Today I went to Illusive Comics for the prerelease for the latest Magic set, Journey Into Nyx. I haven’t been to one for a year, since the Dragon’s Maze prerelease, since I’ve been out of town for the last two prereleases.
In the primer they explained that we’d each choose a color, and get a pack seeded to encourage us to play that color, and that one of the cards therein might be one of the gods which had the color we chose, as well as a promotional card in our color. I looked at the promo cards and thought the White and Green ones were probably the best, and that the Red/White god (Iroas) and the White/Black god (Athreos) would be the most fun to play, so I picked White as my color.
Indeed, I opened Athreos in my seeded pack – and then also got Iroas in another pack! I had really wanted to play White/Black, but it turned out that Black was my weakest color. Red, Green and Blue were all pretty good, so since I wanted to play a god, I played White/Red. (One person was surprised I didn’t try to splash black for Athreos, but I felt it would hurt my deck’s consistency.)
Here’s a picture of the cards I opened:
And here are the cards I decided to play:
Definitely an aggressive deck – not much of a top-end, but several good answers to threats, and a lot of the strong components from the Theros set.
I had a shaky first match, against a White/Blue deck. We split the first two games, and then he decided to swap his Blue for Black, but it didn’t matter since my army got off to a good start. His Blue and Black looked very similar in power when we examined his deck afterwards, but in both cases he was struggling to have 23 playables. I think his Blue was a bit better because he had some good flyers, and I think that’s what he went with.
The second match was against White/Green, and felt almost unfair, because he got badly mana-flooded. In both games he played Font of Fertility late in the game, fetched a land – and then drew another land on his next turn. And he was playing 16 land! He was thinking of cutting a land, but he had a reasonable top end of 5-drops and I suggested he drop some mana acceleration for more creatures because he wasn’t really accelerating into anything great.
My third match was against Green/Blue, which was a couple of really close games, but I managed to jump out to an early lead and put the game away with flyers even as I ran out chump blockers against Heroes’ Bane. I was worried that his Sigiled Starfish would dig to find the answers he needed, but it didn’t come to pass. The second game was the only game where I played Iroas, and it made a difference.
In the fourth match I got to sit in the comfy chair at Table 1. Whee! My opponent was playing another Green/White deck, and said he was playing all five events this weekend. I feel tired just thinking about it. This was the closest match of the day with us trading off weenies and removal spells, and if they’d called time one minute earlier we would have drawn the match, but I managed to win on the final turn. Whew! He also had Ajani in the final game, but it wasn’t quite enough.
The fifth match was an anticlimax, against a Green/Black deck. He didn’t draw very well in the first game, and in the second game I curved out perfectly and just ran him over.
Almost five hours after I arrived, I’d 5-0’ed the prerelease! Definitely my best showing ever!
A few card notes:
- Non-combo of the day: Iroas (which prevents damage to your attacking creatures) and Archetype of Courage (which gives your creatures First Strike). They don’t quite do the same thing, but pretty close.
- Successfully mulliganed a sketchy hand (5 land, 2 Magma Spray) after having not mulliganed similar hands several times in the past – and won the game, which decided that match.
- Armament of Nyx is a tricky card to play. I was constantly resisting putting it on one of my mediocre enchantment creatures, and was consistently rewarded with using it to shut down a much bigger threat.
- There’s a little debate about the value of Skyspear Cavalry. My experience was that as a 3/5 flyer it’s a good card, but not a finisher. As a 2/4 flyer giving a +1/+1 counter to something else, it’s about the same. Probably will be playable in most White decks, but a bit of a skill-testing card in tricky situations.
- Not sure what I think of Constellation yet. Harvestguard Alseids were just a 2/3 body for me, and I didn’t see anyone else get value out of a Constellation card, either, though I did insta-kill Eidolon of Blossoms twice.
- I got to see first-hand how ineffectual Archetype of Finality is: I had him on the ropes, he spends 6 mana, and just gets a 2/3 body out of it? You’d think it would be something that could at least survive a burn spell, which is what I used on it. I think Cyclops of Eternal Fury has a similar problem – I had one and didn’t run it. But at least the Cyclops comes with 5 power attached.
- Someone at the store described Colossus of Akros as a “trap card”, which I can see, although I have also heard of it taking over some games. I only smelled 7 land, never mind 8 or 10, in one game, so I was happy to have sized it up as not right for my deck.
- The guys at Limited Resources are not believers in Dakra Mystic. It’s a weird card, but I have a feeling that it’s going to a find a home somewhere in limited. Probably in some sort of control deck.
- Heliod’s Emissary: Still awesome. Whether you Bestow it or not.
I like playing at Illusive. Even though I don’t go often enough to really know folks there, everyone is really friendly and chatty. And although I was delighted to win, I tried not to take it too seriously. I enjoy breaking down decks with people after each match. I certainly don’t feel like I know more about selecting cards or constructing decks than other people, but I think I have a few insights.
After the event I was chatting with a group of folks who had been there (one was the fellow from my last match), and they asked me how long I’d been playing. I said I’d gotten into it during Ice Age, and I’m pretty sure I could see the wheels turning that none of them had been older than 10 when that set came out. Maybe I look younger than I think!
I got pretty lucky with a strong card pool, but I’m pretty happy with choices I made for me deck, and my play overall. I could have gone 3-2 or even 2-3 if things had broken differently, but I also gave myself some opportunities to win. Maybe I’m turning the corner on this limited format stuff.
