Sealed Deck Building with D

Greetings readers!

Today, in keeping with my theme of sealed decks, I will be opening 6 boosters and building myself a 40 card sealed deck. I'll be going the route that most events have gone, and do 3 packs of Scars, and 3 packs of New Phyrexia.

Now, enough time talking, lets crack some packs!

Sealed

New Phyrexia Pack 1 1 Suture Priest 1 Shriek Raptor 1 Mortis Dogs 1 Vault Skirge 1 Furnace Scamp 1 Geth’s Verdict 1 Gremlin Mine 1 War Report 1 Forced Worship 1 Glistener Elf 1 Argent Mutation 1 Priest of Urabrask 1 Inquisitor Exarch 1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur New Phyrexia Pack 2 1 Artillerize 1 Rotted Hystrix 1 Flameborn Viron 1 Psychic Barrier 1 Thundering Tanadon 1 Gitaxian Probe 1 Chained Throatseeker 1 Leeching Bite 1 Flameborn Viron 1 Blinding Souleater 1 Greenhilt Trainee 1 Arm with Æther 1 Greenhilt Trainee 1 Omen Machine New Phyrexia Pack 3 1 Geth’s Verdict 1 Blind Zealot 1 Chained Throatseeker 1 Sensor Splicer 1 Blind Zealot 1 Volt Charge 1 Defensive Stance 1 Slash Panther 1 Geth’s Verdict 1 Ogre Menial 1 Shrine of Limitless Power 1 Fallen Ferromancer 1 Gut Shot 1 Chancellor of the Spires

Scars of Mirrodin Pack 1 1 Seize the Initiative 1 Relic Putrescence 1 Snapsail Glider 1 Contagious Nim 1 Soul Parry 1 Wing Puncture 1 Iron Myr 1 Moriok Replica 1 Screeching Silcaw 1 Leaden Myr 1 Painsmith 1 Razor Hippogriff 1 Darkslick Drake 1 Chimeric Mass Scars of Mirrodin Pack 2 1 Sunspear Shikari 1 Blistergrub 1 Flight Spellbomb 1 Razorfield Thresher 1 Origin Spellbomb 1 Bleak Coven Vampires 1 Grasp of Darkness 1 Chrome Steed 1 Fume Spitter 1 Auriok Sunchaser 1 Lifesmith 1 Rusted Relic 1 Palladium Myr 1 Mimic Vat Scars of Mirrodin Pack 3 1 Snapsail Glider 1 Vedalken Certarch 1 Strider Harness 1 Melt Terrain 1 Turn Aside 1 Oxidda Daredevil 1 Neurok Invisimancer 1 Nihil Spellbomb 1 Chrome Steed 1 Shatter 1 Slice in Twain 1 Skinrender 1 Thrummingbird 1 Sword of Body and Mind

My luck continues to run strong, and I pulled 2 Mythics. The Blue Praetor is borderline useless in sealed. 8 mana in a match is doable, but you cannot reliably get to 10 mana in a match. Most decks are running 16-18 lands, meaning you would need to dig through 25 cards before finding your 10th land. It's doable if you have some awesome acceleration, and maybe some Mycosynth Wellsprings and a way to bounce them... But that's pushing it.

Anyway, after all the packs were opened, I went through and sorted by color:

White
1 Suture Priest 1 Shriek Raptor 1 Inquisitor Exarch 1 Sensor Splicer 1 Razor Hippogriff 1 Sunspear Shikari 1 Auriok Sunchaser 1 War Report 1 Seize the Initiative 1 Soul Parry 1 Forced Worship

Blue
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur 2 Chained Throatseeker 1 Chancellor of the Spires 1 Screeching Silcaw 1 Darkslick Drake 1 Vedalken Certarch 1 Neurok Invisimancer 1 Thrummingbird 1 Argent Mutation 1 Psychic Barrier 1 Gitaxian Probe 1 Arm with Aether 1 Turn Aside 1 Defensive Stance

Black
1 Mortis Dogs 1 Vault Skirge 2 Blind Zealot 1 Contagious Nim 1 Painsmith 1 Blistergrub 1 Bleak Coven Vampires 1 Fume Spitter 1 Skinrender 1 Grasp of Darkness 1 Relic Putrescence 3 Geth's Verdict

Green
1 Glistener Elf 1 Rotted Hystrix 1 Thundering Tanadon 2 Greenhilt Trainee 1 Lifesmith 1 Leeching Bite 1 Wing Puncture 1 Slice in Twain

Red
1 Furnace Scamp 1 Priest of Urabrask 2 Flameborn Viron 1 Slash Panther 1 Ogre Menial 1 Fallen Ferromancer 1 Oxidda Daredevil 1 Volt Charge 1 Gut Shot 1 Artillerize 1 Melt Terrain 1 Shatter

Artifacts
1 Blinding Souleater 2 Snapsail Glider 1 Iron Myr 1 Moriok Replica 1 Leaden Myr 1 Razorfield Thresher 2 Chrome Steed 1 Palladium Myr 1 Gremlin Mine 1 Omen Machine 1 Shrine of Limitless Power 1 Chimeric Mass 1 Flight Spellbomb 1 Origin Spellbomb 1 Rusted Relic 1 Mimic Vat 1 Strider Harness 1 Nihil Spellbomb 1 Sword of Body and Mind

I'm not seeing any deck ideas jump out at me. I know 3 things currently. My deck will have Mimic Vat and the Sword of Body and Mind, and my deck will not have Jin-Gitaxias.

Lets look at poison. I only have 7 Infect creatures and they are spread out over all 5 colors, and no artifact Infectors. Infect won't be happening reliably enough to win games with it, but the Chained Throatseekers are pretty nice to have as blockers, same with the Ogre Menial. I'll keep them in mind.

Ok, how about synergy. I have Mimic Vat plus Bleak Coven Vampires. That is pretty sweet with Metalcraft. I also have Skinrender, he combos awesome with Mimic Vat... Hmm, I have a bunch of Black cards that work awesome with the Vat. I don't want to try and rely on comboing with Mimic Vat to win the game, that would be foolish, but to pass up this much awesome synergy would be equally foolish.

Look, a 4 life Drain Life for 3 mana per turn

 Let's run Black. Now that that decision is made, it's time to fill out the rest of our deck.

I think my second strongest color for creatures is Red. I also have some decent removal in Red; Shatter, Artillerize, Gut Shot and Volt Charge are all pretty decent. Combine those with the big stack of Geth's Verdicts that came in my first 3 packs and I have some decent control.

Ok, let's sort our Red, Black, and Artifact creatures by cost and see how the curve looks.

I've got 3 1 cost drops, 1 of which (Scamp) is pretty terrible late game.

I've got 4 2 cmc drops, 2 are mana myrs (a red and a black one, awesome).

I've got 9 3 cmc drops, 3 have decent evasion, one is a mana myr.

I've got 4 4 cmc drops, all 4 are pretty decent, Skinrender is amazing.

In the 5 slot I have Bleak Coven.

In the 6 slot I have 2 red Craw Wurms.

And in the 7 slot I have an artifact Craw Wurm.

This is a pretty normal curve. A couple outliers at the 1 and 6+ spot, with the bulk of the deck hanging out are 3 CMC. This is a good thing, most sealed decks run like this, not really doing anything important until turn 3+.

Now let's try and trim the creatures down to around the 16-18 range.

I like both Fume Spitter and Vault Skirge, so they will make the cut.

I think I want all 3 mana myrs, that will help with mana, and I can reduce my lands a little bit, I might even get lucky and get some acceleration out of it. I also like Painsmith, she can help get through clogged up blockers.

I want all 3 of the 3 cmc creatures that have evasion. I'm also going to put the Snapsails in the "maybe" pile.

In the 4 slot I'll put in the dogs, the Skinrender, and both Steeds.

Definitely going to be putting the the 5 cmc Vampires.

The Flameborn Virons will go into the maybe pile as well.

This card is amazing 99% of the time. The other 1% is when your opponent plays a creature-less deck.

Alright, so now I'm sitting at 14 creatures. I'm going to put the Blinding Souleater in, the Moriok Replica will help with card advantage, and I'll go ahead and throw in the 2 Snapsails also to help with metalcraft, and maybe act as flying blockers. Now we're at 18 creatures, which is a pretty happy place to be. A quick flip through my creatures and I realize that I've cut all of my red critters out. So I'm currently sitting in a mono-colored deck. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does limit us a bit.

Now lets look at our non-creature spells. As I said earlier, I definitely want both the Sword and the Vat. My curve is pretty low, and I'm running 3 different mana myr, so I think I'll be ok running only 16 lands. That leaves 4 slots to fill. Since we aren't currently attached to red, let's look at our removal abilities in a vacuum.

I have a Grasp of Darkness, which is pretty decent targeted removal, and 3 Geth's Verdicts, which are awesome untargeted removal.

I have Psychic Barrier in blue, which is pretty good to stonewall late game threats like Praetors or huge bombs.

In Green I have Leeching Bite, Slice in Twain and Wing Puncture.

Red has Volt Charge, Shatter, and Artillerize, which will take care of everything but the largest of bombs.

White only gave me a Forced Worship (and the activations of my Souleater).

One other path I have is my Shrine, which should be able to pretty quickly (turn 5 if it is in my opening hand) empty my opponent's hand.

Alright, let's try this, put in 2 of the Geth's Verdicts, an Artillerize, Shatter and Volt Charge, and the Shrine of Limitless Power. Now we are a bit heavy on cards, sitting at 26 in the pile. I'm going to remove the Painsmith and 1 of the Snapsail Gliders.

Now we are back down to 24 cards, which will let me fill in 16 lands. Normally, I follow a pretty simple pattern to pick how I balance my land types. I add 1 for each time a mana symbol appears on a casting cost, and subtract 1 whenever the other mana symbol appears. But in this case we are running an almost entirely mono-black deck, with a splash of 3 red cards, and 1 artifact that has a white in its activation cost. I'm going to go with 10 Swamps, 5 Mountains, and 1 Plains. Thus, my opening hand should contain 2 Swamps, and 1 Mountain on average, which would be enough to cast just about everything in the entire deck.

Now, I'm a little worried about my top-end. I don't really have any awesome bomb drops to win the game for me when we get into the late game. I do have some synergy with my Mimic Vat, and a mythic sword, but I don't have any tutor abilities to get the cards I want. But, that is one of the risks of running sealed decks, sometimes the cards simply don't fall in your favor.

Just to do a real quick test before heading off to actually play my deck, I decide to goldfish it.

Goldfishing is essentially playing a game of Solitaire magic. You draw your cards and play your lands, but pretend your opponent is a Goldfish that isn't doing anything that affects your board. No creature removal, no counterspells, no attacking, nada.


Alright, the final decklist looks like this:

Deck
Lands (16) 10 Swamp 5 Mountain 1 Plains Creatures (16) 1 Vault Skirge 1 Fume Spitter 2 Blind Zealot 1 Blistergrub 1 Mortis Dogs 1 Skinrender 1 Bleak Coven Vampires 1 Leaden Myr 1 Iron Myr 1 Palladium Myr 2 Chrome Steed 1 Snapsail Glider 1 Blinding Souleater 1 Moriok Replica	Others (8) 1 Shrine of Limitless Power 1 Mimic Vat 1 Sword of Body and Mind 1 Volt Charge 1 Artillerize 1 Shatter 2 Geth's Verdict

I shuffle up, and draw 7: Mountain, Blind Zealot, Swamp, Plains, Blistergrub, Moriok Replica, Swamp.

I play a Swamp.

I draw an Artillerize, and play another Swamp.

I draw a Geth's Verdict and play a Mountain, and then Blind Zealot.

I draw a Mortis Dog, play a Plains, and play the Mortis Dog. Then attack with the Zealot (18).

I draw the Sword of Body and Mind and then play it, attacking with both the Zealot and the Dog (12).

I draw a Fume Spitter, equip the Sword onto my Mortis Dog, and attack for 8, then I Artillerize the dog, dealing an additional 11 damage.

That played out pretty well, and I found a combo I didn't even realize I had, Artillerize on the Mortis Dog does a whole heap of damage.

Beware flying dogs

Alright, that's the end of this journey through my thought process. My playtest buddy is going to build a couple sealed decks, and tomorrow I'll be testing my creation against his and we'll see if we can find any gaping holes in my logic.

If any of my readers out there have some comments, I would love to hear them. The decks that people build in sealed are just about as unique as anything can be in Magic, 2 people looking at the exact same stack of cards will come up with wildly different decks.

See y'all tomorrow!