Typically only V and I attend pre-releases. That was the case for both Lorwynn and Morningtide, but as a result of drafting Lorwynn and Morningtide with our prize packs from those pre-releases K and A were more interested this time. So for the Shadowmoor pre-release the four of us packed ourselves into V's car and drove on up.
The experience of a pre-release? It's unique. My first was Mirrodin. At the time I was still primarily a multi-player Magic fan. V was with me for that one, but he had arranged to join a 3-man team flight and the team was already full, so I was on my own. I joined up with the owner of our local gaming shop and a friend of his and we made our own 3-man team. That was all I did back then.
Since leaving college the formats have change, along with my address. The only team events they have now are Two-Headed Giant sealed. Not quite my cup of tea, though I'm sure I'd enjoy it, and it's something I'll have to try in the future. For now, though the only choices were sealed and draft. The organizers have a special deal. Buy two sealeds at the beginning of the day and you get a $5 discount. Given the prices they charge ($30 per sealed, which I calculate to be a $13 premium at a minimum) this is almost a necessity! So all four of us signed up for this deal and immediately got ready for the first sealed. My very first crack at a new set, it's always exciting. I've seen the promo cards over at Wizards but nothing else. The full set has not yet been revealed to me because I enjoy the surprise. But I already know what I want. I want to pack an Oona and a handful of the other cards. I particularly want as many Leech Bonders as I can grab. To my chagrin, by the end of the day I had not packed an Oona, and had managed to obtain 0 copies of Leech Bonder. All the same, this was likely my most successful pre-release to date. Let's look at the cards first.
Sealed Deck Pile #1[Show]
2 Aphotic Wisps
1 Barrenton Cragtreads
1 Blazethorn Scarecrow
1 Boggart Arsonists
1 Burn Trail
1 Cerulean Wisps
1 Cinderbones
1 Cinderhaze Wretch
1 Curse of Chains
1 Deus of Calamity
1 Disturbing Plot
1 Ember Gale
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Fists of the Demigod
1 Flourishing Defenses
1 Ghastly Discovery
2 Gloomwidow's Feast
1 Goldenglow Moth
1 Gravelgill Duo
1 Graven Cairns
1 Grief Tyrant
1 Guttural Response
1 Heap Doll
1 Helm of the Ghastlord
1 Illuminated Folio
1 Inkfathom Witch
1 Inquisitor's Snare
1 Jaws of Stone
1 Kithkin Shielddare
1 Leechridden Swamp
1 Mana Reflection
1 Manaforge Cinder
1 Mercy Killing
1 Merrow Grimeblotter
1 Mine Excavation
1 Mistveil Plains foil
1 Mossbridge Troll
1 Old Ghastbark
1 Oona's Gatewarden
1 Pale Wayfarer
1 Parapet Watchers
1 Plumeveil
1 Power of Fire
1 Puncture Bolt
1 Raking Canopy
1 Rune-Cervin Rider
2 Rustrazor Butcher
1 Safehold Duo
1 Safehold Sentry
1 Safewright Quest
1 Scar
2 Scuzzback Marauders
1 Scuzzback Scrapper
1 Seedcradle Witch
1 Silkbind Faerie
2 Sinking Feeling
1 Slinking Giant
1 Smash to Smithereens
1 Smolder Initiate
1 Spell Syphon
1 Spiteful Visions
1 Taterkite
1 Thisteldown Duo
1 Thornwatch Scarecrow
1 Traitor's Roar
1 Wanderbrine Rootcutters
1 Watchwing Scarecrow
1 Wildslayer Elves
1 Wingrattle Scarecrow
1 Woeleecher
The very first thing I notice, of course, are the rares. Actually that's a flat-out lie. I opened the sealed first and read through them commons first, then uncommons, then rares. The rares are probably the first thing you noticed, though. An impressive collection. The goal for me, though, is speedy and accurate deck-building, and the key to that is quickly discarding poor avenues of deckbuilding. The sooner I can eliminate a color or two, the better I'll be. It gives me more time to playtest the deck, get sample draws, and make minor adjustments. So my first run-through I'm looking for the bad cards, the ones that will never go into any deck I make unless I'm intentionally making one with the worst cards I can find. My first run-through I am looking for the Chimney Imps of the set. Out of the 75 cards I opened not too many went there this time. This is an OK grab, but not great by any stretch of the imagination, and even then the cards I'm clearly going to toss? Slinking Giant, Illumniated Folio and a few others. This did not help me make any color decisions at all.
My first run-through is also looking for the bombs. Sure, those are usually the rares, so let's take a moment to look at each of the rares, and then the other cards that are clearly winners:
Winners![Show]
// Rares
Deus of Calamity
Graven Cairns
Mana Reflection
Mossbridge Troll
Spiteful Visions
// Some definite push to black/red and green here. The Deus is powerful, 5 colored mana means a tough commitment, but there's a lot of playability there and a 6/6 cannot be ignored in Limited particularly for that much of a mana discount. The troll is Timmy-juice. Unfortunately it's also too expensive to really play here. The Cairns give me some color flexability that I probably didn't use sufficiently, and Spiteful Visions looks like a painful version of Howling Mine.
// Non-rare winners.
Oona's Gatewarden -- For 1 mana I get a 2/1 flyer that makes you -way- less likely to attack me. This is a very good slow-down card.
Scuzzback Marauders -- Persist on a trampling heavy-hitter. Very nice.
Tatterkite -- "Hi, I make wither almost useless".
Plumeveil -- This card is simply fantastic. When I saw it promo'd I figured it'd be causing more fanfare than it is.
Rustrazor Butcher -- The combination of first strike and wither together is something that people didn't grasp at first. This caused more than a few miscalcuations on attacks and blocks. I made sure to capitalize.
Frankly, at the end of this I had piles of cards that were working well together, but nothing clear. A lot of good cards, but not really enough anywhere to make a decision. I really wanted to play either blue or white to get some of the really powerful cards I had in U/W hybrid, including Plumeveil going, but I just didn't see enough there. Similarly red seems like a shoe-in because it clearly has the best selection of creatures, but a lot of that dips into green, where I've got good stuff, and black where I've got good stuff.
I ultimately went with a R/B deck because I thought it would give me more synergy with the hybrids I had. I tossed in the Deus because I figured I could fix into it with the Cairns. And honestly, I was able to play it most of the time without issue, which was probably lucky. In order to fill things out I tossed in Boggart Arsonists and Ember Gale, main deck. The Arsonists curve out nicely and aren't terrible for a red creature, and I knew most decks I'd be seeing would have scarecrows in them to compensate for color problems. The Ember Gale I figured would make a nice finisher letting all my creatures through on a last turn. The second ability if it ever went off would be merely gravy. Lastly, in goes Spiteful Visions. This was a bit of a curiosity play, but also because with my Leechridden Swamps, my solid creature base, and my direct damage I figured I'd be able to race better than most decks. This turns out to be one of the most important choices of all.
Shadowmoor Prerelease Deck #1 R/B[Show]
{TEXT}
Results:
Round 1: vs. (R/B)
The first game turned very ugly very quickly. His deck was full of great cards in both colors and clearly had the better of me, but my play was able to disrupt him sufficiently with the creature destruction I did have and some crafty play from the Rustrazor Butchers. As I said, these guys made people's lives miserable at the prerelease. As a result the game started to drag and I got Spiteful Visions down. At that point I wasn't sure if it was a good play or not, because with about even life, while it was going to hurt him first, it would also help him first as he got to draw more cards. Luckily, it seemed he had drawn most of his best stuff and I'd weathered it. Eventually the Spiteful Visions and my solid enough defenses won out.
The second game was a rout against me, but it took a while to get there meaning our third game was close on time.
Right as time is being called, giving us 5 turns to complete or call it a draw, I drop the Visions again. What a play, with both of us under 10 life it confirmed a win for one of us, and as the case would be, it went to me. My opponent went on to do quite well with his deck against his next opponents, and I'm not surprised.
Won. 1-0
Round 2: vs. (U/W)
Steel of the Godhead. On a Silkbind Faerie. Seriously. 3/5 flying locks me down and gains him life. I had the combo in my hand to deal with it for three turns before I saw it, and those three turns hurt. 1) Aphotic Wisps to drop it back to a 1/3 and then 2) Burn Trail it. I couldn't even convoke it. But with the Faerie gone, I was at least still alive. Clinging at 1 life to his 24. And he failed to draw anything else all game that could hurt me. One point of damage was all he needed. Oh, for a splash of red. Or for me to get stupid and mana burn. But no. No. It was not to be. His 23 life point advantage faded quickly as I brought the forces to bear. But good grief did it take a while.
The second game went much more in his favor. U/W isn't terribly speedy and my deck is pretty fast, but he got a good start and I couldn't keep up. Onto the third game where we got into a lovely position where he had an advantage but couldn't press it fast enough. Time was called and even if I made mistakes he couldn't deal enough damage to kill me in time. I certainly couldn't kill him.
Drawn. 1-0-1.
Round 3: vs. (R/G/B)
He was late arriving so our time was cut short, but it ended up not mattering, because unlike the first two matches, this one went quickly. Scuzzback Marauders all over the place! I won the first game quite quickly, and had this been a higher level event that would've been it, because of his tardiness. But we played on. I got a bad draw and end up losing the second game, but come back and trounce him again in the third. Even the second game felt like one I probably should have won.
Won 2-0-1. With this record I'm in the packs.
Round 4: vs. (G/W/R)
He's in a bad spot, his record is worse than mine, but I can't really offer him a draw, either. It's not economically sound for either one of us. So we play it out, and his deck is just outclassed. The first game he only damaged me at all because he payed 5 mana to Flame Javelin my head right before he dies. The second game he got manascrewed.
Won. 3-0-1. Prizes: 11 packs.
The fact that my two easiest matches were against three-color decks is not surprising. Shadowmoor is very, very picky about colors. Monocolor is playable. Two-color is playable. Three is right out in these situations. My pool of cards might have made for an interesting three color deck scheme, but I know it would not have made a good three color deck.
White/Blue is every bit as good as I figured it would be, and the initial releases coming back from the pro-level stuff seems to confirm this. So if you're looking at your cards and not sure which colors to go, W/U isn't a bad choice if you've got nothing else pushing you one way or another.
There seem to be a lot of surprisingly good cards in this set. The wisps are incredibly useful on attack or defense, the godly auras are amazing on hybrid creatures of the right colors and pretty decent on a creature of a single color. And the combos and level of intricacy set up by this set is absolutely insane. I saw judges being called for truly bizarre questions.
K took three packs, which is terrific for a first event. He'd built a W/U deck himself and played it quite well. A didn't manage any in this event and V also took 3. All in all this was a good sealed that I felt I played better than I pulled on.
There are going to be a lot of sleeper cards out of this, I can feel it. I think my experience with Spiteful Visions may have me feeling it a bit more than anyone else right now, but it's a good card. It can be played in either red or black by itself, which means it's also quite easy to team it up with blue or white. Card draw and damage prevention...
I started playing around with a hypothetical deck with 4 Spiteful visions in mono-red burn Type 2. It's a bit slow coming out (without acceleration) for a constructed deck, and it does have a serious potential to backfire (here have some more cards to beat me with), but it also really hoses a lot of blue 'draw cards' types of builds and requires action or attention. Multiples are particularly insane. One down and it gets reduced to "draw two, take two", a painful situation, no doubt. Two down and it's ratchets up the agony scale to "draw three, take six". Yes, you're going to draw three and take six too, but he's taking it first. Here are the cards I see comboing well with Spiteful Visions:
Burning Command -- Great for options. You can pyroclasm if you're worried about his creatures smacking you too hard and making the Visions too painful an investment, you can deal 4 right to his head, and the real killer combo is making him discard his hand and draw that many cards. If he's been holding on to crap, it hurts and if he's been holding on to good stuff it really hurts.
The problem right now is that constructed is all about "Dredge". Which means they'll never draw anyway. But then, if Dredge never draws... why not play Spiteful Visions. You'll get an extra card a turn and only take one point of damage (if that) compared to your opponent. The answer is, for now, Dredge is too fast to worry about putting in this slow enchantment.
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