For the first time in a while I opened a pretty sick prerelease pool. The rest of my rares were whatever and mostly not playable, but it was centered around
The Jolly Balloon Man and
Toby, Beastie Befriender backed by a ton of removal:
RW Balloons
Nowadays when building a prerelease pool I tend to just see where my (playable) rares lead me towards and which color pile has enough removal + uncommons to work with. This pool was pretty easy to assemble, Boros had enough good cards to work with and I mostly cruised to a 3-0 on the night. If I ever stuck Balloon Man it was just too much value for my opponent to recover from, especially if I curved Toby into it to just start filling the board with 4/4 bodies. That can't attack/block alone clause did lead to some interesting gameplay decisions but also the inevitability if you were able to generate other tokens. That's also where Balloon Man helped because I could prep and sequence into a big turn where I could attack with 3 beasts + a balloon in the air to close the game out quicker. Had two cards that let me recur creatures CMC 3 or less so I was able to trade aggressively early on with bodies and removal until I could come back and stabilize.
Did have a disgusting sequence where I let my Toby die, played
Savior of the Small the next turn, used Balloon Man to make a copy and then attack with the 1/1 balloon with flying haste, then 2nd main phase I got the Survival trigger on the tapped body to recur Toby to hand. I only saw Overlord twice in the 8 games I got to play but being able to plop down two 2/1 flyers on T4 is no joke. The suspend ability leading to a big body in a few turns creates an interesting sub-game with the opponent having to hold onto premium removal because they just might not be able to handle it otherwise.
I didn't have too many inclusions from this set (didn't really look at it much), but I'm probably going to sift through and figure out some additional inclusions later this weekend once Cobra updates with Duskmourn cards. I'm for sure going to give Toby and white Overlord runs because I liked the gameplay from both of them and I think I might give
The Jolly Balloon Man a go because it just plays like the backside of
Fable of the Mirror-Breaker with haste (very relevant when it comes to sequencing a big turn with ETB effects) and that 1/4 body was very sturdy.
, given how that's the actual "cares about Rooms" pair if we go by the draft archetypes.
