Step's League Report - Week 1 and Opening Tournament

Dragons of Tarkir league is here, and as usual, we started with a sealed tournament. If you don't know about sealed, I intend to write an article about it soon, but in the mean time, I'm sure there's lots of info out there on the internet.

Let's take a look at my pool.

That's a lot to look at, so let's ignore that for now, I just wanted to give you all a reference for later. I always start building a sealed deck by separating my cards by colour, and then taking out the unplayable cards and cards I don't really want to play, and seeing what's left. When I was finished, my pool looked like this.

That's still a lot to look at, with no real place to start. If you've had some experience with a format, you can sort of get an idea of what you want to play just by looking at this, but let's say for the sake of argument that I didn't already have an idea.
 My next step would be separating my rares and seeing which of them were playable, as well as whether there was any mana fixing in my pool, most notably, gain lands or fetches.

As it turned out, all of my rares seemed playable, except perhaps the green one. Five of my six rares even stayed within three colours, which isn't unreasonable for a sealed deck to play, so I decided to lay out an Esper deck using all those beautiful rares.

The curve seemed good on this deck, and I had both efficient creatures and removal, but the lack of fixing bothered me. With this deck I would need black mana early, and I wouldn't need blue until later, which was good as both of my double blues were sitting at five mana, but having Anafenza on turn two would be nearly impossible, and without a gain land or two I just didn't see this deck working. The next reasonable step was to take the core of this deck and swap out a colour to see if I could make it more consistent.

I knew I liked my red playables and I had a Swiftwater Cliffs, so swapping the black for red seemed like a reasonable first step.

This deck, too, looked like it had promise, but it always bothers me when I don't have anything to do before turn three, and I didn't think this build would have any better chance of letting me cast Anafenza early. It was true that I had a twin bolt to take out a morph, but in sealed, as in this format in general, I like to get in quickly while my opponent is still trying to set up. Besides, I had two good rares in black, and some good red removal, so I might as well try to build the deck I like best in this format and go Kolaghan

Unfortunately I didn't have quite enough playables to just run red/black, but I did have that Rugged Highlands in my pool, and some green playables, so I thought "Let's try Jund"

Finally, I had a deck I was happy with. A decent curve which started early, a couple of healthy finishers, and plenty of removal. I even had enough fixing to all but guarantee me my colours when I needed them. This was the deck I ran at the opening tournament, and it got me all the way to third place, losing only to Tams in the fourth round finals. Still, I was more than happy with a 3-1 record, and it's won me some games since.

I have had my pool for a few more days though, and I've been looking through it. Is this really the best deck available? Do I like Grim Contest more than I should? Should I have had a better look at that Swiftwater Cliffs instead of the Rugged Highlands? I had to put it together to find out.

Looking at this laid out on the table, I couldn't help but think I'd run the wrong deck. While it doesn't have as much power as the green at the top end, the removal is arguably better, as none of it requires a creature with which to fight. This build is far more tempo oriented, with a couple of fliers and big beaters for the late game. I've playtested this build around the house, and I think this is what I'll run for the remainder of week one.

Once I open my optional pack for the week, things may change, but in the mean time, it looks like I've got options.

If you're interested in setting up a sealed league at your local game store, talk to your judge at FNM. They should be able to help you out. It's a lot of fun and it makes good business, so the store owners are generally open to the idea.

Thanks for reading,

-Step.