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I'm a lot better at draft than sealed and it's been showing lately, so here is the first of a series analyzing my sealed play.
Pool evaluation
Overall, my pool was a bit all over the place:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LhxhLkR.png)
(not sure why it only displayed 16 of my 18 lands...)
Cards that stood out for each color:
White with High Sentinels of Arashin, Ainok Bondkin (x2), Seeker of the Way, Suspension Field, and Watcher of the Roost.
Blue with Thousand Winds, Mystic of Hidden Way, Treasure Cruise, Crippling Chill (x2)
Black with Kheru Bloodsucker, Bellowing Saddlebrute, Bitter Revelation
Red with Burn Away
Green with Savage Punch, Pine Walker, Wooly (x2), and Hooting (x2)
Black and Red were pretty clearly my worst of the bunch, leaving me with a weird mix of White, Blue, and Green as my base colors. My lands heavily supported White and Green, with some support for Blue, and a possible splash for Red.
Cards I wanted to play but never made the cut:
Abzan Guide (no black support from my lands and very weak in my pool)
Abomination of Gudhul (again, no black support)
Sultai Charm (same idea)
Highspire Mantis (playable, but my red if played at all will be a very minor splash, so I will rarely be able to play him on curve)
Cards I think I should have cut:
Some mix of Snowhorn Riders and Avalanche Tuskers to condense my mana spread a bit more away from red and improve my consistency. Perhaps replace with some mix of Jeskai Student, Mardu Hordechief, Salt Road Patrol, Dragon's Eye Savant, Monastery Flock, Smoke Teller.
I thought I still had a decent deck, but it might run into mana issues some games and was lacking in hard removal (conditional Suspension Field and Savage Punch, and expensive Burn Away). Roar of Challenge would smash through board stalls and I had plenty of creatures >= 4 power (or could get there with +1 +1 counters) for Ferocious trigger. I never got to play with the card before and wanted to try it out here.
Round 1
Played against a bad player with a bad sultai deck. He opened up both games with Taigem's Scheming on the 2nd turn, but only putting 1 card in the grave and just re-arranging his draws. In both games he never established any board presence and I just easily ran him over.
Round 2
Played against an aggressive Mardu deck. Game 1 he curved out perfectly and I couldn't stop the onslaught. Game 2 ended up in an interesting scenario - here's the board state:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZMKXBJj.png)
Despite him having three morph creatures on board, he only had 3 mana and has been missing land drops. I figure I'll either get a 2 for 1 here or he'll take the damage, I'll play Winds as a morph and let him alpha swing and unmorph Winds for the blowout afterwards. Sort of worked out...
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lDHaZ8M.png)
Damnit. Not sure if there was a better line to take here. I couldn't put him on Jeering Instigator as a rare and him having all morphs on board.
Round 3
Versus an "ok" Jeskai deck. He Jeskai Crane Techniqued me out 3 games in a row by turn 10. Enough said. Drew the card, mana to cast it, and creatures on board for absurd damage out of nowhere early on.
However, I notice he used Jeskai Crane Technique before combat not making use of the Untap Creatures part of it. I figured with my Crippling Chills, and Thousand Winds, I might be able to get him for that mistake. With that said - I won the 2nd game with an odd play - I had Thousand Winds down as a morph with 8 mana open. I could have outlasted by Bondkin, played a creature, or a morph, but then I wouldn't be able to unmorph Thousand Winds. I attacked with my only other creature at the time Watcher of the Roost for 2 evasive damage and passed the turn hoping for an alpha strike. It was even better than that - he pre-combat casted Jeskai Flying Crane Technique then swung with everyone and I bounced them all. He insta-conceded.
Level ups
* I need to dedicate more practice specifically to sealed.
* Unless I get absurdly lucky with my fixing, I need to focus on a heavy two color base with perhaps 1 or 2 LIGHT splashes. This was my biggest mistake where I was heavily spread across 3 colors and then tried to somewhat lightly splash a 4th.
* Roar of the Challenge I'm still unsure of. A couple times it was stranded in my hand when I could have some board-impacting spell. Other times it helped me push through board stalls or clear the board up significantly.
* Crippling Chill keeps jumping up a little in my evaluation. Cantrip effect and the tempo loss for the opponent is sweet.
* Jeering Instigator continues to jump up in my evaluation. Body + act of treason. Hell, even Act of Treason alone has been screwing up my games.
* Thousand Winds continues to impress. He easily turns the tides with the powerful unmorph effect, or just played straight out as a 5/6 flyer for 6. Morphing him is so risky, so it's tough to decide when that is the right play. It depends on whether you can bait some Outlasts / Alpha Strike for useful bounce targets or not. If I have 10 mana open and no other play, then obviously I'll just play him as a morph since there's no risk then.
Other notes...
I haven't played a draft in over a week. Last Friday was Halloween and had a few friends over to hang out playing Cards Against Humanity, so didn't go to my LGS for FNM. Starting today (Wednesday) my gf and I are on vacation from work (her vacation starts tomorrow actually) to spend some much needed time together and get out of our apartment for a while. We'll be going to a Retro Gaming convention on Saturday (Retro Con in Syracuse). There will be MTG there, but it's a standard tournament and I don't feel like playing standard anyways. So, again, there won't be much MTG playing this week.
Thanks for all the feedback - as always it's much appreciated.
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Cards I think I should have cut:
Some mix of Snowhorn Riders and Avalanche Tuskers to condense my mana spread a bit more away from red and improve my consistency. Perhaps replace with some mix of Jeskai Student, Mardu Hordechief, Salt Road Patrol, Dragon's Eye Savant, Monastery Flock, Smoke Teller.
I actually like your build for the most part, and definitely wouldn't cut snowhorn riders. At worst it's a 3 mana 2/2, and it's pretty good in sealed. I think avalanche tuskers is not as a great as it seems like it should be, and can easily be cut. It's also unfortunate you have no black fixing  .
I can't tell what your last 2 lands are. Just by looking though, it seems like you want more plains and less forests (assuming those last 2 cards are forests, which it looks like).
Bears like smoke teller are much worse in sealed. You don't have enough blue for savant. Jeskai student might be better than bond kin in sealed, I'm not sure, but with your mana it's definitely worse. Hordechief and Salt Road Patrol are both reasonable. I would personally play weaponmaster or salt road patrol.
In general, 2 drops are worse in sealed than in draft, and I could see sideboarding out a bond kin depending on the decks you face, though I'm fine with starting them.
[b]Round 2 Played against an aggressive Mardu deck. Game 1 he curved out perfectly and I couldn't stop the onslaught. Game 2 ended up in an interesting scenario - here's the board state:
why are you attacking here?
* Unless I get absurdly lucky with my fixing, I need to focus on a heavy two color base with perhaps 1 or 2 LIGHT splashes. This was my biggest mistake where I was heavily spread across 3 colors and then tried to somewhat lightly splash a 4th.
* Roar of the Challenge I'm still unsure of. A couple times it was stranded in my hand when I could have some board-impacting spell. Other times it helped me push through board stalls or clear the board up significantly.
I feel like it's actually really hard to be just 2 colors with a light splash in KTK sealed; you're usually at least 4 colors. Roar is good in the slower boardstall games, but don't be afraid to side it out if it looks like it's not needed.
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I attacked for the reasons described below the picture. My plan was to encourage him to attack with all his creatures as I played Thousand Winds as a morph. After he attacked with them, I would take the hits, then unmorph Thousand Winds to return all his creatures to his hand and attack again. Probably fancy play syndrome (FPS) on my part. Probably better to just play Thousand Winds straight out and pass the turn? Looks like Jeering Instigator was going to get me at some point anyways. Perhaps I should have thought more into why he only attacked back into me with two morphs instead of all 3?
Playing Winds as a morph
* Risky if he has Debilitating Injury (he is mardu after all)
* He may not even attack with all creatures (he only attacked with two, leaving back Jeering)
* If he does attack with all three, I almost 100% have the game sealed there with 10 point crack-back and followup as his board is empty with a 5 damage flyer and 5 damage trampler on board.
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On November 08 2014 18:48 EscPlan9 wrote:
I attacked for the reasons described below the picture. My plan was to encourage him to attack with all his creatures as I played Thousand Winds as a morph. After he attacked with them, I would take the hits, then unmorph Thousand Winds to return all his creatures to his hand and attack again. Probably fancy play syndrome (FPS) on my part. Probably better to just play Thousand Winds straight out and pass the turn?
Playing Winds as a morph
* Risky if he has Debilitating Injury (he is mardu after all)
* He may not even attack with all creatures (he only attacked with two, leaving back Jeering)
* If he does attack with all three, I almost 100% have the game sealed there with 10 point crack-back and followup as his board is empty with a 5 damage flyer and 5 damage trampler on board.
Attacking just looks very wrong. He is at 20, you are at 12. He has 3 creatures to your 1, but it's likely you can develop your board to be much stronger than his due to your mana advantage and hand quality. This is a game that favors you if it goes longer. You are the control, he is the aggro. I feel like your line of play is super risky. It looks like you'll be taking 6 immediately, and your plan is to pass the next turn with snowhorn and morph back with 7 mana of all colors up. This is putting all your eggs in one basket. Even if he doesn't expect thousand winds, which he shouldn't, no good player will make that attack.
It's unclear why you're at 4 life in the next picture also. What you should expect, however, is 6 from his board and 1 from your flooded strand, putting you at 5. Act of treason would have killed you in the second screenshot, it didn't have to be jeering instigator. If he also correctly passes when you leave back 7 mana and 2 creatures, you are also risking him drawing land land with arrow storm. There is no way this is your best chance to win.
If you want to cast winds as a morph, I think you should morph aven as well and not attack. Any time you untap with 7 mana and winds, you are very high percentage to win regardless, especially if you're still at 12. There is no reason to provoke him into attacking you; he will have to eventually. This has the same risks as your line of play of just morphing winds. However, you are at a higher life, and have aven in play. If the morphed winds dies, you can still keep up aven unmorph mana. Eventually you can cruise with morph mana still up, and unmorph watcher at some point as well.
Hardcasting winds is also fine. I wouldn't attack in that scenario either. The next turn you can morph aven, and leave up unmorph mana, attacking with the winds each turn.
Looks like Jeering Instigator was going to get me at some point anyways.
I'm not sure this is true, and it's a bad way of thinking either way. The play was wrong regardless.
Perhaps I should have thought more into why he only attacked back into me with two morphs instead of all 3?
Again, I'm not sure exactly what happened between the 2 screen shots. I must be missing something. If the scenario is his 3 morphs against your 1 untapped morph, you can ask yourself why he isn't attacking with one of them. Neither of the red commons makes sense. The same is true for the white commons. Krumar kinda makes sense, though not really, and sidisi's pet doesn't make sense either. Ponyback is also a maybe, probably not. None of the commons really make sense. Any of the 3 uncommon reveal a card morphs seem reasonable to not attack with. Ripper would have blocked if he had a black card in hand. I can't think of the black rare, but either of the white/red rares makes sense as well. The next question to ask is if he does have the red rare, can you afford to play around it? Again, I'm not sure what happened between the two screenshots, but once you're that low on life it is difficult.
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I think I did FPS. I think my best line was just using the most of my mana and playing Winds straight out followed by morphing Aven with unmorph mana up and taking it to the skies. I don't recall myself where the extra damage went? I'd have to review the game again. Somehow I got there shortly after bouncing his morphs.
Thanks for the feedback as always.
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EPT
