Tales from the Magic 2011 Prerelease!

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of “Tales from the Prerelease”. Today is the first of 2 reports form the Wizard’s Comics prereleases, so stay tuned tomorrow for another one. I hope everyone enjoyed their first taste of Magic 2011 (I know I did). This core set is one of best core set’s ever, and I truly enjoyed playing limited with it. Without further ado, let’s see what awaited me in my sealed pool.

Zak’s Sealed Pool

And here’s the deck I built:

Zak’s Sealed Deck

This deck has an aggressive edge to it, chiefly because of the 3 Garruks Companions. Note that I’m normally not a huge fan of the card, but the potential to have a reliably aggressive base green deck was tempting, so I tried it out. This deck has some mid-game flier that keep up the pressure, and has a solid late game with Mind Control, Sword of Vengeance and some fatties to see it through to the end. The white splash gives us 2 solid removal options, as well as another quality flyer to get in for damage when we need to.

Round 1: vs Wilson

I started the first game on the draw, and quickly cast a Garruks Companion. Unfortunately, he hits a turn 3 Lilianas Specter making me discard a card. Unfortunately, I don’t draw land on either turns 3 or 4, and he bolsters his army with the likes of Juggernaut and Vulshok Berserker. When I do hit my land drop, I drop Augury Owl and Sacred Wolf, but they simply can’t stand up to Wilson’s bomb: Inferno Titan.

Game 2 is more even with me getting out a turn 3 Garruks Companion, met again by Lilianas Specter. I get a devastating turn 4 Juggernaut which outclasses Wilson’s play of Arc Runner. A Foresee on my turn lets me dig to ensure my continued stream of spells, and I cast Pacifism on his Specter to ensure that my Juggernaut gets through. When Wilson doesn’t have an answer to my extra 3 points of damage in the form of a Giant Growth, he packs it in and we go to game 3.

Although i’m on the draw, I accelerate quickly with a first-turn Llanowar Elves. Wilson’s drop is just as good, and he casts a Ember Hauler. I play a forest on turn 2, and leave Giant Growth up rather than casting the Gargoyle Sentinel in my hand, because I want to ensure that I get out a turn 3 Giant Spider. He plays a Goblin Piker and, in a moment of confusion, attacks his hauler into my spider. It turns out that he had forgotten that damage doesn’t stack anymore, and admitted his play mistake may have cost him the game. We escalate the size of our armies with me casting a Garruks Companion and a Duskdale Wurm, and him bringing out a Howling Banshee and a Juggernaut. When I finally draw Sword of Vengeance and slap it on a Garruks Packleader, Wilson extends the hand.

1 – 0

Round 2: vs Jordan

I start the second round on the play with my aggressive start of a turn 2 Garruks Companion. He drops a Bloodthrone Vampire on his turn, and follows up with Blinding Mage. He Unsummons my 3/2 beater when I swing with it, but I Negate it, intending to capitalize on his lack of a fourth land. He eventually casts a Stabbing Pain on my companion, which I quickly replace with a Giant Spider. He casts a Cloud Elemental in an effort to break through, but another Garruks Companion shows up to make his potential attacks unprofitable. When he does draw his 4th land, he taps his mage to tap my 3/2, and then Assassinates it. He casts a Gargoyle Sentinel and an Assault Griffin. I start to gain advantage by bringing out my Sword of Vengeance, and equipping it on my third companion. A Juggernaut takes out his Gargoyle, and I cast a Spined Wurm. We eventually make it to a board position where if I draw a creature, I win by giving it haste with the sword, and I pull out the Assault Griffin to win a very evenly matched game.

In game 2 he gets a slow start while I come racing out of the gates with a Blinding Mage, Llanowar Elves, and Gargoyle Sentinel. His first play is a turn 5 Serra Angel, but when I draw my Sword of Vengeance, he has to make some suboptimal blocks to stay alive. When I cast Foresee into a Pacifism for his Azure Drake, he scoops up his cards.

2 – 0

Round 3: vs Adam

Having scouted Adam (and the rest of the 2-0 bracket) earlier, I knew he was packing a red-white-black deck with Day of Judgment, Fireball, and double Corrupt, so I came in expecting almost all my cards to hit some sort of removal. I get a solid draw of Garruks Companion and Sacred Wolf on turns 2 and 3 respectively. He casts Quag Sickness on my 3/2, and brings out a Howling Banshee which trades for my Juggernaut. After a timely Mind Rot to empty my hand, he brings out an Inferno Titan to do me in.

Because so much of Adam’s removal was damage-based, I sideboarded in my Leyline of Vitality, thinking it might help me out. I get a turn 2 Garruks Companion followed again by Sacred Wolf, which trades with his Blinding Mage. However, when I cast Azure Drake, he wrecks my board with his Day of Judgment. My last 2 cards get Mind Rotted away, and he keeps up the pressure with a Nantuko Shade. When I topdeck the useless green Leyline, I extend my hand.

Let this be a lesson to everyone. Do not play Leyline of Vitality. Seriously. It only works when you have creatures out, and in order to get decent value it needs to be in your opening hand, or you have to have a sizeable army. In retrospect, I would have been better off with another creature.

2 – 1

Round 4: vs Lorenzo

Lorenzo is one of the best local players, who usually only comes to big events. Having beat him in the Extended PTQ this year, I’m sure he was out for revenge. I start off strong with a Llanowar Elves and an Augury Owl. The vast improvement of this Owl over Sage Owl becomes apparent when I ship no less than 3 forests to the bottom of my deck. We trade guys for a while until I land a Juggernaut. Lorenzo offered the trade by blocking it with Barony Vampire, but I had the Giant Growth to ensure my war-machine could keep on wrecking the place. When I had the Pacifism for his last chump-blocker, my Juggernaut was able to steamroll its way to victory.

In game 2 we both start slowly, with a turn 3 Crystal Ball for Lorenzo, and a Sacred Wolf for me. He casts Nether Horror to follow up, but I land a Sword of Vengeance and equip it to my troll-shrouded wolf. Lorenzo scrys with his Crystal Ball at both the end of my turn and on his upkeep, putting all 4 cards on the bottom of his library in the hopes of finding an answer. He tries to cast Chandras Outrage on my Yavimaya Wurm, but it gets countered by my Flashfreeze that was brought in from the sideboard. Eventually, my Wurm arms himself with Akroma’s sword, and he destroys the last few points of Lorenzo’s life.

Final Record: 3 – 1

My record is enough to get me 12 packs of M11, which I take in store credit, and I play several games of Legacy afterwards against Lorenzo’s brother, Marcel, to cap off a great prerelease.

I’ve decided to start a new segment to increase the amount of analysis in my tournament reports. I’m going to cap off each report with a list of “Top Cards” of the day, including how to best play them. Note that I will not include any obviously bomb rares in this segment, because we all know that Sword of Vengeance is the nuts.

Top Cards

Foresee

When this card was originally printed in Future Sight, it was one of the most effective card drawing spells at the time. Sure, Tidings may have gotten you three cards for only 1 mana extra, but being able to sculpt your next few turns while accruing card advantage is what made Foresee see a fair bit of constructed play it its heyday. The 4 mana sorcery is not only back, but it’s better than ever in Magic 2011 limited. If you can set up a reasonable defense that can hold your opponent back one turn, say something like a Giant Spider, then you can use Foresee to ensure that your deck doesn’t falter as it progresses into the late turns of the game. Having a defense of some sort is important, because if you don’t draw into something insane, and you haven’t augmented your board position, casting Foresee can be a losing proposition. Of course, if you have no other plays, or plays that you do have would be suboptimal, Foresee is still a fine 4-drop, but realize that you’re giving your opponent another turn to both swing in at you and strengthen their forces. However, Foresee played an all-star role in my sealed deck, digging for my bombs and putting lands on the bottom that would have been blanks.

Augury Owl

Maybe I’m biased because scry is my favourite mechanic, but Augury Owl is head and shoulders above its Sage counterpart from Magic 2010. This 2 drop flyer makes it possible to keep marginal hands that contain disproportionate amounts of land, with an overall effect similar to Serum Powder. A 1/1 flyer is also not something that should be overlooked, as this owl trades with Liliana Specter and Stromfront Pegasus extremely nicely. With all the advantage that scry gives you, taking out an opponents 2-drop is one of the most satisfying plays you can make with this little bird.

Sacred Wolf

Sacred Wolf is a card that shone brightest when I equipped it with a Sword of Vengeance, but all day it had a solid role in helping my deck “get there”. Comparing him to the underplayed Mist Leopard in M10 limited, Sacred Wolf not only provides a decent offense that is immune to the likes of Blinding Mage and Royal Assassin, but the fact that it has shroud means you can get some extremely high value out of it. This guy trades with cards like Juggernaut all day, meaning that he is a card that you should really never be unhappy to run. In the absence of a Sword of Vengeance, this guy will pick up a Warlords Axe and beat in until your opponent finds a guy to block it. Paired with a suite of solid removal spells, Sacred Wolf is a card that helped me greatly when my opponent’s needed to cast their removal spells to try and reclaim a match.

That’s it for today, I’ll have another one of these articles up tomorrow. As always, feel free to contact me via email at zak -AT- power9pro.com or via the comments section below. If you think you’d have built the deck differently, tell me what you’d have played. This pool had some tough decisions to make, so I may have made some wrong calls, but that’s part of Magic. I’m sure that as the set becomes played with more, we’ll know exactly what cards are limited all-stars and which ones are duds relegated to the realm of proxy fodder.

Until next time, Cheers!

Zak

Tags: limited, m11, magic 2011, prerelease, sealed deck