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By: MarcosPMA, nn
Mar 17 2015 12:00pm
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Hello and welcome to another edition of Sealed Success!  This weekend is the Dragons of Tarkir paper prerelease, which means it's time for a set review! Set reviews are the fun part for me from spoilers since I want to see what sweet commons and uncommons I want to open/play in the new Limited environment.  Commons and uncommons are the bread and butter for a Limited player and can be more exciting than the rares a lot of the time.

As for the prerelease itself, I don't know for sure if you can pick clans, although I do expect it so I'm going to assume it'll happen.  I don't think you should pick a clan hoping to spike the tournament and win because there are so many variables going against you that it doesn't make sense to pick a clan because you think its best.  First of all, you're not guaranteed to play that clan even if you pick it.  Those of you who remember my Born of the Gods prerelease will remember that even though I chose green, I built a black/white deck because my green was not playable.  If you choose the Atarka clan for example, you might find that your green/red cards outside your seeded pack are not good at all and you might play blue/white instead.  Second of all, what if you pick a clan thinking it's good and get a bad promo?  Well at that point you're less enthused about the event and might not have as good a time as possible.  I'd pick a clan based off of wanting to open a chase rare/mythic or because you like that color combination in general.  I'm probably going to choose the Dromoka clan because I like green/white and Bolster is sweet.  As far as the Dragonlord cycle goes, if you're able to open one in your seeded pack, then I would want Atarka first, then Silumgar, then Ojutai, then Dromoka, then lastly Kolaghan. 

The grading scale for the set review will go as follows: Bomb, Good, Playable, Unplayable, Sideboard.  In Sealed, we're not looking to rank them 1-10 or how highly they should be picked or anything like that.  We can't choose what we get, we can only make do with the hands we're dealt with.  As such, we can't change the cards we get.  We have to play them, so at that point it's more useful to know which cards are good objectively rather than how they relate to other cards.  

 

Last set review I didn't like how I didn't have a way to measure card that was better than a playable but wasn't a bomb.  This led to me having lots of playable cards that were actually quite better than that but got a grade that made them feel less powerful than they would be otherwise.  This led me to add "Good" to the scale.  A Good grade means that the card is quite playable and has a strong effect, but not as pronounced as a Bomb would be.  Hopefully this change will let me better grade the cards and give you a better understanding of the cards as you go into the Prerelease.

Now then, let's look at Dragons of Tarkir!

Dragons of Tarkir Sealed Set Review

Conclusion

I can't believe Pacifism is back, and at common!  That card is too good and efficient at common.  Dragons of Tarkir looks sweet and I can't wait to battle with our new dragon overlords.  The removal suite in the set is sweet, there are some good bombs, and it looks fairly balanced for the most part. I imagine we're going to see mostly 2 color decks, although it wouldn't surprise me to see some 3 color decks floating around.  The fixing isn't the best in this set, but you can play for removal/bombs if you get some number of Evolving Wilds/monuments.  I don't think 4-5 color is viable at all in this Prerelease format, so I'd abstain from trying to get greedy with your decks.

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns please leave those in the comments section below!  Next week I'll be back with a report over my Sealed pool and my first impression of Dragons of Tarkir.

Thanks for reading/watching!

6 Comments

All Hail Sinfonia by MadKat at Tue, 03/17/2015 - 12:05
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All hail Sinfonia!

:D by JXClaytor at Tue, 03/17/2015 - 12:29
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:D

Hail Sinfonia indeed! :D by MarcosPMA at Wed, 03/18/2015 - 17:17
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Hail Sinfonia indeed! :D

I wish this were facebook so by JXClaytor at Thu, 03/19/2015 - 00:14
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I wish this were facebook so I could like these comments

That happens to me a lot, by Joe Fiorini at Thu, 03/19/2015 - 07:20
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That happens to me a lot, too. :)

Zeta Kappa here. by JXClaytor at Thu, 03/19/2015 - 09:57
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Zeta Kappa here.