Theros Prerelease: Deck Report

Well the Theros prerelease has come and gone. I chose to follow the "path of ambition" aka black. My reasoning was the following. I want to play Read the Bones, that card is sweet!

What a beauty. Sadly I did not get any in my pool (sad trombone). And the gods were even more cruel. I saw people play this card all over the place, and they did it wrong. I saw a guy draw the cards and take two. I saw a guy just draw two. And worst of all I saw a guy Scry 2 and do nothing else. Ugg.


Anyways I cracked open my packs and piled the cards up. We had 50 minutes for deckbuilding so I wrote down my 5 boosters for later reference. If you weren't aware at the prerelease you get 5 boosters of Theros and one color pack. Right away black was coming for me and I had three bombs.

  

There were a couple removal spells and some other black goodies. I had a nice little devotion theme going on with the Mogis's Marauder (better than I thought he would be), and Disciple of Phenax. It was interesting, I actively went searching for 2 and 3 drops with BB in the cost. That was fun. I looked at my curve and there was a hole at 2/3 and 5/6. I was also light on removal -- which is apparently normal for this set. The other thing going on was my 2x Returned Phalanx:

I'm intrigued by this guy. Obviously I run every one I can get my hands on in a blue black deck. So that was pulling me to blue. I also had a travelers amulet to facilitate a splash. So I started by looking through my blue and the power just wasn't there. Same goes for green and white. Red was pretty good with the highlight being

 

There were a couple other burn spells and a couple Deathbellow Raiders. It seemed ok. So that's what I sleeved up. Oh I had an Opaline Unicorn as well. I'm a fan so far. People played cluestones and this guys crushes a cluestone. Given that I looked at the mana base and decided that I wanted to make the blue work for the activation on the Phalanx. I added one island and the traveler's amulet. I had three ways to get blue, a little less than I want but it's only for the activation on the guys so I figured it was enough.

I decided to play 18 land (a 7 drop and consistency, plus no good card to go in the 23rd slot), but since I had the amulet that became 17. The island took up a slot so I was left with 16 slots. I've got a double red and lots of black in there. The 8/8 split felt light on black so I went 9 black 7 mountain.

Here's the final list. Match reports to come.


Creatures (15)
1 drop -
2 drop - 2x Deathbellow Raider, 2x Returned Phalanx, Baleful Eidolon
3 drop - Mogis's Marauder, Angent of the Fates Opaline Unicorn
4 drop - Erebos, God of the Dead, Ember Swallower, Purphoros's Emissary, Cavern Lampad, Insatiable Harpy, Disciple of Phenax
5 drop -
6 drop -
7 drop - Abhorrent Overlord

Removal ( 5) - Lightning Strike, Pharika's Cure, 2x Rage of Purphoros, Sip of Hemlock
Auras (1) - Scourgemark
Tricks (1) - Coordinated Assault
Fixing (1) - Travler's Amulet
Land (17) - 9 swamp, 7 mountain, 1 island

Late Cuts: Dragon Mantle, Spark Jolt, Ordeal of Erebos, Disciple of Phenax, Guardians of Meletis
Other Spice in the pool: Temple of Mystery, Horizon Chimera