Sealed

This finally happened!

/ Jerome / Leave a comment

So this finally happened:

I’ve been playing MTG:Arena pretty much since the early days of the beta. As a F2P player, gems are not easy to accumulate but I’ll typically use them for drafts once I’ve accumulated enough. Unfortunately, I’m not a very strong draft player so this normally ends up as a losing proposition (albeit a fun one). I more rarely treat myself to sealed events but decided to do so earlier this week in honour of the new The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth set.

My pool was far better than what I drew at the Pre-Release for the set. I pulled two green Mythics, Radagast the Brown and Last March of the Ents and I immediately knew that I would be playing some kind of Green deck. Throw in Elrond, Lord of Rivendell, Rangers of Ithilien, and The Shire and it was an easy decision to go Simic.

I started playing Monday night. One win, two wins and then three wins without a loss. I was on a run but it was getting late. “One more,” I told myself and this last game also turned into a win. Another “One more”‘” despite knowing that I might have a hard time waking up the next day, turned into a fifth win in a row. While one or two games might have easily gone the other way, this deck just seemed to have answers for everything, particularly thanks to two copies each of Bewitching Leechcraft and Hithlain Knots. Never underestimate the power of removal, I say despite knowing that I will ignore my own advice despite seeing its efficacy in action the next time I’m building a deck under a time limit.

Reason prevailed finally and I called it a night at 5-0. This was already a run I was pretty happy with. I went to bed, hoping that whatever good luck I’d had would prevail for the remainder of my run.

The next night, I resumed. After a small scare where I inadvertently picked a different game and suddenly wondered where my Simic cards had gone. Game 6 picked up where I had left off with an easy win. The next game did not go the same way and I recorded my first loss. Undeterred, I started my next game and my deck once again delivered and I reached the 7 win milestone! I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I have managed this feat. In case I later forget, this post will serve as a reminder!

The one thing I regret is not saving the deck list. I thought it would automatically get saved but it does not appear so. Aside from the cards mentioned above, other strong performers were Chance-Met Elves and Gift of Strands. Two mechanics, Scry and the ring temptation, gave the deck the consistency needed across the games.

I find that Sealed goes one of two ways for me. Either I know immediately what I’m going to build, like in this case (it can still end up being bad though), or I end up second guessing myself and generally end up with something that just does not gel together.

Christmas Magic 2022

/ Jerome / Leave a comment

With Noah in exams until the Thursday before Christmas, we did not have an opportunity this year to play any Magic before the start of the break. The boys found some JumpStart 2022 packs in their stockings on Christmas morning and that was our first game of the holiday season.

Christian’s two packs were Ferocious Detective (B). Noah ended up with Snow Law (WU) and I got Cruel Gigantic (BG). No big money cards in any of them. My best draw was Runadi, Behemoth Caller, a card I like (I like big green things) but not sure where it might go just yet.

We decided to do our usual round robin tournament. Noah easily beat Christian 2-0 due to a couple of mana floods and early signs that the two packs were not very synergistic. I played Noah next and went down 1-2. My best performer was Creeping Bloodsucker, a common that pings your opponent for one and gives you one at the same time. Slow and steady but it was not enough to withstand the bruising attacks from Noah’s deck. Christian and I played for the spoils and the lack of synergy in his deck was clearly in evidence as he went down 1-2.

I like the Jumpstart concept – It’s great to simply get two packs, slam them together and be ready to play. But it is frustrating when they don’t work well together. And gameplay is not particularly complex, a good thing for new players but a bit of a let down for more experienced ones (yes, I’m talking about Christian and Noah).

I will split mine out and add them to the small collection of Jumpstart packs to use when we’re looking for an easy game or when we look to introduce someone to the game.

From there, it was time for some more serious action. Noah bought Christian and I each six draft booster packs of Kamigawa as our Christmas present. Or in my case five and one Kaldheim pack as the store apparently ran out. The idea was that the two of us would build a sealed deck and over the next few weeks, Noah will add a new pack for us to enhance our decks (or build something new) in a mini-league.

Unfortunately, that left him out of the play. Fortunately, I had some Kaldheim set boosters that I had bought some time back for a rainy day. We decided to use those and to get Noah in on the action. We each gave him two of our Kamigawa packs and then complemented that with 4 Kaldheim set boosters and 2 for Christian and I to cover the two we had just given him. Think of this as some weird version of chaos sealed.

It all made for some rather odd games with no one really standing out over the others with our first builds. We’ll have to see if we continue down this path and add new packs to the mix. It definitely shows though that set boosters don’t work very well for sealed. You’d think that it would be easier with less randomness but it all felt forced – almost like playing Jumpstart but with even less synergy.

Finally, it was time for some Commander. Out came the Warhammer 40K decks. Christian and I are still running them unmodified but Noah has switched out seven cards, adding both his Mana Crypt as well as a Mox Amber pulled from the recent The Brothers’ War set among a few other cards.

Noah started slowly but both Christian and I know that the Necrons can go off quite quickly and explosively. I concentrated my first few turns on him, given that he did not have any creatures out. Christian did not attack but was progressively adding creatures and building his board state.

I was feeling quite optimistic when I played my Space Marine Devastator and cranked out three copies with my extra mana. Along with Marneus Calgar as my Commander, I was starting to amass a good number of tokens. It was time to deal with Christian. I risked it all. And ran into a wall of removal and instant speed tricks on top of the monstrous creatures he had on the battlefield. It was not my finest move by a long stretch and I ended with more losses than I had expected. The attack got through but left me wide open and reeling.

Next turn, Christian proceeded to pump up his creatures, including a couple of 12/12s, gave them all flying and swung in for 39 points of damage. That was it for me.

Noah managed to last another turn but the writing was on the wall and a further turn was enough to seal his fate. The Tyranids rule the Warhammer universe… For now.

And so ended another season of Christmas Magic.