The average 30-card deck has roughly 16-17 non-land playable cards that are spread across 2-3 colors and also include a few artifacts. This means that each of your colors will have somewhere between five and ten playable cards. I bring this up for one very important reason. M2011 has a lot of cards like this.
Depending on what your opponent is playing, these spells could be awesome or unplayable. With such a low deck count, just having one of these cards in the "awesome" category could tip the scales from playing one color or another color. This means that sideboarding entire colors in and out is much more commonplace in 4-booster sealed than 6-booster sealed. This means that you need to prepare for that possibility.
Sometimes it's even a good idea to do this after you've seen your opponent's sideboard cards, because it will help you avoid your opponent's Plummet or Deathmark. The point is that sideboarding is really important to 4-booster sealed, which means that deckbuilding is even more important to the format.
Of course sometimes your deck simply builds itself and it doesn't make any sense to sideboard a color swap for 1-2 decent sideboard cards.
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Combos will show up more often in 4-booster sealed than 6-booster sealed. With a smaller deck size, each copy of a combo will be significantly more likely to show up. Deck manipulation tools are also that much more effective in a smaller deck and therefore it's just that much better at helping you find a combo.
Let's take a look at some of the combos that might show up in your pool.
AND... 
OR 
OR 
This is one of my favorite combo because it takes cards that are not all that great to begin with and turns them into something very deadly.
AND... 
OR 
...
This is not exactly a subtle combo, but it will win games, and it makes both cards better.
AND... 
or 
This is fairly obvious, however all of these cards are very playable without the combo. They get a lot better together.
AND... 
The best way to get a great target for Rise from the Grave is to hit your opponent with an early Mind Rot Your opponent probably isn't going to hold onto their uncastable dragons, angels, and wurms.
AND...
Scroll Thief just needs a little help to go from a pretty good card to an awesome card.
AND... 
Please don't try use Ajani's Mantra just because you have a Pridemate. It's just not worth it.
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Now on to the deckbuilding practice from four of my 4-booster sealed deck tournaments. I've included spoiler buttons so you can think about how you would handle the deck pools before you see what I did with them. I also included a text version of the decklists in case you want to use Magic Online to build a deck. Just cut and past the text into Notepad or a similar program. Then save the decklist as a .txt file, and load it into your deck editor.
#1
#1
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 1--------------------
1 Act of Treason
1 Ajani's Pridemate
1 Angelic Arbiter
1 Angel's Feather
1 Augury Owl
1 Blinding Mage
1 Bog Raiders
1 Cancel
1 Cultivate
1 Demolish
1 Diminish
1 Disentomb
1 Dryad's Favor
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Ember Hauler
1 Excommunicate
1 Giant Growth
1 Goblin Balloon Brigade
1 Haunting Echoes
1 Howling Banshee
1 Ice Cage
1 Incite
1 Infantry Veteran
1 Jace's Ingenuity
1 Juggernaut
1 Lava Axe
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Mana Leak
1 Merfolk Spy
1 Mighty Leap
1 Mighty Leap
1 Mind Control
1 Nether Horror
1 Ornithopter
1 Pacifism
1 Palace Guard
1 Phantom Beast
1 Preordain
1 Primeval Titan
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Runeclaw Bear
1 Safe Passage
1 Shiv's Embrace
1 Siege Mastodon
1 Sign in Blood
1 Stormfront Pegasus
1 Temple Bell
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Thunder Strike
1 Viscera Seer
1 Voltaic Key
1 Vulshok Berserker
1 Wall of Vines
1 Water Servant
2 Fog
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 1--------------------
#1
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts/ Land: Juggernaut is always going to be played, and Elixir of Immortality usually makes the cut as it is a reasonable way to recycle your nonland cards and increase the probability of drawing a non-land in the late game. Oh yeah the 5 life is often very relevant against a lot of decks because M2011 is much more focused on racing than M2010. The single Terramorphic Expanse will definitely help smooth mana issues in a two color deck but it's not quite enough to go for a 3 color deck. Our green has 2 nice color fixers but it is incredibly shallow, so we probably aren't going to want to play 3 colors with this pool.
Black: I like Howling Banshee however that is really the only thing I like about black here. 1 good creature, 2 slightly below par creatures and a Sign in Blood is not what I want to build a deck with.
Blue: Blue is very strong in this pool. Mind Control and Jace's Ingenuity are strong reasons to go blue. Also, Water Servant is reasonably good and the remaining cards are decent filler cards.
Green: This was the lucky sealed deck in which I opened a Primeval Titan. I was happy about it, and it made up for the previous 6 events in which I didn't open anything worth more than $0.50. Monetary value aside, Primeval Titan is one of the weaker titans in sealed, and there is very little support for it. Other than a strange desire to show off the money titan, there is no reason to play green. I don't really like playing green as a splash color, because green is usually the color you use to support your splashes.
Red: Red is strong but not very deep. Lightning Bolt Ember Hauler Shiv's Embrace and Vulshok Berserker are all good cards but there isn't much to go with it. Act of Treason is great if you have sacrifice effects and it is also pretty good as a sideboard card against green, but overall, it's not something that draws me to red when I have no sacrifice effects.
White: Whenever I see Pacifism and Blinding Mage together I know there is a very good chance I'll be playing white. Here, white is definitely our strongest color, and there is no reason to play anything else. When you have quality cards running this deep, you've usually found your primary color.
Conclusions: I think there is really only one way to go with this deck pool. Blue and White are the only colors that have depth and quality. The other three colors are shallow not very exciting. I think this pool illustrates that you can't always go with the money card bombs, and green doesn't work very well as a splash color.
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#1
----------------------------Final Decklist 1------------------------------
My curve is fairly low, so I don't mind going with 13 lands even if I have a 7cc Angel. Preordain and Augury Owl makes it easier to go lower on the land count. I don't like going down to 12 lands if I can avoid it. I just seem to get a whole lot more mulligans with 12 lands than with 13 or 14.
Excommunicate should be in the main deck. When I submitted this deck I overlooked Excommunicate for some reason I can't fathom, and I ended up siding it at every opportunity. Phantom Beast should have stayed in the sideboard. In some match-ups it was amazing, while in other situations, specifically white decks with Blinding Mage it was absolutely terrible.
How did I do? I won the first two matches without much difficulty but then I ended up losing in the final round. I lost to a white/blue deck that seemed quite a bit stronger than mine. It had Baneslayer Angel Serra Angel Conundrum Sphinx, a couple of (Pacisfism)s and no cards that I would consider borderline.
----------------------------Final Decklist 1------------------------------
#2
#2
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 2--------------------
1 Acidic Slime
1 Act of Treason
1 Armored Cancrix
1 Augury Owl
1 Berserkers of Blood Ridge
1 Bog Raiders
1 Chandra's Outrage
1 Cloud Crusader
1 Cloud Elemental
1 Corrupt
1 Diminish
1 Dragon's Claw
1 Duskdale Wurm
1 Earth Servant
1 Excommunicate
1 Fire Servant
1 Fog
1 Garruk's Companion
1 Garruk's Packleader
1 Giant Spider
1 Gravedigger
1 Gravedigger
1 Hornet Sting
1 Knight Exemplar
1 Liliana's Specter
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Merfolk Spy
1 Phantom Beast
1 Platinum Angel
1 Protean Hydra
1 Quag Sickness
1 Rotting Legion
1 Shiv's Embrace
1 Siege Mastodon
1 Sign in Blood
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Stormfront Pegasus
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Thunder Strike
1 Unsummon
1 Volcanic Strength
1 Voltaic Key
1 Wall of Vines
1 War Priest of Thune
1 Warlord's Axe
1 Water Servant
2 Ajani's Mantra
2 Fling
2 Pacifism
2 Pyretic Ritual
2 Sylvan Ranger
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 2--------------------
#2
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts: While Platinum Angel is certainly powerful, it's not nearly as bombtastic as it might appear to be. I've won a few games with it, but I've also been unable to cast it in several games. Also it might as well be made of glass considering how many times a Manic Vandal has taken mine out. Warlord's Axe's power is entirely dependent on how many spells attached to 1/1 creatures you have, ie. Sylvan Ranger, Augury Owl, etc Of course it is also a reasonably playable artifact, so it will probably make the cut in all but the nicest pools.
Black: I really like Gravedigger and having access to two of them is always nice. This pool has Black's typical problem. Black is not a very deep color, but it has cards like Quag Sickness and Corrupt which kind of force you into using black heavily or not at all.
Blue: Blue is a bit on the shallow side of things. It has the cards to muck up the ground but it only has one Cloud Elemental to rule the skies. It's not deep enough to make it maindeckable, and it doesn't have any very good splashable spells like Foresee.
Green: 2 Sylvan Rangers and a reasonably deep green pool makes me think that I could probably play 3 colors relatively easily. Green will most likely be the base of any deck we build.
Red: Fire Servant is a lot like Bloodthrone Vampire. With the right cards it can be amazing, with the wrong cards it can be very underwhelming. As much as I'd like to see Fire Servant and Fling in action, I just don't think there are enough good red spells to want to play red in this pool. Red has no curve. It starts at 4 mana. You could argue that if it's combined with green, green would provide the early drops. However green already has the big creatures as well, so red just doesn't add much to green in this pool.
White: Two (Pacisfism)s and a couple of early drops mean that white is very strong here.
Conclusions: I believe that red and blue are unplayable. The question becomes how to build a deck from white, green, and black. It could easily be a two color deck, however we have the grand opportunity to splash a third color if we want to. How should we do it? Read on and find out how I did it.
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#2
----------------------------Final Decklist 2------------------------------
Green is definitely the base of any build we could make out of this pool. I don't think that War Priest of Thune or Stormfront Pegasus are all that impressive in a 3-color base green deck. Splash cards can't be counted on in the early game, and need to have a big impact in the late game. Having said that, against a blue/white flyers deck both of these cards get significantly better as the War Priest can dissolve Mind Control, Ice Cage, and Pacifism and the Stormfront Pegasus will often be able to trade with a Griffin.
Upon reflection, I definitely skimped on the black mana in this build, and I should have switched out at least 1 forest for 1 swamp. I think 13 land is once again the right amount considering I have 2 Sylvan Rangers and a number of other early plays.
How did I do? I went 3-0 with this decklist, although I had a lot of difficult games. In one match my opponent practically telegraphed that he was holding a fireball by making a disadvantageous attack and using a giant growth on an unblocked creature rather than on a savable blocked creature. He then played a land dropping down to 1 card in hand. I had been holding Liliana's Specter for several turns and I had played out more aggressive plays on previous turns. With the option to play out a large Protean Hydra or Liliana's Specter, I chose to play out the specter and force my opponent to discard his Fireball. I went on to win that game, and then heard all about how I'm so lucky and unskilled at this game.
----------------------------Final Decklist 2------------------------------
#3
#3
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 3--------------------
1 Acidic Slime
1 Angelic Arbiter
1 Augury Owl
1 Back to Nature
1 Barony Vampire
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Blinding Mage
1 Bloodcrazed Goblin
1 Bloodthrone Vampire
1 Cancel
1 Demolish
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Fireball
1 Giant Growth
1 Goblin Balloon Brigade
1 Goblin Chieftain
1 Incite
1 Knight Exemplar
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Manic Vandal
1 Merfolk Spy
1 Mighty Leap
1 Mighty Leap
1 Mind Control
1 Nether Horror
1 Pacifism
1 Palace Guard
1 Preordain
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Roc Egg
1 Sacred Wolf
1 Scroll Thief
1 Solemn Offering
1 Sorcerer's Strongbox
1 Spined Wurm
1 Stone Golem
1 Voltaic Key
1 Wall of Vines
1 White Knight
1 Wild Griffin
2 Assassinate
2 Assault Griffin
2 Azure Drake
2 Canyon Minotaur
2 Dryad's Favor
2 Llanowar Elves
2 Terramorphic Expanse
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 3--------------------
#3
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts and Lands: Two Terramorphic Expanses means that we can play three colors without being attached to green. That definitely opens up our options. Stone Golem is playable, but it will often be cut because it is vulnerable to artifact removal and it is often equal to or weaker than most decent 5 drop creatures.
Black: We have Reassembling Skeleton and Bloodthrone Vampire along with a Diabolic Tutor to find the combo. Other than that we have a couple of Assassinate which are removal, even if they are often really low grade removal. I'm not all that excited about Rise from the Grave. It is a situational spell that creates a creature that is often not worth five mana. It gets a lot better if you have Mind Rot and Liliana's Specters as you can often force your opponent to discard something really nasty. We have neither of those cards.
Blue: I seem to like Scroll Thief more than most players. One Scroll Thief and a removal spell is all it takes to put your opponent on the defensive. Of course, beyond my personal preferences, blue has some very solid cards in Mind Control and two Azure Drakes.
Green: Why do I always seem to double up on Dryad's Favor and Llanowar Elves? It's probably because I pay attention to it more than I pay attention to the times that I get duplicate good cards like say Pacifism. Anyway, green is really sad, and I think I'm going to avoid it.
Red: Fireball and Lightning Bolt and a couple of filler creatures. That looks like a decent possibility to me.
White: Once again we have Pacifism and Blinding Mage and a decent amount of other good cards to go with it. Are you sensing a pattern yet? Anyway, we are most liking gong to be playing white.
Conclusions: Green is the only color we can eliminate immediately. With the Terramorphics we can now think about 3 color decks as well as 2 color decks.
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#3
----------------------------Final Decklist 3------------------------------
We start with white Blinding Mage, Pacifism, White Knight, (Knight Templar), Wild Griffin, 2xAssault Griffin, and Angelic Arbiter. This is truly the best starting point.
Next I'd say that red is only worth a splash for Lightning Bolt and Fireball. It is a splash that is definitely worth making, but it shouldn't be a main color.
The question becomes what goes better with the cards above, blue or black?
Blue has some obvious power in double Azure Drake and Mind Control, and it also has two scry cards that might help us find our colors.
Black on the other hand has the Skeleton/Vampire combo and it increases the power level of Roc Egg with a sacrifice effect. Blinding Mage also makes the two Assassinate a whole lot better.
Black and white have the better synergy but blue and white have more raw power. In the end, I went with blue and white.
I like having 14 land here because we need it for the Angelic Arbiter and we have some difficult to cast white and blue spells.
How did I do? I ended up going 2-1 with this deck. The mana was a bit more inconsistent than I thought it would be and there were some really good decks in this pool.
----------------------------Final Decklist 3------------------------------
#4
#4
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 4--------------------
1 Acidic Slime
1 Ajani's Mantra
1 Ajani's Pridemate
1 Angel's Feather
1 Arc Runner
1 Armored Cancrix
1 Assassinate
1 Azure Drake
1 Blood Tithe
1 Bloodthrone Vampire
1 Bog Raiders
1 Canyon Minotaur
1 Captivating Vampire
1 Combust
1 Demon of Death's Gate
1 Destructive Force
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Dragon's Claw
1 Dryad's Favor
1 Fling
1 Goldenglow Moth
1 Harbor Serpent
1 Howling Banshee
1 Hunters' Feast
1 Inferno Titan
1 Inspired Charge
1 Lava Axe
1 Liliana's Caress
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Mighty Leap
1 Mountain
1 Mountain
1 Mountain
1 Nether Horror
1 Pacifism
1 Palace Guard
1 Plummet
1 Preordain
1 Scroll Thief
1 Solemn Offering
1 Stone Golem
1 Swamp
1 Swamp
1 Sylvan Ranger
1 Thunder Strike
1 Tome Scour
1 Unsummon
1 Volcanic Strength
1 Wurm's Tooth
1 Yavimaya Wurm
2 Cloud Elemental
2 Ember Hauler
2 Goblin Balloon Brigade
2 Naturalize
2 Tireless Missionaries
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 4--------------------
#4
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts: It's Stone Golem, which is nothing to get too excited about.
Black: There are a lot of black playable cards in this pool. Not many of them are all that exciting, and a deck filled with average cards is a recipe for disaster.
Blue: There are some decent flyers in this pool, but just like black we have a couple of creatures and not much else.
Green: Naturalize and Plummet are good sideboard cards. So if we face a deck filled with flyers and artifacts, we might want to side green in. However that's not really very likely to happen. The rest of the green cards in this pool are slightly above average and not very deep.
Red: Inferno Titan and two Ember Haulers are going to be enough to make red the most appetizing color in our pool. Destructive Force is a reset button that is really hard to take advantage of unless you have something that can live through it. Inferno Titan can do that. That doesn't mean that Destructive Force is all that great, but we have to play something, and it can clear out a lot of creatures if our opponent over extends.
White: Pacifism and Ajani's Pridemate are about our only above average playables. This means that I can probably eliminate White right away.
Conclusions: White and green are sitting on the sidelines, red will take center stage. The only question in my mind is whether we want blue or black to complement red.
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#4
----------------------------Final Decklist 4------------------------------
While having a Diabolic Tutor for Inferno Titan may be tempting, it's also risky. Beyond Diabolic Tutor there isn't much a reason to pick black over blue. Blue on the other hand has some quality creatures including a few like Azure Drake and Armored Cancrix which can withstand Destructive Force if they are wearing Volcanic strength.
Also note that we're using 14 land. This is the another way to turn Destructive Force in our favor. With more lands in our deck, we can recover from it easier.
How did I do? I went 2-1 with this deck. Most of the time I relied on Inferno Titan and Destructive Force to win. I lost the last match because my opponent had sideboarded in a Negate for my Destructive Force and I wasn't able to reset the board.
----------------------------Final Decklist 4------------------------------
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Thanks for reading, and see you in the 4-Booster Sealed Deck queues.
Marcus, "Shuyin Knight of Zanarkand" on Magic Online.
