Prerelease went pretty well, had a really nice pool to work with this time as I went 3-0 and didn't drop a game:
Naya Landers and Lobsters
Fun little synergistic deck that had a bunch of artifacts and sequencing decisions. This was much more complex to navigate than my last prerelease with Dragonstorm. My promo was
Bioengineered Future and I opened a second copy so I was for sure going to play both of them. Once I saw the Lobster and the Biotech guy I knew that I had to go Naya to fully maximize this pool and utilize all my removal. Having all of the various ways to make lander tokens made me more confident in playing the big expensive 6 and 7 drops that came with an ETB
Lightning Bolt and they did help close out two different games just with the 3 damage putting them low enough to where I could threaten lethal via combat and weird interactions. There was one game where it got incredibly boardstalled till my opponent decided to go for an alpha strike to try and win it one go with a board he had grown pretty tall, but with some chump blocks and dudes bouncing off eachother I was able to like at like 3. I did some quick match in my head and realized that I could crack back for 15 and then play
Biotech Specialist + sac two landers to deal 19 and win it.
Speaking of weird interactions,
Ragost, Deft Gastronaut was a very fun card to play with but the sequencing was complex to pull off to maximize every loop and untap as well. I had two games where I also had
Biotech Specialist out and sometimes I'd just sandbag lander tokens to use as food to pull off
Lava Axe to the face a few times. Being able to do that end of their turn and then untap to do the same on mine for a total of 10 damage was wild. Especially satisfying in my 2nd round where I got mana screwed early in G2, but I wombo-comboed the Lobster + Landers to win the round.
Warp and the Landers were pretty fun to play with.
Bioengineered Future was a really strange card to sequence around because you really wanted a land drop + a lander sac to maximize playing out your guys. I'd often sandbag smaller dudes depending on how the board was developing to maximize the counters. And if I had the Lobster or Biotech I'd also hold off on using landers at all to just serve as ways to bolt and shock for extra damage because of how many board stalls I'd run into with my tiny guys. Pulling off an attack here and there just to trade and/or chip in a little damage was fun to navigate on the way to closing out games.
I've had the idea to build out an artifact cube for a while now, but I might finally get around to it on Cobra sometime soon. There's probably enough bleed in all 5 colors nowadays to really make it feel unique and interesting.