I've been having the worst luck all day with sealed mana pools. If it's not land flood, 10 mana sources and 2 spells by the time I died, it's too few, 2 lands with the 3rd and 4th coming way too late. Both of those each happened twice with the same deck/mana base in 1 sealed event. Lost 2 rounds and never was really able to do anything relevant about it. Frustrating to say the least.

My best luck with sealed decks has been very removal heavy. There is a TON in this format, Ghostly Visit, Spirit Shackles, Misfortune's Gain, all the burn, and even green has some with Tripwire. Just try and wear them down with removal until you can land a big enough creature to take the game.

I normally try to play 17 land and between 1 and 3 mana fixers whether those be fellwar stones or a grail or a mana elf. In this format though it is pretty hard to not lose at least one game to awkward mana whether you run 15 land or 19 land since you will most likely be running three colors.

"Second is when someone can finish you off, but chooses not to do so. However, there is an easy answer to that ("Good Game") so it's not a big deal."

Yeah, I call this "piling on" and I can't stand it. If I'm tapped out with an empty hand and 5 life and you have a darksteel collosus on the board, there's no need for you to drop 4 more critters just cuz you can.

This is a great article, I've enjoyed all of your stuff so far. I made a deck with Goblin Assault that I use in classic that uses Goblin Bombardment as well. Turns all of your goblins into tiny missiles to get that last bit of damage through. Great deck idea though, one that I might have to try out.

I think that it is a little bit too early to judge the new cards. We don't even have the half of the new set spoiled. To be able to judge them and say that they are good or bad, we have to wait to see the full set. Such as Iona and/or Luminarch Ascension.

You say that Iona is a fun casual multiplayer card. How do we know that? When I look at that card, the only thing I see a juicy target for a new reanimator deck for example. How do we know that Solar Flare is not coming back and Iona is not going to be the new Akroma?

Or how do we know that the new Merfolk lord and the Merfolk tribe in general will be relegated to Extended as you say? The Orb of Insight shows that there are a great number of Merfolk coming with Zendikar. In fact they are the main tribe of Blue. How do we know that there won't be a new Tier-1 Merfolk deck for Standard? Or for ZEN Block?

Some other cards, such as Day of Judgement or World Queller are just plain good cards. We don't have to wait for anything to be able to talk about them. But they are the minority.

There is nothing wrong in talking about the new cards now. I do that too and I also love to read what others think of the new cards, so yours was the first article I clicked today. But as I said, a few cards spoiled so far are just plain good whereas for the rest we should wait a little bit more to be able to say that they are fun cards or chase rares.

I just wanted to point that.

LE

Even without seeing all the elves, I think we can safely say that she's not first pick worthy.

- Her low starting loyalty and it only increasing by 1 a turn will almost guarantee that her ultimate never fires. Even if the rest of ZEN's elves completely rock, the only ability she has that is likely to be relevant is the lifegain which is pretty meh.

- She waters down the power level of your overall draft. In a set this size and on average, math tells us that 3 to 4 copies of a single common card will be opened at your table over 3 packs. Unlike Tome Scour in M10, Nissa's Chosen is actually playable in any green deck - you can't expect to table every copy of it or even see every copy of it. Nissa forces you to take the Chosen as high picks just to ensure that you get a couple.

I believe the draft formats will be:
Zen-Zen-Zen
Zen-Zen-WWk
Pros-Pros-Pros (Prosper is designed to be drafted alone).

So the draft formats that Nissa will appear in all give ample opportunity to pick up copies of her Chosen.

Grixis Panorama may well help out in the final deck you talk about. I'm not sure if Swirling Sandstorm is really a maindeck card in that deck either, given as you'll be having random goblins hanging around quite a lot.

If I open the Aggrodeck I'll play between 16-17 Manasources. Otherwise, 18 or 19. Any non-green pool is so expensive and manahungry, it's absurd. Sometimes I screw even with 19 Manasources. But that is just my opinion for Sealed.

@Whiffy: The slower a format is, the more you need your landdrops to cast your 5 and 6 drops in turn 5/6. Missing 2 landdrops is mostly gg.

Thank you for your help everyone (about submitting articles :P)!

neat stuff. I'm not convinced by scute mob though. The only way I can see him getting pklayed is in a U/G tempo deck, so you can get to 5 lands, drop him and keep countermagic mana up. In that role, I think he's solid, but i don't see him getting played as part of mana-ramp, etc.

World Queller is a very interesting card. It surely isn't as powerful as braids (braids eats one of their permanents before they've untapped to kill her, and costs 1 less), but it does allow you to off any permanent class which you don't own for free, and can "aim" more precisely than braids. Overall, I don't see him being played while baneslayer exists (unless flagstones of trokair gets reprinted next block?).

Anyway, the question everybody's asking: Is Nissa the first planeswalker who isn't automatic first pick?

For my money, I'd probably still pick her (in zen-zen-zen), and hope to pick up 2-3 of her chosen, but then, I'm prone to bouts of rare-drafting anyway? I guess we need to know all of the elves in zendikar before we can fully judge. By the time we're drafting zen-wwk-set3, there will only be 1 pack to pick up nissa's chosen, and she will presumably be unpickable... Would they reprint nissa's chosen in all 3 sets? That might be funny...