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By: MarcosPMA, nn
Oct 06 2016 12:00pm
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Welcome to another edition of Sealed Success!  By the time this article goes up the Kaladesh prerelease will be rocking and rolling and I hope to find myself in those queues battling out some Kaladesh Limited.  Since Kaladesh released in paper I've been doing some drafting and while I've been winning, I feel I'm getting lucky in doing so.  Signaling has been a little weird since you don't actually have to play too many colored cards to make a deck work.  Some amount of your deck is going to be artifacts so you don't have to pick up as many on color playables as you normally would need to.  You could be X/x/x (one main color/one splash/artifacts/second splash) which makes it important to know if one color is open, not necessarily knowing if two colors are open.  Of course if the packs are flush with colored cards then you need to draft like normal and play attention to the signals you are getting.

In my limited experience with Kaladesh Limited (pun intended), I've found two cards that you need to play with correctly in order to put them into your deck: Attune with Aether and Prophetic Prism.

                                                                                   

Mana fixing at commons means your manabase is more stable, which in turn allows you to explore the possibility of playing more colors than you normally would.  These two cards and a basic of another color allows you to splash one to two cards easily without making your mana worse because of it.  However, these cards have to have actual use in your deck other than fixing your mana.  If you're playing with Attune with Aether, you must want both the mana fixing and the energy the card provides.  You can't be playing with Lay of the Land in your deck, it simply doesn't do enough if that's what you end up with.  If you're able to Attune with Aether for a Swamp in a RG deck and cast Unlicensed Disintegration and use the two energy to pump a Longtusk Cub or make a Harnessed Lightning stronger, you did a lot of for that one mana.  You have to make the energy relevant, because otherwise Attune could be Swamp #2, except in that situation the Swamp is better since it didn't cost you a card and mana to draw it.

Prophetic Prism in a two color deck that doesn't care about the artifact in play is not worth it.  Sure, it draws a card but you spent mana to draw that card and got nothing in return for it.  It's the Gitaxian Probe fallacy.  If you consider a deck with 4 Gitaxian Probes, it's like you're playing a 56 card deck.  However, in order to play those cards you had to cut 4 cards from the deck, all in exchange for trading one card for a random card.  If all you need is a random card, wouldn't it be better to actually play the cards you'd want to draw into?  If you want to play with Gitaxian Probe to draw into a burn spell or a removal spell, isn't it better to just play more of those type of cards?  If you need a Prophetic Prism to hit a land/creature/removal, why not just play that card instead?  Decks that play Gitaxian Probe not only need to draw cards, they need the information they get and they need the card in the graveyard.  If you're playing with Prophetic Prism you need to want the card, want the mana fixing, and want the artifact in play.  That Prophetic Prism is much more useful than the Prophetic Prism in a monocolored deck/stable two color deck.

Last week I went over my first prerelease pool and this week I'd like to take a look at my next two pools and a draft I did this past weekend.  Let's begin!

Preleased Sealed Pool #2

              

A couple good white cards are here but not a lot of depth, however that is to be expected in this format.  I like the Skyswirl Harriers and the Aetherstorm Roc the best along with the Aerial Responder.  Toolcraft Exemplar could make an appearance if I end up with a W/x Aggro deck.  Fragmentize is a good removal spell to deal with Vehicles so white has some good things going for it.

           

Not a lot of depth here either, but it's quite poor in blue.  Aethersquall Ancient with hardly any energy producers in blue means my other color needs to produce energy for me to take full effect of the rare.  Padeem is great if I can build a heavy artifact deck, otherwise is a 1/4 for 4.  There just isn't enough here to warrant me playing blue, even as a splash color.  My other colors would have to be terrible for me to consider blue.

        

No depth here either unfortunately for me.  Tidy Conclusion and Fortuitous Find are good cards but not good enough for me to consider black.  It's slightly worse than blue and blue wasn't great to begin with.  Black just doesn't do anything.

             

Okay okay, finally some depth!  Red has a couple of aggressive cards and a great removal spell in Welding Sparks.  Fateful Showdown is too slow and expensive to warrant consideration.  Wayward Giants are big doofuses that can block Vehicles and are great at attacking.  Inventor's Apprentice into artifact into Brazen Scourge is a lot of damage to start the game with.  The curve is a little funky but I can fix that with artifacts and another color.

         

I'm only really interested in four cards here: Longtusk Cub, Thriving Rhino, Armorcraft Judge and Arborback Stomper.  Attune and Wild Wanderer could make a potential splash work, but I'm not sure that this is better than what white has to offer.  It is better than blue and black, that's for sure.  No Appetite for the Unnatural makes me sad.

                   

No Prophetic Prism here so if I'm splashing I have to be green or no splash at all.  I have some good Vehicles in Ballista Charger and Sky Skiff.  Renegade Freighter hits hard and fast if you curve out into it.   Bastion Mastodons are big dummies that you don't need to be in white to play and the Eager Construct makes mulligans a lot more bearable while helping you out when you're curving out.

       

My blue and black weren't good so it's unlikely that I use those gold uncommons.  Veteran Motorist and Depala make me lean very heavily towards RW, especially since Engineered Might in GW can't actually go wide, so you're limited in how you can use the card.  Aether Hub can allow for a splash, but given this pool I'm not interested in splashing.


Looking at this pool I decided that my best bet was to go RW Aggro since I had two payoffs in Veteran Motorist and Depala, Pilot Exemplar.  My pool doesn't allow me to go long so there's no use in trying to be a control deck and I have the tools to be a good aggressive deck.  Toolcraft Exemplar is going to be attacking for 1 on turn 2 a lot, but it can crew any Vehicle and I can live the dream of turn 1 Exemplar into turn 2 Eager Cadet/Sky Skiff.  I have a fair amount of flying in the deck which functions as reach here.  I can get in a few hits early then use my fliers to finish off my opponent should I find myself in a racing situation.  We played an 8 player pod with this deck and I won the first two matches quite easily and decided for the sake of time/sleep to draw the third match and go home "early".

Before this pool I had actually gotten a kit earlier that night and after looking at it for a bit I deemed it unplayable and dropped before the first match even went up.  Later on when I had a clear head and not on a slight tilt I broke down the pool and actually built the deck.  Let's look it over!

Prerelease Sealed Pool #3

               

The cards I'm excited about here are: Aerial Responder, Skywhaler's Shot, and Propeller Pioneer.  Outside of that I'm not too happy with what I'm looking at.  The cards here don't do enough for me to justify playing them.  I can play white as a support color due to the removal it has, but I'm not playing white as my primary color.  It can't really win games on its own.

       

Only 8 blue cards?  Wow, that's not a lot of cards to work with!  Do these cards actually do anything together?  I suppose Glimmer of Genius and Thriving Turtles are decent, but they're quite underpowered if you're looking at them as reasons to play a color.  It's a lot worse than white, and white wasn't that great to begin with.  I don't see myself touching any of these blue cards.

               

Okay, we have some decent cards here in black.  I wonder if that's because I have more of them?  If a color has more cards in it I'm inclined to believe it has higher odds of being played, or at least be playable.  Die Young and Tidy Conclusion are good removal spells.  The creatures a little underpowered but I can trade them off and get them back with Dukhara Scavenger if I need to.  Live Fast is card advantage and an energy source for my Die Young.  Black is merely okay, but that's better than blue and white already.

          

Depending on the deck I can see playing between 6-8 red cards.  Welding Sparks is great and Skyship Stalker is a good way to spend excess mana.  Wayward Giant is big while Spontaneous Artist, Salivating Gremlins, and Spireside Infiltrator are playable creatures.

             

Riparian Tiger and Cowl Prowlers are a nice top end here, but the rest of the color is merely okay.  Highspire Artisans aren't too impressive and the Wild Wanderer is best used to help splash as opposed to ramping you.  Creeping Mold and Appetite for the Unnatural deserve consideration here as they can eliminate Vehicles with ease.  Green is merely okay, nothing more than that.

                

17 artifacts and yet a lot of them aren't very desirable actually.  Multiform Wonder is just decent in my opinion so I'm not excited about it.  Aradara Express has a high crew cost but it hits hard once you're able to crew it.  Scraphead Scrounger is good if I'm aggressive, but not so much if I'm even a little bit slower.  Filigree Familiar is nice and the Cobra can be if I'm in green.

  

Unless I'm in these color combinations I'm not getting anything here and the Sequestered Stash is unplayable in my opinion.

Perhaps I should be BR since Skyship Stalker is good, but I settled on a GB deck that looks pretty average at best to me.  In terms of Sealed, having an average deck is close to unplayable in most situations since over the course of 7-9 rounds you're going to have to beat really good decks in order to have a good record. Now, I know I'm not playing that many rounds and this is just the prerelease, but if I had to play this deck I would win maybe half of my games?  It's not technically unplayable, but it's not good either.  In reality the pool isn't as bad as I thought it to be, but it's not much better either.  What do you think?  Would you have played with this?

Kaladesh Draft

This past weekend I happened to draft the format 3 times, with a finals split in the last two drafts I did.  Both drafts were base black and had a fair amount of Die Young.  My first draft didn't go so well when I tried to be UG Energy and even though I had Empyreal Voyager it didn't pan out the way I wanted it to.  Black was open in my next two drafts and I figured I'd take the black cards and see where that would take me.  UB Control and GB Midrange were the decks I drafted and I liked those quite a bit.  I didn't do anything fancy with Vehicles, I just killed things and outcarded my opponent.  This is what my GB deck looked like: 

 

I was heavy black in pack 1 and ended up with 3 Die Young going into pack 2 and that's when I opened Nissa, Vital Force.  I had some blue cards and wondered if Nissa was worth switching colors for, and it turns out she was definitely worth it.  The games Nissa came down I was able to win easily and the emblem is back breaking if the game starts to slow down a bit.  I would not recommend making an emblem right away as you're more likely to win using her +1 and -3 over the course of several turns.  Regardless of me having Nissa or not, the deck is still good.  I would have to play less noncreature spells if I didn't have Nissa but I'd be fine.  Architect of the Untamed with a lot of energy sources means I'm able to make at least one 6/6 and if I make two I'm going to win.  I have plenty of removal and some big creatures that aren't easy to deal with.

Treasure Chests - The Future

I'm writing this section knowing that there will be news/updates concerning Magic Online later today (right now it is 3 a.m. Tuesday) because how I feel about Treasure Chests won't change with what gets said tomorrow.  I believe that this is the beginning of the end of Magic Online at its current state and the first step towards a free-to-play platform.

Treasure Chests are used in other games with Eternal being the game I have the most experience with.  Even though it is in Beta, it uses the chest system to great effect.  When you complete an event or quest you are rewarded some number of chests.  Those chests contain a mix of currency, cards, and packs.  You can use the currency to play more events or buy packs while you can either play with the cards or use to them create other cards that you may need.  In theory you could buy packs to get cards, but you don't have to if you're willing to spend time to acquire a collection. Everything in the chest has a use and so receiving a chest as a prize is actually worth something because even if you don't get what you specifically want, you can use what you opened to get what you need.

A Magic Online chest in our current state has no use outside of some rare instances.  If you open a valuable card you can sell it for tickets which can get you packs or cards you need.  If you open play points then you can keep playing with your deck and maybe earn a valuable card.  However, if you end up with bulk rares, uncommons, and commons you'll have earned absolutely nothing.  What use do Magic players have for bulk cards?  You can't sell them and they're not worth anything in trade, so it's like you earned nothing at all.  If your average chest is a bulk rare and random Standard commons and uncommons, did you win anything at all?

What if in the future you could use cards to "craft" other cards?  Now the cards you get from chests have a purpose and value, and with that means you've actually earned something.  As much as I blast Wizards of the Coast, they're not stupid.  They know what players do with packs they earn in Leagues and/or drafts.  We all know the contents of a pack are worth less than the pack itself, so we use the pack as a currency and only open them in events that require packs being opened.  If the majority of players opened packs to acquire cards, this wouldn't be an issue.  They wouldn't do this unless the cards had a specific use and a crafting system would be that very use.

In essence, the Magic Online as we know it is not ready for a Treasure Chest system.  It has no use for it with the way it is currently structured. However, a different Magic Online with a different economy might actually want Treasure Chests.  Perhaps that Magic Online is free to play?

Conclusion

Whether it's on Magic Online or another platform I strongly believe that online Magic is heading towards a future where it's going to have a "free to play" model.  I don't know if that's a good thing or not, only the future will tell.  In any case, Kaladesh is on Magic Online!  I'll be back next week with a draft and a sealed league and hopefully some practice sealed as well.

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns leave them in the comments section below.

Thanks for reading!