In this article, we give you, in the interest of offering you the occasion to practice deckbuilding for M13 Sealed, the Sealed pools (and decklists) of those at MTGO Academy who participated at Grand Prix Boston-Worcester. Feel free to describe how you would build these lists in the comments section, and then check under the spoilers to see what we did, what we wish we’d done, and what our records were.
ChrisKool's Grand Prix Boston-Worcester Sealed pool
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Show ChrisKool’s registered decklist, and his retooled list »
ChrisKool's registered decklist
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What ChrisKool thinks he should have played
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PlanetWalls' Grand Prix Boston-Worcester Sealed pool
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Show PlanetWalls’ registered decklist, and his retooled list »
PlanetWalls' registered decklist
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What PlanetWalls thinks he should have played
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enderfall's Grand Prix Boston-Worcester Sealed pool
Show enderfall’s’ registered decklist, and his retooled list »
enderfall's registered decklist
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What enderfall thinks he should have played
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ThePolkaMan's Grand Prix Boston-Worcester Sealed pool
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Show ThePolkaMan’s registered decklist, and his retooled list »
ThePolkaMan's registered decklist
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What ThePolkaMan thinks he should have played
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From the pools and decklists, guess who did the best and who did the worst! »
Worst: PlanetWalls, at 1-3
Best: ThePolkaMan, at 11-5
Just missed the top 64. My sealed was complete garbage, but I ended up 8-2 on day 1 with the EPIC combo of Fungal Sprouting and Predatory Rampage.
Day 2 I made the sickest draft deck ever. I basically made M13 Limited Delver.
3 Archeomancer
3 Unsummon
2 Switcheroo
3 Vedalken Entrancer
and some finisher called Thundermaw Hellkite.
I was able to use the Entrancer on myself, mill 2 cards with Archeomancer in hand, get something, use it. And best moment of Boston:
Switcheroo Odric for my Archeomancer, Unsummon my Archeomancer, then procede to get back unsummon and swing for Lethal.
Best GP ever.
Aside from planetwalls revised decklist I would have build all the sealed pools differently.
Planetwalls revised decklist is the best he could make out of the bad pool he got.
Now for Chriskools pool. Wow.. That is really one of those once in a lifetime sealed’s you can get. I personally would have gone with U/W over Boros. It might be personal preference, but red offered you searing spear/turn to slag/arms dealer. While blue offered you better creatures and another bomb in the form of talrand.
Welkin Tern, 2x wind drake, and jace phantasm gives you early tempo with evasion.
You will have 5 removal over 6 (unsummon, encrust), but it puts your opponent in a tough spot to deal with 5 fliers < cmc 3. If he can deal with those fliers through removal you paved the path for your 3 bombs, sublime archangel, serra angel, talrand.
You also still retain your swarm effect for your crusader, something you probably wanted to get through playing red.
Enderfalls list is tricky. Green seems very attractive, but I am confident that both your black + white are stronger, even though they lack the green bombs.
I would have gone B/W. Yes you lack big creatures, but you make it up for a ton of removal, early beaters + evasion.
Also 2x ring of xathrid + faithmender/healer/vampire nighthawk still gives you an incredible lategame.
You hold the ground, and in the meanwhile you remove all threats in the air + tormented soul + ring. It will be almost impossible for any opponent to race you with the defensive power you have, and you will keep poking them instead.
ThePolka's sealed pool is tough. He obviously did good, so its hard to contradict his decision,
However I probably would have cut stormtide leviathan + tricks of the trade for 2 centaur coursers.
Splashing red is very enticing, especially with the rootbound crag, but it probably is to taxing since you need to include a plains for the avens.
Definitely agree that my pool was the weakest of the four. My mistake was thinking that 2x Murder would give me enough options to win against other players, but they just weren’t enough. First and second rounds I lost in close game 3s against decks with tons of threats (first guy played RBg with Thragtusk, Xathrid Gorgon, and Krenko), and my removal suite wasn’t as effective as a set of difficult-to-answer win cons.
As for Chris’s list, I’m not sure that Talrand is a bomb with white. There just aren’t that many instants and sorceries.
Finally, Mike told me when he found out he made Day 2 that what allowed him to win several of his matches was the Leviathan, which he was initially skeptical of playing. Not sure about how those games went. He might show up to comment, though.
Perhaps B/W is where I should have gone. Most of the games I managed to win were on the back of Nighthawk and I think I won every game that I was able to equip Ring of Xathrid to the Nighthawk. When I was deck building, the White pool just looked real weak to me. I saw the Pacifism and the O-Ring, but I didn’t see much else to push me in that direction (at the time). In hindsight, that might have been a critical mistake, but when looking at B/W together the deck didn’t have anything after the 4-drop slot and it didn’t look like an “aggro” deck, so it appeared weak.
For what it’s worth, I ended up siding into the UW version for Rounds 2 and 3. I do agree that red does look pretty good in this pool and was certainly an option, but I still think that UW is correct because of the 2 Arctic Avens. Having 3/2 with flying and lifelink is so much greater a threat than a 2/1 flier that I think it is the tiebreaker between the 3 other pretty average colors.
As for Tricks and Leviathan, I think they are both worth keeping in the deck. Tricks is less useful in UW because so many things already have evasion, and giving a guy with flying unblockable is far less useful than giving a regular guy unblockable. Nonetheless, it is still a solid card in the UG version, since you can present a pretty fast clock putting it on a Packleader or Baloth, and its value goes way up being in the same deck as Scroll Thief. Also, when the deck sides into UW, a Tricks on Ajani Sunstriker can quickly get out of hand. I remember one game in particular where I was racing a BW exalted deck and was able to stay afloat with Sunstriker and Tricks and eventually win the race.
And as for Leviathan, I was definitely skeptical of running him at all, but its a powerhouse. I know its slow and awkward when it sits in your hand all game, but when it resolves, it has a tremendous impact on the board and can easily swing games in your favor. Sure, if you were dead to fliers, then you’re still dead to fliers, but even in these worst case scenarios it will stop an Attended Knight or so from attacking. At its best, it shuts them down completely. In one game, my opponent had me dead on board with a bunch of Goblins and Tormented Souls and two cards in hand. He played Krenko’s Command and Walking Corpse and passed. On my turn I cast Stormtide Leviathan, which pretty much shut him down completely. And if Moat wasn’t good enough, you also have an 8/8 unblockable creature, so your opponent only has a turn or two to find an answer to Leviathan, and there are surprisingly few answers to it, and those few answers are especially scare in Sealed. There are also no matches where either half of the card (the Moat or the unblockable 8/8) are not game-changing. It’s a clunky and expensive bomb, but a bomb nonetheless.