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By: MarcosPMA, nn
Jan 26 2016 1:00pm
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Hello and welcome to another edition of Sealed Success!  Oath of the Gatewatch is officially released and my quest to open an Expedition has been less than ideal.  Last set it took me 3 prerelease kits (18 packs) to open an Expedition whereas this set I'm about 40 packs into it and I've yet to open a single one.  The quest will continue and hopefully it ends with a Wasteland.

Speaking of Wastes, those are really hard to open!  They take up a common slot and even though they're twice as common as any common (or so I'm told) I think I'm averaging less than 1 Wastes per sealed pool.  Finding colorless sources isn't too hard in Oath, but if you're looking for Wastes specifically it's going to be a bit of a challenge, so I expect most Walker of the Wastes that are played to "just" be a 5 mana 4/4 trampler.

I don't know if I discussed this or not, but the colorless cards in this set are not free to play.  Someone saw that I opened a Sea Gate Wreckage and said I should play it because it draws a card and it's basically free, but I disagreed.  It's likely that this person equated colorless mana to generic mana and that's why they thought it was free, but it really isn't.  Sea Gate Wreckage produces colorless mana and needs colorless mana to activate it, so you're effectively playing at least 2 colorless sources to be able to use the land, but 2 isn't really enough and so you're more likely going to have to play 3 sources to activate it and that brings your colorless count to 4 (3 sources + Sea Gate).  Once I explained that to this person they were much less enthused to playing the card.  So if you're wanting to play a card that needs colorless mana to make it work (in the cmc or activated ability), then you're pushing yourself to a 3 color build from the start, possibly 4 colors if you're using Unknown Shores and/or Crumbling Vestige to splash a color. When you're building your sealed pool you need to make sure you have enough fixing to make your manabase as stable as possible.  The less dual lands/mana fixers you have the more likely it is that you're going to be restricted to just a 2 color build.

While I'm on the subject on Crumbling Vestige, does it bother anyone that you can't produce colorless mana when it first comes into play?  I had a game where I needed a colorless source to cast a colorless creature and the land I drew was Crumbling Vestige, which would have been great until you realize you can't produce a colorless when it comes into play.  It just feels weird that there are situations where you're curving out and the Vestige actually makes it so you have to wait a turn to play your colorless creature.  

Last week I covered the prerelease pool I did on Saturday and today we'll be going over the one I did on Sunday, but before that let's take a look at the last draft I did for Mirrodin block

Mirrodin Block Flashback Draft

I had a plan going into the draft and by all accounts I did not execute it very well, but that's due to my lack of experience as opposed to blatant bad drafting.  I had the idea of going sunburst since you'd be able to draft Skyreach Manta and having a 5 mana 4/4 seemed like a pretty sweet deal.  This may have been a trap as it's likely that other people would be doing the same thing, but given how little experience I have with the format and the difficulty I've had in reading signals, it's much more preferable to have a plan and try to go that route as opposed to trying to draft whatever is open.  Normally you'd be better off reading signals as opposed to forcing something but that only works in a format where your opponents are drafting 2 color decks.  In that scenario you can see what colors are open and draft those cards even if they might not be the objectively best cards you could be taking.  In Mirrodin the inclusion of artifacts makes looking for open colors much more difficult due to the fact that you're going to see colored cards much less often than you normally would.  Perhaps an experienced drafter can looking for those signals and see the open colors, however that drafter is not me.

I ended up with an okay deck and got destroyed by my opponent who had a much more synergistic deck than I did.  They presented more questions than I had answers for and they absolutely deserved to win.

WHITE

           

BLUE

              

BLACK

              

RED

              

GREEN

                

MULTI/COLORLESS/LAND

           

Pool Analysis

White - The good cards in white are pretty good (Expedition Raptor, Ondu Rising + Munda's Vanguard) but the bad cards are pretty bad (Cliffside Lookout, Mighty Leap, Inspired Charge).  There aren't enough cards in white to make it a supporting color or a main color and that makes the color unplayable enough though Munda's Vanguard is quite the bomb in the right deck.

Blue - Crush of Tentacles and Drowner of Hope are pretty good cards to have even though the other blue cards aren't quite as strong.  There's no countermagic in blue (I don't count Abstruse Interference as a card) so if I play blue it's going to have to be paired with a color that has removal. Jwar Isle Avenger is a nice beater and Clutch of Currents is as good as it's always been.  I consider blue to be medium, not good but not bad either.

Black - Dread Defiler can close out a game quickly and the package of Flaying Tendrils/Rising Miasma/Transgress the Mind can play a nice control role.  Smothering Abomination plus the other fliers makes it so you can pressure the opponent in the skies while control the ground with blockers and sweepers.  Drana's Chosen is quite good if I'm the Ally deck but if I'm not then it's a total blank.

Red - There's only a few cards in red I'm interested in playing (Reality Hemorrhage, Touch of the Void, Stonefury, Embodiment of Fury) and then the rest of it I'd rather not play.  Since there are so few good cards in red I can't consider myself playing it even though it has actual removal spells.  One thing to note is that since there are a lot less X/1s in the format it makes Boiling Earth not as good as it used to be.

Green - Green has dudes and that's about it.  Green is doing what green should be doing and providing big beefy creatures to attack with as well as some good early creatures that can block/attack.  The major flaw green has is that there aren't any "I win" cards and there isn't a whole lot of tricks that you can use.  You can use Elemental Uprising on offense or defense but if things go wrong and you're using this in the early game then you might be set back enough that you lose because of it.  Still, it's a card that most people won't expect and you can definitely get value out of it.

Multi/Colorless - The gold cards are going to be good if you can play them and if you manage to cast Ruin Processor and gain 5 life then you're likely a huge favorite to win the game since 7/8 is quite hard to block effectively.

I had played in the Two-Headed Giant event prior to this and once that ended we were given the kits for the 1v1 event so I was a bit tired and brain dead by the time I sat down to build this deck.  In spite of that this is what I came up with:

Deck #1
 
Creatures
1 Culling Drone
1 Blinding Drone
1 Sky Scourer
1 Mindmelter
1 Nirkana Assassin
1 Ruination Guide
1 Vampire Envoy
1 Smothering Abomination
1 Havoc Sower
1 Warden of Geometries
1 Silent Skimmer
1 Jwar Isle Avenger
2 Kozilek's Translator
1 Kozilek's Channeler
1 Drowner of Hope
1 Ruin Processor
1 Dread Defiler
18 cards

Other Spells
1 Clutch of Currents
1 Anticipate
1 Transgress the Mind
1 Rising Miasma
1 Crush of Tentacles
5 cards
Lands
1 Wastes
8 Island
8 Swamp
17 cards
 
 

*Should be 7 Island + 1 Skyline Cascade

I wasn't really sure if I should be Blue/Black or Black/Green.  I felt I needed to play black because of Rising Miasma/Flaying Tendrils along with Dread Defiler and Smothering Abomination, so the real question was what color to pair it with.  Green gives me more of a beatdown approach while blue gives me tricks plus a reset button in Crush of Tentacles.  In the end I was tired and didn't want to think too much so I decided to go with the deck that let me play the most rares.  It's a bad way of thinking but at the time I had to make a choice and didn't want to think too long about it.  I went 2-1-1 and I sided into Black/Green in two matches.

Deck #2
 
Creatures
1 Culling Drone
1 Oran-Rief Invoker
1 Sky Scourer
1 Nirkana Assassin
1 Vampire Envoy
1 Smothering Abomination
1 Havoc Sower
1 Silent Skimmer
1 Eyeless Watcher
2 Kozilek's Translator
1 Kozilek's Channeler
2 Tajuru Pathwarden
1 Embodiment of Insight
1 Canopy Gorger
1 Ruin Processor
1 Dread Defiler
1 Giant Mantis
19 cards

Other Spells
1 Transgress the Mind
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 Pulse of Murasa
1 Rising Miasma
4 cards
Lands
1 Wastes
8 Forest
8 Swamp
17 cards
 
 

 

I sided in the green in matchups where I felt that I needed to have better creatures and have more pressure in play as opposed to trying to be a bad control deck with Crush of Tentacles.  The games I won were the games where I was curving out and applying pressure with my creatures, which is a great way to leverage the raw power level of Dread Defiler.  The games I lost where ones were I was slow coming out and wasn't able to match what my opponent was doing every turn of the game.  In that sense it felt important to be curving out and doing things early on, which means it's less efficient to be the slow control deck.  Grizzly bears aren't generally what you want in sealed since they have a lower power level and are horrible draws in the later stages of the game, but this might be a format where you need to play one just to be able to block/attack in the early turns.

Conclusion

I believe that Oath of the Gatewatch is a faster format than Battle for Zendikar.  There are less Eldrazi running around as well as less scions, so it makes it less likely that your opponent is going to play giant creatures consistently.  My early impressions led me to believe that "big" creatures right now are cards that are comparable to Tajuru Pathwarden (5/4) and Canopy Gorger (6/5).  Of course there are creatures that are larger than that but I think on average that is as big as you'll see creaturely naturally get.  

Another reason to believe the format sped up is due to the Support mechanic.  Support naturally wants you to play creatures and have them in play. You don't necessarily have to be aggro, but you want to have enough creatures where Support 2/Support 3 is actually going to do something.  Support cards want you to curve into them, leading you down a path of creature heavy builds that naturally will want you to attack as early as possible.  I drafted triple Oath this Saturday (we didn't have BFZ) and while my deck featured no rares or insane powerful cards (outside of Joraja Auxiliary) it was a deck that leaned heavily on Support.  Joraga Auxiliary, Expedition Raptor, and Lead by Example were cards that rewarded me for having creatures in play while Steppe Glider made creatures with +1/+1 counters formidable threats.  I curved out a vast majority of my games and when I hit Expedition Raptor on turn 5 the game swung largely in my favor.  In my opinion you're better off attacking as opposed to blocking right now.  For those interested here is my draft deck:

Draft Deck
 
Creatures
1 Makindi Aeronaut
3 Ondu War Cleric
2 Joraga Auxiliary
2 Scion Summoner
3 Kor Sky Climber
1 Kor Scythemaster
2 Expedition Raptor
2 Steppe Glider
1 Tajuru Pathwarden
2 Canopy Gorger
19 cards

Other Spells
1 Immolating Glare
1 Lead by Example
2 Isolation Zone
4 cards
Lands
9 Forest
8 Plains
17 cards
 
 

 

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns leave them in the comments section below!  Next week is the Oath prerelease on MTGO so I'll be back with a bunch of drafts!

Thanks for reading/watching!