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How to Build an Awesome Sealed Deck for the Shards of Alara Prerelease

September 23, 2008

Update: I just posted the prerelease report of my first flight.

With the Shards of Alara Prerelease happening this weekend, Magic The Gathering players will soon be cracking tournament packs and boosters packs to build their sealed deck. I, for one, can’t wait

If you want to build a better sealed deck, here are a couple things to consider.

Before The Prerelease

Believe it or not, you can gain a big advantage by doing a couple things before the prerelease.

First, read the spoiler. Here’s the printable spoiler.

You may be one of those players that doesn’t like to look at spoilers. That’s fine but you’ll be at a disadvantage against the many players that did check out the spoiler.

The main reason to read the spoiler is to save time during the deck building period. If you’re familiar with the new cards, you can build your sealed deck faster.

You won’t have to spend a lot of time reading the cards. If you have to read the cards on prerelease day, you’ll be pressured for time and probably end up with a suboptimal decklist.

While you’re reading the spoiler, you’ll want to categorize each card. This step will save you even more time during the deck building period.

I find the following seven categories helpful. The first five categories spell the acronym BREAD:

Bombs
Removal
Evasion
Abilities
Dudes

This acronym can help you remember the categories. The last two categories start with the letter “C”.

1. Bombs

Bombs are the most powerful cards. Oftentimes, they are big evasive creatures like this dragon:

Hellkite Overlord – 4BRRG
Creature – Dragon (Mythic Rare)
Flying, trample, haste
{R}: Hellkite Overlord gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
{B}{G}: Regenerate Hellkite Overlord.
8/8

Spells with huge effects also count as bombs. For example, check out this Overrun on steroids:

Titanic Ultimatum – RRGGGWW
Sorcery (Rare)
Until end of turn, creatures you control get +5/+5 and gain first strike, lifelink, and trample.

Basically, bombs massively warp the game in your favor. If you are able to play them, you usually win a short time later.

2. Removal

Removal are the cards that get rid of creatures. With creatures being the main way to win games, you’ll want removal in your sealed decklists. Here are three examples:

Bant Charm – GWU
Instant (Uncommon)
Choose one – Destroy target artifact; or put target creature on the bottom of its owner’s library; or counter target instant spell.

Branching Bolt – 1RG
Instant (Common)
Choose one or both – Branching Bolt deals 3 damage to target creature with flying; or Branching Bolt deals 3 damage to target creature without flying.

Executioner’s Capsule – B
Artifact (Common)
{1}{B}, {T}, Sacrifice Executioner’s Capsule: Destroy target nonblack creature.

3. Evasion

Evasion stands for the cards that have a way to avoid most blockers. Usually, these cards are creatures with flying.

Evasion is important to have in a sealed deck because many games end up in a ground creature stall.

4. Abilities

Abilities is a big category that includes combat tricks like bounce and creature pump spells. Also, it includes creatures and artifacts with useful abilities. Here are some examples:

Resounding Wave – 2U
Instant (Common)
Return target permanent to its owner’s hand.
Cycling {5}{W}{U}{B}
When you cycle Resounding Wave, return up to two target permanents to their owners’ hands.

Resounding Roar – 1G
Instant (Common)
Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn.
Cycling {5}{R}{G}{W}
When you cycle Resounding Roar, target creature gets +6/+6 until end of turn.

Grixis Battlemage – 2B
Creature – Human Wizard (Uncommon)
{U}, {T}: Draw a card, then discard a card.
{R}, {T}: Target creature can’t block this turn.
2/2

Courier’s Capsule – 1U
Artifact (Common)
{1}{U}, {T}, Sacrifice Courier’s Capsule: Draw two cards.

5. Dudes

Dudes are creatures that don’t suck.

The reason you want to keep track of your creatures is because most good sealed decks have a lot of creatures. You can have the best spells in your deck but if you don’t have enough creatures, it will be hard to bring your opponent down to 0 life.

6. Combos

Combos are the cards that need other cards to work well. For example, you could open this planeswalker:

Tezzeret the Seeker – 3UU
Planeswalker – Tezzeret (Mythic Rare)
+1: Untap up to two target artifacts.
-X: Search your library for an artifact card with converted mana cost X or less and put it into play. Then shuffle your library.
-5: Artifacts you control become 5/5 artifact creatures until end of turn.
4

If the artifacts in your sealed card pool are horrible, you won’t want to play with Tezzeret. However, if you have awesome artifacts, Tezzeret becomes really good.

Here’s another example.

Drumhunter – 3G
Creature – Human Druid Shaman (Uncommon)
At the end of your turn, if you control a creature with power 5 or greater, you may draw a card.
{T}: Add {1} to your mana pool.
2/2

Drumhunter is pretty much unplayable unless you have a lot of creatures with power 5 or greater.

7. Crap

Don’t play bad cards

Cards can be crap for different reasons. They may be overcosted, clumsy, have weak abilities, and/or have irrelevant effects.

For example, Necrogenesis is just too expensive for what it does. Plus, you have to wait until you have creature cards in the graveyard, which makes it a clumsy card.

Necrogenesis – BG
Enchantment (Uncommon)
{2}, Remove a creature card in your graveyard from the game: Put a 1/1 green Saproling creature token into play.

Clarion Ultimatum sucks in the sealed deck format because you don’t get a lot of multiples of good cards.

Clarion Ultimatum – GGWWWUU
Sorcery (Rare)
Choose five permanents you control. For each permanent, search your library for a card with the same name as that permanent and put it into play tapped. Then shuffle your library.

During The Prerelease

Here are the basic steps for actually building your sealed deck.

First, separate your cards by color and then category.

Bombs and Removal

Find the bombs. You probably won’t have a lot of bombs because most of them are rare or mythic rare. In most cases, your deck will be based on the colors of your bombs.

The cards of next importance are your removal spells. Basically, the colors you choose to play should have the most bombs and removal.

Building The Rest of Your Deck

Once you’ve figured out your colors, add the next three categories of cards: evasion, abilities, and dudes.

You should have at least 16 creatures.

Check out your combo cards. Are there any that work well with the cards you’ve added?

Watch your mana curve. I looked at a sealed deck that had a perfect record in a recent Grand Prix. His mana curve looked like this (“cc” stands for casting cost):

1cc = 2
2cc = 4
3cc = 6
4cc = 6
5cc = 3
6cc = 2

He had a couple of early drops for the first two turns. Over half of his cards were three or four casting cost. And he had a few expensive cards that cost 5 or more mana.

Basically, you want 5-7 early drops and 4-6 expensive cards. This helps you cover the early game and late game.

The middle game is that most crucial so half of your cards should be 3cc or 4cc. See in some games, you won’t be able to play your expensive spells because the game is over by then.

Yet, you don’t want to play mostly 1cc or 2cc spells because these spells are weaker than the more expensive spells. You want to add a couple cheap spells, so you have something to do in the early game. Also, these spells help you hold off your opponent whenever you are manascrewed or stuck on two lands.

Building Your Manabase

17-18 land is good amount for most sealed decks.

Make sure you’re using all the your color fixers that fit your colors. If you’re playing white, blue, and black, you don’t want to leave Arcane Sanctum in your sideboard.

Arcane Sanctum
Land (Uncommon)
Arcane Sanctum comes into play tapped.
{T}: Add {W}, {U}, or {B} mana to your mana pool.

You should have a least 7 colored mana sources for your main colors. If you have early double mana drops like Knight of the White Orchid, you should have at least 9 mana sources for that color.

Knight of the White Orchid – WW
Creature – Human Knight (Rare)
First strike
When Knight of the White Orchid comes into play, if an opponent controls more lands than you, you may search your library for a Plains card, put it into play, then shuffle your library.
2/2

If you’re only playing 1-2 cards of a certain color, you only need 3 colored mana sources to support those cards.

Don’t forget to accommodate cards that have a different color requirement to active their abilities. For example, Knight of the Skyward Eye is a white card. However, it needs green mana to use its ability.

Knight of the Skyward Eye – 1W
Creature – Human Knight (Common)
{3}{G}: Knight of the Skyward Eye gets +2/+2 until end of turn. Play this ability only once each turn.
2/2

Making Cuts

At this point, you may have over 40 cards. You should remove cards until your deck is only 40 cards. You want the smallest decklist possible because that gives you the best chance of drawing your best cards.

When making cuts, the first place I look is at my spells. Check out your spells and cut the worst ones. If you need to cut more cards, remove your worst creatures. Just make sure to always have at least 16 creatures in your deck.

Feedback and a Future Prerelease Report

I hope this guide has helped. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or contact me.

I’ll be posting my prerelease tournament report after this weekend. To receive notification whenever this tournament report is published, subscribe for email updates today. It’s free.

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