Prerelease Report: RNA Edition
Temur Adapt
Ok, so this deck was straight fire. I won 80% of my games with it, and I ended up going 3-1. This deck had a lot of random little interactions, so it was fairly complicated, but incredibly fun. I was running only 16 lands since the majority of my creatures were 2-drops and I had a copy of
Open the Gates to help with fixing/thinning. Since 11 of my lands could tap for G, the chances of me being unable to cast Open when I needed it were low enough to make me comfortable playing it in place of a 17th land.
First things first, I thought
Benthic Biomancer and
Combine Guildmage were both terrible cards. The only reason I was running either of them was because:
-RNA is a retail limited formant and thus not super powerful.
-They both were on-curve threats that had relevant abilities in my deck.
As it turned out, this combo is straight gas. For 4 mana, you get to add a counter to one of your creatures and loot at instant speed. It's clunky, but it was fun. I won 3 games just because I was able to get this engine together.
Galloping Lizrog was just an amazing finisher for this deck due to the Benthic Biomance/Guildmage combo. I don't think any of these interactions are necessarily cubeable, but they are fun.
Riot is probably the best mechanic of the entire Guilds of Ravnica "block."
Wrecking Beast is actually pretty good. I think if you run a pauper cube or use low-power finishers, this could be a good card for you. A 6/6 Haste Trample is good, even at 7 mana.
Gruul Beastmaster is also quite good, although I found it to be weak as both a 2/2 haste and a 3/3 without haste. However, It was good as a 3/3 haste, which I was able to achieve thanks to
Domri, Chaos Bringer.
Speaking of Domri,
Domri, Chaos Bringer is really good. Being able to add mana
and give your creature riot is amazing. The super
adventurous impulse is also quite good. I found myself never even wanting to activate his ultimate because his other abilities were so good. Unfortunately, I think his Ultimate ability could keep him out of my cube. Just getting to add 8 power to the board every turn for free is just super oppressive. However, I am re-working my cube, so he could have a home. I think
Rhythm of the Wild will probably achieve the same effect I am looking for, although I have yet to play with or against it.
Pretty much everyone at my prerelease was excited about
Guardian Project, I was not impressed. Even though I was running duplicates of many of my creatures, I still had more than enough ways to trigger the dang thing, and yet, it never felt like something worth casting. I always wanted to either hold up mana for instants or adapt triggers or develop one of my creatures.
Wilderness Reclamation, on the other hand, was really good. Being able to puke out all of my two-drops and still hold up combat tricks, the Benthic Biomance/Guildmage trick, or just adapt a creature all in one turn cycle was powerful in my deck. I think it was only as powerful for me as it was because I was playing Simic. I probably won't find a home for it in my list, but the possibility is there especially since my U/G decks actually would like something like this.
Growth Spiral was exactly as good as advertised. It was fine overall. I think it would have been better if I had 2 or 3 in the deck. The unstoppable instant-speed card draw and ramp it can provide was useful in a couple of cases where I needed to dig for and play an answer in the same turn.
Applied Biomancy was the best card in my deck. It allowed me to protect my important creatures while disrupting my opponent's tempo. There were many cases where
Applied Biomancy was just
Doom Blade+
Unsummon on a single card. This is easily the best soft removal spell in RNA, especially when the game is close. The only thing keeping me from cubing it at this point in time is the stiff competition in my Simic section.
Everything I didn't talk about was average. Not good, not bad, somewhere in the middle.
Overall, this prerelease was probably the most fun event I have attended in a long time. I don't think RNA limited will be as interactive as GRN limited was overall, but I think that certain elements of RNA will lead to some fun limited gameplay. The only bad part was not getting to test
Sharktocrab.
-TrainmasterGT