Article ChannelFireball: Microsealed

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
This was a fantastic read. Gonna try it the next time my brother's in town.

Also pleased as punch to hear that the games between you and James were such a tight affair. What a cliffhanger!
 
Nice to see it in a succinct writeup rather than the fleshing out in the dedicated thread. I'll definitely give this a try, we often cube just two people and it'll be a nice change of pace. I hope we'll get a bunch of reports in this thread, should be fun.
 

CML

Contributor
We've done "Cube sealed" for tardy drafters (pick 90 cards of the remaining detritus and a few funsies lands) before, they suffice to make 40-carders so though I love this idea I might try it with 4 packs instead.

That Ira Glass quotation on taste was surprisingly good, considering Ira Glass's taste
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah but here you're making four 15-card decks. If you only use 4 packs you'll have no room to maneuver.
 

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
I've been playing a few microsealeds and they've been fun. We've been using Evolved Wilds but not the other, and we've kept all the lands in the pool. You don't retire fetches and duals and whatnot, but you do retire manlands and things. Man, I built the nuttiest Birthing Pod/flicker deck for round one, and in each game he Ashioked my Birthing Pod out of my library. Since I'd left all the targets in the sideboard I pretty much just did nothing and lost. Later I had a sweet reanimator deck with Gifts Ungiven and Fauna Shaman to find the fatties in the sideboard. I also ran Shelldock Isle which is nutty in this format.
 
Green Sun's Zenith is totally insane. While mildly hilarious, it's almost so powerful that I would consider removing it from the piles. Thoughts?
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I would keep it in for the sweetness factor. The wish rule is one of the best parts of the format... And I think the Red zenith is the most insane of the bunch in microsealed.
 

Aoret

Developer
Tried this tonight with a buddy. Even with my lower power cube, it feels like insanely powerful magic. I can confirm that this format absolutely eliminates the number of non-games that happen. I also agree that the format definitely warps the power of certain cards, but honestly I don't really think that is a bad thing. It allows you to experience your cube cards in a new light by turning some of them on their heads.

We ended up only playing 2 matches. I almost wonder if doing best out of three match wins (with best out of three game wins within each) is a better way to go. 4 Match wins is a lot if you go 2-1 in every game and 4-3 on matches. 21 games plus deckbuilding?

Also, we felt a bit weird about being able to get graveyards back but not exiled cards. In particular, it makes flashback cards kinda shitty. We experimented with a 4 life penalty for shuffling RFG'd cards back into your deck (because we agreed that exiled cards should always be harder to get back than graveyard cards). I can say that it really hurt to pay the four life, but I did do it once. I guess an alternative rule would be a life penalty to put the exiled cards back into the graveyard, but I'm not sure that really works as intended; I'd rather that people couldn't tutor a collection of flashback cards back to their graveyard for even 3 life.

I think I might actually like this even more than grid draft, but maybe that is just because it is fresh. I really like the lands. We actually didn't end up putting them in our decks, but just the fact that I had to consider, and decide not to use the lifegain land enriched the experience. (I was playing burn for most of the games)
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Yeah, it's a long format, kind of meant to fill a lot of time if you and a buddy are sitting around with hours to kill. You can also play 1-game matches for time considerations.
 
Got a chance to test microsealed with a 720 card double-block Ravnica cube last week. Had a lot of fun, the power level was high, and the meta-constraints on deck building really added to the overall feeling. If people are interested I can repost some of the decks we played when I get home.

My main feedback is that like lands, mana rocks might be better left out of pools.

As a clarification, when the tutor rules say 'collection' that is intended to be the cards from your 90 card sealed pool which are not currently in use/retired correct?
 

Aoret

Developer
Another clarification: when something that you tutor for gets destroyed or exiled, do you just follow the normal rules for destruction/exile? Does the card go back into your overall pool? Does it get really, no-shit, truly removed from game?
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Another clarification: when something that you tutor for gets destroyed or exiled, do you just follow the normal rules for destruction/exile? Does the card go back into your overall pool? Does it get really, no-shit, truly removed from game?

Just follow the normal rules mid-game.
 
The way we played it is you got to choose, so long as you presented a legal deck for the start of the next game.

We were a little worried about the abuse of tutor spells. With Tinker/Natural Order/Zenith/Pod, you can have all possibilities in all matches, without compromising your draw quality. Retiring the tutored card after each game seemed a fair trade-off.
 
Also, Ashiok is stupid good in this format. We haven't quite decided if banning is the right move, because aggro decks can be a decent answer. But, man...
 

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Sorry, to clarify, the card either:
a) stayed in your deck or
b) got retired

A tutored card would not go back to the collection.
 
Ah, okay. That makes more sense. So, you could essentially sideboard it in between games; otherwise, it's retired.
 
Hey, if I want to post a write-up of my Microsealed session(s), would this thread be the appropriate place to post? Or is there a thread specifically for match/tourney recaps?
 
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