Saturday, September 25, 2010

Post-Scars Prerelease

Note: post prerelease, I consider nothing Scars-related to be spoilers. Click image for a larger view of my 40 card prerelease deck.

I either had an 80% or 72% victory rate at the prerelease tournament depending on whether you're going by rounds or games, respectively (best 2/3 games in a round). I won three packs and am suffering the sin of pride.

The round I lost was the first one. I was up against someone who had somehow managed to make a fully functional Black/Green Infect deck, complete with Putrefax. Not only that, but he had a Sword of Body and Mind. A well made deck by a good player with good cards and I don't recall making any particular blunders against him, so I don't feel too bad about it.

Well, I feel a LITTLE bad about it. If I had won every round, my prize would've been fifteen packs instead of three. But still, three extra packs is nice, and one had a Myr Battlesphere! Oh yes.

I am not going to link to every card in my deck just because it would take a while to do, but I will list it here and you can look any of them up yourselves with the Gatherer archives (apologies in advance if there are typos; they use weird words). Cards are ordered by color, then by casting cost from lowest to highest.

Blue - 7

1 Screeching Silcaw
1 Thrummingbird
1 Plated Seastrider
1 Stoic Rebuttal
1 Neurok Invisimancer
2 Lumengrid Drake

Artifact - 9

1 Origin Spellbomb
1 Infiltration Lens
1 Copper Myr
2 Silver Myr
2 Glint Hawk Idol
1 Snapsail Glider
1 Tumble Magnet

White - 9

1 Salvage Scout
2 Revoke Existence
1 Auriok Edgewright
1 Soul Parry
1 Myrsmith
1 Arrest
1 Tempered Steel
1 Razor Hippogriff

Land - 15

6 Island
1 Seachrome Coast
8 Plains

And yes, thanks to Origin Spellbomb and Myrsmith, I did get to use my Myr tokens! In fact, I don't recall a single game where I didn't get to use them. Not one person commented on them, however. It makes me wonder if anyone mistook them for the genuine article, which seems unlikely, but I guess it's possible given that nobody looked at them up close.

Origin Spellbomb proved more useful than I thought it would be. I used Salvage Scout to retrieve and reuse it in multiple games just for card advantage, as it was common to reach a point of being stalemated and just looking for that one card to turn the tide, like Tempered Steel or Tumble Magnet.

Speaking of Tumble Magnet, it's VERY potent in limited. If you look at my deck list, none of the creatures are big finishers on their own, and there was the occasional fatty I had to stall in order to win. It combos well with Thrummingbird, which allowed me to get 4 uses out of it. Would've been more, but counters are removed from cards when exiled and my opponent cast a Glimmerpoint Stag that effectively removed the last charge counter, leaving me with nothing to proliferate.

EDIT: It's been pointed out to me that the Tumble Magnet should've gotten three new charge counters when it entered the battlefield again from exile, meaning I screwed up and should have actually had an easier time winning that game than I did. I blame being tired for the oversight, though I should probably also spin the wheel of blame... *spins* Paul Reubens! How could you, Pee-wee?!

Seachrome Coast was a very lucky draw. Most of the cards I got were actually red and blue, but white gave me better options even if I did wind up using almost every white card I got. I included Copper Myr in spite of having nothing green to cast simply for additional mana acceleration, and it worked out well.

Anyway, I could ramble on about this for pages, but it reaches a point where only I would care (assuming I didn't reach that point several paragraphs ago). Anyone have their own Scars of Mirrodin prerelease experiences / decks to share?

13 comments:

  1. For some reason, I read every single blog post you make on this Magic blog...and I never have ANY idea of what you're saying, as I don't play Magic...

    Anyways, yeah. Congrats on the wins! :)

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  2. You got me back into magic, you beautiful son of a botch. #imissmyextracash

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  3. My typo just inspired a wonderful new insult! Sorry no prerelease stories but definitely looking forward to it. Hoping to find a local tourney here in Cali.

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  4. Whoa, I didn't know about those 2-color lands before reading this post, they seem awesome.

    I don't know if the rules regarding that have changed in the last year, but I'm pretty sure "returning from exile" triggers "Enter the Battlefield" triggers, so your Magnet should come back with 3 counters on it. =/

    All in all, great post, as an ex-player it's nice to see what Standard is getting.

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  5. Haiiro87 - "I don't know if the rules regarding that have changed in the last year, but I'm pretty sure "returning from exile" triggers "Enter the Battlefield" triggers, so your Magnet should come back with 3 counters on it. =/"

    ... ... ...WOW. Okay, I think you're totally right about that. I won that game, so not a huge deal, but I should have won it FASTER. Thanks for pointing that out. I'm sure you're right, but I'm paranoid so I'm still going to post about it in the rules Q&A forums ^^;

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  6. Asked and answered: http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/25927301/Tumble_Magnet__Glimmerpoint_Stag?sdb=1

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  7. The guy you lost to had the same exact deck I did. You didn't happen to play at Kings Games in Brooklyn, did you?

    It's looking to be an awesome block for Magic fans. Great to hear you had a good time. =D

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  8. Hehe, I'm one of those guys that managed a fully functional G/B Infect deck...but I'm down in Arizona. Didn't win as much as I'd like, but had a fun time.

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  9. Hey, congrats on your success! I went to the prerelease myself, fun stuff. Came in second, which was nice, mostly because I got both Steel Hellkite and Prototype Portal. Ran a G/U/W deck, worked fairly well.

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  10. Bad Dan! Bad! White, blue, black, red, green, multicolored, colorless artifacts, nonbasic land, basic land! In that order! Colorless non-artifacts (Oh hey Emrakul, I was just talking about you! Good things, of course... don't eat me!) kinda don't have a place... I usually put them between multicolored and colorless artifacts.

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  11. Unfortunately, some of us just started our second year of college. I'll be lucky if I can make it to a booster draft once or twice this quarter. :(

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  12. I suppose I should post my decklist. At the end of the tournament (ours was continual build) I had:
    Black: Blackcleave Goblin, Blackcleave Goblin (Foil), Blistergrub, Blistergrub, Contagious Nim, Exsanguinate, Flesh Allergy, Instill Infection, Moriok Reaver, Skinrender
    Artifact: Bladed Pinions, Corpse Cur, Copper Myr, Ichorclaw Myr, Ichorclaw Myr, Memnite, Necropede, PLATINUM EMPERION, Perilous Myr, Trigon of Infestation, Throne of Geth, Vector Asp
    Land: Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp, Swamp

    I started with "white, black, and some random artifacts mashed together" due to lack of time, but I tweaked over time, to the point I couldn't justify keeping white, so...

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  13. Well, might as well recount my own experiences. I went to the local prerelease just to watch and get a good idea at what cards would work well in Limited.... but then the store owner asked if I could sign up, since it would give the tourney an even number of players, though this meant I had to draft without any strategy in mind.

    I ended up drafting black (My default color for limited, as opposed to Red in constructed) and Blue, which is a color I had never even touched before. The deck..... actually worked fairly well. I focused on trying to get Infect-capable monsters, in addition to whatever Proliferate cards I could find, plus any worthwhile black and blue spells.

    Now, I don't really have an exact decklist, since I was borrowing my friends card sleeves and hastily pulled the sleeves out and stuffed the deck in my box, but here's a list of the cards that were definitely in the deck:

    Black:
    Moriok Reaver, Blistergrub, Ichor Rats, Contagious Nim, Painsmith, Plague Stinger, Grasp of Darkness, Fume Spitter

    Blue:
    Scrapdifer Serpent, Sky-Eel School, Halt Order, Disperse, Turn Aside

    Artifact:
    Argentum Armor, Grafted Exoskeleton, Moriok Replica, Myr Galvanizer, Leaden Myr, Ichorclaw Myr, Throne of Geth, Grindclock, Nim Deathmantle, Nihil Spellbomb

    Land:
    Swamp, Island, Blackcleave Cliffs

    Overall the deck did fairly well, though there were some problems.... (For example, apparently I had only included four Islands in the deck, which was either a mistake on my part, or foul play on someone elses, but whatever) I just narrowly avoided winning any prizes (Aside from a Wurmcoil Engine as thanks for helping out*), partially because in the last round my opponent kept using two Tumble Magnets to lock me down.

    * - The Draft was on Sunday, while the main Prerelease event had been the day before, and thus most of the people who were at the draft had already recieved a Wurmcoil Engine the day before.

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