by Robert Anderson
Originally written soon after the Scars of Mirrodin prerelease weekend, Robert Anderson tells you why he is so awesome at Limited. No, really, the man went X-0 in his first 5 Scars Limited events and he is here to tell you how he did just that.
As all of you know, this weekend was the Scars of Mirrodin prerelease. I usually do decently at prereleases, but I'm the kind of person who would usually drop after getting 1 loss unless there's only one round left to go. This weekend I was on fire, winning 3 sealeds of various sizes (5-0, 4-0, 3-0) splitting finals of two unsanctioned drafts, winning a sanctioned draft (3-0) and losing a sanctioned draft (2-2) to rising star Joey Smith and risen star Vincent Thibeault. Doing well at prerelease events isn't exactly impressive but people seem to think that because I won a bunch of them I must know how to correctly build sealed decks and/or how to draft. I was being approached both days by various people and had a look at a lot of sealed pools, which was great for me because I'd like to see as many pools as possible to prepare for GP Toronto and the Paris PTQ season.
When you do well in a format, it's easy to say you enjoy it and think it's skill intensive. However, I thoroughly believe that even if I lost to bombs and mulligans all weekend, I would still say it's a fun and skill intensive format. I've always thought that synergy is what makes a format skill intensive, and Scars limited is full of it.
I opened my first few packs of the main prerelease and had an assortment of choices to make. I had an Elspeth, a Carnifex Demon, and an Engulfing Slagwurm, followed by a Nim Deathmantle and some unplayable junk. After laying my pool out I noticed something else, I had 15 creatures of varying casting costs with infect. People were asking me in the morning if I thought infect was a viable strategy for sealed, and I immediately said "I don't think it's possible, infect looks like an all-or-nothing strategy, you don't want to deal 19 damage to your opponent and give him 9 poison counters."
When I look at a spoiler I tend to look more at constructed cards than limited cards besides common removal and combat tricks. I didn't realize there were that many infect cards, and I had a pool with 3 Ichorclaw Myrs, a Plague Stinger, 2 Corpse Curs, 2 Tel-Jilad Fallen, a Contagious Nim, a Tangle Archer, an Untamed Might and Skinrender (him, an Iron Myr and the Wurm were my only non-infect guys) and some equipment. I originally disregarded the equipment because I thought they looked bad on the spoiler, but I was pleasantly surprised. I played 2x Strider Harness and 1x Sylvok Lifestaff, both of which are excellent in infect-based decks and pretty decent in general.
Most of my games were very straight forward, I play a 2-drop, I play an equipment, they kill my 2 drop, I bring it back with a Corpse Cur, then just push as much 'damage' through as possible. Some games ended with me 'luring' their entire team with Tangle Archer and infecting them for enough. The Carnifex Demon and Engulfing Slagwurm didn't actually make it into my maindeck because my curve ended at 4 and I was playing 15 lands. Also the Demon kills 80% of my guys. After talking to Alex Hayne he convinced me to play the Wurm because it's a complete blowout and impossible to deal with. I agreed and took out a Blackcleave Goblin which was probably my worst infect guy.
My deck had no removal and no bombs besides the Wurm and possibly the deathmantle, but I still managed to win most of my games quite easily. Round 1 was really hard, because my opponent played Contagion Engine, Contagion Clasp, Sunblast Angel, Geth and a plethora of removal. My third round opponent punted the game because I was at 10 life, he had 8 damage worth of Exsanguinate mana up and a Myr Battlesphere and friends in play. I knew he had it in hand because he was constantly counting his mana and he killed me with it game 2. The problem was he didn't read the Slagwurm I had in play and attacked before playing Exsanguinate. I took 4, went to 6, blocked the Sphere and went to 13. He smacked himself in the head and lost a few turns later. That was the only game in the tournament that I won via dealing damage. Those two matches were the only ones that went to 3 games, every other round I won quite handily due to the speed of my deck.
My second sealed was another popular archetype, R/W equipment. I had a Galvanic Blast, 2x Darksteel Axe, Kemba, a Sunspear Shikari, Glint Hawk, Arc Trail, Arrest and some other random guys that attack. It was similar to the first sealed, I didn't lose a game by simply being really agressive, or getting Kemba out, sitting around until he became the crazy cat lady, then bashing in. I was 8-0 for the day and had 42 packs to my name, so we went back to my place for a draft.
The first draft I wanted to try metalcraft and I have to say I wasn't terribly impressed. I drafted UG, first picking a Wurmcoil Engine, 2nd picking Carapace Forgers then getting lots of Myrs, Vedalken Certarchs and Lumengrid drakes. I won 2-0 but I feel like my opponents didn't have excellent decks. However, It was fun to use Ezuri to regenerate and overrun my Carapace Forgers. I would have certainly lost in the finals to Cormier's infect deck but we wanted to start another draft so we simply split.
I mean, the deck is good, but when you look at it statistically, to reliably get 3 artifacts early enough in the game how many do you think you need? 15? 20? The number is ridiculous. To have two artifacts in your starting hand you need to have an average of 11.42 artifacts. Let's say you have 12 artifacts. You have 2 in your opening hand, let's say a Myr and an equipment, a Certarch, a Carapace Forger and 3 lands. It seems like a very good hand, but can you keep it? Your first draw you have a 30% chance of getting another artifact, with the % increasing slightly at every draw. If you don't draw another artifact within a reasonable span of time you will lose. Your Certarch is a Mons's Goblin Raiders and your Forger is a Grizzly Bear. What if you draw another artifact and then they kill your myr? Or Shatter your equipment? What if you draw more Forgers, Certarchs and Drakes (4 mana Wind Drakes)? There's no question that metalcraft is good but it's VERY fragile and I would not be comfortable playing it without a ton of artifacts.
And, as DK mentioned in his article, playing crappy artifacts to get your count up isn't a winning battle. Then you get to the problem in the actual draft. Do you want another Carapace Forger or another Myr? People are going to pick Myrs and Spellbombs no matter what deck they're playing, and you don't want to play off-color bad Replicas or off-color bad Spellbombs. Liquidmetal Coating is a card that was always going 15th pick in the drafts but I think that it might not be bad in a deck like this. I think the best artifact for enabling metalcraft is Origin Spellbomb, because it's effectively a 1/1 Wall of Omens that is an artifact! I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up constructed playable in a Grand Architect aggro/control deck.
The second draft of the evening was the definition of "must be nice" for me (or mbn as you usually refer to it). I first picked a Contagion Clasp, then god himself spoke to me and told me to force infect. I 2nd picked a Tangle Angler and went to town. My deck was looking somewhat mediocre and then three Cyst Bearers wheeled. Huh? Okay, not bad. Pack 3? Hand of the Praetors. 2nd pick? Skithiryx. Wow. Mbn. My deck was extremely top heavy, I ended up with SIX Blackcleave Goblins but only ended up playing 3. I had something like 11 4-drops which is a common problem I notice with infect.
As for infect as a draft archetype, I think it's incredibly strong but it's difficult to get, like UW fliers in m11. There are lots of important cards, like Plague Stinger, Corpse Cur, Contagious Nim, Cyst Bearer, and some cute ones like Tangle Angler and Tel-Jilad Fallen. I think you can approach it two different ways. Pick up removal, Corpse Cur and higher cc infect guys and whittle them down with card advantage and removal, or pick up a lot of Vector Asps (not sure about him yet), Blight Mambas, Plague Stingers and Cyst Bearers/Nims and aggro them out fast, hopefully with equipment. I find the Strider Harness,Llifestaff and Bladed Pinions are particularly good, obviously with Darksteel Axe being nuts. I think Infiltration Lens deserves a mention as well, as people want to block your infect guys to avoid not, you know, dying.
I got to the finals with Corm again, and his deck looked very good (mono black with Strata Scythe, Prototype Portal, Precursor Golem, Etched Champion and other bombs) but it was almost 4 am so we split again and went to bed. The next day I went to Face à Face for the 2nd sealed, and was just given a ridiculous pool. The first 2 packs I opened contained Carnifex Demons and the third had a Koth, so the rest was pretty straight forward. I had a ton of artifacts, I believe the only colored cards in my deck were 2 Galvanic Blasts, an Arc Trail, Koth and 2 Carnifex Demons. I ran 15 lands, 3 Myrs, 1 Palladium Myr, 1 Myr Lord, a Heavy Arbalest (combo with Myr Lord + Myr!), a Tower of Calamities, a Nim Deathmantle, a Contagion Clasp and some other goodies.
Most games I just won with Koth or got a Demon out and wrathed their board. It's funny that 2 Demons gives you "B: Put a -1/-1 counter on all your opp's creatures" effectively but that never came to be. I also never activated the Tower of Calamities but having it in play as an artifact was fine most of the time. It also added inevitability if I got flooded. Once again I didn't lose a game with a very good deck and I was ready to draft.
The first draft didn't go very well as I decided to force infect again because I'm not a very original person. My deck was solid but once again rather top-heavy and you don't really want to play a Myr on t2. I won my first round but Alex was quite flooded and said he didn't sideboard properly. My winning streak was crushed by Joey Smith in my 2nd round, won my third and lost to Vincent T. in the last round (despite us playing a match for fun before the round and me winning =P).
The second draft was interesting, with me first picking a Grand Architect, then getting a Myrsmith, Razor Hippogriff, 2 Glimmerpoint Stags, some Myrs, counterspells, a Shatter and an Oxidda Scrapmelter. I played 2 Wall of Tanglecord which I think is a card that isn't played enough, it blocks all day, is an artifact and doesn't even lose too much value from being infected. I won most games through attrition, using Stag and Trigon of Thought to get card advantage, and stagging Hippogriff or Scrapmelters is just nuts.I played 2 Mountains and had an Iron Myr, but the mana was a bit sketchy, needing WW and UU for a few spells.
I used Lumengrid Drake and Sky-Eel School to win in the air and Architect, Walls and Myrs via Myrsmith along with regular mana Myrs held the ground. I won all my matches in 2 games. Alex's deck in the finals looked sweet . It was BR aggro with lots of 2 drops (Painsmith and Embersmith). He also packed equipments, but as usual he drew too many lands. Though after board I had Loxodon Wayfinders to clutter up the ground even more. I think that blockers with lots of toughness are quite viable to make control-oriented decks better. I like control more than in M11, because it was very difficult to win M11 with a control deck without some sort of bomb.
Hopefully this helps you guys a bit, though don't get discouraged losing in a new format like this. Building your sealed correctly seems extremely hard and I definitely need a lot more practice to master building and playing this sealed format. Drafting will be a whole other can of worms, but I have good friends to practice with. What I'm doing and I recommend you to do if you need practice is to download the SoM patch on MWS, get the pictures and generate 6 pack sealed decks. It's a bit slower than laying the cards out in real life but it gets the job done just fine. If someone can get it to work with Apprentice that would be awesome but I think that program is done for. I hope to see you guys at the coming PTQs and GPs!
Robert Anderson
Kar Yung Tom (KYT) is the Digital Content Manager for Face to Face Games. He oversees the F2FTour.com and Magic F2F websites. He is also the lead host of the First Strike podcast.
