Sealed Deck Practice With Zendikar #1
September 28, 2009 | Posted by Dee
To prepare to the Zendikar Sealed PTQ season, I’ll be practicing by building decks from different card pools.
This sealed card pool comes from Salivanth’s Zendikar prerelease.
| Zendikar Sealed Card Pool | |||||||||||
White (12)
Blue (17) | Black (17)
Red (11)
Green (12)
Artifacts (6) Lands (6) |
| |||||||||
How would you have built the deck?
Deck Building Analysis
I’ll look at one color, give some comments, and then move to the next color. I’ll deal with the artifacts and lands last. This step by step approach is helpful to find out the best colors for the deck.
| White | ||||||||||
White (12) |
| |||||||||
White is very meh. The best cards are Journey to Nowhere and Kazandu Blademaster. Removal is always good and Blademaster is one of the best early creatures.
However, after those two, the quality drops a lot. Kor Skyfisher , Noble Vestige, and Steppe Lynx are not very exciting. Skyfisher is solid but slow. Vestige is often pretty bad with all the fatties running around that good players like to play in sealed. And Lynx is too situational. It’s only good in Landfall.dec.
The rest of the white cards are mediocre. Brave the Elements can be good but only if you have a lot of solid white creatures.
With only five solid cards in white, it looks like we won’t be playing it as a main color. We can try to splash Journey of Nowhere.
| Blue | ||||||||||
Blue (17) |
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Blue is better than white and could be a main color. I see the following cards as playable.
Gomazoa: Blue’s version of removal. Plus, it can block 2/2s and 2/3s all day.
Into the Roil: Repulse was played in past Constructed formats so Into the Roil should be fine in limited. Plus, bounce has special uses in Zendikar like stopping quests and reusing ally abilities.
Ior Ruin Expedition: Undercosted card draw.
Reckless Scholar: A Merfolk Looter that can beat down? Nice!
Sea Gate Loremaster: Reusable card advantage and gets insane with other allies.
Sky Ruin Drake: Great blocker and evasion.
Summoner’s Bane: Card advantage and stops bomb creatures.
2 Welkin Tern: Quick flying beats.
Whiplash Trap: Even at five mana, it’s a great tempo boost especially if you hit two expensive creatures. Also, it combos well with Summoner’s Bane.
Blue has a lot of solid cards, but it is lacking fat and removal. It will need to be paired with a color that has those two elements.
| Black | ||||||||||
Black (17) |
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4 Crypt Rippers?! LOL, WTF, etc. Crypt Ripper is a very good creature but you don’t want too many in your deck. Still, four should be fine as long as we play at least eight black sources. Obviously the more sources, the better.
Here are the rest of the playables.
Giant Scorpion: Great defensive creature. It kills 2/2s and 2/3s. It trades with bigger ground creatures.
2 Hideous End: Removal that also helps you race.
2 Soul Stair Expedition: Solid as an early play.
Vampire Hexmage: Solid early beater and her second ability can be relevant against quests.
If we pair black with blue, we only have 20 cards. Therefore, this color combination won’t work unless we play mediocre cards. We could play two solid artifacts if we have them and try to splash Journey to Nowhere to get to 23 cards. However, we’ll need mana fixing lands or the white splash will make our mana base pretty unstable.
| Red | ||||||||||
Red (11) |
| |||||||||
Red has these six playable cards.
Geyser Glider: Red’s version of Air Elemental.
Plated Geopede: Solid early beater. It gets better with fetch lands and the green cards, Harrow and Khalni Heart Expedition.
Ruinous Minotaur: Bad attacker early in the game, but you can still block with it.
Shatterskull Giant: Undercosted fatty.
Spire Barrage: Nice removal spell that can also go to the dome.
Torch Slinger: Removal on a 2/2 body is good card advantage.
Murasa Pyromancer might be good but only if we go green and green has a lot of solid allies.
At this point, we’re definitely hoping that green is strong. Blue/black as our main colors is our only real option right now. And that color combination is 2-3 cards short.
| Green | ||||||||||
Green (12) |
| |||||||||
Sadly, green is not as strong as blue or black. All the cards are playable except the 2 Tajuru Archer and Joraga Bard. That leaves us with only nine playable green cards.
We’ll definitely have to go blue/black since removal is so important in sealed and green doesn’t have any removal.
Let’s hope that he can get some help with our artifacts and lands.
| Artifacts and Lands | ||||||||||
Artifacts (6) Lands (6) |
| |||||||||
Well, not much help here.
Adventuring Gear is not that good in our blue/black control deck. The equipment is better in aggro decks or decks that have a lot of ways to trigger landfall.
Carnage Altar is usually good enough, but we only have 13 creatures (including Summoner’s Bane) and we have plenty of card draw with Ior Ruin Expedition, Reckless Scholar, and Sea Gate Loremaster.
1 Expedition Map will probably make it. The artifact helps us splash Journey to Nowhere. It helps us trigger our landfall quests, Ior Ruin Expedition and 2 Soul Stair Expedition. And if nothing else, it can get an extra Swamp to boost Crypt Ripper.
Trusty Machete is solid and will make the cut. It will help because we have so many small creatures.
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood tempted me to go green but it’s probably not enough.
We’ll play Piranha Marsh and Soaring Seacliff but the rest of the lands don’t fit our deck.
Here is our final decklist.
| UBw Crypt Ripper Control | |||||||||||
Creatures (12) | Spells (11)
Lands (17) |
| |||||||||
I just checked out Salivanth’s build. Our decks were very similar. He didn’t splash white or play Piranha Marsh. Also, he played Caller of Gales.
I didn’t think Caller of Gales was very good, but it helped him kill Vampire Nighthawk by giving Giant Scorpion flying. Plus, Caller of Gales is a great combo with Crypt Ripper and allows you to have an extra out versus dangerous flying creatures.
I would play it over 1 Soul Stair Expedition.
12 Responses to “Sealed Deck Practice With Zendikar #1”
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Interesting to see what someone else did with my pool. If I could play it again, I’d include Piranha Marsh. It’s better than I thought it was. Also interesting splashing Journey to Nowhere, though that’s something I never do in Sealed: if I splash something I want to splash 3-4 cards. That’s a little eccentricity I have. Turns out our decks only had about 4 cards difference. It was a weak pool though.
If you want to do the same with my pool next week, feel free to.
Yeah, it was a weak pool. Good job winning your first three games.
I’ll probably do the same thing with your pool next week. It’s good practice and I usually always learned something – like playing Caller of Gales to stop dangerous evasion guys.
I think you have overlooked green. The green is really good with the grazing gladeharts (card is better than it looks), nissas chosen, ohran rief survivalist,vastwood gorger and the savage silhouette. I would combine it with the black.
I think you’re undervaluing Steppe Lynx. In drafts he will be amazing. In sealed he is still pretty solid. The skyfisher is also a really solid common. White’s best cards are journey, lynx and skyfisher.
Also, in my opinion, running 17 lands is not predetermined in this format. With all the landfall stuff top-decking a land can be a win-con, especially with creatures like Roil Elemental. Top-decking lands, and then holding on to them to landfall with mid and late game are good strategy. I make this observation because you started deck-building looking for 23 cards, and especially after seeing a weak pool like this. I think I would have still gone with 17, and added +1 steppe lynx -1 machete equipment, and -1 soul stair +1 skyfisher.
Other than that, I think you did a great job. I think your reasoning for not including the carnage alter very good–I’d only run it if I had something like cobra trap AND if I had 17+ creatures.
@bluesky
I still like blue because it has some of the important things you want in a sealed deck, evasion and removal. Plus, blue has card advantage.
Green has good cheap guys but they are easily stopped by something like a 1/4 or a fatty.
@Sean
Splashing for Steppe Lynx seems pretty bad. It’s only good in aggressive decks and our deck is pretty controlling. Plus, Lynx is not very good mid or late game and you can’t count on splash cards being played early on a regularly basis.
And splashing another white card (Skyfisher) is just asking to be color screwed with only 2 white mana sources.
17-18 land should still be a good baseline even with landfall since many of the landfall decks will have ways to get land like Harrow or Explorer’s Scope. Also, even with 17, you’ll often flood mid or late game.
man, this pool is so synergistic, could basically play like a good draft deck, and you missed the boat completely on it. your two deepest colors are green and blue, and I appreciate the concern that they are removal free colors, you could have exploited certain combinations to great effect to simulate removal. the key would have been to combine the tajuru archers (irritatingly bad on their own but you shouldn’t count them out just as welkintern-killers who give you a 3/3 survivalist) with caller of gales and soaring seacliffs to pick off groundpounders and combine with your other allies. Here’s what my build would have been:
2x oran-rief survivalist
2x tajuru archer
1x joraga bard
2x grazing gladeheart
1x turntimber basilisk
1x vastwood gorger
1x caller of gales
2x welkin tern
1x into the roil
1x whiplash trap
1x sky ruin drake
1x sea gate loremaster
1x reckless scholar
1x gomazoa
1x stonework puma
1x expedition map
1x trusty machete
1x journey to nowhere
1x kor skyfisher
2 plains
8 forest
soaring seacliff
6 island
I disagree with green over black. Removal is always good in limited and you’ve got 2 Hideous End, which is one of the best removal spells in the format.
Also, Crypt Ripper is very good. Soul Stair Expedition is the best card advantage spell at common. And Giant Scorpion acts as removal much more often than Tajuru Archer.
Tajuru Archer, Joraga Bard, and Stonework Puma are unplayable most of the time especially since you only have 7 allies. Sure, you can hit a flyer with Tajuru Archer but what if they don’t play flyers or they don’t draw their flyers. Or their flyer is too big for you to kill like the 2/5 Sky Ruin Drake or the 3/3 white flyer with first strike and vigilance. I’d rather have 2 Hideous End. The black card is much, much more reliable.
Thanks for the post. Actually just recently did a seal draft with my buddies and the idea of splashing another color came in a great deal. I have always been reluctant to splash some colors for one or two removal cards. However, thanks to the OP idea of splashing the journey to no where, i ended up going 6-1 in our 4 man seal draft. Granted, a Ob Nixilis, the Fallen really just shuts people down. Good picks and deck build.
As stated from other posts, some of the cards you mentioned in white are better than you think IMO.
Good drafting and thanks for the post.
Black (8)
# 4 Crypt Ripper
# 1 Giant Scorpion
# 2 Hideous End
# 1 Vampire Hexmage
Green (11)
# 2 Grazing Gladehart
# 1 Joraga Bard
# 1 Nissas Chosen
# 2 Oran-Rief Survivalist
# 1 Savage Silhouette
# 2 Tajuru Archer
# 1 Turntimber Basilisk
# 1 Vastwood Gorger
Artifacts (3)
# 1 Stonework Puma
# 1 Trusty Machete
# 1 Adventuring Gear
Lands (18)
# 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
# 1 Piranha Marsh
# 8 Forest
# 8 Swamps
I dont think green anything is viable with this pool. The main problem is that Nissa’s Chosen is GG and Crypt Ripper is BB. It would be hard to consistently play the card on turn 2 and any later in the game its just worse than the cards you have access to with Blue. Lifegain isn’t that big of a deal in this game as it was in other formats (kitchen finks)
I think the question is what green offers to the table that blue doesn’t? Blue has good two drops, blue has good late game creatures, blue has good utility spells. Green has “good” two drops. Vastwood gorger will just get chumped all day. I think its safe to say that U/B is the optimal build.
horrible sealed. no bombs whatsoever. I was thinking a W/U/G but the mana was to awkward.
What I came up with was similiar. I felt like the journey splash wasn’t worth it.
Creatures (12)
4 Crypt Ripper
1 Giant Scorpian
1 Vampire Hexmage
1 Gamazoa
1 Reckless Scholar
1 Sea Gate Loremaster
1 Sky Ruin Drake
2 Welkin Tern
Spells (11)
2 Hideous End
1 Into the Roil
1 Ior Ruin Expedition
1 Summoners Bane
1 Whiplash trap
2 Expedition Map
1 Trusty Machete
2 Soul Stair Expedition
Lands (17)
9 Swamp
1 Piranha Marsh
6 Island
1 Soaring Seacliff