On Limited Resources 382, co-founder Ryan Spain came on and talked about a bunch of stuff but one thing in particular caught my eye, errr, ear. When assembling a sealed deck, keep your rares secret from yourself. It's very easy to get seduced by a powerhouse rare rather than building the best possible deck of 40. So I tried to do that with the pre-release! When opening packs, I removed the last three cards (token, land, rare) and just sorted the commons & uncommons into Awesome, Playable, Garbage/Sideboard.
My green did not have nearly enough playables. My red & blue were alright, but I was pretty clearly pulled into a Black/White zombies tribal deck.
Some decent synergies but nothing that jumped off the page. More importantly, I had the following:
The Trial of Solidarity is a decent glorious charge at sorcery speed. Not a lot of tokens, so this isn't a bonkers SUPER-wide Servos like Kaladesh, but it does decent work. However when you can re-cast it with a cartouche it starts getting out of control in a real hurry. +2/+1 gives your opponent terrible combat math and the vigilance is surprisingly relevant when exerting creatures. I thought it would be good; I didn't know it would be GREAT.
So I have a decent deck, surprisingly low to the ground with lots of 2 & 3 drops and limited high end. Hopefully the tapping, the cartouches, other jank can get me there. Let's see what sweet sweet rares I opened!
What... what is this? I'm not entirely sure which format this would be (I was informed EDH) but slow, conditional ramp is not what I want. Next!
Now this is more like it! Shame it's in my shallowest color. Even as a legit bomb, it's not enough for my green to get me there. Imagine dealing with that thing... twice. Ugh.
Stop it! I STILL don't have enough green cards, even if the ramp synergy with the hydra is beyond sweet. What a card: ramp into a 3/4 body. Yes please.
I SAID-oh wait, this card is kind of meh. The green side is just about useless, the red is a sweet sweeper though a little less valuable as your opponent gets to see it coming.
This looks like it was built exclusively for commander. In any sealed matchup, a -2/-2 minisweeper for four mana is... mediocre. Being able to steal a creature in play is always sweet (see Shrewd Negotiation) but your opponent choosing AND it costing 7 is not so sweet.
Okay, this is legit, especially at instant speed. 5 mana, draw three, discard 1 is perfectly playable and it can only get better from there. But, and I'd like to emphasize this, I'm not in blue. Goddammit, six rares, half of one in my color, this is a stupid game, oh wait! My promo card!
... yeah okay I got lucky on that one.
The deck plays out more like a massive cartouche theme with a light dusting of zombies. Occasionally a few things would interact in hilarious ways, like stir the sands and binding mummy tapping three of their creatures. But in a large number of games I was able to cast Trial of Solidarity multiple times, which tended to close them out. I finished 1-1-1, with the tie coming in game 2 against Samir who was delightful but also new to magic. Also had one of the better finishes I've been privy to: he's keeping relentless pressure up with the new Liliana and this objectively bad card that is just wrecking me.
I'm sorry, but Trespasser's Curse is not a good card, unless your opponent is running a bunch of token makers. Then it's sweet! Still, I stabilize with my normal swath of cartouches and going wide but right on the last turn before time is called, I send in an all-out assault with lethal on the board (fyi this is after he gained ~10 life with that stupid curse).
And he fogs. Two wrongs DO make a right!
Very fun set, if the synergies are strong enough where you can power them in a sealed pool then I suspect drafting is going to be a blast.
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