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Editor: Audrey Chin-Quan. Saturday 26th November 2005.
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Ravnica League
My first pre-release was Champions of Kamigawa. Aside from one draft, pre-releases are the closest thing I get to serious play due to time constraints, despite my high enthusiasm for the game. I enjoy the skill of building from a sealed pool of cards, evaluating each one, thinking about their interactions and trying to figure out what is the 'best' build. There is the thrill of seeing and feeling the cards rather than seeing previews or text in a spoiler; sometimes you just understand more by seeing it in its entirety. I played in the Betrayers of Kamigawa and Saviours of Kamigawa pre-releases. I skipped 9th (I don't remember why) and I was psyched about Ravnica. However, the weekend the pre-release was on, I was taking my girlfriend for a week's holiday over to the Gold Coast. Now, that's a pretty good trade off. So I would have to replicate the Ravnica pre-release experience in a more casual environment. My friend John and I purchased a Ravnica tournament pack and some boosters to play a Sealed League (loosely speaking; we didn't keep scores). I found this format highly addictive. We began with the typical tournament pack and 2 boosters, built some decks and played some games. After several games, you add another booster to your card pool, and again build the best deck you can. I wouldn't say I always built the best deck; with the casual environment we were in, I tried different guilds and colour combinations with most of the card pools. As I said, I found the format highly addictive, so I thought I would share my card pool and experience with you. It is fun to open a booster, add a few more decent commons and a rare bomb to an archetype you dismissed or performed poorly with previously, and have it turn into a powerhouse. Perhaps there are some synergies you have that get far stronger as you get more pieces. After a couple of weeks, (without checking the rare count, I think this was the tournament pack + 2 boosters to start, plus 4 extra boosters) this was my card pool:
I had played a number of different decks over the last couple of weeks (some of those with less cards than shown above). At a glance it seems (to me at least) that there aren't a lot of great Boros cards compared to the other Guilds, but that was the last deck I made with this pool, with decent results. While there were no standout powerful cards, it had a decent curve and was able to punch through for the win. The deck looked like this:
As you can see, no bombs, but enough to get the job done. So this week, we opened up another pack. I'll list the pack and make note of how many I now have if listed before, rather than torture you with another complete card pool:
I had read about a red/blue draft deck in BDM's weekly column over at mtg.com, and the additional Tidewater Minion and Viashino Fangtail steered me in that direction. I made my first deck that had no guild affiliations:
The deck had lots of great synergies going on. The plan was to stall until I could get these synergies online and slowly take over the game. Drift of Phantasms and Junktroller served as great blockers. Tidewater Minions aren't too shabby at holding the ground and obviously interact with Viashino Fangtails. There were plenty of protection and control spells as well, in Dizzy spell, Stasis Cell, Galvanic Arc and Peel from Reality. I was interested to see if this could work or whether it was a pile. I hate to Mulligan. On the play my first hand was a Tidewater Minion, a Sparkmage Apprentice and 5 land. Knowing it was likely dodgy, I kept it. I then proceeded to rip excellent cards off the top. On the second turn I kept back my Sparkmage, waiting for a target. The next turn John laid down Birds of Paradise, so I blasted it on turn 3. On turn 4 I drew and played Viashino Fangtail, with Tidewater Minion following the next turn. By this time I was facing down a Searing Meditation, Veteran Armorer and Selesnya Guildmage. On turn 6 I drew Dizzy Spell. I played a Galvanic Arc I had drawn on Sparkmage killing Veteran Armorer, then Transmuted Dizzy Spell into Mark of Eviction, ready to set up my engine. On turn 7, I cast the Mark of Eviction on Sparkmage, who was met with Cleansing Beam, wrecking my plans. I cast Telling Time, drawing into Instill Furor, which I cast on John's opposing Viashino. Of course he attacked, I blocked with Tidewater Minion, he played a trick, and I Peeled them both from Reality. On my next turn I cast a 2nd Viashino. John had reached 8 mana, which made his Selesnya Guildmage a threat. He made a mistake with his mana and I was able to take it out with the 2 Viashino's. With 2 Viashino's and 2 Tidewater Minions on the table, I had strong control of the board. By this stage John had another blocker, but with the occasional pings and attacks in between, I paid the 8 and all 4 went in for the win. In the second game John mulliganed, and I kept a slow hand. He led with Birds, and on following turns laid down Centaur Safeguard, Veteran Armorer, Golgari Brownscale and Searing Meditation. I dropped to 8 before I stabilised, and was fearful of the synergy of the Meditation and life gain cards. Nevertheless I managed to maintain at 8 life while pinging at threats or to the dome. With a Drift of Phantasms in play and a Galvanic Arc in hand, I eventually drew Mark of Eviction, and the fun began. I began clearing threats, and two turns later, Flight of Fancy turned up to make things really broken, with 2 Galvanic Arcs swiftly finishing the game. Another game later we bored of those builds and went for something different. I thought I would try a Selesnya/Golgari crossover, basically putting all the powerful cards of those colours into the one deck. In cutting some cards, I cut it back to just a splash of white to support the stronger cards, leaving out Conclave Equenaut and Devouring Light.
I won't bore you with another complete rundown. This was the first pool where I had Golgari Rotwurm, and it won me one of the games. Once I went all the way with a Vinelasher Kudzu, finally smashing for 7 as I kept bouncing the dual lands. Faith’s Fetters was always welcome. A lot of my bombs throughout the games we have played never seemed to do much as they were always met with answers. I think Voja reached play once over the last few weeks. Gleancrawler never seemed to be quite as good as I'd like in all the games I've played with him; he was in play with Drooling Groodion once, and I haven't seen him with Golgari Rotwurm, but he is simply too good not to play. The final deck I will share is a Selesnyan build.
I thought I would stick with several cheap creatures or producers, hoping to Convoke out Equenauts or Scatter the Seeds early. My plan was to build up tokens and attack en masse. The secondary plan was to give Root-Kin Ally trample with Fists of Ironwood and swing for a large amount. I've found most of my Selesnya builds over this experience have performed poorly. A foil Plague Boiler cleared all my tokens, but it did leave me with a Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree (yes, John opens a foil Plague Boiler and I open a foil Blood Funnel. Yay.). John followed shortly thereafter with a Helldozer. We had a laugh as I cast Faith’s Fetters; Helldozer was in John's card pool from round one, and every single game it hit play, I always answered with Faith’s Fetters. A few turns and a few tricks later, Helldozer had been removed from play and hardcast again. For the first time in three weeks Helldozer finally came online. John nuked my Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree, then followed with my Forests while I drew Green cards (I got excited for about half a second by Scatter the Seeds until I looked at my mana base). John eventually attacked with the Dozer which I was able to remove with Devouring Light, but it was too late for recovery as the rest of his army slaughtered me. After we finished for the night, I had to square up my tab with John as he'd purchased the cards. We couldn't agree on the number of packs I had to pay for. After John said "...plus the 2 packs each we opened tonight" I looked over at a lonely booster sitting at the edge of the table. At one stage John seemed to have taken ages to construct a new deck... now I knew why! We had decided this was our final week with these card pools, but I cracked the pack regardless. I cracked a Siege Wurm, which would have made an excellent addition to the Selesnya deck. The Last Gasp would have put me to 4 copies, making black even stronger in the early game. The Dimir Guildmage was also fantastic. And you know what? I don't even remember what the rare was. I certainly enjoy constructed decks (usually of the kooky casual variety), the problem is John does not have the card pool (Ravnica being his first box purchase, with most of his other stuff back from 4th Edition era) to compete with many of the decks I construct. The limited formats remove this difference. Card pools can still be relevant in sealed environments, but deck building and play skill become more relevant, and these are factors that I do enjoy. Limited formats also let cards see play that may never or rarely see play in constructed formats. Now that we've finished the current 'league' I think we'll try a few other limited formats. League is a great way to get extra mileage out of your cards, costing you as little as one booster a week (or however frequently you play) after your initial tournament pack. After each round or when the league is over, you can also swap card pools and see if you build the same decks. Remember that there were only the two of us in our 'league'; more players (preferably of an even number) would add even more depth to the format. If you've got 4 regular players, you could always play Two-Headed Giant following the league format (perhaps adding 1 pack to each teams card pool after each game or match instead of 1 per player). If you can do so, I envy you! I'd love to hear about anyone who tries that format. There are many ways to get more out of your cards, whether straight from the booster or from a designated pool of cards. I'll be happy to let you know how my future limited experiences go as I try out different formats. Get the most out of your cards!
Michael Howell
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