Sealed Deck Practice With Zendikar #2
October 2, 2009
Here we go with another Zendikar sealed deck building exercise. This pool is from the prize packs I won from the prerelease.
| Zendikar Sealed Card Pool | |||||||||||
White (10)
Blue (15)
Black (13) | Red (15)
Green (22)
Artifacts (2) Lands (7) |
| |||||||||
How would you have built the deck?
Deck Building Analysis
Let’s look at each of the colors one by one and then save the artifacts and lands last.
| White | ||||||||||
White (10) |
| |||||||||
White only has 10 cards and its power level is low, so we won’t be playing it.
| Blue | ||||||||||
Blue (15) |
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Blue has a lot of good qualities. It has 12 playables. It has evasion and removal (well, Gomazoa is pseudo removal but it works well enough). Blue is a possible main color.
| Black | ||||||||||
Black (13) |
| |||||||||
Black is too shallow with only eight playables including mediocre cards like Hagra Crocodile, Bog Tatters, and Grim Discovery.
| Red | ||||||||||
Red (15) |
| |||||||||
Red could be paired with blue but let’s hope that green is better than red. Red has too many cheap guys that are quickly outclassed by bigger creatures or defensive ones. Also, its removal only kills small creatures.
| Green | |||||||||||
Green (22) |
| ||||||||||
Fortunately, green saves our pool from being terrible. It is the best color with many playables, a couple fatties, and two bomb creature enchantments, Gigantiform and Predatory Urge. Plus, we can protect our enchanted creature with Vines of Vastwood.
By the way, the planewalker was foil 
Here’s the deck I came up with.
| Blue/Green Midrange | |||||||||||
Creatures (14) | Spells (9)
Lands (17) |
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A couple things to note. I had the second Reckless Scholar over Grazing Gladehart. However, I started reading stuff that Grazing Gladehart was very solid and Reckless Scholar was not that good in the format because you often don’t want to discard lands because of landfall.
Savage Silhouette combos well with Turntimber Basilisk to provide reusable removal.
Four Soaring Seacliffs might seem like a lot but I goldfished the deck a couple of times and they usually weren’t a problem. The lands work well with the fatties and Gigantiform.
6 Responses to “Sealed Deck Practice With Zendikar #2”
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Hi there,
first, thanks for doing this! Makes for good practice.
This is what I build before looking at your deck:
Creatures (16)
1 Nissas Chosen
1 Welkin Tern
1 Grazing Gladehart
1 Umara Raptor
2 Gomazoa
2 Turntimber Basilisk
2 Reckless Scholar
1 Windrider Eel
1 Mold Shambler
1 Joraga Bard
1 Baloth Cage Trap
1 Sky Ruin Drake
1 Vastwood Gorger
1 Shoal Serpent
Spells (6)
1 Primal Bellow
1 Gigantiform
1 Vines of Vastwood
1 Predatory Urge
1 Paralyzing Grasp
1 Trusty Machete
Lands (18)
4 Soaring Seacliff
4 Island
9 Forest
I did not notice the synergy Turntimber Basilisk/Savage Silhouette, what is your experience with the Silhouette? I’m unsure. Maybe I’d include it on second thought.
I don’t like the Nissa here (I don’t this it will do much besides tutoring up the Chosen), but I do like the Joraga Bard. I think this deck can use some more early defense.
Also, I definitly like both Scholars in this deck. I will be very happy if I draw it early so I can hit my land drops more regularly. Also, this deck has a number of rather situational cards (Gomazoa, Predatory urge) that are great sometimes buth that I’ll trade in happily for another card in certain situations.
Best of luck in the PTQs,
Martin
martinDOTluedeckeATgmail
Martin,
Thanks for trying out the exercise.
I think Nissa is much better than Joraga Bard because you get a really good defense with the unkillable Chosen. (Well, almost unkillable. Journey to Nowhere can take it out.) Also, the life gain can matter sometimes.
I did some goldfishing with the deck and Savage Silhouette turned out to be ok, but I could see playing Scholar over it. I think the key is to think of it as a five mana spell so you have regeneration mana open.
Actually, looking back, I think I would play 18 land and cut Savage Silhouette or Scholar. The curve is kinda high and we do have some landfall abilities.
A couple notes about Scholar. I wouldn’t want to loot away Gomazoa and Predatory Urge. We don’t have much removal so I would save those cards. That’s why I would go to 18 land.
Also, Scholar has been pretty mediocre for me since this is a format where lands matter a lot. Therefore, you often don’t want to loot because you want to keep your spells and lands.
And in my reading, many pros have mentioned this as well and some have even said Scholar is the worst looter in a limited format. It’s still playable of course, but definitely not as good as looters in the past.
I would pull the scholar for hedron crab. The scholar is basically a 2/1 chump blocker and the hedron crab can chump block if needed. This deck could easily stalemate and hedron crab first turn is a bomb and is playable late game.
With frontier guide you could end the game in 7 turns.
Crab seems pretty bad. Scholar can attack, block, and trade and the looting ability is solid to help you find your best cards.
Crab, on the other hand, just sits there doing nothing. Sure, you can mill your opponent but that’s a very unlikely scenario. And sometimes your milling allows them to draw their bomb earlier.
Nah, looking at the card pool… I think G/U is by and far the obvious choice…. though the whole combo thing with the Basilisk makes me a bit nervous. I like how synergistic it is, but you are leaving yourself open to bounce or creature destruction….BUT having said that… if you can can resolve the combo your opponent is pretty much screwed.
And I also agree with your analysis about crab… the only time I’ve seen the whole combo work is if the person managed to pull 3-4 crabs with a lot of land fetch. This is assuming of course that one of their opponents just doesn’t kill it outright.
Great practice, thanks for this.
Yeah, I would only play crab if I had the dedicated mill strategy. For example, I drafted multiple crabs, defensive cards, and many ways to trigger land fall (fetchlands, Harrow, etc.). But that strategy seems very rare.