Khans of Tarkir Prerelease Report: Midwest Edition

Big Fall Set Time, so Brent went to the local game store to battle some sealed at a Khans of Tarkir prerelease. [Side note: I cannot keep the clan names and abilities straight. Am I getting older or are these less evocative names than Shards or Ravnica?]

Which clan are you?

I picked Temur, because I like beef with a side of trickery. The Ferocious ability does little to tickle me, but I don't intend to build a whole strategy around it. If I see powerful cards with Ferocious, I will treat it strictly as a bonus. Recall that Naya in Shards was about big dudes, not the bonus you get for having big dudes.

In my pool, there is not much too exciting besides a Flooded Strand (what a lucksack) and the new five-mana Wrath. My promo card is the Temur mana-elf-morph, which is fine, but not a bomb.

I also own a whole bunch of the Onslaught fetches, so I have that going for me, which is nice.

I try the three colors the pool supposedly is, but that doesn't look too great. There is some good instant burn and plenty of large morphs, but red seems aimed toward quick aggression, which is not supported in the rest of the pool. I discard the red except for a possible splash.

Next to go was blue. Again there were good support cards with two Unsummons and a Singing Bell Strike, but quite the uninspiring creature base. Double Icefeather Aven were the only blue dudes I turly wanted to play.

The junk colors (Abzan) had a good bit of removal, plus a little bit of synergy, with a decent outlast roster and a few other cards that played into the +1/+1 counter theme. I filled in the deck with my big green morphs. The problem with this build was the mana.

My fixing was great as long as I wanted to play four-color not black. There were three Azorius lands, one Simic, one Boros, and two Temur, plus the Temur elf. The only fixing on hand that made black was a single banner and I will go on record that the banners are Not Good. Now I am between a rock and a hard place. My best deck has zero fixing, but my fixing supports a deck I don't like in the slightest.

I decide to go with the junk build with 18 land, since at least I know what it's goal is. Outlast (heh) the opponent, growing an insurmoutable army. As I put together the mana, I notice that there is a free blue splash available (five "free" sources that already made green or white). With that in mind, I add both the Icefeather Aven, knowing that at worst they are Grey Ogres.

Round One, I lose to a good player with a tight Red-Blue-white (Jeskai) deck. Each game, he kills one of my creatures with a five mana burn spell that draws a card. Then he recurs it with a Snidd, draws another card and kills another creature. In response I stare at my bounce morph, unwilling to bounce his creature to let him get it back again.

Nice combo. Slow, grindy creatures never stood a chance.

Round two, I play against a guy who is upset about losing the first round. We have essentially the same deck, outlast junk with Wrath, and unsurprisingly we go to time and draw. I made several mistakes that may have kept me from winning. My favorite was ending the second game by chumping a 3/3 with my morphed Pine Walker even though I have five mana and one of it is green. "Why?", you ask. Because I thought the unmorph cost was double green. Since I did not feel like untapping and eating his hill giant, I just packed up and went to game three, which I had under control when we went to turns, but could not finish off.

Control mirror + mistakes = unitentional draw

Round three and four, I beat inferior decks to finish 2-1-1. Top eight, right? Not really, since we didn't play the full five rounds necessary. Nonetheless, I had a good time because I love sealed and this challenging format really got my brain working in MTG mode again.

In the light of day today and after four matches of experience, I took a second look at my pool. I trimmed the outlast theme, went with a tight two-color blue green build with a small, nearly free white splash for the removal.

The big morph dudes are all in the three slot for display purposes

The two-drop 2/1s will be quite useful to beat down or trade with (more expensive) morphs. I elected to go with "big" morphs except for the fliers. Double bounce and Singing Bell Strike should be great tempo plays and mana should not be an issue.

Black had good removal, a strong counter theme, but lacked the fixing as I said earlier.

Red had a group of aggro creatures and spells, real good burn, three big Temur morphs and two big spells that were not in my colors. There may have been something worth running here, but it seemed disjointed during deck construction.

White had the outlast guys, Wrath and the tapper/wall, which is best used for blocking defensively then tapping offensively. Plus there were the two removal spells that I put in the revised maindeck.

I REALLY didn't want to use any banners.