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By: MarcosPMA, nn
Jun 12 2019 12:00pm
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Hello and welcome to another edition of Sealed Success!  I played in the Modern Horizons prerelease and price tag aside it was fun, though not as fun as Modern Masters 2017, which will always be my threshold for a good draft environment which costs more than a regular draft.  I lost horribly to a deck with multiple Iceberg Cancrix and then immediately drafted one of my own and let me tell you, there is nothing like seeing your opponent lose all hope as you keep blinking a snow creature with Soulherder and watching their deck size dwindle.  I would say the set is more neat than fun because all the cards are a little wacky and there are so many mechanics, but whether that directly translates to fun is up for debate.  I had a thought to play a phantom draft on Magic Online but there's not really any point in doing it with Core 2020 about a month away, so I'd rather make sure to get the most War of the Spark drafts I can before I shift to Core 2020.  In fact if we look at the upcoming schedule we don't actually have too much time left with War of the Spark.  It seems as though time flew quickly and perhaps it did, but I do have to recognize I did have some weeks off after War of the Spark came out.  So we won't collectively have as much time with WAR as I'd like, so let's make the most of it.

  • Today - War of the Spark Draft League #4, War of the Spark Sealed League #3, War of the Spark Sealed League #4
  • 6/20 - War of the Spark Draft League #5, War of the Spark Sealed League #3 video, War of the Spark Sealed League #4 videos
  • 6/27 - War of the Spark Draft League #6, War of the Spark Sealed League #3 video, War of the Spark Sealed League #4 videos
  • 7/4 - Core 2020 Sealed Set Review, War of the Spark Sealed League #3 videos, War of the Spark Sealed League #4 videos

The way things are shaping up I won't have to finish the leagues before the set review for Core 2020 is due, so we'll have a fairly long article that week as I wrap up the leagues and do the review all at once.  With all that said, let's open some packs.

War of the Spark Draft League #4

I have to admit it was a little hard not to start off against with Evolution Sage, but given that my attempts at any deck with it on Magic Online have not been great, I decided to take Teferi, Time Raveler instead.  Teferi is a good card and you can use it offensively to get a blocker out of the way while neutralizing combat tricks, or as a value card by rebuying your etb effects while drawing you a card.  Of course we didn't actually go the route of Teferi, nor our second pick of Feather, the Redeemed.  Instead, by having those two cards I was incentizived to pick blue, red, and/or white cards and found myself in position to have a good U/R deck.  From there all I had to do was not deviate from the blue and red cards I was getting and make sure I wasn't forcing some white splash for Teferi and Wanderer's Strike.  Splashing does add power but at the sake of consistency and that's not something I wanted with the way I envisioned games playing out.

I believe the only glaring hole this deck has is being able to get rid of a naturally big creature, and it did show in all three matches.  When my opponent played Primordial Wurm early and I had no way to deal with it, I was forced to chump block and stall until I had a board good enough to stop it from attacking.  However, if my opponent had a big flier like a Thunder Drake with multiple +1/+1 counters, I was hoping for cards that weren't in my deck.  It's not the decks fault really, blue and red do have a tough time removing creatures with large amounts of toughness once they're in play.  You're either looking at a bounce spell and counter or having to use multiple spells in order to take down a singular large threat.    I played well for the most part and got to do fun things with both Saheeli and Kasmina, but my third round opponent was too good for me to defeat.  

War of the Spark Sealed League #3

I've grown to not like white as a color in War of the Spark, but I'm not opposed to playing it if I feel it's the best color in a sealed pool and/or open in draft.  Removal is still king in Limited and with about 5 pieces of it in white alone along with the potential snowball effect of Grateful Apparition I can make good use of my planeswalkers while attacking my opponent.  We have won games with Grateful Apparition with +1/+1 counters before and very quickly spirals out of control if the opponent has no way to interact with it.   As for the rest of the pool, black is pretty unplayable and from my point of view every non-white deck is much worse than any of the white decks I have.  A big part of this is the removal suite gets a lot worse without compensating in better creatures/spells.  I've played decks where they have little removal but the power level is high so it all balances out in a way, but if you drop the power level and lose removal, it's a tough way to go about things.  What do you think?  Am I forced to play white or is another deck viable?

War of the Spark Sealed League #4

I don't normally make so few decks but this was a case where the other options just weren't viable enough to warrant making other decks.  Green and black didn't have enough depth to make them worthy inclusions, and by themselves were worse versions of blue and red.  White always seems to look playable, and if you get the good white cards it actually is, but for the most part white is relatively underpowered compared to the rest of the colors.  Most of it comes down to the white common creatures being less useful/powerful than the other colors.  I like Trusted Pegasus, Enforcer Griffin, Law-Rune Enforcer, and Wanderer's Strike, but after that the white commons drop off in power level considerably.  This isn't to say you can't play with white cards, rather that it's more difficult to do so.

Regardless of all that I at least have a decent option in U/R, even if it's not the idea version of the deck.  In my mind when I have Saheeli, Sublime Artificer and Ral, Storm Conduit I want good noncreature spells in my deck so I can get value off my planeswalkers to either augment my creature package or help beef up any deficiencies I have.  Thankfully Sarkhan, the Masterless gives me a way to circumvent all that by attacking them directly with planeswalkers if I'm able to set up that board state.  It's possible to win without Sarkhan, but it'd be a lot easier to do it with him.  What do you think?  What would you build?

Conclusion

I had a pretty good draft deck and were it not for my opponent having incredibly good draws against me I feel I would have gone 3-0 this week.  I can't be mad at losing to a better deck because I did about all I could do right and that's the important thing to take away.  Sometimes you have games where you can make all the right decisions and still lose due to factors you can't control.  You can't win all the time, there are times where you must lose and part of growing and learning is being able to accept defeat whenever it happens.  

I feel a bit mixed about my sealed pools, on one hand they're not unplayable but on the other I'm not sure how it'll all pan out.  If I had to guess I'd say I'm more likely to lose than win with them, but the beauty of Magic is that you have a chance no matter what and sometimes you just get there.  As long as you see a path to victory and play towards it you have a chance at winning games.  If you have any comments, questions, or concerns leave them in the comments section below.

Thanks for reading/watching!