White:
1 Ajani's Mantra
1 Blinding Mage
1 Infantry Veteran
1 Inspired Charge
1 Mighty Leap
1 Palace Guard
1 Siege Mastodon
1 Solemn Offering
1 Tireless Missionaries
1 Roc Egg
1 White Knight
Blue:
2 Armored Cancrix
1 Augury Owl
1 Diminish
1 Foresee
1 Harbor Serpent
1 Ice Cage
2 Merfolk Spy
1 Negate
1 Preordain
1 Scroll Thief
1 Unsummon
1 Call to Mind
1 Traumatize (rare)
Black:
1 Barony Vampire
1 Blood Tithe
1 Bog Raiders
1 Doom Blade
2 Nightwing Shade
1 Quag Sickness
1 Sign in Blood
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Unholy Strength
2 Viscera Seer
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Haunting Echoes (rare)
2 Phylactery Lich (rare)
Red:
1 Act of Treason
1 Berserkers of Blood Ridge
1 Demolish
1 Fling
2 Goblin Balloon Brigade
3 Goblin Piker
1 Lava Axe
1 Manic Vandal
1 Pyretic Ritual
1 Thunder Strike
1 Volcanic Strength
2 Chandra's Spitfire
1 Fire Servant
Green:
2 Giant Spider
1 Hunter's Feast
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Naturalize
1 Sacred Wolf
2 Spined Wurm
1 Wall of Vines
1 Wall of Vines (FOIL)
1 Yavimaya Wurm
1 Acidic Slime
2 Autumn's Veil
1 Back to Nature
1 Cudgel Troll
1 Garruk's Packleader
Colorless:
1 Crystal Ball
1 Demon's Horn
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Kraken's Eye
1 Warlord's Axe
Land:
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Dragonskull Summit (rare)
1 Sunpetal Grove (rare)
2 Plains
1 Island
3 Mountain
Whenever I do a sealed pools, I first pull out my rares to see if I drafted any bombs. In this pool, there are no huge bombs that beckon a deck to be build around it. Two duel lands is nice, and having three black rares may guide us into that color, although I never build simply around rares. Every card from a common to a mythic is equally important when building a sealed deck. Finding synergies with rares is fine (like haunting echoes and traumatize) but I never begin deck building until I've gone through each card:
Rares:
1 Dragonskull Summit (rare)
1 Sunpetal Grove (rare)
1 Haunting Echoes (rare)
2 Phylactery Lich (rare)
1 Traumatize (rare)
The craziest thing is that we pulled two Phylactery Lichs. This is rare and something we cannot ignore. While we go through the rest of the cards I will be counting my artifacts to see if we can play double lichs! This would make us VERY black (nearly mono) but would be pretty cool.
After looking over my rares, the next thing I do is pull out powerful cards in each color. I try to value each colors potential power to figure out what my main color or colors are going to be. I pull out all the cards that I think are powerful from each color and see how they stack up or work together with other colors. It is key to remember we have three mana helping lands (two duels and terramorphic expanse) that will help us splash a third color or guide us into two specific colors. The other thing I make sure to do in this process is make note of archetypes (evasion creatures, milling, control, aggro) because a bunch of spells that accomplish those goals may not be the best spells in your pool but combined together can win you games. On to the key spells in each color:
White:
1 Blinding Mage
1 White Knight
White got the shaft in this pool. In fact it would be hard to pen six m11 packs and have worse white cards. On the other hand, at least we didn't open a bomb white card like Baneslayer without any support. Actually, I am always happy when one of two colors are completely dry, it makes building your deck easier. For the professors contest it makes coming up with an original deck much harder (i bit no one builds a white deck in the entire contest). Back to the cards, White knight is a good card but would never be played without support because of the double white mana cost. Basically, we could splash white for blinding mage, which seems really weak and just asking for mana problems. It looks as though white cards can be put away for this sealed pool.
Blue:
1 Augury Owl
1 Diminish
1 Foresee
1 Ice Cage
1 Negate
1 Unsummon
1 Traumatize (rare)
Blue got some good removal or psuedo removal cards. This is a good mix of cards that are very good in sealed. Remember that the odds of seeing huge bombs in sealed are twice as likely than in draft, since each player has 6 rares to choose from. This means cards like unsummon, diminish, ice cage, and negate and all very powerful cards. I tossed traumatize in here because with all the other support, we could go for some type of milling strategy. We did not pull Jace's Erasure which would solidify a mill strategy. Instead, traumatize could simply help cut their deck from powerful spells, which is very relevant in M11 because of all the tutors (diabolic tutor, liliana vess, fauna shaman, squadron hawks). This means traumatize can eliminate big threats the opponents may try to exploit, and also could be a good sideboard card for decks with threats we cannot deal with. Overall blue has no good creatures, but would make a great secondary color.
Black:
1 Doom Blade
2 Nightwing Shade
1 Quag Sickness
1 Sign in Blood
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Haunting Echoes (rare)
2 Phylactery Lich (rare)
Black got the most cards in the pool, and some really good ones. Once again I must say, the craziest thing is that we pulled two Phylactery Lichs. One Lich is not playable in an m11 sealed deck, and two is still unplayable unless you have artifact support. Lich's can be a 5/5 on turn three! Which is worth working towards, and with two Lich's out it is very hard for an opponent to recover from. The Rise from the Grave helps us bring them back too, and also can steal their bombs if we traumatize them. Before we commit to the Lichs, we do want to note the Doom Blade and Quag Sickness. Remember that Quag Sickness needs black support, and is not a good splashable removal spell (I made this mistake on mtgo). Quag is a great removal if you are playing heavy black. Nightwing Shade is decent, not great, but worth noting if we play heavy black. Shades are always worse with multiples (which I learned in m10) since your mana can't pump them both. I excluded the double Viscera Seer's but they are worthy to note, because they may be a great one drop that helps us chump and scry as the game progresses. Black seems decent, although it look like we would be building around the Lichs if that was our choice.
Moving on:
Red:
1 Act of Treason
1 Fling
1 Lava Axe
1 Manic Vandal
2 Chandra's Spitfire
1 Fire Servant
Vandal is a good sideboard card. Fling and Act of Treason is a great combo, and works well with our double viscera seer. Steal their guy and fling it or sacrifice it and scry. Also, Chandra's Spitfire and Fire Servant are great cards. It is too bad we did not draft any lightning bolts or Chandra's Outrage. Both cards need damage dealing removal, and we basically have none. Our black removal does not deal damage, and our blue removal does not deal damage. Sadly, as nice as our 3 red creatures are, they simply do not work well in this pool as nothing supports them. However, fling and act of treason are two cards we can consider splashing, especially with the Dragonskull Summit and Terramorphic expanse. Manic Vandal could still be a relevant sideboard card if we splash red, but not mainboard because we need to be careful he doesn't only have targets we control.
Green:
2 Giant Spider
1 Llanowar Elves
1 Naturalize
2 Spined Wurm
1 Wall of Vines
1 Wall of Vines (FOIL)
1 Acidic Slime
2 Autumn's Veil
1 Cudgel Troll
1 Garruk's Packleader
Green has some beefy creatures. One mana excellerent in llanowar elves and some very good defensive one drops in Wall of Vines. I like cudgel troll and acidic slime a lot, and two spined wurms could be a beating. When I see double wall of vines, which is good against fliers, I do start considering using some of the red pump spells as ways to kill off pesky fliers since in my entire pool I am lacking quality removal. Having so many big beaters is something that should never be overlooked in a sealed pool and would make a great backbone to a deck. In the end, green looks just as solid as black as a main color.
Colorless:
1 Crystal Ball
1 Demon's Horn
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Kraken's Eye
I laugh at the colorless spells, because they taunt me to use the Lichs. Both a blue and a black 2 drop artifact, that would work GREAT with the Lichs. Crystal Ball is also going to make the cut no matter what we play. The Gargoyle Sentinel is the same. A great big beater for three. Having three good cheap artifacts for the Lichs seem good, since they are hard to kill. If they have to sideboard a bunch of cards to kill my artifacts it will give me time to use cards like traumatize and haunting echoes. However, our green creatures may be the key to victory in this deck.
The Dilemna
The chance to play double phylactery Lich's is so enticing, but we will be struggling to stay mostly black while trying to get good blue/red spells into our deck. At the same time our green is powerful, but doesn't pair too well with our other colors. We could take out our Lichs and play green/black, playing 50/50 will allow us to play our Quag Sickness and the flying Shades. The question becomes do we play heavy black Lichs with blue and red splash? Or do we play green, splashing black/blue? I think both decks seems powerful, the Lichs seem cutesy and dynamic and the green strategy seems consistent. So what deck would you build with this pool?
I am going to study the curve of the two decks and playtest a little bit before making my final decision. I am also going to figure out what cards and decks beat me, and try to figure out which deck is the most stable against other sealed decks, especially after sideboard. I'll be submitting my deck in the next 24 hours.
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