Khans Sealed Deck #1 - Deck Construction

For the first time in quite a while, I fired up the old MODO machine and hopped into a Khans of Tarkir sealed deck release event. Let's get right to the pool:

Sweet fetch, bro

In this format, the first thing I'm going to look at is the fixing. I included the banners because they are cards if just barely. If we want to go full 5 color, then we have 5 red, 5 green, 3 blue, 3 white, and 2 black, plus 10 basics to split up. That doesn't feel like quite enough for my taste, although if the pool pushes us that way, it might be possible. By clan, there are 4 Temur fixers, 3 Mardu, 2 Sultai, 2 Jeskai, and 2 Abzan. Essentially our fixing is spread out across all colors.

On to the real cards...

The colorless group is not exciting:

Next comes the multi-color selection:

There is some sweet token action from the Mardu Horde, two beaters from Temur (shockingly), a tricky morph in Jeskai, and one removal spell and one enabler from Sultai. All in all this is not too exciting. There certainly isn't enough widespread power to seriously consider five-color. And how weird is it to open 6 packs and not find a single Abzan card?

For the colors, I have sorted into strong, passable, and sideboard/unplayable groupings.

White has a few top-end cards then a couple expensive dragons and a bunch of stupid ground guys. The Kill Shot is primo and in the right deck, Rush of Battle can do Overrun-style work.

Blue features powerful card draw but weaker removal and nothing really sexy.

Black has powerful early- and late-game removal, some card draw, delve cards and delve enablers, a big bruiser and a couple strong early Mardu weenies. I like the looks of this.

Red provides a bunch of chaff. The Phoenix is super strong and the Heart-Piercer is quite ruthless at killing morphs, but the unplayables list is long here. I make a note that Trumpet Blast is our second Overrun-style card in the pool.

Green gives us some excellent large morphs, including one that doubles as possible removal. There are several tricks and a Trail of Mystery, which makes me want to at least look at a morph-heavy deck.

I lay out quite a few builds, including blue-green splash red, white-black splash red, and blue-black splash green. Which of these do you like?

The Temur is the Trail of Mystery deck, with nine morphs but only two two-drops, one of which has zero power. This gives me pause, despite the sweet interactions and the big beef. There is not any hard removal in this version either.

The Mardu deck has a plan, which is to make a bunch of small guys, kill your big guys once the expensive removal comes on line, then Overrun for the win. Not the best plan for sealed, but I do like decks with a plan.

The mana is worst in the Sultai build, but that one has the biggest creatures and a decent removal suite. It is quite tempting.

As the 20 minute deckbuilding window ticked down, I decided to go aggression and a plan, with good mana. I submitted the following Mardu build, which includes a few oversights that I would change if I could do it again.

• The mana count is 8-8-6 on 18 lands. 
• I have only four morphs and only 14 creatures, but three of those bring extra tokens along for the ride. 
• I only have one splash card that is not a morph, so I probably could have gone with fewer mountains, but I was in love with the Phoenix and wanted to get it face up consistently.
• There are seven warriors for the Chief and the lifelink clause on Rush of Battle.
• The Lammasu doesn't fit the plan and came out regularly. 
• Defiant Strike does not bestow first strike, which I found out the hard way, although at least it cycled, amirite? That came out game two every round, because I don't think it does enough outside of a prowess-heavy build.
• Warshrieker, Trumpet Blast, big dumb white morph and Ankle Shanker were the first bodies off the bench, since they support my plan. The first two should have been starting for the 8-drop flier and Defiant Strike. The Shanker only came in against a board stall matchup.

Join me next time, as I finish my tale with match reports and thoughts on the format.