We learn nothing from unwarranted success. We learn almost everything from failure. Yet for most of my life I have done everything in my power to avoid failure. I am not alone. I'm guessing that most of you have tried to avoid failure as well. This is not entirely a bad thing. Studying in school to avoid a failing grade is a good thing. However we also avoid failure in negative ways as well. How many of us have avoided new activities because we're afraid of embarrassing ourselves with a potential failure. How many of us have not asked someone out on a date due to the fear of rejection? How many of us stick to what we've always done because it is safe and comfortable? I'm betting the number of us that have done these things is quite high.
I avoid many opportunities in this way without even noticing it most of the time. Sometimes failure can cost us a lot, such as a failing grade or the loss of a job. Other times failure results in little more than a harmless bruise to our egos.
It's that ego thing that gets in the way. We all make mistakes and yet we never want to admit to those mistakes because that might damage our view of ourselves. If we can't admit that we make mistakes, then we certainly can't learn anything from those mistakes. In a game as luck intensive as Magic, it's very easy to blame our mistakes on luck. It's also equally easy to claim our victories are skillful rather than lucky. In the end, this type of attitude stops us from growing.
Up and down are opposites. Skill and luck are not opposites. This seems to be a concept that eludes many of the players that I've played against online. I openly and freely admit the times when I've been lucky and it happens about as often as the times when I'm not lucky. However quite often, my opponents assume that by admitting that I was lucky, I am also admitting that I am bad player, or that my losing opponent is somehow more skilled than I am. This logic makes no sense to me. Good players get lucky too. In fact good players often "get lucky" more often than poor players because they keep their options open. In a losing situation good players are constantly thinking about which cards they can draw that will help them steal a victory or turn the game around. Poor players will often miss those opportunities. Therefore when those cards show up, the good players are lucky while the poor players just missed an opportunity to win the game. In essence, good players create more chances to "get lucky" than poor players, therefore it makes no sense to say that a lucky player is not skilled.
So, what does this have to do with anything related to Magic strategy? Everything. If we want to get better, we need to recognize failure and acknowledge luck in a realistic way. As an author it is tempting for me to write about my success stories. I could write pages about the time I got the most amazing deck filled with bomb after bomb and then I played some epic games to an amazing victory. However that isn't all that helpful to any of us. We wouldn't learn anything from it. It's much more useful to look at the times when I've either failed or had some success but could have done better. This means I'll be showing you some of the worst sealed deck pools and builds I've used. Not only did I blatantly misbuild some of these decks but I also tended to think that these pools are so bad I'd be lucky to get 1 match win out of them. This kind of attitude ended in horrible results. These deck pools are a challenge, but every deck pool should at least give you chance to do well. I wasn't so lucky with these deck pools. Of the four, I managed to go 1-2 with three of them and 2-1 in the fourth. Although that one 2-1 finish was due to a couple of lucky draws. See, I will admit it.
On a side note, if you are new to the 4-booster sealed format, take a look at my previous articles. I think they give a reasonable insight into format, but this article is for the advanced deckbuilders.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/4-booster-sealed-frequently-asked-questions-and-tournament-report
http://puremtgo.com/articles/4-booster-sealed-deckbuilding
Now on to the deckbuilding practice from four of my 4-booster sealed deck tournaments. I've included spoiler buttons so you can think about how you would handle the deck pools before you see what I did with them. I also included a text version of the decklists in case you want to use Magic Online to build a deck. Just cut and past the text into Notepad or a similar program. Then save the decklist as a .txt file, and load it into your deck editor.
#1
#1
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 1--------------------
1 Act of Treason
1 Angel's Feather
1 Arc Runner
1 Augury Owl
1 Berserkers of Blood Ridge
1 Bloodcrazed Goblin
1 Brindle Boar
1 Cancel
1 Canyon Minotaur
1 Child of Night
1 Cloud Crusader
1 Combust
1 Condemn
1 Corrupt
1 Cultivate
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Diminish
1 Dragon's Claw
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Duress
1 Flashfreeze
1 Foresee
1 Garruk's Companion
1 Gravedigger
1 Greater Basilisk
1 Hoarding Dragon
1 Holy Strength
1 Ice Cage
1 Incite
1 Maritime Guard
1 Mind Rot
1 Naturalize
1 Primal Cocoon
1 Prodigal Pyromancer
1 Quag Sickness
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Rotting Legion
1 Sacred Wolf
1 Safe Passage
1 Scroll Thief
1 Shiv's Embrace
1 Sleep
1 Solemn Offering
1 Squadron Hawk
1 Stone Golem
1 Stormtide Leviathan
1 Sylvan Ranger
1 Temple Bell
1 Unholy Strength
1 Volcanic Strength
2 Dryad's Favor
2 Preordain
2 Siege Mastodon
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 1--------------------
#1
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts and Land: Temple Bell will usually help you as much as it will hurt you. If you get enough milling cards it might be useful, however I wouldn't count on that happening. Sadly, Stone Golem is one of the better cards in this pool and it will be played. Dragonskull Summit is helpful if you are red/black but doesn't help much if you are trying for three colors.
Black: Black is reasonably good in this pool. The only problem is that it isn't very deep and Quag Sickness and Corrupt are the only removal spells, and they both require a heavy commitment to black.
Blue: Foresee and two Preordain give blue some nice card drawing and fixing options. Too bad there isn't much in blue that we want to draw with our card drawing spells.
Green: Greater Basilisk is our best creature in green. Otherwise we have some small creatures and mana acceleration.
Red: Red has a couple of good creatures in Hoarding Dragon and Prodigal Pyromancer but it has absolutely no burn, which makes it a tough color to run.
White: White is abysmal. Condemn is decent in a pinch, but Siege Mastodons are clearly nothing to get excited about.
Conclusions: Black is our only reasonably good color, and it isn't all that deep. The other four colors are weak but I don't think any of them really stand out as a great choice for a second color.
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#1
----------------------------Final Decklist 1------------------------------
I ended up playing blue and black because it had the most card advantage based cards. Unfortunately I'm low on creatures, and even lower on quality cards. I ended up doing terribly bad with this deck. I started off losing my first two matches and barely squeaked a match victory in my last round.
The biggest problem with this card pool is that it lacks early game plays and it doesn't have enough removal or fatties to make up for it in the long game. If I had to build it over again, I think I would try for a three color build with green because green is the only color with a decent early game.
Without heavy black, Quag Sickness and Corrupt are not worth it anymore. Therefore we don't have any sort of removal to speak of. This means this would still be a very difficult deck to pilot. However this build has a more aggressive build and can put a couple of must deal with threats out. Which would probably do better than the underpowered blue/black deck I used that had some removal but not much of anything else.
----------------------------Final Decklist 1------------------------------
#2
#2
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 2--------------------
1 Angel's Feather
1 Armored Ascension
1 Assassinate
1 Assault Griffin
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Canyon Minotaur
1 Child of Night
1 Cloud Elemental
1 Demolish
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Diminish
1 Dragon's Claw
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Dryad's Favor
1 Ember Hauler
1 Fling
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Goblin Balloon Brigade
1 Gravedigger
1 Incite
1 Knight Exemplar
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Mana Leak
1 Manic Vandal
1 Merfolk Spy
1 Mighty Leap
1 Palace Guard
1 Phantom Beast
1 Preordain
1 Quag Sickness
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Roc Egg
1 Runeclaw Bear
1 Sacred Wolf
1 Siege Mastodon
1 Spined Wurm
1 Stone Golem
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Sylvan Ranger
1 Viscera Seer
1 Volcanic Strength
1 Vulshok Berserker
1 Wall of Vines
1 Yavimaya Wurm
2 Azure Drake
2 Barony Vampire
2 Infantry Veteran
2 Inspired Charge
2 Shiv's Embrace
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 2--------------------
#2
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts and Land: 3 playable artifact creatures and a couple of dual lands is a nice way to start things off. Although the artifact creatures make us vulnerable to artifact removal, they do give us some much needed power and consistency.
Black: Black has nothing amazing in this pool, but it has some decent removal spells, a few average creatures, and Gravedigger which is my second favorite black splash behind Doom Blade.
Blue: 3 reasonable flyers and Preordain. That kind of combination usually doesn't get us very far.
Green: Green is fairly solid. It has acceleration, 2 big creatures, and 2 color fixers. With the solid artifact creatures we have, we could run a three color deck with green as a base color.
Red: Shiv's Embrace is a very risky card. It can certainly end games fast, however there are so many ways for your opponent to make it backfire on you. I've discovered that a lot of red's cards are very problematic in the fact that sometimes they work really nicely, while other times they do next to nothing. See Fling Act of Treason Manic Vandal Arc Runner and Volcanic Strength for more examples.
White: One of the strongest common openings in M2011 sealed is a turn 1 Infantry Veteran followed by a turn 2 power two drop of some sort. This pool has the Infantry Veteran but it doesn't have any white 2 drops which means that the white aggro role is stripped of a lot of its' power.
Conclusions: Green looks like the best color, and then the difficult choices arrive. Blue is the weakest color but it's flyers are splashable. Red has the risky Shiv's Embrace build, and Black has the best overall second color. White is average but nothing that really begs to played.
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#2
----------------------------Final Decklist 2------------------------------
The main problem with this pool is that there isn't really enough cards to make a good green black deck and there isn't a whole lot that is worth splashing for. In my tournament I decided to go white green and splash black because the Infantry Veterans are much better in a main color than in a splash color. This didn't end up working well for me and I ended up with match win in the last round. I have yet to go without at least one match win in a 4 booster sealed event, but I was hoping that I could get at least 2 match wins out of this pool.
So, if I had to do it over again, what would I do? How about something like this.
Azure Drake is a solid flyer and not that bad. I normally wouldn't splash it, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We're also really low in removal, so that's why I added Diminish to the final decklist.
----------------------------Final Decklist 2------------------------------
#3
#3
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 3--------------------
1 Æther Adept
1 Ajani's Mantra
1 Assault Griffin
1 Bog Raiders
1 Combust
1 Crystal Ball
1 Cultivate
1 Diminish
1 Doom Blade
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Fling
1 Fog
1 Goblin Piker
1 Goldenglow Moth
1 Gravedigger
1 Infantry Veteran
1 Lava Axe
1 Mana Leak
1 Manic Vandal
1 Merfolk Sovereign
1 Merfolk Spy
1 Mind Control
1 Necrotic Plague
1 Negate
1 Ornithopter
1 Pacifism
1 Prized Unicorn
1 Runeclaw Bear
1 Safe Passage
1 Serra Angel
1 Serra Ascendant
1 Shiv's Embrace
1 Siege Mastodon
1 Solemn Offering
1 Sorcerer's Strongbox
1 Spined Wurm
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Tome Scour
1 Traumatize
1 Unsummon
1 Voltaic Key
1 Vulshok Berserker
1 Wall of Frost
1 Warlord's Axe
2 Act of Treason
2 Arc Runner
2 Dryad's Favor
2 Maritime Guard
2 Mind Rot
2 Naturalize
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 3--------------------
#3
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts and Land: There is no doubt that Crystal Ball is good and will be played in every build we make. Elixir of Immortality, Warlord's Axe, and, Sorcerer's Strongbox are all playable as well, but there is a much greater chance of cutting them. Sorcerer's Strongbox is sort of like the Nether Horror of card drawing spells. It's not very good and you wish you could cut it, but sometimes you just need something to fill the 4 drop space with something. The value of Warlord's Axe goes up with every creature in your deck that has 1 power. Elixir of Immortality is one of those tricky cards that is often more useful than it seems to be. Especially in 4 booster swiss where refilling your deck with 3-8 nonland cards is often worth spending a card for.
Black: Doom Blade and Gravedigger would make an excellent splash. While I like Necrotic Plague, it's two black requirement is going to be difficult to pull off.
Blue: So many blue cards and so few of them are worthwhile. We definitely have some great defensive options in Wall of Frost but without card drawing or flyers, defensive cards aren't that appealing. Mind Control is amazing but it's hard to build a deck around it and a bunch of defensive cards.
Green: One Cultivate and Spined Wurm is not enough to pull me into green. Green is pretty easily set aside.
Red: The main difference between sealed deck and draft is that sometimes you have to play a deck type you're not all that comfortable with. In draft you can usually force your way into a deck that fits your style of play. In sealed deck, you sometimes don't have that freedom. Red is sort of like that in this pool. It has all the cards for a suicide red deck such as double Arc Runner, double Act of Treason, Lava Axe, and Fling have a lot of synergy together as pieces of an aggressive burn deck. The problem is that I've always felt that type of deck is weak and not very playable so I've avoided it. I like Act of Treason when I have some sacrificiable vampires, but in a mono red deck it becomes much more difficult. However when my normal decktypes aren't very appetizing, I should have considered this type of archetype.
White: Serra Angel, Pacifism, and Assault Griffin are solid cards, and there is enough filler cards to make white a playable color in this deck.
Conclusions: Blue is very defensive and red is very aggressive, so they shouldn't be played together. Green is rather unappealing, Black is a splash color at best, and white is solid but not all that exciting.
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#3
----------------------------Final Decklist 3------------------------------
I actively avoided the Arc Runner / Lava Axe build because I'm more comfortable with less suicidal decklists. The problem with that plan is that there are few good options that avoid the red. If you're playing red, it's hard to find a decent build that doesn't take the Arc Runner / Lava Axe build. So, due to my distaste of Arc Runner I ran the decklist above and sank the first two rounds to decks that actually played creatures that matter. In the last round I was given a merciful bye so it wasn't a complete loss. Maritime Guards are horrible and they are no reason to play Merfolk Sovereign.
So, it's probably pretty easy to guess what I would do differently. Red is clearly playable at least on some level, and I should have gone in that directly. I'm not sure if I could take two wins with the rebuild, but I would definitely have a better shot at it than I had with my previous build.
----------------------------Final Decklist 3------------------------------
#4
#4
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 4--------------------
1 Act of Treason
1 Ajani's Mantra
1 Augury Owl
1 Autumn's Veil
1 Berserkers of Blood Ridge
1 Bog Raiders
1 Call to Mind
1 Cancel
1 Celestial Purge
1 Cloud Crusader
1 Conundrum Sphinx
1 Deathmark
1 Diminish
1 Duress
1 Duskdale Wurm
1 Fling
1 Fog
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Garruk's Companion
1 Giant Spider
1 Goblin Piker
2 Goblin Tunneler
1 Goldenglow Moth
1 Gravedigger
1 Harbor Serpent
1 Holy Strength
2 Incite
1 Infantry Veteran
1 Jace's Erasure
1 Lava Axe
1 Leyline of the Void
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Merfolk Spy
1 Mind Rot
1 Nether Horror
1 Ornithopter
1 Pacifism
1 Prodigal Pyromancer
1 Pyroclasm
1 Quag Sickness
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Serra Angel
1 Shiv's Embrace
1 Siege Mastodon
1 Sign in Blood
1 Silvercoat Lion
1 Squadron Hawk
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Sword of Vengeance
1 Thunder Strike
1 Tome Scour
1 Unsummon
1 Wild Evocation
-------------------------Text Version of Decklist 4--------------------
#4
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
Artifacts and Land: Gargoyle Sentinel is solid and Sword of Vengeance is awesome. The artifacts seem reasonably solid in this pool.
Black: If I'm going to play black, I usually want a little more removal than a single Quag Sickness. I value Gravedigger pretty highly but the rest of the creatures are somewhat lackluster. Black seems playable but nothing all that exciting.
Blue: Conundrum Sphinx is an amazing creature, but there is little else that is worth playing in blue. Despite the Sphinx, there is little reason to play blue in this pool.
Green: Green is spread way to thin to be playable. It can be easily dismissed from the deckbuilding process.
Red: It's sad when a pool is bad enough to make the Act of Treason / Fling combo look good. Our red cards are filled with a bunch of below average and underwhelming filler cards, but there are some bright spots in Lightning Bolt and Prodigal Pyromancer. Pyroclasm is also pretty good but not when your red has some many creatures that die to said Pyroclasm.
White: Pacifism, Serra Angel and some reasonable filler cards mean that white is genuinely playable. It's not that exciting, but nothing about these pools is all that exciting.
Conclusions: So, blue and green are probably out of the picture. This usually means that a three color deck is also out of the picture. What's left are some great artifacts and 3 below average colors to choose from.
------------------------Card Pool Analysis-------------------------------
#4
----------------------------Final Decklist 4------------------------------
You can tell that I tried to stretch red and white to their limits if I was willing to include a singleton Squadron Hawk and a Holy Strength in my deck. This is actually a deck that I managed to take two match wins with although it was partially due to some lucky draws. It's a difficult pool and I know I could have built it better.
So, what would I have done differently? Take a look...
This deck pool needs to lean on Sword of Vengeance. In order to do that I need to keep creatures on the table, and black does that much better than red ever did. Of all the sideboard color hosers, Deathmark is the only one I'm willing to maindeck because I think it hits the biggest range of major decktypes (WG, WU, GR, GB).
----------------------------Final Decklist 4------------------------------
(--------------------------------------------------------------------------)
Thanks for reading, and see you in the 4-Booster Sealed Deck queues.
Marcus, "Shuyin Knight of Zanarkand" on Magic Online.
9 Comments
Disclaimer: I'm nothing special at 4-pack. I've played twice, 4-0 and 1-3.
This format is REALLY hard to read, but i do favor quantity in terms of understanding a new format. I'm glad you're playing lots of 4-pack, and sharing your results with us.
Sealed Pool 1:
Feels like it should have been R/B to me.
Child of Night
Reassembling Skeleton
Assassinate
Quag Sickness
Act of Treason
Mind Rot
2x Barony Vampire
Prodigal Pyromancer
Gravedigger
Canyon Minotaur
Shiv's Embrace
Rise from the Grave
Rotting Legion
Berserkers of Blood Ridge
Hoarding Dragon
Corrupt
Sideboard
Duress
Volcanic Strength
Stone Golem
Diabolic Tutor
Incite (against decks with amazing blockers like Giant Spider/Azure Drake or Ice Cage)
This gives you ten playable creatures, the same 3 pieces of removal, and very stable mana, as well as the two biggest bombs in your poor: Shiv's Embrace and Hoarding Dragon. Volcanic Strength might be the call over Act of Treason, especially against Red decks or decks splashing Fireball/Lightning Bolt.
I just really like Hoarding Dragon, Shiv's Embrace, and Pyromancer over Stormtide Leviathan, Ice Cage, and Sleep.
Yes, this build is a lot better than the black blue one I originally submitted. Stormtide Leviathan was terrible. I could never survive long enough to use it. In the future I'm probably not going to even play it unless I've got multiple Cultivates.
Hoarding Dragon is very good, but it also has little to search for in this pool. That's the main reason why it didn't pull me stronger in that direction.
I still like the three color build in my rebuild of the decklist because I haven't had much difficulty with three colors when I have 2 color fixers and a dual land.
Hey, ran into you in the 4-man queues tonight. Hope you won your last match!
In your second event, i thought UB was the way to go. Cloud Elemental isn't a monster, but it's a solid beater who's very hard to stop with any of the white fliers short of Serra Angel. I think you massively underrate
Again, sad about leaving Shiv's Embrace in the board.
Diminish
2x Preordain
Mana Leak
Child of Night
Reassembling Skeleton
Assassinate
Quag Sickness
Cloud Elemental
2x Barony Vampire
2x Gargoyle Sentinel (unless you only had one...)
2x Azure Drake
Gravedigger
Rise from the Grave
Stone Golem
Your sideboard is really thin:
Phantom Beast (Against a deck with few target effects, your sideboard)
splash Red for Manic Vandal/Demolish against Whispersilk Cloak/Warlord's Axe/Crystal Ball/Fireball splash
I think you massively underrate Azure Drake. It's one of the best commons in the format.
I won my last match and ended up with a 2-1 record with the help of the bye. It's strange how so many people drop after the first round in 4-booster swiss. I guess they're looking for MOCS points.
Anyway, I had 2 gargoyles, one was foil.
You may be right that I underestimate Azure Drake. I certainly think it's a good creature, but it's also defensive and I've found that defensive strategies don't work very well in M2011. I'll have to watch my evaluation of Azure Drake in the future.
Four sealed pools in one article is just sick value. Nice.
I would agree that you rate Azure Drake too low. Defense in this format can actually be a solid form of virtual card advantage, because when you drop that 2/4 flier, you're trumping pretty much every creature that hit the table before it (assuming you have it on turn 4). You are absolutely correct that defense won't win you games, but the fact that it's a flier makes up for that in my book as it's not too hard to start hitting with it when it's time.
In the second list, you had the combo of Viscera Seer/Reassembling Skeleton. Not a bomb by any means, but it does help with card selection and it's nothing to dismiss if you're going to play your black.
In the fourth pool, I would definitely have played blue. The Sphinx is quite good, and while the rest of the blue cards aren't that exciting, I think as a whole they're good enough. Maybe I just like blue too much. :)
4-pack sealed is quickly becoming my favorite format and I have really enjoyed your past three articles.
I wish I could remember the exact quote regarding luck, but I remember it as being something like "luck = skill + opportunity". The take-home point is that you often need skill to maximize the opportunity a lesser-skilled player might overlook, and this often appears to observers as luck. I think the best way to apply this thinking in Magic is to play to your outs when you are in an "unwinnable" situation. You have nothing to lose (versus just giving up and prematurely conceding) and may get "lucky" when you do draw into those outs.
Again ... great article and keep up the good work.
Good article. I just played my first 4-booster sealed last night and had a blast. Of course I had a really bomby pool (crystal ball, whispersilk cloak, mind control, blinding mage, day of judgement, forsee, water servant, azure drake... etc..), nothing like the trash you've got stuck with here.
I'm wondering if there isn't some better way to format your articles.
http://puremtgo.com/articles/waiting-godot-four-play-pt-1
this one has some good examples of how to show a pool that is both easy on the eyes and instantly recognizable to any of us to play MTGO.
I will work on the formatting to make it a little easier to read.