General Prerelease Reports?

Ferritovore

Ferritovore

I decided to take a pass on going to the midnight ultra-fan prerelease, because my partner is even worse at MtG than I am, and I'd like us to have decent chances at winning a couple times so we'll probably go to an afternoon event, in the hopes there'll be more casuals.

How has the prerelease been for you folks? Did most stores actually stick to the stated plan of making everyone play 2HG, or did a lot of them say fuck it, do normal 1v1? That one new zealander on reddit claims that eldrazi decks have been pretty spicy and ally decks were too durdly and disruptable to accomplish their goals (which isn't too surprising). I made sealed decks for us two to try on Cockatrice and had a similar experience; their RBc eldrazi aggro was much stronger than my GWb control/allies.

Being expected to draft Wastes if you want to use Wastes is kinda weird. Are stores sticking to that too? How interesting has OGW been so far as a "draft environment"?
 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
So I went 3-0 in my pre-release. Me and my partner took quite a while to make our decks. Mine was a Bur Eldrazi eck with loads of removal and his was RG beats. My deck for reference:

The Colourless Head











My other heads list had 2 Valakut Invokers, 3 Boulder Salvo and a Void Winnower as our 'bomb'.

Round 1 we play against 2 RB aggro decks one splashing blue. I don't know how they managed to have enough in those three colours for two deck but they mainly had mana troubles and they both stopped at 3. They did get to surge an early Goblin Freerunner with a bone saw attached (who plays that card?) which I Visions of Brutality. It keeps getting in and acts like a pseudo Sulfuric Vortex with both teams losing 4 life every turn. We stabilised with all our removal and my teammate beat them down with a Grove Rumbler.

Round 2 we play against GB Eldrazi ramp and WRG Allies. In this matchup I got two early Blinding Drones and used them to hang on while they were gaining 4 a turn with two Ondu War Clerics. My partner finally gets out the void winnower and it blanks all but two of their creatures (in play) and they could remove it (their only removal for it was 2 Oblivion Strike and a Smite the Monstrous. Both of which are even). It takes 3 swings with the winnower but they finally die.

Round 3 was a tight one against WB flyers and Mono G Eldrazi. It is a very hard match to explain what happened as it went for quite a while. They were on the ropes near the end only having 3 life but an active Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim to get them back up to a healthy total. The flyers head decides to swing in with their team, mighty leaping the Ayli (we have no flyers) then Inspired Charge for exactly our life total (21). In response I crack my Blighted Gorge to kill the random 2/2 flyer to that we live on 4 and they are tapped out with no blockers and our ground force of 4 creatures finish them off.

Stray thoughts:
  • Oblivion Strike is easily the best common in the set. Unconditional removal is sweet.
  • Blinding Drone is a pretty close second (IMO). Sometimes the colourless was a bit awkward to keep up (I only had 2 sources at most at any time) but it is a decent body that keeps the best threat locked
  • We did not open a single wastes. If we did, I would have been able to run our two pilgrims eyes to help my colourless situation better, but I just gave them to our other head to hit 8 mana consistently.
  • I never had colour problems. Which was quite surprising for a ~4 colour deck.
  • Thought-Knot seer is pretty solid. Nothing back-breaking in limited, but always grabbed a relevant card had a decent body and gave the least threatening head the card to draw when it died.
  • Surge is silly in 2HG. Every game there was a turn 2 Goblin Freerunner (either on our side or opposing us). Card is nuts for 2 mana. Boulder Salvo was also great. I can imagine the surge Sphinx is also stupid, but we never saw it played.
  • Visions of Brutality is an interesting card. I enjoyed it's little nuances as a 'crappy' Pacifism. I realised it is bad to put it on a creature with trample. I never made that mistake again.
Overall ad a good time, despite our stores lack of prize support *grumble grumble*. Can't wait to draft 5 Blinding Drones at release and annoy the crap out of everyone :D
 
shamizy

shamizy

I played midnight prerelease last night and did 2HG earlier today, went 3-1-1 last night and 3-1-1 today. I had a really sweet RB aggro pool with a solid amount of removal, 3 of those surge menace goblins, the Threaten Eldrazi rare, and a ton of colorless Eldrazi along my 2s and 3s. It was a ton of fun and my best win was definitely against the nut ally deck I had to play against in the 2nd round. They had promo Tazri, Tazri, Angelic Captain, Hero of Goma Fada, Sylvan Advocate and some other rare that I forgot. G1 he just curves out and destroys me, my x/2 creatures aren't shit in the face of his guys. Game 2 I whittled him down with Nettle Drone and the new Eldrazi that drains a life and you gain a life before having a turn where I could surge out two menace goblins.

Game three was insane because I had whittled him down to 14 before he had a board with a Tajuru Stalwart as a 3/4 and a copy of General Tazri (this was my first time seeing it in the match) that fetched out the promo version of itself from his deck. I was like wtf how do I even deal with these 3/4s? I have like 3 pieces of removal in the entire deck to kill it. My board was like two 2/3 Eldrazi things and the 2/2 that could activate deathtouch. I have the Threaten Eldrazi in hand, but no window to to kick it for value quite yet. Like two turns later its mostly a stall and I've added a 3/2 menace goblin but then he plays the Angelic Captain and I'm like holy shit I'm going to take a million next turn. The only way I get out of this is if he attacks and I get him on the crackback or something. One turn he ends up swinging in with Tazri, hoping for me to trade off my 2/2 activate deathtouch but after doing some quick math (since he had tapped out for angel), I realized that if I Threaten it, I can hit him for lethal off the ally trigger it would get from hitting alongside the menace goblin. So I take the Tazri hit, then untap Threaten his angel, swing out, and deal lethal for the win. It was so dope.

2HG sealed pool was insane, friend opened promo Kozilek, I got promo Kalitas. I then opened a 2nd Kalitas and constructed a sweet RB deck with a long of removal and ways to gum up the board early and he constructed a UW Eldrazi ramp deck (the white was for two Reflector Mage) and we wrecked all of our opponents aside from the one match where we just each missed one of our key colors for like 6 turns. If we had hit on curve or just gotten to one of each source we would have had them.

In any case, I love this sealed format. Lots of play to surge, rewards players who know how to sequence their plays correctly, and 2HG was just a blast to play. Cohort is excellent in a grindy 2HG game, but I don't think it's going to be anywhere near as good in draft. I'm super excited to play RB Eldrazi in draft though, that was a very sweet archetype. I will also draft and play just about any menace goblin I get because that card is just insane.
 
Aston

Aston

Prerelease Deck











I built this for our (individual) pre-release. I didn't think the deck was all that good but managed to go 5-0. Most of the games played out the same way - playing a bunch of big toughness guys to make my opponent overextend into Rolling Thunder or Kozilek's Return and mop up with Cyclone Sire or Maw of Kozilek. I did manage to trigger the back half of Kozilek's Return off Ruin Processor a few times and every time it was insane, killing everything in play and leaving me with a 7/8.

I think overall I only lost one game all day, which I thought I had locked up until my opponent drew their 10th mana for Ulamog.

The best cards in my deck other than Kozilek's Return and Rolling Thunder were probably Seer's Lantern, which helped fix my draws in the long games I was going for, and Maw of Kozilek, which was really good at pulling double duty at defence early and closing the game out quickly late. I never activated Sea Gate Wreckage but I could definitely see it being good had I drawn it in different games or at different points. I was pretty underwhelmed with Embodiment of Fury, it seemed like whenever it triggered the land would just trade for one of my opponent's crappy creatures.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
I went 4-2 because I refused to mulligan a 2-lander in my final game against a deck that was. Of course I didn't draw another land for the next 5 turns and he curved out. Grrr... Damn you stupid decisions! I had a total blast though. My deck was awesome to play, and had a powerful late game. I won one game against a guy that went up to over 40 life with that cohort life gainer and the 1/4 vampire that gains a life when it becomes tapped. I dipped down to 3 but stabilized and started hitting hard. Lost the next game, but won the 3rd game through a wrath on the final turn of extra turns, doing exactly lethal damage because I made a good attack decision earlier in the game. Best game I've played in a long while on the prerelease!

Prerelease Deck











I was impressed by Roiling Waters, Baloth Null, Pulse of Murasa. Plated Crusher and Sphinx of the Final Word also win games of course. The Swell of Growth didn't start in the main, but won me some games. I also sided it out against some opponents though. Oh, and Seer's Lantern was super good! In one game (the one where my opponent gained upwards of 30 life) I actually got to see my entire library! Oh oh oh, and also those Seed Guardians won me multiple games by stalling the board until I could land something ridiculous!
 
Ferritovore

Ferritovore

Ended up deciding to skip on this set's prerelease, actually. We can always just do a normal draft later, and financials are kinda tight. It sounded as though this set only has three stable-enough-to-be-sealed-worthy decks in it, RB aggro, RUB colorless, and GW+ allies. Of course, Boot posts something a little mold-breaking after the decision was already made, but oh well. Gives us more time to get the house packed up. Unlikely for this set to measure up to Khans anyways!

Very cool deck Boot, cool deck. And grats on cracking THE CARD of the whole set, Aston!
 
MCMcEmcee

MCMcEmcee

Went 4-"2" at a 1v1 prerelease, conceded to my friend after crushing him 2-0 so we could play no-ban modern instead. Played UR with a bunch of removal and a Serpentine Spike, a bunch of x/5s to bog the game down, and a bunch of card advantage and filtering. Lost to drawing all of my expensive cards against a good aggro curve out. Won most games by stalling with x/5s while 2x Seer's Lantern and Prophet of Distortion won the topdeck race. Basically won every game by rebuying Serpentine Spike with Ulamog's Reclaimer.

Also sided into a slightly more aggressive BR deck with worse card advantage but a better curve a few times which was ok buy worse in general. Only really needed to cuz I couldn't win a long game against the guy with hexproof mythic 5/5 sphinx.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Also of note, we all severely underestimated cohort. That ability was really good for my opponents. I straight up lost one of my matches to that crappy looking zombie maker. Turns out making a zombie token each turn breaks board stalls...
 
Ferritovore

Ferritovore

Onderzeeboot said:
Also of note, we all severely underestimated cohort. That ability was really good for my opponents. I straight up lost one of my matches to that crappy looking zombie maker. Turns out making a zombie token each turn breaks board stalls...
Click to expand...
FWIW, in our 1v1 sealed matches on cockatrice, some fun was had with White 5 Mana 3/3 Cohort Puts +1/+1 On Everyone ... worked very well with Black Flying 1/3 Who Gains You 1 Life Whenever Turned Sideways. The incidental healing helps you get to the part of the game where all your bods have +3/+3 on them, and even a single +1/+1 counter turns that flying vampally from a minor nuisance into a bit of a serious clock, if they lack good fliers and/or already blew removal on your sexy 2 to 3 cc gold cards which are scarier individual threats.

But we still found the eldrazi based decks to be more consistent.
 
Ferritovore

Ferritovore

Black Flying 1/3 Who Gains You 1 Life Whenever Turned Sideways
Click to expand...
Ooh that reminds me of when we were discussing enablers for Shitty Bob (inspired Bob). All of the cohorts that don't suck, are enablers for inspired / lorwynmerfolk, I guess.
 
Kirblinx

Kirblinx

Developer
Staff member
So, at my release event we played individual sealed with six packs of OGW, and I look at my pool with no coherent gameplan. Say stuff it, and throw everything good I could in and see how we go:

Green Splash, No Forests











So this deck was a little reckless. I did manage to go 3-0, going 2-1 every time. Deceiver of Forms was my main win condition, although Double Jwar Ilse Avenger did do a lot of work as well.
I only had mana troubles once where I had both my Crumbling vestiges in my hand and had to play them out just to hit land drops. Then I hit nothing but swamps and get stuck with a pile of blue cards in hand and no way to play them.

Deck also had a couple of cards taht were just bad. Captain's Claws was very meh, as I was never the aggressor. Mina and Denn I never got to cast due to my lands. They weren't even that great enough for that much of a reckless splash... Oh well :rolleyes:

Not a single person I saw was playing white. I don't know what is going on there. I thought green was pretty average in OGW but there was a lot of green. Eh, who knows. Eldrazi are definitely strong though.
 
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