Howdy folks! We’re deep into October, and that means the middle of fall set sealed season. Khans of Tarkir is a bear of a sealed format. The power level of the cards exceeds anything we’ve had in limited for a while. Multicolored sets are always powerful because the cards inherently do more when they cost more than one color of mana, but Khans takes it to a new level with incredible tri-colored cards. It’s funny, though, that the most powerful cards in Khans are actually colorless! Or at least they are sometimes, when you play them face down. Morph has really blown me away as the powerhouse mechanic of limited. And morph absolutely dominates in Khans sealed.
Last weekend I played in a five-round competitive sealed tournament at Twenty Sided Store. The event was limited to 32 people and paid a box of packs to the single 5-0 record. I was excited to play a real sealed deck tournament outside the context of a PTQ or Grand Prix. The pool I got (registered expertly by the one and only Hugh Kramer) was quite strong and a lot of fun to build. So for this Khans sealed primer I am going to walk through how I built the deck.
Here’s what I found in front of me after the deck swap:
Sealed Pool—Artifacts and Lands
| (10) 1 Ghostfire Blade 1 Mardu Banner 1 Temur Banner 1 Witness of the Ages 1 Blossoming Sands 1 Jungle Hollow 1 Sandsteppe Citadel 2 Scoured Barrens 1 Swiftwater Cliffs |
Let’s start with the most important part of the pool: the colorless cards. Well, besides the morphs, which come later. The lands are both powerful and plentiful in Khans sealed. They define your deck. It is very hard to build a sealed deck that goes against the colors dictated by its dual lands. And if you have less than five, you are disappointed. My pool comes up strong in this department, as I have four dual lands and one tri-land all centered around Abzan colors, plus the oddball Swiftwater Cliffs. Looking at my lands, I am certainly playing black, and combining it with some amount of white and green. Red and blue will be hard to play, although I have enough redundancy in my main colors that I could afford to run a few splash mountains or islands.
My pool also offers up a welcome surprise in the rest of the colorless cards: Ghostfire Blade. The Sword of No Colors might be the best card in the entire format. It’s certainly the one that goes in the most decks. If the portion of sealed pools containing Ghostfire Blade that play it in the main deck is less than 100%, that can only be explained as human error. Seriously. I was so happy to see the blade in my pool.
As I’ve said already, morph creatures are already the most powerful cards in the format. Ghostfire Blade turns them into unstoppable forces for almost no mana. It’s very hard to lose if you have an early blade and a stream of morphs. If you attack with a 4/4 every turn, your opponent has to block. So you pick the morph that punishes them the most for blocking, slip on the blade for a mana, and swing in every turn for the rest of the game. Even your bad morphs turn into removal spells. That is incredibly powerful. Basically, you can use weaker cards to trade with your opponent’s threats, which means you’ve exhausted your opponent’s resources before your big plays come down.
Sealed Pool—Multicolored
| (10) 1 Abzan Charm 1 Abzan Guide 1 Butcher of the Horde 1 Chief of the Edge 1 Efreet Weaponmaster 1 Jeskai Charm 1 Kheru Lich Lord 1 Master the Way 1 Ponyback Brigade 1 Sidisi, Brood Tyrant |
Moving on to the next most important cards in the pool. This is where you hope to find some all-stars. The biggest standouts for me are Butcher of the Horde and Sidisi, Brood Tyrant. Each requires a splash outside my Abzan base, but not much of one. It will be hard to play both, however. The rest of the gold cards are all quite strong actually. My mana won’t support any of the Jeskai cards, unfortunately, but Abzan Charm and Chief of the Edge are in the deck for sure.
Sealed Pool—White
| (14) 1 Ainok Bond-Kin 1 Brave the Sands 2 Erase 2 Firehoof Cavalry 1 Mardu Hateblade 1 Mardu Hordechief 1 Master of Pearls 2 Siegecraft 1 Venerable Lammasu 1 War Behemoth 1 Watcher of the Roost |
White has some nice cards. Master of Pearls is a real beating, and as a rare morph is especially difficult for your opponent to anticipate. Watcher of the Roost is a great free morph and War Behemoth is a perfect filler morph. Ainok Bond-Kin is one of the best two drops in the set, and Mardu Hordechief provides a lot of efficiency. And there’s my favorite unassuming win condition, Venerable Lammasu. It’s no bomb but it wins games. Overall, I am inclined to play these white cards and am glad to see that my Abzan-ish mana base will have a solid deck.
Sealed Pool—Blue
| (10) 1 Embodiment of Spring 1 Glacial Stalker 1 Mistfire Weaver 1 Monastery Flock 1 Quiet Contemplation 1 Singing Bell Strike 2 Taigam’s Scheming 2 Treasure Cruise |
The blue cards in here are a joke. Treasure Cruise and Mistfire Weaver are great, and Glacial Stalker is quite good, but there’s no depth. I was already leaning away from blue based on my lands, and Sidisi is the only card pulling me into blue at all. I might splash a Treasure Cruise if I play Sidisi, but I can pretty much set these cards aside and move on.
Sealed Pool—Black
| (12) 1 Bellowing Saddlebrute 2 Debilitating Injury 1 Disowned Ancestor 1 Dutiful Return 1 Gurmag Swiftwing 1 Rakshasa’s Secret 1 Rotting Mastodon 1 Sidisi’s Pet 1 Sultai Scavenger 2 Unyielding Krumar |
I have five dual- or tri-lands that produce black, so I want to be rewarded here. I’m not hugely rewarded, but it could be worse. I happily slam two Debilitating Injury into my deck, and Bellowing Saddlebrute is a powerhouse. Sultai Scavenger is a strong threat as well. After that there’s nothing too exciting, but I’ll probably end up playing some of them since black mana will be so easy to produce.
Sealed Pool—Red
| (13) 1 Act of Treason 1 Barrage of Boulders 1 Bloodfire Mentor 1 Burn Away 1 Crater’s Claws 1 Leaping Master 3 Mardu Warshrieker 2 Shatter 1 Valley Dasher 1 War-Name Aspirant |
Crater’s Claws! Yes please! I am 100% splashing red in my deck to cast this card. Khans sealed games go long, and the Claws end them. While I think Ghostfire Blade is the most ubiquitously played bomb in Khans sealed, since every deck can cast it, I suspect Crater’s Claws is the most splashed card in the format. Why wouldn’t you throw two mountains in your deck, or whatever red fixing you have, to be able to top deck “win the game” on turn fifteen? I would love to open Ghostfire Blade and Crater’s Claws in every Khans sealed tournament I play. Obviously I’m stoked to have them here.
At this point it looks like I will be Abzan splashing red for Crater’s Claws and Butcher of the Horde. The rest of the red cards don’t offer much incentive to dig deeper. Mardu Warshrieker is fantastic, and I’d happily play three in a red deck, but I don’t think my deck is going to want a lot of red cards. Burn Away is a nice removal spell for big threats that also hoses delve, so it’s a nice option to have. Barrage of Boulders is a sideboard possibility if a match is a total board stall.
Sealed Pool—Green
There are a lot of solid green cards here, although nothing too powerful. Hooting Mandrills and Tuskguard Captain are quite strong, and Longshot Squad is always welcome. But this mostly looks like filler. Savage Punch is great if you have big creatures, and Roar of Challenge is another sideboard stall breaker, but both are best at augmenting an already-powerful green deck. I’m not sure that’s what I have here.
Here’s what I submitted. Twenty-two spells and eighteen lands. No banners. You know, the basics. I went 4-0 in matches before splitting the finals prize with my buddy Alex Owen.
Gift of Orzhova
I knew my deck would be some sort of Abzan deck with a few mountains to cast Crater’s Claws, Butcher of the Horde, and maybe one or two other red spells if I felt so inclined. But I spent a lot of time, the majority of deckbuilding, deciding how to trim down from here. The best decks in limited generally, across all formats, have two main colors. I think that holds up here as well. It just turns out in Khans that you have so much fixing you can splash for whatever you need, either with off-color duals or in my case with basics that still fit because I have such color density in my nonbasic lands. Reid Duke wrote a fantastic sealed primer at Channel Fireball, and he makes the same point, that you want to focus on two colors.
Based on that, I chose to go white-black and leave all of my green cards in the sideboard other than the two gold Abzan cards, the charm and the guide. I only had three green sources from duals, but that’s plenty for these two cards. Leaving out the rest of my green cards let me cut forests out of my deck to make room for the mountains I needed. Maybe I should have put in a fourth mountain, but I chose to keep my focus on white and black spells. I cut Burn Away for this reason, leaving me just the two red bombs plus Ponyback Brigade as my red cards.
The final cards I chose to include were Witness of the Ages and Sidisi’s Pet. As I’ve been saying, morphs are fantastic, especially with a Ghostfire Blade. One of my weaknesses as a limited player, that I’ve finally started to overcome, is that I play too many spells and too few creatures. Here I decided that extra morphs would do more to control the board and establish my game plan than an off-color removal spell like Burn Away or Savage Punch. I’m glad I made that decision and I’m sure it helped me go undefeated in the tournament.
I hope this tour through building a sealed deck has been helpful and provides some insight into how to approach the format.
Carrie O’Hara is Editor-in-Chief of Hipsters of the Coast.