Future Sight Release PE Walk-Through
It’s the middle of the Future Sight release events. I finally have had a chance to play in my first event – a NIX TIX Sealed PE. NIX TIX is sweet – if you can drag yourself out of bed at 5am. In my case, my dogs helped.
I logged on, joined the event, then waited for the player total to hit the magic 24. In the end, we got 25 players, and started shortly after the designated start time. Not bad for an early morning, weekday event.
I could write about why I was able to play my first Future Sight release event on Tuesday, almost a week after the start, but I doubt anyone wants to read about that stuff. (If you do, get a life email me.) I think people would rather see the card pool I received.
NIX TIX PE # 975741
In building a deck from a pool like this, I first look for rares and bombs. In this pool, although Pact of Negation is certainly worth some TIX, nothing is particularly exciting. After that, I look for colors to eliminate.
In this pool, green was the first color I cut. It has not evasion and no removal. Durkwood Baloth is a monster, but with Sprout Swarm being common, odds are good that the Baloth would just get chumped forever. Green also had mana fixing, but I’m not going to run green just to get other colors. I’ll just run the other colors.
The next color I cut was blue. Pact of Negation may be fine in Dragonstorm, but it’s not a :must play this color” in limited. Blue has few fliers, with only Crookclaw Transmuter being any good, albeit fragile.. Fathon Seer and Cryptic Annelid are good card drawers, and Snapback is quite useful, but blue has nothing to actually win the game. It’s not dreadful, but we can do better.
All three of the remaining colors have solid cards. I can’t outright dismiss any of them.
Black is the strongest color. It has removal in Dark Withering and Death Rattle. It has a boatload of evasion. It also has some madness outlets, and the madness cards to use them.
Red also has some potent removal, some decent creatures and a few sideboard cards (e.g. Plunder, in case someone has Akroma’s Memorial.) Red also has some fast beats, which complement blacks creatures.
White has some more fliers, some additional removal and a few tricks. It’s creatures (aside from the 3/3 flier) are strictly worst than those in black or red. White has some possibilities, but I wanted to explore RB first.
Here’s the deck I built:
I had some time left in deck construction, after finishing and submitting the RB deck. I save it – which allows me to work on variants, but still revert to it easily.
Note: I did not splash for a third color. Mana fixing is marginal in this environment, and mana screw costs matches.
I also built a WB version. This version has some strictly worse cards, but it is slightly better against evasive decks.
After some consideration, and a hard look at splashing for cards like
Cryptic Annelid, I reverted to the RB version.
Match #1: Ryusuke R/G
Game 1: I was mana screwed, and lost. I tried to operate off Molten Slagheap, but drew nothing but red cards. He had a fast start, and Word of Seizing for my first and only blocker.
Game 2: I won with fliers. Nothing significant happened. I had the Deepcavern Imp, then Mana Skimmer, and he had no removal, blockers or speed.
Game 3: I pinged him to death with Keldon Megalith. Setting the beginning of upkeep step was the critical “tech” play for this match. Nothing really tricky was involved – I just had to keep my hand empty to use Megaliths, so I used it before my draw whenever possible. We had a ground stall, but early beats had dropped his life totals to unsafe levels.
Win
Match #2: morefire
Game 1: My turn 4 Shimian Specter took Akroma out of his hand. The Totem smashed in a couple times, and fliers won the game. It was quick and simple.
Game 2: Urborg Syphon mage discarded Dark Withering, then lands. He tried an all-out attack, after an unsuspended
Ivory Giant entered play and tapped my morphed Gathan Riders. I unmorphed the Riders by madnessing out Gorgon Recluse after blockers were decalerd. My opponent was at 9, and I sent the Riders (a 3/3 at that moment, since I had one card in hand.) and a Pit Keeper into a 3/3 and 2/2. He spent a long time thinking about what tricks I might have, then misclicked past blockers. I pitched the last card to Syphon Mage, draining him to 7, so the Riders and Pit Keeper finished the deal that turn. Not that it mattered, I had him no matter what he did.
Win
Match #3: ycjooX
Game 2: I sideboarded into the BW package, because it packed more fliers. He again suspends Sursi T1, and curved nicely. I had no black mana and lost to fliers, most importantly a
Griffin Guide on his turn two Blade of the Sixth Pride. I had Mana Skimmer, Deepcavern Imp and Shimmian Specter in hand, but my only black was the turn three Phyrexian Totem. With additional turns, I could have played Imp, then Madnessed out the Dark Withering, but he had an Errant Ephemeron with only two counters left which I wanted to save the Withering for. My only real out would have been to draw a
Damnation, but since it isn’t even in the format…
Lose
Match #4: zenon6
Game 1: He made a couple 4/4 Fomori Nomads this game. I Withered one and another eventually chumped a Henchfiend, which pumped for the trade. At one point, he had a morph, and I attacked with a Keldon Halberdiers and the Henchfiend. He flipped the morph, revealing
Vesuvan Shapeshifter and copying the Halberdiers. I had considered this possibility, and had a Death Rattle ready to off the Shapeshifter. After that, he was out of gas and my Halberdiers and Totem beat him down.
Game 2: I hit his turn three morph with Fatal Attraction, and it turned out to be the new Djinn. He made a
Careful Consideration, tapping him out, so I cast Henchfiend and swung. He dropped some 2/2s, but I was drawing lots of lands, allowing me to smash over the 2/2s with the Totem, and sacrifice the spare lands to the totem’s effect. He dropped a Fomori, but I ripped Gathan Riders off the top and play it morphed. He had Serrated Arrows working and tagged my morph EoT, then again on his turn, but I pitch Dark Withering to unmorph the Riders (makig it a 3/3) and kill the Fomori. Next turn he mades a Spiketailed Drake, then I misplayed. He was at four, with two 2/2s in play. I had enough mana to play the Riddle of Fire I was holding, then activate the Totem. If he sacrificed the Drake, I could not pay, swing with both the Totem and 1/1 Riders and kill him. If he did not sac the Drake, I might have been able to kill him outright. Instead, I activated the Totem and swung with both dudes. He blocked the Totem with one 2/2, the Riders with the Drake, and lived another turn. Fortunately, he drew a blank and conceded.
Win
My notes as I sat waiting for the next round:
With any luck, there should only be four people at 9 points, plus the four at 10 points that IDed last round. We should be able to draw in, and get to the draft faster.
I don’t have Draftcap on my machine – and I’m not sure whether it does Future Sight yet anyway – so I will have to take what notes I can.
I don’t even know what format the draft is – TS / PC / FUT or FUT / FUT / FUT. I’m guessing the later, but I don’t really know. I could look it up, but I’m too lazy. Besised, I’ll know when the first pack opens.
Assuming I’m in. My opponent could want to play it out. Unlikely, but not impossible.
While I wait, I checked out the opposition. One player is rated 1891. Several are in the 1775-1800 range. The rest are a bit over 1700 – including me, now. I started this tournament about 1680 – Planar Chaos was not kind to me.
One match still in progress. Waiting is boring.
(Reading about me waiting probably isn’t much better.)
We all IDed. The round five took 15 seconds. Only nine players were left in the event, and only one player wanted to play another match. He was in ninth, and got a bye.
The draft was TS/PC/FUT. I had drafted this once, in paper. My rule: when in doubt, take removal. After than, take evasion. Beyond that, I used what I knew of TS / TS / PC drafting.
My first pick was Sudden Shock. Next was Strangling Soot, then Stormcloud Djinn over Castle Raptors. (Three color blue is easier, since blue should give you card drawing, which can provide the lands for splash colors. RBW is tougher.) I picked up a Mawcor fourth, before rare drafting an Academy Ruins (over nothing much.) Planar Chaos wasn’t very nice to me, but I did open a Serra Sphinx. In Future Sight, I opened (and picked) Linessa. I’m always uncertain about raredrafting, since I’m often concerned that the desire for a card to try in constructed is affecting my weightings – but Linessa is an in color
Hill Giant with a possibly relevant ability. It should be good. Anyway, here’s how my draft shook out.
Here’s the deck I built.
Game one I gambled, and lost. I swung with Chronatog Totem and pumped it, hoping he did not have a two mana kill spell. He did. Then I messed up. He targeted his
Herd Gnarr with
Oblivion Crown, and I let that resolve. As it turned out, he had two madness spells among his three cards – and he ended up at 3 while I died.
Game two I kept a 5 land hand with Reality Strobe and Serra Sphinx. He had Dark Withering for the Sphinx, and I never caught up. He had a bunch of 4/4s, and my Rathi Tapper showed up a turn late. It didn’t help that I made my first nine land drops, and had more in land.
I have thought about this match a bit. I was obviously pissed about throwing away game one. Just stupidity: I keep thinking that my opponents in the T8 of sealed PEs will be as bad as the average round one player in a 4-3-2-2. That’s not true, and risky gambles are really risky there.
What I spent more time thinking about was whether I should have mulliganed the five land hand. I had the Megaliths, all three colors and two good spells. In a three color deck, with a slightly high mana curve, I really don’t like going to six cards, or possibly lower. With twelve lands left in the deck, along with one mana artifact and twenty good cards. The odds of drawing good stuff start at around 61% the first draw, and increased thereafter with every land I drew. A quick, back-of-the-envelop calculation says the odds of hitting my first ten land drops (which would have happened if I hadn’t died) were really small. The odds that he could not draw removal or otherwise stop Serra were significantly higher.
I think I’d do it again, but maybe that’s why my rating is so low.
I was going to write about triple Future Sight, but I just got blown out in four drafts. Some of that was because of luck (like the opponent that dropped Akroma’s Memorial the turn before I would have killed him in two of three games.) Some were because of mana flood or screw – or bad luck (like the match where I could not draw any of my nine removal spells to get rid of the annoying 2/2 that cost me the game.)
However I cut it, though, I did just lose in the first round of two straight 4-3-2-2 drafts. I’m going to have to win a couple more before I feel confidant enough to tell anyone what to do.
One opponent had a rating of 1530. And Akroma’s Memorial, but still.
I’m going back to sealed. That I can play.
PRJ
“One Million Words” on MODO
3 Comments
Please post a message on our forums in the bugs section to let us know what problem your having. If you could include the browser and anything we could do to reproduce this bug that would be great.
Im registered, Just cant log in
Anyway, I did two tournys and got beat up both times. This was just hours before I saw this article.
Im turned off to tournaments. Im just not good enough, but I do enjoy reading your articles.
The quality and quantity of work produced here are absolutely informative. Thanks for sharing. My site:: 검증놀이터