"Fate Reforged Paper Prerelease" - January 17, 2015

So I've just gotten home from a fantastic time at my Fate Reforged Prerelease. I know you're probably all itching to get to yours, so I'll jump right in.

I chose Sultai for my clan pretty much on a whim. I would have been happy in any of the clans, and as I went Temur last time, I decided to change it up. I'm not the type to play Sultai, but the purple die and pin called to me, and when I opened my packs, I was glad that I heeded the call.

My entire pool was fairly strong, and I could have gone a couple of ways with it. In the end I chose to stick to my colours, and just my colours, though I did splash red for one of my rares.

First, I should talk about the format. When I heard that the prerelease was going to be four and a half
packs of Fate Reforged, I thought it was going to be bad, but it turns our that having that many of the new cards is interesting. The lack of morphs in this set is made up for by Manifest, which plays out better than I'd initially expected.

I've heard mixed review of Manifest, and I can safely tell you that it's good. Burning through your deck and using lands you don't need as 2/2s makes the game feel better. There's still the risk of manifesting that land you need to cast your bomb, or manifesting your Pyrotechnics or End Hostilities, but it's worth the risk, especially with so much bounce in the format. 

I actually manifested my Treasure Cruise once, but thanks to Temur Sabertooth, I would have had it back in hand, if my opponent hadn't exiled it. The sabertooth handily won me a game anyway by continuously bouncing my smoke teller back to my hand and quicky tearing apart my opponent's board.

Other cards of note were my three bomb rares:

Yasova Dragonclaw is clearly a bomb in limited. She's a 4/2 with trample, and if you can increase her toughness in any way, she can swing in herself for a ton of damage over the course of a game. Failing that, her ability is like a repeatable act of treason, which can quickly close out a game by removing a blocker every turn and giving you free damage, or at least giving your opponent unfavourable blocks.

Silumgar, the Drifting Death ended up being better than I expected. Having a 3/7 flyer is as good as it sounds, and the fact that he's hexproof is relevant. Also relevent is the fact that when you attack with her, she kills all the opponent's spirit and warrior tokens, plus any number of X/1s they might have floating around. If nothing else, he's a big dumb blocker with enough power to kill most things that might want to attack you.

Finally, Atarka, World Render. I had a hard look at my deck and mana base, and decided that she was worth splashing. I'm so glad I did. Along with Silumgar, she won me three games at least. When a 6/4 flyer with trample and doublestrike comes swinging at you, you need to have an answer. If not, it's game over.

At this point I want to mention the Hero's Blade. As I had three legendary creatures, I thought that if I were ever going to run it, this was the time, and while it did some work in the one game I got it, I'd have prefered it be another creature. If I can say that with it attatched to a 3/7 flyer, you should probably not bother running it except as your 23rd card (I still ran 18 land, by the way).

Other cards of note include:

These, along with a Sultai charm, served as my removal. They all did work. I actually prefer Douse in Gloom to something like Pharika's Cure in a multicoloured set. It may not be premium, but it can take out a morph or manifest creature, and that means that it stays relevent much later in the game.

Grim Contest is fantastic in a control deck. I targeted Silumgar more than once, and there's not much that can answer that.

Reach of Shadows I didn't start in my main, but after boarding it in against a Jeskai control deck, I left it in. Five mana, kill anything you care about is pretty good in sealed.

My foil promo was SoulFlayer, and it pained me not to run it, but I just didn't need to. My only targets in the deck for it were my two dragons, and I figured if they were in the graveyard, a 4/4 wouldn't really do much for me. I still could have run it as a 4/4 for two, but in my deck, I preferred refilling my hand with Treasure Cruise. I just didn't need another body when I could make a 2/2 our of a random forest.

My best moment of the evening was the turn after I dropped Silumgar and equipped my Hero's blade to it. I dropped Atarka, giving Silumgar double strike and swinging in to blow up their three 1/1 spirits and deal 12 damage, which was more than lethal

My worst moment of the evening was a mulligan to five and never drawing my third land... but that, too, is part of the game.

In the end, my record was 3-2, which I felt was respectable. It put me in fourth place, and got me four packs of Fate Reforged, which I hope to let Tams open later today so that we can have our own mini prerelease.

I hope that someone out there has found this report useful, or at least entertaining. I wish you all the best of luck at your own prereleases, and I'm looking forward to seeing you all for our MTGO prerelease video in two weeks time.

Until then, thanks for reading,


-Step.