Two weekends ago I played at GP Almost Ottawa, and I lost. But I didn’t lose as badly as I could have.
Instead of writing another boring tournament report, I thought I would spend this article talking about my Sealed deck build and explaining some of the choices. In the process, I’ll have the opportunity to talk about some cards and how people regularly misevaluate them. Like [card]Kheru Spellsnatcher[/card], which is not a bomb. But more on that later.
First, let’s talk about Khans Sealed deck.
After talking pretty generally about strategy last week, let’s look at what worked well this weekend. At the end of Day 1 there were four undefeated players. I think new players tend to think that the decks which go undefeated are inherently the best. So the first disclaimer has to be that there are lots of elements which lead to going undefeated: luck, skill, and deck quality. All three of these have to be decently high to get it done. But they are certainly an example of decks which work. So let’s dig in.
So, four people went undefeated in Sealed. Two of them were straight Abzan. One was Black/White splashing Green and Red (for morphs and Charms). The last was green based, splashing the other four colours, and playing [card]Trail of Mystery[/card]. This colour distribution is pretty telling. It suggests that the most consistent decks focus on a combination of Black, White, and Green to present an imposing board presence. Both Blue and Red show up almost universally in a support role. I certainly don’t think this tells the whole story of the colour balance, particularly since each clan has a lot of upside and a sees lot of play. However, it takes consistency to be undefeated at the end of the day. Clearly, Abzan takes home that credit.
I think that this Sealed format is really defined by the best decks’ abilities to stabilize. Three of the four decks had [card]Siege Rhino[/card]. The card which has been stabilizing Standard since the set was released. Even more telling, the only deck not playing [card]Abzan Guide[/card] didn’t have one in the pool. That says a lot about where this format is at. The ability to change a race by contributing a large body and recovering a ton of lost life is hugely significant. It is unsurprising that the top 8 contenders often mentioned [card]Siege Rhino[/card] as their MVP. Even though there are more powerful individual cards in the set, the ability to withstand an opponent’s aggressive start and reorient after a rocky draw cannot be overlooked.
Before moving on, there are two last things I want to point out. Firstly, two of the top decks played 18 creatures, while one played 15 (16 if you count the [card]Mardu Charm[/card]). The only one with fewer than 15 was Matt Costa’s [card]Trail of Mystery[/card] deck, which was thinning itself by pulling out its lands and could play all but two of its creatures on three lands (the outliers being [card]Siege Rhino[/card] and [card]Riverwheel Aerialists[/card]). Clearly, creature density is important. As I suggested in my first article, playing a ton of powerful spells is probably not a winning strategy.
Secondly, there was not a [card]Jeskai Windscout[/card] in a main deck. This certainly doesn’t mean that this is a bad card. Yet, going back to the point about stabilization, the decks which didn’t occasionally just lose weren’t playing cards that thrive in a tempo based strategy. That is generally true for most formats – the best decks have a high power level and tons of consistency with cards that are strong in a variety of situations. All this says is that this is a format where these decks are attainable and run rampant. The undefeated decks had their share of [card]War Behemoth[/card]s and [card]Kin-Tree Warden[/card]s. The best decks want to be able to make stable game-states.
The take away from this information is that Khans Sealed format is not the same as draft; the explosive two colour decks are just not as viable. In a long Sealed tournament, the times when your draw doesn’t allow you to curve out begin to compound, and the regularity with which you see bombs add up. It becomes very hard to rely on a deck whose plan is [card]Wetland Sambar[/card] into [card]Jeskai Windscout[/card] into [card]Crippling Chill[/card] into [card]Force Away[/card] and then [card]Arrow Storm[/card] for the win. I wrote about this more in depth last week, and GP Ottawa seems to have really played it out. The five colour decks and the two colour splash decks seem to really dominate the format. That being said, if you open a particularly weak pool I still believe that a tempo based deck, when the draws go its way, has some potential to capitalize on this status quo. It’s not where you want to be, but sometimes it’s the only option you have.
This transitions well into talking about my pool.
This is what I was passed on Saturday morning.
The first thing that I always do with my Khans pools is look at the lands. Here we have seven – which is acceptable – but none that make Black mana. The lack of Black fixing means that if we don’t play the colour then our mana will be significantly better, and if we do play it, it has to be one of our main colours. Looking over at the black cards, there are certainly some exciting ones in [card]Murderous Cut[/card], [card]Debilitating Injury[/card], and the pair of [card]Sultai Scavenger[/card]s. Furthermore, playing Abzan would give us access to [card]Abzan Guide[/card] and [card]Abzan Charm[/card]. However, when looking at the pool, I decided that the power level increase from playing a black based deck would not make up for the decreased consistency we get by playing colours which are represented in our fixing. For this reason, I opted to not play Black. Cutting the colour – and with it access to our best removal – was not easy and may have not been correct. However, in a long game when players are playing haymakers, I judged that I would be at a disadvantage as I lacked true bombs. In fact, the only really explosive card in the pool, [card]Flying Crane Technique[/card], would be essentially unplayable in the Black shell. There may have been a five colour deck here, but I didn’t want to risk it with the mana I had.
So Black was out.
Looking at the remaining colours, Green clearly had the strongest creature base. We had two excellent two-drops in [card]Heir of the Wilds[/card] and [card]Rattleclaw Mystic[/card], powerful outlasters in [card]Tuskguard Captain[/card] and [card]Longshot Squad[/card], and a copy of [card]Savage Punch[/card] which can be a huge tempo play in the developing part of the game.
Red was also a key colour as it had not only [card]Mardu Heart-Piercer[/card] and [card]Jeering Instigator[/card], but a mana symbol in each of our remaining powerful multi-coloured cards. The Heart-Piercer is one of the best tempo creatures in the set, and the [card]Instigator[/card] can completely steal wins. If we were going to get there it was going to be on the back of these tempo plays, and some strong morphs in [card]Efreet Weaponmaster[/card] and [card]Snowhorn Rider[/card].
I think the base of Red and Green was pretty clear once Black was removed from the pool. Now the question became whether to focus more heavily on White or Blue. Playing a completely balanced four colour deck was not really an option, particularly when we want to try to beat our opponents in the tempo portion of the game. When laying out the deck I had put Blue in the heavier role, giving access to [card]Mistfire Weaver[/card], [card]Force Away[/card], [card]Singing Bell Strike[/card], [card]Jeskai Windscout[/card], [card]Glacial Stalker[/card], and the morphs. In this deck, the white was for the morphs, [card]Ride Down[/card], [card]Kill Shot[/card] and [card]Feat of Resistance[/card]. However, as the deckbuilding time began to dwindle I realized that I wanted to be more creature focussed, and that white gave me access to a nice outlast package in [card]Abzan Battle Priest[/card] and [card]Ainok Bond-Kin[/card]. Furthermore, the pair of [card]Alabaster Kirin[/card]s interact pretty favourably in the gummy ground stalls that appear in the format.
Here is what I ended up submitting.
A couple notes on the deck. The first thing that probably jumps out at a lot of people is the 17 lands, as opposed to the normal 18 for this format. Since I had a number of two drops and very few cards which had to be hard-cast over 4 mana (only [card]Arrow Storm[/card] and [card]Flying Crane Technique[/card]), and I had the [card]Rattleclaw Mystic[/card], the 17 lands was a commitment to the idea of trying to beat people in the early part of the mid-game. These mana considerations were also a big part of why [card]Avalanche Tusker[/card] was left on the sidelines. I didn’t trust that he would be regularly cast-able on turn 5 and his low toughness and slow start didn’t fit the game plan. Similarly, [card]Winterflame[/card] was one of the last cuts, as I ended up playing fewer mountains and more plains. I decided that there was a likelihood that I would want to play a white creature and leave up mana for [card]Kill Shot[/card] or [card]Feat of Resistance[/card]. Overall, the mana for the deck worked out well and I never felt I lost to it, even when the draws were not perfect (as always happens in Magic at times).
The last cuts from the deck were a trio of red creatures – [card]Mardu Warshrieker[/card], [card]Canyon Lurkers[/card], and [card]Bloodfire Expert[/card] – for which I simply couldn’t find room. Unfortunately, this meant that I had a hard time triggering the ferocious on [card]Savage Punch[/card] and [card]Barrage of Boulders[/card]. Not having the density of cheap four power creatures was certainly an oversight, and I believe cost me a couple games over the course of the day.
Having sleeved up this naya-splash-blue deck I began the tournament round 1, playing with no byes (one GPT being the only real tournament I had played with paper cards in this format). The deck functioned about as well as I had expected. The cards and tempo were able to carry me past opponents who stumbled, misplayed, and tried to set up powerful late-games. However, when I eventually began facing decks with a density of bombs, I had more trouble. The losses I took were to [card]High Sentinels of Arashin[/card], [card]Siege Rhino[/card]s, and generally, the type of Abzan builds that we discussed looking at the top tables. I was eventually knocked out of the tournament in the eighth round by a ton of morphs and a [card]Ghostfire Blade[/card] versus a few clunky draws and mulligans. I don’t expect that I played that last match perfectly, but the deck certainly struggles when your opponent curves out better than you and also has a stronger top-end.
Overall, it was not a particularly impressive performance. However, it did show that these tempo-based decks have some play it the format. Last week, some people commented that they would like to see some examples of more linear Sealed decks, and I think my GP Ottawa experience delivered. When you don’t open a pool that can play the best strategy in the room – which is clearly the slow stable game and winning with bombs – it is still possible to win more than your share of matches.
Before closing, I want to briefly highlight two cards which I think I have a different evaluation of than some other people, particularly those I saw slinging at the GP. Firstly, I saw a lot of [card]Kheru Spellsnatcher[/card]s in play over the course of the weekend. Usually, I didn’t actually see them until they were moved to the graveyard unflipped. While I’m not denying the card has some serious upside, I think it is best suited to a deck which is comfortable playing it as a [card]Hill Giant[/card] and can consistently have the double blue for its morph cost. Even in these decks, it is not a bomb. This format is often about interacting with morphs during combat. You want to be able to flip your morph for value in the combat step either in order to or in response to changing the complexion of the board. The fact that the Spellsnatcher only wants to be turned face up when there is something on the stack really limits its versatility. It can often be hard to find time to leave up two mana for [card]Disdainful Stroke[/card] in this format, the six mana on [card]Kheru Spellsnatcher[/card] fills a very awkward spot. I’m certainly not trying to suggest the card isn’t playable, but I think people need to stop thinking that just because it can be a blow-out doesn’t mean it is a bomb caliber card.
Secondly, one of my MVPs of not just the weekend but also the last couple weeks has been [card]Barrage of Boulders[/card]. While I certainly don’t think this card is a bomb either, it does a lot of versatile work against a lot of decks. Its ability to just [card]Falter[/card] the opposing team and allow a crashing victory in otherwise stalled boards should not be overlooked. Additionally, it isn’t only the Mardu token deck that is playing lots of X/1s (though the card is insane in that matchup). [card]Jeskai Windscout[/card], [card]Wetland Sambar[/card], [card]Highland Game[/card], [card]Ainok Bond-Kin[/card], and more, all see tons of play and die to the Barrage. There are few true 2-for-1s in this format, and the Barrage has the potential to be even better than that. I didn’t have the opportunity to watch the Top 8 of GP Ottawa (I was driving home), but I hear Barrage did some work there. Again, I’m not advocating taking this card super highly, but I certainly think a lot of people should take some time to reassess it.
Anyways, that’s my GP experience in sum. I hope people find the deck building choices interesting, even if you disagree. This GP really served to reinforce some of the points I have been making over these last couple articles. I think it stands that we should play more creatures, listen to our lands and use them to determine how you will splash, and that the format isn’t exceptionally slow – it is often won in the midgame, either by tempoing your opponent out or by stabilizing. There is also an important lesson here to not let our pools limit us. I was able to do better than I expected by taking the pool seriously, and I think a better player and builder would have been able to take it even further.
Let me know how you would have built the pool differently in the comments or I can be found @Micahgu on Twitter or streaming at twitch.tv/Kahm21.