Did anybody else think it was weird that M2011 switched from 6-booster swiss sealed deck tournaments over to 4-booster swiss sealed deck tournaments and Rise of the Eldrazi didn't change over? Well, I thought it was kind of weird. At first I thought it was just a simple oversight. Then after another week and it stayed the same, I began to ponder the meaning behind it. Was 4-booster swiss only intended for the core set? Would Scars of Mirrodin be subjected to the horror that is the terrible prize distribution of the 6-booster swiss sealed deck queues? Would I ever be able to see if the strangeness that is 4-booster swiss would work on another set?
Basically I started some crazy mass guessing as to the reason behind the persistent 6-booster swiss ROE queues. So I posted a message asking about it on the main message boards. No one seemed to know anything about it other than a vague notion that 4-booster swiss was supposed to replace 6-booster swiss. So, then I waited another week, and nothing changed. Then I decided to write an email to a prominent WotC online employee to see if I could get some answers. Crickets chirped for another week. Finally I decided to advocate for 4 booster swiss tournaments for Scars of Mirrodin in advance on the Magic Online message boards. I didn't fully read the rules of the board however, and apparently advocating for something in the form of a petition is against the rules, and my thread was closed. Well, that was a mistake. Oh well, all I really wanted was a few simple answers about the future of 4-booster swiss. So then I posted another question about changing the ROE queues over to 4-booster swiss. This time I posted it as a reply to the downtime notes on the mothership blog. http://community.wizards.com/magiconline/blog/2010/09/14/downtime_notes_for_9152010 Then, after the downtime the ROE 4-booster sealed deck queues were there. So, what did I learn from all of this running around? Post response questions to the mothership blog if you want mistakes corrected.
Of course there is still the problem of getting enough people to know about the ROE queue to actually get it to fire. As I see it, this queue has three strikes against it already.
Strike 1: Rise of the Eldrazi is slightly older than Magic2011. In terms of popularity, the newest set is always king, and there is no changing it.
Strike 2: There is no publicity for it. The ROE 4-booster queue was changed without a peep from anyone except me. I'm sure there are many players out there who will quickly glance at the queue and just assume it was the same as the old 6-booster queues that nobody liked.
Strike 3: We're too close to the release of a new set. Everybody is excited about Scars of Mirrodin, myself included. Now that I know that 4-booster swiss isn't going to be quickly forgotten like one-set wonder formats like Kaleidoscope, I can at least breath a little easier. However we still have somewhere around a month or two to wait for Scars to be available online.
Well, at this point, I feel Scars 4-booster sealed is a sure thing, and therefore it's not a huge deal, however, I like variety. I want to see ROE 4-booster sealed decks in action. So, join me in my quest to get this queue active while we're waiting for Scars to be released.
So, what's so great about Rise of the Eldrazi?
What can we get out of R.O.E. that we can't get out of M2011?
I'm glad you asked...
Rise of the Eldrazi has a better ability to play three colors, which makes for a more interesting deck building experience.
Rise of the Eldrazi is a more complicated set. That means more choices, and fewer turns in which your stuck wondering if a monkey could take over for you and make pretty much the same moves.
Rise of the Eldrazi has a few more valuable cards than M2011. I love M2011, but I also like a little variety, and at heart I'm also a bit of a rare-drafter. If I could do 4-booster sealed deck tournaments with Tempest block, I would do it all day long in order to pick up some Wastelands. Sometimes opening a really valuable card is half of the fun of this game. M2011 is very heavily saturated and it has a lot of reprints, therefore the number of truly valuable cards is down to about three mythic rares. Now R.O.E. is not the perfect rare-drafting set, but it is still better than M2011 right now.
There are more interesting combos in Rise of the Eldrazi than there are in M2011. One of the interesting things about sealed deck is how certain cards go up and down in value based on what other cards you have in your pool. M2011 has some of this in cards like Bloodthrone Vampire and Chandra's Spitfire but Rise of the Eldrazi has it beat with many complicated cards that are not cut and dry to evaluate.
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Well, hopefully I've convinced some of you to try out the ROE 4-booster queues as well as the M2011 queues. I will be trying to get them to fire whenever I have a free Magic night. However, now on to the meat and potatoes of my article. In case you missed the previous articles, this series of articles is designed to give deckbuilding opportunities to the readers based on the many 4-booster queues I've entered. I've included hide/show buttons so that you can see what you would do before looking at what I did.
For reference, here are the links to my other articles on 4-booster swiss sealed deck tournaments.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/4-booster-sealed-frequently-asked-questions-and-tournament-report
http://puremtgo.com/articles/4-booster-sealed-deckbuilding
http://puremtgo.com/articles/4-booster-sealed-working-trash
Now on to the decklists....
#1
#1
#1
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts and Land:
I'm much more willing to main deck an Elixir of Immortality now than when I first started playing limited games in M2011. A lot of games come down to tempo races, and 5 life is not insignificant. Also, in 4-booster swiss, a late game Elixir of Immortality can do almost as much as a Crystal Ball in terms of filling your deck with potent threats. Terramorphic Expanse will always make the cut and it is a welcome addition to any deck pool.
Black:
There are only two cards that would pull us into black. I believe this color can be easily dismissed.
Blue: and filler.
Blue is very solid, but a bit light on creatures. I've found Sleep to be very good if you are playing green/blue and if you are playing with Scroll Thief. So far, Sleep isn't looking too good with this deck.
Green:
Green has some reasonable creatures, but it isn't very deep, and only has a one weak bomb in Garruk's Companion. Green seems playable but not that great.
Red:
Red is another weak color. There is little here that is worth bothering with.
White: and filler
Day of Judgment is really nice in a deck with a lot of late game cards. It's not nearly as good with the white weenies we have here. It works at cross purposes, but it is still good if you can get your opponent to over-commit.
Conclusions: White is our only color for removal, blue has massive card drawing, and green has the big creatures. Black and Red are unplayable. We have three reasonable colors and we want a little from everything, but we can't easily play three colors. So, what do we do?
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#1
----------------------------Final Decklist 1------------------------------
I think that blue/white is the obvious deck to build. None of the other color combinations match the raw power of our blue and white cards.
So, how did I do? I lost the first round in a blow out match. I was able to use Day of Judgment and Jace's Ingenuity to gain some huge card advantage, but at the end of the day I couldn't deal with a late game Primeval Titan. I got a rare 2nd round bye in the next round, and I won the last match with some solid draws. So I ended up going 2-1 but it didn't feel that way due to the bye.
----------------------------Final Decklist 1------------------------------
#2
#2
#2
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts:
It's always nice to see Triskelion or Brittle Effigy in any deck pool. To have them both means that we have quite a bit of flexibility in building our deck. Oh yes, and Warlord's Axe is nice too, sometimes... I guess...
Black:
Nantuko Shade is the only card that would tempt me into black. However without Gravediggers or any form of decent removal, black is looking very bleak.
Blue: 2x and not too much filler
Card advantage wins games. However if all you're drawing with your card drawing spells is more land and more card drawing spells, you probably aren't going to win the game. The fact that we have Brittle Effigy and Triskelion means that we actually have something worthwhile to draw, so blue is still a great possibility, but it doesn't have everything we need to win.
Green: and some reasonable filler
I think green is just strong enough here to avoid immediate dismissal. It's not exciting, but I wouldn't be very happy playing with it.
Red:
Red isn't incredibly deep, but it has a nice little combo with Triskelion and Chandra's Spitfire. Also Fling is a card that has risen in my estimation recently. This is mainly due to the fact that there are a lot of Pacifisms and Ice Cages running around, and Fling often reads "throw useless pacified creature at Blinding Mage or opponent's head."
White:
White is very aggressive and reasonably solid with two of the best one drops in the set along with a couple of two drops to back it up, and Armored Ascension to finish the game.
Conclusions: Besides our artifacts, this pool is not all that impressive. After looking at all the colors, I think it's clear that we're going to use some combination of white, blue, and red.
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#2
----------------------------Final Decklist 2------------------------------
I just couldn't resist the power of Chandra's Spitfire and Triskelion, and while the card drawing potential of blue is nice, it doesn't do much good if you don't have anything big to draw. I think the weenie option is really the best I can do here.
So, how did I do? Absolutely terrible. I lost the first round to a reasonably good deck, but it seemed like a fair match and I probably couldn't have played better. Then I won the next round in another good match. Then I was absolutely destroyed in the last round by one of those decks that you can only dream of getting. I still don't know how he ended up in the loser's bracket. I faced 2 (Lightning Bolts), a Fireball, a Chandra's Outrage, Cultivate, Crystal Ball, and several very good creatures. So, I ended up 1-2.
----------------------------Final Decklist 2------------------------------
#3
#3
#3
#3
----------------------------Final Decklist 3------------------------------
Child of Night is a card that is kind of tricky to evaluate. It's often worse than Silvercoat Lion because it can't safely block Scroll Thief and it often trades with creatures you don't want to trade it with such as Sylvan Ranger or Augury Owl. The only reason I'm remotely interested in Child of Night is because we currently have double Shiv's Embrace. Now I'm not really wild about the aura-up-a-guy-and-swing attitude, but this pool doesn't leave me too many other options. If we tried to pair up our two strongest colors red and green, than the resultant deck would be horribly low on early game cards. Without red in the picture, Child of Night doesn't look all that good at all. However we need black because it gives us the only removal options we have Assassinate.
This is one of those pools where I'm still not sure what to do with it.
So, how did I do with it? I ended up going 2-1 with it mainly due to surprise Flings for lethal damage. In at least three games I would cast Shiv's Embrace on a Child of Night and swing for 5-6 damage. Then the embraced Child of Night would get pacified and I would continue to play out threats until I could pump up Child of Night and Fling it at my opponent for the win. This tournament alone raised my estimation evaluation of Fling quite a bit.
----------------------------Final Decklist 3------------------------------
#4
#4
#4
#4
----------------------------Final Decklist 4------------------------------
I think I have a slight bias towards using the Bloodthrone Vampire combos and by submitting this decklist I proved that to myself. On face value, 2xAct of Treason and one Hoarding Dragon is not better than 2xPacifism and one Serra Angel. In addition, the white splash variant has Roc Egg and Siege Mastodon which could have easily replaced some of the filler black cards in this deck. I like using the 3 discard spells along with Rise from the Grave to potential get an opponent's huge creature into play, but it never worked out that way. My own Gravedigger was the best creature I reanimated with Rise from the Grave.
So, how did I do?
I went 2-1 with this deck, which is very frustrating because this is the strongest pool I've gotten in a long time. I won my first two rounds without much difficulty, but I faced the dreaded Grave Titan deck in the last round. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, however for some reason I couldn't get my Act of Treason Bloodthrone Vampire combo working before the Grave Titan could attack me. In both games, I was forced to use Act of Treason to buy myself time against the titan without a sacrificial outlet. In retrospect the Black/White deck would have been the better way to go.
----------------------------Final Decklist 4------------------------------
Thanks for reading, and see you in the 4-Booster Sealed Deck queues.
Marcus, "Shuyin Knight of Zanarkand" on Magic Online.
5 Comments
Besides the fail not including white in #4 2 Cultivates and a Awakening Druid is the perfect reason to splash green. Not to mention the 2 naturalizes and plumet for the sideboard. You originally picked Hoarding Dragon over Serra Angel, which really baffles me. Act of treason is good, but it requires them to have a bomb to steal. If they have some combat trick and you don't end the game right there, you need to have a solution for it next turn so it doesn't knock you out. Borrowing the Titan for a turn might be cute, but what do you do when it swings back at you next turn? The answer is pacifism and it was never heard from again.
Maybe I am stuck in shards block, but 3 colors (especially with fixers) works well with m11. Did I mention TWO!! cultivates?!?!?!? Say you started with 2 cultivates 2 lands and 3x other cards. First draw is another land. That's now more than half your land removed from your deck (assuming 13 land). Fetch fixes and thins, this becomes even more powerful in a 30 card deck. Mean while your opponent is flooding you are dropping creature after creature each turn. Because that turn 4 Serra Angel with a flash freeze and cancel to protect, will usually run to the finish line. Maybe it comes down to personal play style. I am pretty sure #4 would have been a bomb WUG build. Safe passage and sleep can be a game winner. Not to mention 2 time scours can really put someone on the clock with a 30 card deck.
Bloodthrone Vampire + Act of Treason > Pacifism
and
Pacifism > Act of Treason
and
Hoarding Dragon + Triskelion + 2xBloodthrone Vampire > Serra Angel
For me this build was more about card interactions over the raw power of the cards. I only went 2-1 with the pool so I'm willing to admit that raw power might have been the better call. But I believe it was a close call.
Pacifism itself is not a permanent solution, since Naturalize, Acidic Slime, War Priest of Thune, and Solemn Offering are quite playable. I reasoned that with 2 Bloodthrone Vampires and a Gravedigger I should be able to get and keep one on the table most of the time to make Act of Treason into a permanent removal spell. It didn't work out that way in the final match but it did work out in my first two matches so I don't think it was a horrible decision, just probably not the optimal one.
The main problem with splashing Cultivate is figuring out your mana base. Since green is a splash, you don't want too many forests, but if you cast Cultivate early you have access to all three colors. Therefore you want enough forests in your deck to cast Cultivate. Cultivate itself doesn't help you find that first forest. So either you have a few (3-4) forests in the deck and risk having a Cultivate in your deck you can't play until turn 6-7 or you have a lot of forests (5-7) and risk drawing all forests and no Cultivates meaning which means you can't cast any of your business spells.
Basically a three color deck carries a lot of added risk that you won't get to your colors when you need them. Adding Cultivate as a third color to fix your colors and thin your deck means that it is just working against itself.
Another nice article on 4 pack sealed. I really like your format. I hope I am able to try and get into an ROE 4 pack sealed on thursday night, but unfortunately another strike against it is the Fringe season opener this week. ROE drafting just didn't last long enough, and I'd like to be able to play it a few more times before it disappears. Archetypes were so strong in that set that it would also be interesting to see how it plays out with a small pool.
Another fine article. A couple of questions/comments popped up for me as I was building along:
- Did you consider Diminish for your WU build given the scant amount of removal available? What are your thoughts on that card?
- I agree that the use of green was a tough decision in Pool 4. My initial BGw build did include it so I could get the Pacifisms, but I understood after reading what you built (as well as your recently posted comment) that using green for Cultivate amounts to splashing for color-fixing (agreeably a bad idea in most cases). After revisiting the pool, I probably would have just gone BW as green had nothing exciting as a finisher. Glad to see your BR build turned out well.
Diminish is one of the last cards I cut from the list. I consider Diminish to be a mediocre card that is slightly weaker Mighty Leap. You have to go through a lot of hoops in order for Diminish to be good, and it is almost always trumped by Giant Growth, Mighty Leap, or spot removal.
Of course if you've got a couple of Prodigal Pyromancers, it gets significantly better. It's also pretty good with Scroll Thief as Scroll Thief kind of forces blocking.