This week I present my Grand Prix Atlanta report, in which my streak of day twos crashed into the rocks of the bad pool. All the dude ever wanted was a deck that does something, but it was not to be. As I looked at my assigned set of cards during the two-bye sleep-in deck build, my heart sunk. Null Rod times 84, that’s what I saw. This is what I got:
GP Atlanta Sealed Pool—White
GP Atlanta Sealed Pool—Blue
GP Atlanta Sealed Pool—Black
| (12) 1 Asphyxiate 1 Bile Blight 2 Cruel Feeding 1 Eye Gouge 1 Feast of Dreams 1 Herald of Torment 1 Necrobite 1 Nyxborn Eidolon 1 Pharika’s Cure 1 Returned Centaur 1 Rotted Hulk |
GP Atlanta Sealed Pool—Red
GP Atlanta Sealed Pool—Green
GP Atlanta Sealed Pool—Multicolored and Colorless
| (7) 1 Destructive Revelry 1 Kragma Warcaller 1 Kruphix, God of Horizons 1 Pharika’s Mender 1 Astral Cornucopia 1 Chariot of Victory 1 Springleaf Drum |
Now that is an unimpressive pool. I flipped through my rares: Kruphix, God of Horizons, Twinflame, Oracle of Bones (foil!), Herald of Torment, Astral Cornucopia, Labyrinth Champion, and Soldier of the Pantheon. It’s pretty hard to open a pool with a foil rare and a god, and still have complete garbage. But here we are. Herald of Torment is the only rare I’d consider good, while Oracle of Bones and Labyrinth Champion are decent. I actually spent some time trying to figure out if I could do anything exciting with Twinflame. Is that even possible?
This will not go well.
Looking over the full pool, each color has a decent core but nothing to put it over the top. White has some nice bestows and early drops, but no removal or top end. Blue has some sweet utility cards, a Nimbus Naiad, and an actual finisher in Kraken of the Straits. Black has a nice suite of removal plus the Herald, but almost nothing else. Red has a decent small creature base. Green has a nice core around Golden Hind and Nessian Game Warden, but no big creatures or any reason to want to play green cards. Pharika’s Mender is great, at least.
Overall the pool lacks finishers or anything impressive at all. I’d have a hard time closing games quickly no matter what color combination I choose. And I know very well that closing games quickly is one of the keys to success in this sealed format, while durdling away leads to death.
I tried various color combinations and each had about twelve playable creatures and not much punch. One major weakness of this pool is that black has the most removal but the least cards. Those black cards are too good to get away from, but the thinness of black strains your resources in a second color. And none of my secondary colors were strong enough to fill in adequately. Red has some reasonable cards, but this pool is destined to be a midrange deck and the red cards here are very bad in such a deck. When Kragma Butcher is your best attacker, you have problems.
Never trust a man with a crease in his pants.
Green likewise offers too little of what green is supposed to offer. My biggest butt is a Nessian Game Warden. Great card, but it can only draw into a worse creature. Golden Hind can get ahead a turn on mana, but what is this pool going to accelerate into? Slow midrange ground creatures don’t do a whole lot in this sealed format.
I eventually settled on blue, even though it is my next thinnest color. Evasion is strong, and the two Sigiled Starfish offered a good way to dig to the correct removal spells. Kraken of the Straits is the actual biggest creature in my pool, and it is a legitimate beater. Archetype of Imagination offers a way to end a game fairly quickly if you’re lucky, which is more than I could hope for from other decks. Unfortunately, I’ve played a lot of decks in this archetype and I knew this version was not going to win many games. I had to hope to get lucky that my removal could actually kill the threats I faced while some evasive threat slowly chipped away. That’s maybe a 40% strategy, at best, which is to say a losing one.
Hoping to add some power to the deck, I decided to splash some green cards. Pharika’s Mender is pure value, and actually has four power to boot. Fade into Antiquity really fills a hole in blue-black decks and always has good targets in sealed. The final card I added was Agent of Horizons. It’s not much, but I felt I needed one more evasive threat, effectively my third Cloaked Siren, to be able to win an attrition match.
What I’m saying is, my deck sucked. I figured at least I could play one that had some coherent (if weak) plans and that I would enjoy playing. I don’t mind losing quite as much if I get to scry every turn. At least it feels like I’m making important decisions. Here’s the final list I submitted, in all its shame.
All Aboard the Failboat
| Creatures (14) 2 Sigiled Starfish 1 Nyxborn Eidolon 1 Nimbus Naiad 1 Herald of Torment 1 Nyxborn Triton 1 Agent of Horizons 2 Cloaked Siren 1 Rotted Hulk 1 Returned Centaur 1 Pharika’s Mender 1 Archetype of Imagination 1 Kraken of the Straits Spells (8) 1 Bile Blight 1 Pharika’s Cure 1 Asphyxiate 1 Lash of the Whip 1 Feast of Dreams 1 Eternity Snare 1 Fade into Antiquity 1 Rise of Eagles | Lands (18) 9 Swamp 7 Island 2 Forest Sideboard (6) 1 Eye Gouge 1 Necrobite 1 Stymied Hopes 1 Cruel Feeding 1 Reviving Melody 1 Stratus Walk |
At least I started with two byes. I ended up playing through round eight, and only one one more match. Five total game wins. I had some fun and engaging matches, at least, but when Ajani, Mentor of Heroes hit the table in round six when I was 3-2 I knew my tournament was over.
Herald of Torment was not very good in this deck. I knew it wouldn’t be, too, but a bad threat is more than most cards offered. It was really just a worse Nimbus Naiad, as my deck never had a fast clock and the extra life loss mattered more to me than the extra point of damage to my opponent. And most of my threats worth bestowing already have evasion. So it goes. When your best cards are not being maximized by your deck, it’s tough to win.
So that was a rough weekend. I hope it is useful to read about a bad sealed pool, and see what goes into trying to salvage one. If nothing else, you can read and nod knowingly. We’ve all been there, and it sucks. Fortunately there’s a double PTQ this weekend so I have a chance to put my sealed experience to good use. Maybe I can get a good pool too.
Carrie O’Hara is Editor-in-Chief of Hipsters of the Coast.