win fast? Is it possible? Is it possible to win even faster? These are the questions I asked myself with this pool. Great discussions. Thanks for participating. I hope you found this 1 on 1 feedback helpful.
@@anonymous-ki5wn Oh, wow! I had no idea the Gnarlid Colony _entering_ with counters works with the Hydra. IDK why you think Gnarlid Colony unplayable - I think it's a great flexible card that works reasonably at both 2 and 5 mana. In fact, it's one of the few cards that have/grant Trample - I think it's a must-pick here! Your deck showed me that the synergy with green in this pool is a lot better than I thought.
Thanks for the fun challenge! This is what I came up with in 50min. I built blue red first because of balmor and good top of curve blue creatures. Looking at that deck I felt it lacked quality removal, and many of the creatures were questionably stated. So then I jumped to white black for the great removal, decent curve, and graveyard recursion. I felt much more confident about this build. Open to any feedback!
1 Abyssal Harvester
1 Armasaur Guide
1 Bake into a Pie
1 Banishing Light
1 Claws Out
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Felidar Savior
1 Gutless Plunderer
2 Helpful Hunter
1 Hungry Ghoul
1 Infernal Vessel
1 Infestation Sage
1 Joust Through
1 Luminous Rebuke
8 Plains
1 Prideful Parent
1 Raise the Past
1 Resolute Reinforcements
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Serra Angel
1 Skyknight Squire
2 Stab
7 Swamp
1 Vanguard Seraph
1 Zombify
@Mr_Dylll
Fantastic build! I am curious did you use your entire build time, or did you stop with time to spare? I went through this identical progression at the start of my build with laying out izzet first and then jump to orzhov. Thank you for sharing that you started izzet and pivoted here. That was useful information. I think your reasons for going leaving izzet to jump into orzhov are sound. I think the interaction that these two colors have in this pool are hard to walk away from. It also allows you access to the Abyssal Harvester which is one of the best cards, if not the best, in the entire pool. I like your thought process a lot here. I have a few things that I think you should consider with this build. First, Raise the Past is a really medium here. You don't have enough 1 and 2 drops to justify this card, and I think it'll be more awkward than good. Don't get me wrong, I like the card because of the Skyknight Squire but not being able to consistently hit 3 or more targets makes it a little medium. I love that you included Rouge's Passage. Well done on that! I think you overlooked one of your absolute best cards in this build, the Squad Rallier. I think this card is a must include as it has so many targets for you to hit and gives you access to repeatable value. I'd swap out the Vanguard Seraph for the Squad Rallier.
I will let you know that although our progression was the same up to this point, I did not end here. I kept going with multiple iterations after orzhov. There were several reasons I didn't stay here. You seem really skilled so I'll ask you, why would you think this build would worry me? Why would I chose to leave this build? It has a more than reasonable curve out, reasonable interaction, plus a good card or two. What do you think it is missing? What is its weak spot? Did that worry you too? I challenge you to find this deck's weakest spot and make it so it isn't a problem. This is really advanced stuff. I think this deck you've built is one of the best options this pool has to offer. It might be one of the best 2 color options for sure, but it does have a problem with it. It would not be crazy to say I see that problem and I'm just going to hope it is never an issue. You could run this deck and take that risk. Although, I want to make sure you know what that weak point is. It's important that you saw it too, but it is okay if you decided it was acceptable (as long as you know it's there). Thanks for sharing your build!
@@mtgmonster8755 Thank you so much!! I used about 30 min to build and decide to pivot from izzet, then 10 min to build orzhov, and then spent the last 10 min overthinking my cuts and trying to decide if I wanted to splash anything. I did this pretty late last night and my brain was reading Raise the Past as return all creatures POWER 2 or less. Knowing how the card works now makes me see its pretty bad here. And I like the Squad Rallier swap!
To answer your question I would say the lack of big threats is something to worry about here. At my prerelease there was a decent amount of removal going around, so if my okay top end creatures or Harvester are removed I wouldn't have much goin on. Also I see that my creatures are still fairly weak in stats so big toughness creatures early on, or a curve out with better stats would get uncomfortable quick. With that in mind I'm looking at blue again for big impactful bombs. From watching your channel I'm guessing you ended up in more than 2 colors, and I was tempted to splash for the Harvester and Bake into a Pie, but I felt more comfortable with this azorius build:
1 Archmage of Runes
1 Banishing Light
1 Claws Out
1 Elementalist
1 Erudite Wizard
1 Essence Scatter
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Felidar Savior
1 Fleeting Distraction
1 Grappling Kraken
2 Helpful Hunter
7 Island
1 Joust Through
1 Luminous Rebuke
2 Mischievous Mystic
8 Plains
1 Prideful Parent
1 Resolute Reinforcements
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Scrawling Crawler
1 Serra Angel
1 Skyknight Squire
1 Squad Rallier
1 Tolarian Terror
1 Uncharted Voyage
Better bombs and synergy here I think. Excited for your feedback! I'm finding this very helpful.
Edit: For some reason I thought Erudite had flying, I would swap that out for something else. Splashing black is looking more enticing.
@Mr_Dylll
So I think your Orzhov build was comparable to this build. (specrtal sailor should be in your build list here) To me both builds suffer from the same problem though, which I think you're starting to get at which is this pool is lacking end game bombs and finishers (the end game is non-existent/ weak). This new Azorius build gives you a bit more evasion for chip in and a wider board potentially, but neither of the two decks deal with the larger problem of the pool in general. Which is if a game goes long, winning could become completely out of reach for you pretty quickly. What can you do to protect yourself from that problem when you just don't have an end game plan in any color? Most of the time control can take care of that, which is why I said the Orzhov build was maybe the best 2 color build of the pool. You could theoretically play it perfectly knowing you have to save your removal for things you can't trade off with. But that has risks. This pool is lacking great control (board wipes, lots of exile, removal with value, etc) in all color pairs. Orzhov maybe edges out Azorius... Neither are where they would need to be in sealed to make that a fool proof plan. So the only thing left you could do to protect yourself from the bomb heavy pools with good curve outs is try and win faster. It took me 30 minutes of build time with this pool to realize that is the real hurdle this pool needs you to overcome. What deck can you make that wins the fastest here? It's really tough to recognize when a fast win is necessary to prioritize above all else. I think one of the most common traps in sealed is running a mid range pool that has a good curve out, decent synergies, but not enough bombs at the end to actually win against that broken pool you face at the end of the night. The dreaded perpetual 3-1, 2-2 build. Good enough to win more often than not but when you face the pool with 7 rares it just feels unbeatable, and you're left wondering how does anyone beat that!? We've all been there including me. lol and you're right I did run more than 2 colors. That's the other more advanced thing in sealed is being able to recognize when you actually do NEED to go to 3 to get what you need. The weaker the pool and the more even split the cards are across the colors like seen here, the more likely it is that stretching into 3 colors is necessary. Food for thought! Glad you've found this helpful.
@ That all makes sense, I thought maybe the blue had big enough threats so this is feedback very helpful. I’m looking forward to seeing your build!
@Mr_Dylll
Build is posted in video details
I want you to know I really liked your BW build. It wasn't a line I considered but after looking at your list it looked solid. I ended up stretching for the black removal anyways but your build was an option with no stretching required. Thanks for sharing.
White/Red had quite a bit of removal and also some synergy with ETB effects like token creation and cards that trigger ETBs (Raise The Past and Electroduplicate)
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Secluded Courtyard
8 Mountain
7 Plains
1 Boltwave
1 Fanatical Firebrand
1 Frenzied Goblin
1 Joust Through
1 Gleaming Barrier
1 Goldvein Pick
1 Heartfire Immolator
2 Helpful Hunter
1 Resolute Reinforcements
1 Skyknight Squire
1 Banishing Light
1 Electroduplicate
1 Fiery Annihilation
1 Goblin Surprise
1 Prideful Parent
1 Felidar Savior
1 Involuntary Employment
1 Raise the Past
1 Spitfire Lagac
1 Claws Out
1 Luminous Rebuke
1 Serra Angel
@nickmtg-v7l
Thanks for posting. Nice build! I like several things about your build. First being that it has a really clear win con, and it's extremely aggressive. That being said, there are more than a few choices that don't fit your win con and this could slow you down just enough to not cross that finish line before your opponent stabilizes. The Gleaming Barrier in particular stands out as a card that this deck should not be running. The last thing your aggro deck wants is a 2 drop that can't swing in. With Axgard Cavalry still in the board and in your 2 colors for me that is an easy swap out. I also wonder why not both Goblin Surprises? Only one copy seems to go away from your win con. It's 2 bodies when you have none and later game if you have a wide board it's a potential win con. I like your attempt to try and include the Raise the Past. It's a very specific card but can be powerful in some match-ups. Which leads me to my final question, do you feel like you could have stretched further for more synergies and bigger pay offs here? This list is quite vulnerable to lifelink match-ups and the mirror where your op opened more good rares than you like a Chandra or a big dragon. It even might struggle against an elf deck that goes wide and then ramps to a big creature early. There's lots of decks in this format that can make this build have no good attacks. There aren't too many ways you included for you to get around that, especially if you were on the draw.
Leaving both Mischievous Mystics in the side board, Spectral Sailor, and Balmor, Battlemage Captain seem like big loses here. Especially with Raise the Past hitting all 4 of those targets, and all 4 giving substantially more synergistic payouts than just Boros gets you. Not to mention more card draw, more creatures, and better buffs including trample. I am worried that because you only have 2-3 problematic cards in this Boros build that any interaction and you could find yourself short of win cons. The lack of evasion and lack of card draw makes this build a little vulnerable to stalling out. So much so that I would run 16 lands and not 17 here. I'd also consider a Thrill of Possibility too to mitigate that problem. But I think my biggest overall feeling I'm left with from your build is that it's a safe build. Maybe too safe? idk that's debatable, but for me the worry is it isn't enough to compete with the best pools at the event. Maybe you'll get lucky and out aggro 1-2 opponents, but 3-5 opponents in a row? In best of 3? Where they can sideboard in to deal with your plan better... It's a risky deck to run, not because it's bad but because the power level ceiling is quite low. When your sealed pool is so weak it is sometimes necessary to stretch to get some more power in there somehow, or some higher payouts for synergies, or more interaction. This sealed pool has quite a few options for fixing. Is there a reason you like playing it safer here? Would you be willing to sideboard in game 2 to stretch for more power? What would that look like for you? Great build thanks for sharing.
@@mtgmonster8755 Thanks for the feedback! Ya I think synergies could've been better as you mentioned and the swaps you pointed out make sense for what the deck was trying to do. I also agree that I wouldn't necessarily see it winning a lot of the time. I only considered including two colors when building this mainly because that's what I've heard be recommended as a rule of thumb and I'm pretty new to limited. If I was going to consider more than two, I'd want to look over the pool again to consider everything in that context.
@nickmtg-v7l
When you are newer to mtg sticking to two color builds is safest. I completely understand that reasoning for why you didn’t stretch for more power in this low level pool. It’s a very good reason to keep it simple! Also, traditionally aggro builds want to be as few colors as possible. Both are good reasons not to stretch here. My challenge for you is I want you to push your comfort level and practice making a more complex deck with more cross synergies and higher pay-offs. You’ll want to be purposeful in every card choice to make sure you’re supporting your win cons further than you can in just two colors. Don’t lose focus. Make sure if you go to three colors you’re making it count, and you’re actually adding significant power levels and not just making it more complicated for no reason. I like to ask myself how do I make my deck more difficult for my opponent to disrupt my win cons? How can I do what my deck wants to do anyways more or better? Further, can I prevent them from getting their win cons going as well? Can I do all of these things in the same deck? I think for someone newer to mtg your Boros build was quite good. You should be proud. Like I said only a few cards out of place so if you are that new that’s not bad at all! Great job. Keep it up.
@nickmtg-v7l
build posted in video details
oh this is really interesting! and i've got some free time rn! and congrats on going 5x0!
I've only really dabbled in draft, and mostly play commander, so limited is pretty much out of my league. I'll try it anyways!
It seems like the pool didn't come with any maaajor bombs. I'd guess blue is your strongest color with archmage, tolarian terror, 2 of the guy who makes faeries and spectral sailor, although i love the +1/+1 counters and cats, I'd try to build izzet. if the pool had any eaten alive i'd maybe try splashing black with the dismal backwater? but i'm not too confident that the black is good enough for a splash... the new Kykar or empyrian eagle would've been awesome here, i think!
Sadly my izzet build only reaches uhh... 19 playables, and i think i would rather play the good white 2drops than the remaining red-blue cards, especially because the helpful hunters draw cards for the mischievous mystics... and I think evolving wilds and secluded courtyard naming cats when i draw them would help make it possible, hopefully 😅 here's what i got!
1 Archmage of Runes
1 Balmor, Battlemage Captain
1 Boltwave
1 Electroduplicate
1 Elementalist Adept
1 Essence Scatter
1 Fiery Annihilation
1 Fleeting Distraction
2 Goblin Surprise
1 Heartfire Immolator
1 Icewind Elemental
1 Spectral Sailor
1 Thrill of Possibility
1 Tolarian Terror
1 Uncharted Voyage
2 Mischievous Mystic
1 Mocking Sprite
2 Helpful Hunter
1 Skyknight Squire
1 Luminous Rebuke
1 Secluded Courtyard
1 Evolving Wilds
7 Island
6 Mountain
2 Plains
edit: i don't think i'm in love with either erudite wizard or clinquant skymage, but maybe it would've been right to include them? i also think i glanced over the scrawling crawler which also fuels the card draw :P
@mymarshlands
This is a really solid start. Let's work off this and push it even further to maximize your win cons and minimize your risks. I think with 4 white 2 drops that want to land early in the game it would be important to factor that into your mana ratios. You want white to be more than an afterthought here with the deck as is. Right now your white is one of your ONLY hard removal spells, and your interaction is on the light side which makes it even more important to have access to white. Without a top end bomb rare it's important you find ways to deal with problems that more powerful sealed pools will have. Your 1/1 fairies, cats and goblins won't be able to trade up with anything great on your op's board. Your creatures are too small for that, and you don’t have enough pumps to waist for early trades for common creatures your ops drop. Factor that into your build. How do I win when someone drops a 1/3, 2/3, or a 3/3 early in the game and I’m on the draw? Find more ways to maximize your 2 Mischievous Mystics if that's the win con you're going for. 100% bring in that Scrawling Crawler. But also push it further, am I FAST enough or wide enough to race? Is there a way I race better faster? Can I win a longer game? If not can I always win a faster game? Where are these lines taking me? Think about what you NEED each turn to win? How to maximize your win con support? This is a very good build, but as is I think it would lose to the decks that have a good curve out and a stronger top end than you do. It would suffer on the draw. Think hard about how you plan on winning against those predictable scenarios and edit this build. That's something I always ask myself in sealed, how do I win against x,y, and z? Am I weak to anything? Can I make myself have more answers to probable scenarios? Can I make those not a problem? Anyways, great start! Thanks for sharing. This was a good line to take with this pool, but a little more refinement and I think you can find a slightly more synergistic and robust build that can tackle more problem situations.
@mtgmonster8755 thank you!!! that's super insightful, I'll keep it in mind and try to update the deck like you mentioned. Something i've felt with foundations is that it seems really risky to go into multiple colors, especially when compared to duskmourn where the 13lands became untapped duals after the first few turns. Even with green, you're either using llanowar and archdruid to add more green mana, or grow from the ashes which feels really slow and only really at home in the simic build with koma/tatyova/ghalta?.. ruby adds red, but also locks you into green/red in the first place. Otherwise you're having to rely on goldvein pick and gleaming barrier for treasures. Maybe goldvein would've been an option? but i haven't played enough to know if it's worth it. Thinking about it, with fliers it does help ensure they connect to make the treasures.
@mymarshlands
I really hope you found my comments helpful. The goal is to make you better at analyzing your own build here, not necessarily pushing you into what I did. I want you walking away with a deeper understanding of your own build process and what you like about it or want to get better at. It's about the journey here not the final deck. I think if you want to play 3 colors in this format you absolutely can in any combination. You are correct that there is no "green creature that is also fixing" just ramp! So that does limit your fixing options. Burnished Hart does fix and ramp. The Goldvein Pick also fixes and ramps. I think with a flying heavy deck it is reasonable to run at least one Pick for fixing in this format. That isn't crazy. Those treasure would help, and it does potentially add an extra point of damage as well!
I think you are right to leave the rudite wizard and clinquant skymage out of the build. I think those were some excellent hard calls to make. I think you are correct that blue and red have too many filler cards that aren't worth it and you need to go elsewhere to get enough playables. I found myself thinking similar things as you somewhere in-between my mental break down over how bad this pool was and pure shock in the first 5 minutes of building time. I just kept saying to myself there just aren't enough of the playables I want here, as I frantically rearranged and tried every combination this pool had to offer.
You are also correct this pool is well, kind of lacking any bomb to build around. This is why I think your biggest thing that maybe you didn't ask yourself enough through your first edit was, what do I do when my op starts dropping their bombs? In sealed you MUST assume they will do that. There are good removal choices in the three colors (jeskai) you have to work with at the moment, but perhaps your original thought of izzet is blinding you to your more important white removal options this path gives you? And maybe a better path for the build all together? Like I said I took all of the build time in store with this pool. My journey of building with this pool was full of twists and edits and re-edits. It is not an easy pool. There is no one answer here. You're doing great. I look forward to seeing your carefully thought out changes to see if we can end up somewhere you are happier with, or if you think your first attempt was more correct?
@mymarshlands
build posted in video details
I think you were one of the closest builders to what I had. In fact, I had a sideboard option where I took out black completely and went jeskai aggro with less removal. I only used that in one match up, but I thought your build was a great line.
This is just like something I did with my friends when Bloomburrow launched!
OK but one unpleasant part I forgot: how the heck do you deckbuild online from a (sealed) pool? I remember I've settled on Archidekt because it was the only site I've found that allowed me to select multiple cards and move them to a different bucket (column) - albeit it's not smooth at all. I then exported it to moxfield to look at mana curve, decide lands and do cuts.
I did remember mostly how to wield the site but this challenge definitely took me more like 70 minutes - hard to judge how much of it was technical difficulties, though. I'm considering just booting up Tabletop Simulator next time, even though I'm not sure how I'd export/share it after I'm done... (I suppose it's not a problem when doing this with friends)
Here's my deck:
1 Abyssal Harvester
1 Bake into a Pie
1 Banishing Light
1 Dismal Backwater
1 Electroduplicate
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Fiery Annihilation
1 Gutless Plunderer
1 Heartfire Immolator
2 Helpful Hunter
1 Icewind Elemental
2 Island
1 Luminous Rebuke
2 Mischievous Mystic
3 Mountain
6 Plains
1 Raise the Past
1 Resolute Reinforcements
1 Scrawling Crawler
1 Secluded Courtyard
1 Serra Angel
1 Skyknight Squire
2 Stab
3 Swamp
1 Thrill of Possibility
1 Uncharted Voyage
1 Zombify
Deck creation process:
I've sorted everything into categories (one of which was just "everything removal and otherwise auto-include").
The biggest categories were ~15 aggro/raid, ~15 blue-ish bomb/engine and ~13 good ETB/dies effects and cards to activate them.
First aggro pile had the fewest non-commons and they were not really doing anything to guarantee closing a game so I deemed it too risky.
Second pile was simic and, well... the removal/auto-include pile was severely lacking in blue/green. I still looked at what blue actually does there and threw away green. Didn't really make for a deck so I scratched that as well.
Third pile was white-heavy and the cards seemed too valuable to pass up with a lot of options for removal and branching off, so that's where I've settled.
In the end, I've centered it around firing-and-forgetting good effects, hopefully churning so much that I can get an advantage even while chump-blocking - white, black, red. Flyers for actually dealing damage (or blocking their fliers) - blue from previous pile really wanted to pitch in here. No idea if it works...
OMG, reading the other comments now and I completely overlooked Squad Rallier. I didn't fully understand how to play it and what category/strategy it falls under (literally the only card in the whole pool) and it ended up in the "trash" pile - whoops! Definitely something I should've included.
Anyways, this was a lot of fun!
@buttonasas
Okay! This is a lot of deck to process. You really went for it! This may take me a while to work through and I'm sure I will miss some talking points because there's a lot here. I want to make sure I hit on the main things I see as much as possible. First, I like that you are trying to support the synergies and actions of your best cards rather than just being blinded by what colors the cards are. This is a really hard thing to focus down on, and I can see where you were trying to go with this and why. Second, I think you got scared to lean into those synergies even more. You backed off a few of the best synergies you had, and backing off of those would hurt your build in the end. If you have a central idea of how you want to win lean into that more, not less. This way when you start reaching for that 3rd and 4th colors you are doing it with even more purpose, not just because it's a good card too. Lastly, if you want to run this build you need to bring in at least one more piece of fixing at minimum, preferably 2, and that secluded courtyard has to go! You can't have that land take up a colorless spot for most of the spells in your deck. You are running 10 spells so that's always going to be a colorless land for those...
So, let's talk about how to sort out what you should be focusing on vs what is just a good filler card because that's hard to do! As your build currently stands it would be important to reassess why you are running each color to see if there is at least one that could be cut or if you are missing out on a great card that you overlooked in the three color pairs because you were too focused on jamming in those great cards. Are there synergy cards that are good in 3 colors that you missed that could replace your 4th color choices? I can easily spot several cards that want to get into this deck and you could easily rebuild it with only 3 colors while keeping the essentials of what your plan is. So I'd start there. Then once you have 3 that you're happy with you can re-look and see if running extra fixing is actually going to be worth it for you to stretch even further into that 4th color or if the 3 color stretch was enough. MOST of the time the 3 color stretch is enough.
I think you need to identify how you want this deck to win. Focus on that and let that lead to your cuts and reassessments. Right now you're pulled across a lot of different win cons with your creatures. You should decide how you actually want to win? What is your strongest win con? What wins the fastest? Right now you are in this middle zone of making small creatures early game with no plan on how to push them through, you have some control midgame, and then hoping a 4/4 flyer is big enough end game. I think your deck would do better if you focused on your good go wide synergies/ draw make a 1/1 fairies here more, and supporting the go wide win cons as much as possible. I don't think your deck is as far off from great as it seems at first glance. It's actually got some good ideas going here, but as is I think it would be difficult to do everything you're trying to accomplish well and it would fall flatter than anticipated. Focus on bringing in some fixing. Focus on supporting your go wide strategy better and see where that puts you! I'm excited to see this edit! I'm looking forward to it.
@@mtgmonster8755 Honestly, my strategy was mostly just "remove all those Ashroot Animists (that my opponents got so many copies of) until they run out of cards" :'D
But even then, not everything I put in actually does execute exactly that strategy, so... there's absolutely a lot I can change :)
Commenting as I go: Stabs must go (they don't beat animist). Without stabs, only one black removal left and both best black cards need TWO black, so that's a rather obvious whole colour to cut since it stretches it so much.
- everything black
I had Goblin Surprise in the pile and I didn't add it because it felt like I was just adding two tokens that I wasn't going to use in any way. I completely forgot about the other parts: it being an instant and a pump :'D so that's definitely a way to really lean into actually attacking with all the guys I'm generating.
+ Goblin Surprise
+ Goblin Surprise
+ Prideful Parent
Pivoting to wide strategy further and further:
+ Balmor
+ Claws out (though, I'm really not a fan of this card - it feels like an expensive inflexible Goblin Surprise... actually, I didn't even notice how many cats I had!)
- Serra Angel
- Icewind elemental
+ Fleeting Distraction
I kept adding and removing Burnished Harts yesterday but I don't really have many outlets for that much mana - and they're slooooooooow. Same for Goldvein Picks.
+ Joust Through
- Secluded Courtyard (I still love it but now I am spell-heavy)
Looking through red creatures, they seem very mediocre at what they do and awful topdecks - Gorehorn Raider can be a one-and-a-half-for-one but it feels too expensive.
+ Squad Rallier
+ Armasaur Guide
Looking at blue creatures: no changes with 2 Mischievous Mystics - I am not rushing to cast any of them (especially not the cheaper ones, they're trash) and neither Tolarian Terror nor Archmage of Runes seem to compliment my strategy (even with all the triggers).
Now to cut:
... this is the part that I agonise over the most. I kind of want to cut to 16 lands but this deck really does want to play on-curve. Still, I am going to do it and just hope the card draw will help when I'm down lands. I really don't want to flood and I should be able to play white or red 2 and 3 mana cards just fine.
- land
- Luminous Rebuke (this and Joust Through are situational removal so one needs to go but this one is worse for my strategy, I think... also, Joust Through has a chance of beating Animist before it attacks... and yes, I'm still thinking about it XD I got burnt, ok?)
Now balance basic lands - blue cards can wait so there's fewer - aaaaaaaaand moxfield bugged out and lied about the card count in deck LOL
+ land (back to 17 - I'm tired now, can't be bothered to think much more about this)
1 Armasaur Guide
1 Balmor, Battlemage Captain
1 Banishing Light
1 Claws Out
1 Electroduplicate
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Fiery Annihilation
1 Fleeting Distraction
2 Goblin Surprise
1 Heartfire Immolator
2 Helpful Hunter
3 Island
1 Joust Through
2 Mischievous Mystic
6 Mountain
7 Plains
1 Prideful Parent
1 Raise the Past
1 Resolute Reinforcements
1 Scrawling Crawler
1 Skyknight Squire
1 Squad Rallier
1 Thrill of Possibility
1 Uncharted Voyage
...is Fishing Pole any good?
started out trying to make blue work but felt like i was falling into the spellsling/prowess trap. switched to naya counters which doesn't have any payoff but hey, counters are their own payoff, right?
1 Armasaur Guide
1 Banishing Light
1 Beast-Kin Ranger
1 Broken Wings
1 Electroduplicate
1 Fanatical Firebrand
1 Fiery Annihilation
1 Giant Growth
2 Gnarlid Colony
1 Goblin Boarders
1 Gorehorn Raider
1 Heartfire Immolator
1 Joust Through
1 Luminous Rebuke
1 Ruby, Daring Tracker
1 Scrawling Crawler
1 Skyknight Squire
1 Squad Rallier
1 Sylvan Scavenging
1 Thrill of Possibility
2 Treetop Snarespinner
1 Wildwood Scourge
1 Blossoming Sands
1 Evolving Wilds
4 Plains
5 Mountain
5 Forest
@malasdair
Good to see you submitted a deck! Your deck is a cool build. I like your mana base. I think it is well thought out. I can tell you did a good job of making sure you had an extremely functional deck. great job! Your deck has some good synergies it is focused on building around and a great curve out, but it lacks 2 key things evasion and power level. This is a mid range deck in a sealed pool with no busted end game win cons. That's a pretty big problem. One of the most difficult things to recognize in sealed is when your build falls into the midrange, not fast enough to be good aggro, not powerful enough to be good grindy late game, and not enough control to deal with your opponent's busted pool. I like to call this the sealed midrange abyss. This is a major reason why I thought this pool was one of the most interesting ones I've opened in a long time and I thought it had a lot of study value in it. This pool has many synergies you can build around, but no good late end game. It is also lacking great control. So no matter what you choose, it is going to be extremely vulnerable to this mid-range doomed to lose to another deck's better bombs scenario. This isn't because you built a "bad" deck. Quite the opposite. You built a good functional deck, but in competitive sealed this would not be enough to win against the top table. You would win a few games on the night, but eventually fall to a late game opponent that opened better rares than you. When I have such a low power pool one of the questions I always ask myself is how do I lose, and how do I win? How can I minimize they types of decks I am vulnerable to losing to? Can I help myself win more games than I currently am by playing a different strategy? How can you build your sealed pool to prevent you from losing to the bomb heavy sealed pools? Yes, the Sylvan Scavenging is a nice engine, but it is on the slower side. It would force this build into a grindier match-up. Do you think that your build would win in a game that goes over 10 turns long? I think this deck is fundamentally sound. I honestly have no complaints about it's structure or composition. It has a good removal to creature ratio. The curve out is good. There is technically nothing wrong with the build, but I do not think it would go 5-0. To do that with this pool you would need to build a deck that can win faster than this one.
I think it's interesting you said blue made you feel like you were falling into the spell slinging prowess trap? This is interesting. What made you uncomfortable with it in particular? What did you feel was the trap there? What were you specifically unsure of in that color that made you go away from it? Was it lacking something you felt it needed? What kind of support or win con was it not providing? I'd love to hear a bit more on that.
@@mtgmonster8755 "technically nothing wrong but ... not 5-0" is exactly the problem I have lmao. It's definitely kind of low to the ground but also grindy in a way that doesn't mesh, mid-range abyss nails it. The Gnarlid Colonys granting trample was the closest to a plan for evasion I had, but I don't think it has quite the depth of counter-spreading that it would need for that strategy to work consistently. In a game that goes long I can see a boardstall that gets broken by mana-sinking into the Snarespinners, and tbh i figured the Sylvan Scavenging would be pumping out a 3/3 each turn by default. This was the densest removal I could find among color combos too. Even as I hit the button to comment I thought "I should probably swap Armasaur Guide for Serra Angel and the Beast-Kin Ranger for the Frenzied Goblin" which would have brought up the evasion, and landfall was another angle I cut to make room, I didn't think the elf giant or the lizard were swingy enough for their costs.
I think I instinctively avoid the UR builds in limited that focus on instants and sorceries (not just because of Bloomburrow lol). This pool had a pretty good amount of draw but I feel like spellslinging almost inevitably runs out of gas in a 40-card format. Thinking about speed I can imagine a deck that gets there off of Clinquant Skymage, Balmor, and Mischievous Mystic maybe? It felt too magical xmas land without the Archmage of Runes out (and getting him out and keeping him also felt that way!) and I was still only coming off with maybe a dozen non-permanents when I threw something together. Looking at the other decks in the replies I'm thinking the 5-0 deck is somewhere in the white-blue section!
@malasdair
Yes, exactly! This is why I said it's a hard thing for a lot of players to recognize when their deck is in the mid-range abyss. It's maybe the most difficult deck building assessment to learn. Let's work on getting you out of the mid abyss in sealed for the future! You've got this.
I will share what I think are without a doubt the strongest cards in this pool are:
Spectral Sailor, Balmor Battlemage Captain, Heartfire Immolator, x2 Mischievous Mystic (if these, then x2 Helpful Hunters as well), Skyknight Squire, Abyssal Harvester, Scrawling Crawler, Joust Through, x2 Stab, Fiery Annihilation, Goblin Surprise, Bake into a Pie, Luminous Rebuke, Banishing Light, and Sylvan Scavenging
So when I start building I like to see how many of my best cards I can realistically fit into the same deck. Then start seeing what synergies I have the most support for. Then what win con is the best one or two in the card group. Then support that further. Then final cuts. The reason why I wanted to talk about your immediate desire to shy away from blue is that there is only 1 green card on this list, but many blue cards. Spell slinging can be a difficult build to wrap your head around for sure, but in this pool some level of spell slinging is nearly unavoidable if you want to play many of the best cards. Balmor with double Goblin Surprise is reason enough to want to make Izzet at some compacity work. Same with Skyknight Squire and Rebuke plus Banish. Those 3 make white really hard to say no to. double stab, baked into a pie and Harvester make black extremely compelling. I think if you started to play around with cutting your green for either blue or black you might find that your build not only wins faster, but also has more consistency, more impactful cards overall, and the removal is better. Just better cards along your curve out as win cons in general.
*This set loves aggro. Logged on yesterday for my first draft (video later today) but easy trophy with low to the ground Boros.
@malasdair
build posted in video details
This might have taken longer than 50 minutes. Mainly due to struggling to use the online deck builder. I would have finished just fine with physical cards in front of me. I started Blue/Red, Tried Green/White/Black, and settled on Blue/White.
1x Archmage of Runes
1x Banishing Light
1x Claws Out
1x Clinquant Skymage
1x Erudite Wizard
1x Essence Scatter
1x Evolving Wilds
1x Fleeting Distraction
1x Grappling Kraken
2x Helpful Hunter
8x Island
1x Joust Through
1x Luminous Rebuke
2x Mischievous Mystic
1x Mocking Sprite
7x Plains
1x Prideful Parent
1x Raise the Past
1x Resolute Reinforcements
1x Rogue's Passage
1x Scrawling Crawler
1x Skyknight Squire
1x Spectral Sailor
1x Tolarian Terror
1x Uncharted Voyage
@anonymous-ki5wn
Thanks for giving the extra effort to go through the build process even though it was more challenging with online deck building tools. It's okay that you exceeded the time limit. That is just there to remind you that at events you won't have days to build, and I didn't want people posting decks that they worked on for days. It's supposed to be a quick exercise. Being able to build quickly is an important skill, so it's good to practice it. It's 100% okay if you took a little extra time because the interface was difficult to work with. I understand.
I like your build quite a lot. It has a decent curve out and some good interaction. I think you have included the strongest 6 card cross synergy in the pool which is Spectral Sailor, 2- Helpful Hunter, Scrawling Crawler, and 2- Mischievous Mystic. You also have The Skyknight Squire which is one of the best cards in the pool. You fit a lot of good things into your 2 color build. Those 7 cards are a great base start to any deck! Just like the Orzhov deck that got posted you missed the Squad Rallier. That card would be great here, and it's a must include for this build in my opinion. You can hit almost all your best creatures off of it so it's a great late game mana sink for added value. I want to point out that I think this build has a strong start but the mid and late game has a lot of filler. Clinquant Skymage, Mocking Sprite, and Erudite Wizard are not my favorite cards. They do have synergies here but that doesn't eliminate that they can be risky top decks in a close match. I'd consider running something else over those if you had the option. I also think Tolarian Terror is pretty weak in your deck. Don't misunderstand me, it's still okay to include, but you will most likely be casting it for 5 or even 6 mana here so it isn't at its best. Similarly the Raise the Past is not at its best. Although the 7 targets it can hit are great you probably will only expect to get 2 creatures back in most games.
I want to discus with you in more detail your path to get here. It sounds like you struggled to find a build you were 100% happy with. Are you happy with where you ended up here? What was it about every build you did before this one that made it not good enough? Did you solve the problem you saw with the other builds you tried first with this one? With more time was there something else you would have explored? What would that be and why? There's no denying that you've come up with a fundamentally sound build. The ratios are in a good range, but I think it is a build that would worry me in sealed. This deck would not finish last at an event, but it also wouldn't take 1st. I challenge you to try and make this a deck that can win more games and potentially take 1st. I always ask myself how does this deck win the tournament? What could you do to this deck to make it less susceptible to losing? How can you make this deck better? What is it weakest to? Can you make it so that its weak spot is no longer there? How would you go about making this deck have less filler? Can you support your win con even further than you already have? I think you got to a safe build that works, and ran out of time. If you push this line of thought further you could end up somewhere even better than this. So I challenge you to go back and find a way to improve upon this good start.
@@mtgmonster8755
So Blue/Red seemed good for spellsling. After building it, the creatures seemed weak, and the card draw/removal was lacking.
Green/White/Black: White and black had decent removal. I was heavier on Green/White, and the 2pip Abyssal Harvester and Bake Into a Pie just didn't seem right.
I would have liked to explore White/Green/Red. I like the Sylvan Scavenging and the Treetop Snarespinners. Kicked Grow From the Ashes has also been working well for me.
As far as the deck I've posted. It's hard for me to be 100% happy in limited. Many times, a deck I think will win the tournament gets absolutely squashed. And the ones I am merely okay with go much further than expected. Clinquant Skymage is nice in my eyes if I can keep it alive for a couple turns, but in my experience, its got a target on its back and removed quickly and cheaply. I don't think I have enough Instants and Sorceries to make Mocking Sprite, Tolarian Terror, and Archmage of Runes very effective. Splashing in Red would add some good instants in Fiery Anihillation, Thrill of Possibility, and Goblin Surprise, but I would struggle manawise with that build. Oh, and I definitely read Raise From the Past wrong. I was thinking it returns Power 2 or less, not Mana Value, so I now see why that is not viable.
I will explore the White/Green/Red and Blue/White/Red builds. If I come up with anything playable, I'll post them. But for all intents and purposes I will settle with this Blue/White deck and my 'final' deck, as i have exceeded build time lol.
Thanks for taking the time to respond! It's good insight and a good learning experience.
Here what I came up with for Green/White/Red. I know that Gnarlid Colony is almost unplayable. But I'm hoping to be able to get plenty of +1/+1 counters on the board to give my bigger creatures Trample. I feel a little better about this deck than the previous one posted. My fear is having to mulligan and relying on +1/+1 counters to make any decent sized creatures.
1x Banishing Light
1x Blossoming Sands
1x Evolving Wilds
1x Felidar Savior
1x Fiery Annihilation
6x Forest
1x Giant Growth
2x Gnarlid Colony
1x Goblin Boarders
2x Goblin Surprise
1x Grow from the Ashes
1x Heartfire Immolator
2x Helpful Hunter
1x Luminous Rebuke
4x Mountain
4x Plains
1x Prideful Parent
1x Resolute Reinforcements
1x Rogue's Passage
1x Ruby, Daring Tracker
1x Scrawling Crawler
1x Skyknight Squire
1x Sylvan Scavenging
2x Treetop Snarespinner
1x Wildwood Scourge
@anonymous-ki5wn
I think this is an interesting build, but its lack of evasion is where I think this would be less good than your UW build. I also agree with your mana worries and I would opt to not run rouge's passage here and instead go for the even split giving you access to one more colored mana. I want to back up to you thinking UR looked like a good splash, but after building it the creatures seemed weak, and the card draw/removal was lacking. I think your UW build screams for that red splash. Balmor, Battlemage Captain and double Goblin Surprise alone can replace some of the more filler blue cards and bring in more pumps to get rid of the small creatures worry.
It's not uncommon for someone to come up to me and say exactly what you just said to me, "Many times, a deck I think will win the tournament gets absolutely squashed. And the ones I am merely okay with go much further than expected." I think a lot of this has to do with people building what they think is a good curve out deck with a few good cards, synergies, and saying great. It'll win the first few matches, but eventually it will get to the sealed pools that are amazing, and have the best win cons and the late game that is unbeatable. Once your deck gets there it loses, and you're left wondering who can beat that deck I just faced? It's impossible! That person's pool was just too good. I thought I had a great pool but theirs was better... Sound familiar? This normally happens when you do have a good deck but it is not broken good in the late game. Your deck isn't aggro and it isn't uber control so it allows both you and your op to get to each other's most broken cards you opened in sealed. This can lead to you sometimes having the best cards, but sometimes your opponent does and the later you go in the tournament the more likely they have something better than you. Further, ones you didn't think would do well outperform. Why? Most of the time this is because those decks that are less bomb heavy, and you focused on winning faster. Therefor you skip the whole end game show and tell of each other's best cards. If you don't go to the late game against those cracked decks then they are matching their curve to yours and sometimes you can squeeze in a better curve than them and win more games.
In this pool it's important to recognize its greatest flaw is that it has no late game that can win out every time. It also lacks extreme control to make any late game win con viable. So what are you left with? YOU MUST WIN FAST. It's the only method have left to realistically take on the best pools. So when I built I just asked myself how can I win in the fewest amount of turns and then I went from there. It's a good question to ask yourself in the future in sealed... I always try and identify what my pool is doing better than any other pool in the format. This pool has some amazing wide flyers. How do you maximize that and win fast? Is it possible? Is it possible to win even faster? These are the questions I asked myself with this pool. Great discussions. Thanks for participating. I hope you found this 1 on 1 feedback helpful.
@@anonymous-ki5wn Oh, wow! I had no idea the Gnarlid Colony _entering_ with counters works with the Hydra. IDK why you think Gnarlid Colony unplayable - I think it's a great flexible card that works reasonably at both 2 and 5 mana. In fact, it's one of the few cards that have/grant Trample - I think it's a must-pick here! Your deck showed me that the synergy with green in this pool is a lot better than I thought.