Practice Session #2: Building a Shards of Alara Sealed Deck
October 28, 2008
Welcome to another practice session in building a Shards of Alara sealed deck.
I’ve got a PTQ to go to this weekend so I opened five Shards of Alara booster packs, set the timer for 30 minutes, and tried to build a good sealed decklist.
Here was my card pool.
Magic-League Mini Tournament Report #1: Shards of Alara Sealed Deck
October 27, 2008
Magic-League is a great place to play Magic The Gathering competitively for free. They run a couple “minis” a day. Minis are single elimination tournaments of usually 8 or 16 players.
I recently played in an eight player Shards of Alara sealed mini. Here’s the sealed card pool I opened:
No MTG States for Me
October 24, 2008
Sadly, I won’t be going to States this year. I think I’ll be too unprepared.
I haven’t had time to test the Standard format and I don’t have the cards for a good deck. I could try to get caught up with the format by doing a lot of testing in the next two weeks. However, my time is limited because of work. I think my time would be better spent testing Shards of Alara sealed and draft. There is a PTQ in eight days and I can do a lot of testing on Magic Online now that Shards of Alara has been released online.
The Perfect Shards of Alara Sealed Card Pool
October 23, 2008
Rich Hagon asked a bunch of Magic The Gathering pros what the perfect Shards of Alara sealed pool would look like. Here’s what he found:
Asked what the notional ‘perfect Sealed Pool’ would be, I received near-identical answers from every Pro. Nobody, but nobody, mentioned Predator Dragon or Hellkite Overlord or Empyrial Archangel or Planeswalkers or Spearbreaker Behemoth et al. Without exception, what the Pros wanted for Christmas was a fast fast fast deck, using tempo spells and removal to get the hell out of Dodge before all the afore-mentioned expensive spells could come online. Their overwhelming advice to you at your next PTQ would be to build an Aggro deck if it’s there for the taking, and pray for good draws if it isn’t.
Source: Shards Sealed With The Pros
Olivier Ruel on Shards of Alara Sealed
October 22, 2008
Olivier Ruel was recently inducted into the Magic The Gathering Hall of Fame. Also, he’s been one of the top pro players this year.
He talked about building a deck for the Shards of Alara sealed format:
I think in this format, you really want to play five colours if the fixing is there. You can’t make a very efficient aggro deck in this format because you must use three colours so the mana won’t work. It may work one round, two rounds… but for nine rounds? No, it will let you down. So you play five colours and powerful cards – all the fixing, all the flyers, all the removal.
PTQ Kyoto Tournament Report in San Antonio, TX
October 21, 2008
Last Saturday, I played at a Pro Tour Qualifier (PTQ) about 4 1/2 hours from my place. There were around 70 players so the tournament was seven rounds.
Here is the sealed card pool I opened from my one tournament pack and two boosters.
Alara Reborn, the 3rd Card Set in the Shards of Alara Block
October 21, 2008
Wizards of the Coast just released information about the third expansion card set in the Shards of Alara block. The set name is Alara Reborn.
The Biggest Magic The Gathering Tournament Ever
October 21, 2008
Grand Prix Paris had 1839 players!
There were probably more judges in this tournament than the 71 person PTQ I went to last weekend. This picture shows only one half of the players.
Practice Session #1: Building a Shards of Alara Sealed Deck
October 17, 2008
One of the best ways to prepare for a Pro Tour Qualifier (PTQ) sealed deck tournament is to practice building a sealed deck. You can do this by opening a tournament pack and two booster packs (or five booster packs, which is basically the same thing). Then, just try to build a 40 card deck in 30 minutes.
Yesterday, I cracked five Shards of Alara booster packs and built a sealed deck to practice for tomorrow’s PTQ. Here were the Magic: The Gathering cards in my card pool.
Shards of Alara Prerelease Report (Flight #2)
October 14, 2008
Two posts ago, I talked about my first flight in the Shards of Alara prerelease. Here is how my second flight went.
I opened this card pool from one tournament deck and three boosters.
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