M13 Prerelease

And I took fourth out of thirty. Huzzah!

So, I’m still not the biggest fan of the new line of Core Sets, but I have to say WotC did an amazing job on the packaging. Not only do the packs look sweet, but they open beautifully. Like they were made for “popping.” <— See 3:44 of this video. Heck, even the new card smell’s better than most recent sets. Methinks I get a bit too much into opening packs. <_<

Opened some good stuff for once. Wanted to go black/white, but ended up full esper for the draw. Blah blah blah details. Here’s what I opened / built, italics indicating rarity and foiliness.


Sealed For My Pleasure [BUW]
—Land (18)—
3 Evolving Wilds
6 Island
5 Plains
4 Swamp

—Creatures (13)—
Ajani’s Sunstriker
Archaeomancer
Arctic Aven
Chronomaton
Duty-Bound Dead
Guardians of Akrasa
Knight of Glory
Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis
Sublime Archangel
Warclamp Mastiff
War Priest of Thune
2 Welkin Tern

—Noncreatures (9)—
Divination
Elixir of Immortality
2 Index
Murder
Oblivion Ring
Staff of Nin
2 Talrand’s Invocation

—Sideboard (8)—
Disentomb
Duress
Essence Scatter
Gilded Lotus
Guardian Lions
Healer of the Pride
Plains
Safe Passage

—Other Opens—
Battleflight Eagle
Captain’s Call
Divine Favor
Griffin Protector
Show of Valor
Silvercoat Lion
2 Bloodthrone Vampire
Cower in Fear
2 Walking Corpse
Wit’s End
Downpour
Faerie Invaders
Harbor Serpent
2 Hydrosurge
Jace’s Phantasm
Kraken Hatchling
2 Merfolk of the Pearl Trident
2 Negate
Sleep
Vedalken Entrancer
Arbor Elf
Bountiful Harvest
Deadly Recluse
Duskdale Wurm
Elvish Visionary
Primal Huntbeast
Rancor
Ranger’s Path
Spiked Baloth
Timberpack Wolf
Arms Dealer
Bladetusk Boar
Dragon Hatchling
Fervor
Goblin Arsonist
Goblin Battle Jestor
Kindled Fury
Krenko’s Command
Reckless Brute
Rummaging Goblin
Searing Spear
Torch Fiend
Turn to Slag
Volcanic Geyser
Volcanic Strength
Wild Guess
Ring of Kalonia


Round 1 vs Black/Red (2-0) - I faced a highly competitive player known for his ragequit temper when things don’t go his way. Outside of Limited, all he’s capable of is netdecks. Moving on, since I’m not here to bash. Game one I do a little early attacking, and he gets out Vampire Nighthawk. I Talrand’s Invocation into two 2/2 flying blockers, stalling the field until Murder kills the Bloodhawk. He scoops in response, unwilling to lay out an (apparently) cruddy hand. Game two’s not much different, this time him scooping after loudly proclaiming mana screw and something along the lines of a rather snoddy “Nice three color deck.” Probably best that I kept my tongue held. After all, I was only mainboarding Gilded Lotus at the time, alongside my three Evolving Wilds and those Indexes.

Round 2 vs Green/Red and Black/Blue (2-0) - In game one I got out Sublime Angel, but ended up having to trade her with a Dragon Hatchling. Nefarox came out shortly after, but couldn’t attack on account of a Deadly Recluse. After a few turns of stalling, an Index grabbed my O-Ring to get it out of the way for the win. He switched colors for game two, and sadly for him I ended up curving perfectly, too much to stop.

Round 3 vs Monoblack (0-2) - The guy opened up four Murders, need I say more? My stars died easily, and my second game had a rather slow hand. Hey, luck can go both ways.

Round 4 vs Black/Blue/Green (2-0 / 3-1) - Battling a friend, we choose to split the prize packs and play for points. Which was a good thing, since I ended up utterly overpowering him. Sublime Angel + Talrand’s Invocation is really good stuff. Especially when it happens two games in a row. We played two more games after that, and still had a third of the round left when we’d finished.
All in all, an excellant showing.

Besieged Midnight Sealed Tournament (3-1)

Mirrodin Besieged is here!
With this one, I had a rough time deciding on my faction. Eventually I went Phyrexia, mostly due to friends and the foil. I was rather surprised at the amount of Mirran players, with a roughly 50/50 split between the two groups. Either the Phyrexians around here tend to be the louder group, or I need more Mirran friends.

My last Sealed was a horrible memory. Opened a great infect deck, put itself together without much effort and all that jazz. Only problem was that I couldn't draw land. At all. The exception being a friendly few games with another player while we waited between rounds. I smashed him thoroughly. Oh yeah, he later won that tournament. Yeah. Moving on.

Here's a list of the deck I pulled together, the cards I ended up using in sideboard (in italics), and the "illegitimate" rest of the sideboard that only saw light of day while I opened my packs.


A Nightmare Awakens
---Lands (16)---
x9 Forest
x1 Glimmerpost
x6 Swamp

---Creatures (14)---
x1 Blight Mamba
x1 Blightwidow
x1 Corpse Cur
x2 Flensermite
x1 Flesh-Eater Imp
x1 Necropede
x1 Phyrexian Juggernaut
x1 Rot Wolf
x1 Rusted Slasher
x2 Viridian Corrupter
x2 Viridian Emissary

---Spells (4)---
x2 Morbid Plunder
x1 Untamed Might
x1 Virulent Wound

---Artifacts (7)---
x1 Grafted Exoskeleton
x2 Ichor Wellspring
x1 Infiltration Lens
x1 Mimic Vat
x1 Mirrorworks
x1 Spine of Ish Sah


---Sideboard (59)---
x1 Blackcleave Goblin
x1 Caustic Hound
x1 Corrupted Harvester
x1 Fume Spitter
x1 Gruesome Encore
x1 Phyresis
x1 Phyrexian Rager
x1 Carapace Forger
x1 Copperhorn Scout
x1 Creeping Corrosion
x1 Ezuri, Renegade Leader
x2 Glissa's Courier
x2 Unnatural Predation
x1 Viridian Revel
x1 Dross Ripper
x3 Flayer Husk
x1 Moriok Replica
x1 Mortarpod
x2 Panic Spellbomb
x1 Pierce Strider
x1 Saberclaw Golem
x1 Sylvok Replica
x1 Vector Asp
x1 Vulshok Replica
x1 Wall of Tanglecord
x1 Arrest
x1 Banishment Decree
x1 Choking Fumes
x1 Fulgent Distraction
x1 Glint Hawk
x1 Soul Parry
x2 Tine Shrike
x1 Bonds of Quicksilver
x1 Darkslick Drake
x1 Disperse
x2 Fuel for the Cause
x1 Inexorable Tide
x1 Riddlesmith
x1 Scrapdiver Serpent
x2 Serum Raker
x1 Sky-Eel School
x1 Thrummingbird
x1 Turn Aside
x1 Vault Skyward
x1 Vedalken Certarch
x1 Into the Core
x2 Kuldotha Rebirth
x1 Oxidda Scrapmelter
x1 Turn to Slag
x1 Swamp


The matches themselves were four rounds; here's a quick summary.

Round 1 - Monoblack Infect (2-0)
I can't say too much here. Game 1 ended prematurely to a Untamed Might 9/9 Rot Wolf poisoning the day. An enjoyable first poison win, even if it fell one power short of unlocking the Praetor's Pet achievement. Second game I felt like a douche-bag; Rusted Slasher + Spine of Ish Sah equals a recurring pay 7 mana to destroy a permanent. Now toss in Mirrorworks and for an extra 2 mana you can destroy a second permanent as well as keep regeneration fodder for the more vulnerable combo piece. That's a worthy recipe for making an Eldrazi, if I say so myself.

Round 2 -Red/White Battlecry (0-2)
My first exposure to what the Mirrans had to offer. Would have gone better if I saw better draw during both games, but oh well. At least verified battle cry in my mind as being more than a "meh" ability.

Round 3 - Black/Green Geth (2-1)
Another Untamed Might gave Rot Wolf another player kill. Loved it. Geth, Lord of the Vault saw play in game two, which took up the majority of our match time. Ish Sah killed it eventually. Eventually. But after being milled twenty or so cards, he had the creature advantage to seal the deal. Game 3, however, saw me with more infect creatures than I could shake a stick at. Helps when Phyrexian Juggernaut has Infiltration Lens on him and whatnot.

Round 4 - White/Red Battlecry (2-1)
I was nervous this time around. Games for all the beans can do that sometimes. Particularly after the first Mirran bout. Game one started, and a bad omen Mulligan gave me a worse hand than the first. Kept it, eventually popping my two Viridian Emissaries a total of five times thanks to Morbid Plunder. Mostly it was done to avert the total lack of land I was drawing early game, and to help stem the tide of double Master's Call (two 1/1 Myrs each) followed by Kuldotha Rebirth (-1 Myr, +3 1/1 Goblins). Seemed pretty good, but he wasn't seeing more than one mountain. By the time he could play his battle cry red creatures, I had enough mana to fuel my Mirrorworks and Spine of Ish Sah. Without my Slasher, I had to use my mirrorwork copy to destroy the original so I could recur it. Oh well. Eventually, Grafted Exoskeleton on none other than Viridian Emissary went the distance. Game two I got to see battlecry go to town. My blockers helped a ton, but a well-placed Arrest on my Juggernaut kept me from stabilizing. Awfully quick game. The third game saw us going past the round time limit into five-turn draw mode. I can't recall all of what happened there; happened too quickly, but I can say is that Koth was involved, Juggernaut saw me drawing lots and lots and lots off Infiltrator Lens, and we both had Mimic Vats out at any given time, even two in my possession at one point. Crazy stuff, even if I didn't get to combo. In the end, lack of flying on his part let Flesh-Eater Imp go the distance.

So yeah, five prize packs to me next week. Hope they are worth the wait!