I've taken quite a liking to playing the 8 man sealed swiss queues on MTGO.  3 rounds of guaranteed play means that they predictably finish within 3 hours and they don't involved the demands of learning a draft format.  I first started playing these on a regular basis when MED2 was a nix tix queue just before it went off sale.  You cracked 5 packs, built a deck, and then could win 9, 5, 2 or 0 packs depending on your record.  The big attraction was to crack a dual, which were going for 20 tix or more at the time.  It was pretty straightforward to be able to keep playing for minimal or zero cost, and build up a few dual lands in the collection to boot, once you got the hang of the format, and I really enjoyed the old cards.

Once the MED2 queues were pulled, and the Reborn release events wrapped up, I still wanted to play swiss sealed.  It was good value for my entertainment dollar, didn’t' take all day, and you didn't have to worry about what cards to draft.  However, I had a large initial period of frustration at 'sealed luck' as many people have referred to it over the years.  This continued my personal tradition of being relatively terrible at multi colour block formats, all Ravnica being the exception.   After putting in some work though, I'd say that I have got the hang of building the best deck or close to the best deck with any particular sealed pool, and getting the mana right is the most important part of finding the correct build for any given card pool.

My early mistakes involved playing too many mana sources.  I had heard the format was fast, so I wanted to hit my land drops and be able to play my spells, but I sacrificed playing powerful multi coloured spells to do this.  Also, I was constantly being flooded later in the games, while my opponents seemed to keep rolling out a steady stream of threats.  After I realized my error, I started paring down the number of mana sources, and did find a better level of total mana.  But now I had a new problem; I couldn't find my colours, and would often get rolled over (easily) by the aggressive builds of my opponents.  Things were improving, but I swung too far towards playing my best and most powerful spells, often running spells that required multiple splashes.  It was at this point I think my rating dropped to an historic low.

Too many, not enough?  Gotta get this just right!

After reading some of Godot's first articles on this site, he confirmed for me what I had been learning in the school of hard knocks.  Alara block limited is blazingly fast, with aggressive creatures and good removal, where a 1-cc card like Magma Spray or Path to Exile can completely seize the tempo advantage and inevitability of the win.  It was important to be 'doing something' in the early turns of the game, but fixing mana in turn 3 or 4 shouldn't be part of that.

Thus I had learned the first important lesson in Alara sealed deck.  Get your mana right.  This is critical!  If you're not ready to play out threats or deal with opposing threats on turns 3, 4 or 5, you might get destroyed before you can stabilize.  Alternately, if you are playing out threats in these turns, you have the opportunity to be seizing a large advantage in the game if your opponent stumbles.  Here are some guidelines for getting your mana right.

Non Basic Lands:  Lands that produce multiple colours are good.  The tri lands are very good and should be played, pretty much always.  There are some corner cases where you have no need of the splash colours, and your deck is aggressive enough to not want comes into play tapped lands, but this is rare.  Rupture Spire is right up there in terms of quality mana fixing as well.  The fetch lands from Shards of Alara are also pretty good and should be used, but don't go hog wild with these.  If you are using one fetch land to support 2 splashes, you should reconsider the 2nd splash.  Ancient Ziggurat I thought was ok, but I am off of it now.  It might have the odd application in a particularly heavy creature build, but I tend to play more spells than average in this environment.

Reborn Land Cyclers:  Some of these should not be played, unless absolutely necessary!  You should consider if you are willing to play these cards without the land cycling, and then decide what to do.  I'll comment on each of them here.  The only one I will always play is Pale Recluse because of its solid body.  You can't really say the same for the others, though the hasty Igneous Pouncer does the right thing in the right colours.  (Valley Rennet) often trades with 2-cc spells or small creatures, so it can represent a large loss of tempo.  Having a toughness of 4 or more is an advantage in this environment as many of the common removal spells deal 3 damage, like Resounding Thunder or give a creature -3 toughness, like Sangrite Backlash.  The U/B fear land cycler is a terrible deal for 6 mana.  Sanctum Plowbeast is interesting because of its large back end, but having defender pushes it down into the middle ground of land cyclers.  Sometimes you have to play these if you need the mana fixing, but be careful about playing more than one.  If you'd be unhappy playing it as a spell, then think hard about cutting it from your deck.

The Border Posts:  Use these.  Functionally, they are a comes into play tapped land.  However, they shouldn't be treated as 'just' land.  Examine your hand.  Do you need the mana fixing by playing their alternate casting cost, or can you play them out on the 3rd turn to accelerate into a large 5cc creature on the 4th turn?  Sometimes getting to 5 mana first can swing a game largely in your favor; playing out the border posts on turn 1 ensures you'll get a steady stream of land drops, but nothing explosive.  Sometimes they should be a land drop, but sometimes they should be acceleration.  Figuring out which one they'll be will improve your game.  If my hand is on colour, with 3 lands and a border post, it is an easy decision to wait till the 3rd turn to play out the border post for it's regular casting cost, ramping up my mana on later turns.

Conflux Land Cyclers:  These are quite handy, and your on colour ones should be considered if you need the fixing.  Fiery Fall should always be played if you are in red, but don't be afraid to cycle it in the early game.  I know it's removal, but it's not efficient removal, and sometimes it will clog your hand.  This is a similar choice to the border posts in that deciding when it should be mana fixing and when the spell should be the play can swing games.  Each of the cycle has its applications, but Gleam of Resistance can dominate a busy red zone.  Absorb Vis is nothing special, it's only the odd time I'll consider using it as a spell.  Sylvan Bounty, with the instant speed gain of 8 life, can turn around a race in your favor.  And Traumatic Visions usually comes in out of the sideboard in case of game changing spell like Martial Coup or Lavalanche.

Obelisks:  These tri colour producing artifacts should come out to play in certain decks, particularly in decks that want to survive the early game and ramp up mana in order to play out a steady stream of high casting cost bombs.  I used to never play these, but sometimes they do find the right spot in the curve and allow access to splashed spells.  Use these on a case by case basis only.

Armillary Sphere:   This should always be played if you've got one.  The only time I cut one from a deck was when I happened to have two in my card pool.

Trace of Abundance:  Definitely plays this one if you are a base green deck with access to red or white mana.  This is right up there with the trilands and Rupture Spire for quality mana fixing.

Domain Considerations:  Do you need the Domain?  The Domain cards can be quite powerful, but stretching your mana base in order to accommodate them can be an overall negative.  Drag Down is just fine in normal 3 colour decks and you shouldn't try to get to 4/5 or the full Domain just for this card.  Ditto for Matca Rioters, as it is a fine 3-cc creature at a potential 3/3.  In order to stretch my mana base to get the Domain, I want to be able to do it without much effort through my mana fixing, or I want a critical mass of Domain cards that push my deck in that direction.  The Resounding cycle of cards from Shards of Alara should also receive some consideration here.  It's nice to have the option to cycle these cards, but not required, and again do not stretch your mana base just to be able to cycle these.

Mulligans:  This is a big one as sometimes, no matter how well constructed your mana base is, you'll have to mulligan away your hand because of the lack of a key colour or mana in general.  If your hand can play out between turns 3 and 5, having a mix of creatures, spells, and appropriate mana, that's an easy keep.  Sometimes you'll be looking at a good hand, but it's just missing one thing.  If you can reasonably expect to draw that one thing (such as a land from one of your main colours), this is an easy keep as well.  There is some risk involved, but the benefits outweigh the risk.  Now, if you need to draw into 2 separate cards to play out your hand, time to send the first seven cards packing.  Having removal and the ability to play that removal tilts me towards keeping.  Hands with nothing to do before the 5th turn, well, these are pretty much death sentences in this format, where 3 power creatures often show up on turn 2.

Too much Mana fixing:  Mana fixing can take up parts of the early turns in a game but not all the time!  For example, if you are fixing mana on turn 2 by playing Rupture Spire, cycling for a Swamp on turn 3, and rolling out an Obelisk of Bant on turn 4, you had better be doing something spectacular on turn 5 and beyond.  Starting a game like this, you might be staring down 3 creatures or more on turn 5, and all your opponent needs is one removal spell to completely dominate the game by removing your first blocker/threat.

Land Counts:  In general, my decks tend to go between 16 and 17 lands, with very odd builds going to 15 lands.  I played 18 lands sometimes early on, with disastrous results.  The fixing is good enough in this format that you shouldn't ever need to run 18 lands.  Sometimes I'll have this feeling that 16 lands are not enough, but 17 lands are too much, but I really can't decide what I want to do.  In this case, look towards on colour card that cycles, such as Jungle Weaver or Molten Frame.  These can be looked at as half a spell, so in a sense, you are sort of going from 17 lands to 16 1/2 lands by adding a cycler.  In general for cycling, and for the land cyclers in particular, when these are added to a deck they can be considered as half spell and half land in terms of your mana count.

Balancing all these out to build a mana base is the key to initial success in Alara Block sealed deck.  Once you understand what your colours your sealed pool is capable of producing consistently, then it's time to see how your spells can fit in and interact with your mana base.  Do you have enough stability in your mana base to go with all 5 colours, splashing multiple bombs?  Or is your only hope by being aggressive and limiting yourself to 3 colours?  Or will it be some mix of the two?  I'll try answering these questions in Part 2, a swiss sealed deck event report with deck building and play decision commentary inspired by Godot.