M14 Prerelease - Deck Tech

First of all I must say I had a blast at the prerelease. I was over at Card Kingdom with what turned out to be about 6 friends (you had to buy your tickets online a few days ahead of time). We cracked our packs and got to building. The pool I opened up looks like this.

I don't need no stinking green!

The white and blue were chock full of removal. We're talking two Claustrophobia and two Time Ebb, while white had a Pacifism and two Banisher Priests. I had a Shimmering Grotto for splash but going to the shock and the doom blade just didn't seem worth it. Why would I splash for something my deck was already strong in (ach, it's back)?

With my color decisions made it just came down to figuring out which 23 to pay. When I looked at my spells it was the ones mentioned above and Divination. There were no other spells I was super happy about running. Based on those spells, it really felt like I wanted to get on a roll early and stay there. Time ebb in particular.

Especially in a new format this card is sweet. People love to screw up their mana base and mulligan poorly. Proper use of a Time Ebb is back breaking. In several games I was able to use it to keep my opponent off their fourth land drop, while I was calmly developing my lands to get to my finishers.

Now that I had my plan it was time to fill out the creatures. Let's start at the one drop slot. There were only two of them in my pool.

 

I just couldn't bring myself to put them in my deck. Not even tempted a little, I know my plan is to get pressure on early, but Suntail Hawk couldn't pressure a one pound coconut. The two slot was also pretty slim but I had a few playables:  Tidebinder Mage, Coral Merfolk, and a Seacoast Drake. I decided to play two of them and left the Drake out because he's only a 1/3. 

This guy was an all star for me. Everyone I played had red or green creatures. So he was just sweet. The three slot is where this deck got going. 2x Banisher Priest, Auramancer (ugg), Trained Condor, Master of Diversion, Phantom Warrior, Scroll Thief (because I has so much removal and the Condor and the Diversion), Warden of Evos Isle, and Griffin Sentinel. Let's talk about the new stuff for a minute.

 

These are the cards that limited was born for. And in my deck they fit perfectly. These guys deal with your opponents creatures while simultaneously developing your board. I love the balance on the Master (allons-y). It is good but they can deal with it. But they probably don't want to pop a spell on it. So combat is getting more interesting. He does induce a bit of a headache when planning your attack but is quite fun. For the Priest I am really happy to see the new template of Oblivion Ring / Fiend Hunter. This is a great step in Magic design. The old interaction with bouncing a Hunter while it's first ability was on the stack was super shitty. Bravo.

The high end of my curve was pretty sparse: Charging Griffin, Messenger Drake, Serra Angel, and Jace's Mindseeker.

And that's my deck. I did decide to run a Cancel, figuring that if I was on the front foot it would ice the game (that never happened btw, every time I had the cancel and i was ahead I was already crushing them so bad I didn't need it). Also I had a spciy peice of equipment, the Fireshrieker, it gives double strike.

Again as is usual for me in limited I went Zendikar lands in House Lannister sleeves.

Deck:

LANDS: 8 Plains and 9 Islands

2-DROP: Tidebinder Mage, Coral Merfolk

3-DROP: 2x Banisher Priest, Auramancer, Trained Condor, Master of Diversion, Phantom Warrior, Scroll Thief, Warden of Evos Isle, Griffin Sentinel

4-DROP: Charging Griffin

5-DROP: Messenger Drake, Serra Angel

6-DROP: Jace's Mindseeker

SPELLS: Pacifism, 2x Claustrophobia, 2x Time Ebb, Diviniation, Cancel, Fireshrieker 

(new thing that I'm starting, Bold is removal, Italics are evasion. I am generous with my definition, see Master of Diversion.)

Late Cuts: Show of Valor, Celestial Flare, 2x Archaeomancer

Stay tuned for Match Reports, and a bonus special post featuring Marshall Sutcliffe.