Midnight Prerelease - Scars of Mirrodin

I went to the midnight prerelease at Silver Spring Hobby on Friday night. I've wanted to do a midnight prere for years and my birthday is next week so I decided to roll it. There were around 40 lucky souls who sat down around 12:30 (boo, hiss) to crack 6 packs of Scars of Mirrodin. The big news of the set is of course, poison, and it played an important role all night. First, let's crack the packs and we can talk about meaning later.

Sealed Pool

White	Blue	Black
2 Arrest	Bonds Of Quicksilver	Blistergrub
Auriok Edgewright	2 Neurok Invisimancer	Contagious Nim
Elspeth Tirel!	Plated Seastrider	2 Dross Hopper
2 Ghalma's Warden	Riddlesmith	Grasp of Darkness
Glint Hawk	Scrapdiver Serpent	Moriok Reaver
Loxodon Wayfarer	Screeching Silclaw	Relic Putrescence
Salvage Scout	Sky-Eel School	Tainted Strike
	Steady Progress
	Stoic Rebuttal
	Thrummingbird
	Vedalken Certarch
Red	Green	Artifact/Land
Assault Strobe	Bellowing Tangleworm	2 Argentum Armor
Bloodshot Trainee	Carapace Forger	2 Chrome Steed
Ferrovore	Carrion Call	Contagion Engine
2 Flameborn Hellion	Cystbearer	Copper Myr
2 Furnace Celebration	Ezuri, Renegade Leader	Darksteel Axe
3 Melt Terrain	2 Ezuri's Archers	Darksteel Myr
Shatter	Lifesmith	Darksteel Sentinel
Turn to Slag	Molder Beast	2 Echo Circlet
	Tel-Jilad Defiance	2 Glint Hawk Idol
	Withstand Death	Gold Myr
		Ichorclaw Myr
		Liquimetal Coating
		Neurok Replica
		Nihil Spellbomb
		Palladium Myr
		Precursor Golem
		Razorfield Thresher
		Rust Tick
		Saberclaw Golem
		Soliton
		Sylvok Replica
		Trigon of Infestation
		Trigon of Rage
		Trigon of Thought
		Tumble Magnet
		Vector Asp
		Wall of Tanglecord

White is very solid, with double Arrest and "win the effing game" card Elspeth Tirel. Also notable is the white mana myr and the double glint Hawk Idol.

Blue is excellent as well. No bombs, but Bonds of Quicksilver, Riddlesmith, Sky-Eel School, Stoic Rebuttal (hard counters are good in sealed), Thrummingbird and Certarch are all cards I'd be glad to run.

Black is the first color I cut from consideration. No bombs, only one infect creature, little evasion or removal. Yech.

Red has the all star Shatter, a couple of hasty worms (sorry, hellions. Whatever, WOTC. I know a fucking worm when I see one.) and a Turn to Slag. It also has three too many Melt Terrains and is really creature light. No thank you.

Green is very solid. Good curve, good fat, a couple of decent tricks. This is another front runner. Again, little infect.

Artifacts. I don't know what to say in general about artifacts. Play good Equipment, mana Myrs and decently costed creatures. The one late add was Darksteel Sentinel. I thought he was too expensive at 6. I was wrong. He's a champ.

Ultimately, the lack of removal in Green kept me away despite the repeatable overrun on Ezuri and the nice curve. Blue was tempting until I realized I was going to be playing five rounds starting at 1 am and counting on myself to make optimal plays was not wise. Ultimately, the siren song of a pretty straightforward deck with a win now condition got me into White. I was actually going to go mono-W until I realized I could cut a few subpar artifacts in order to make room for Shatter (all-star) and Bloodshot Trainee (3 ways to activate and a 3-butt). I did leave the Wayfarer on the sidelines, but played everything else. Final list:

2 Arrest - Is this or Shatter better in the environment? Discuss.
Auriok Edgewright - It was surprisingly hard to get metalcraft going even with 14 artifacts. It might be better in draft, but I was unimpressed.
Elspeth Tirel
2 Ghalma's Warden - OTOH, these were solid. 4 butts were nice, even against infect dudes and there are tons of -1/-1 counters flying around.
Glint Hawk - I so wanted this to be better. Maybe with a Memnite...
Salvage Scout - This is a superhero in the environment.
Darksteel Axe
Tumble Magnet
Precursor Golem - You will occasionally get blown out, like when somebody hits one with a cantrip. Nonetheless, 9 power for 5 mana is...good.
2 Glint Hawk Idol - almost better than Glint Hawk. Carries equipment like a champ.
Copper Myr - I don't know if you play offcolor mana Myr in an infect deck, but I don't know if they ever hit the sideboard otherwise.
Darksteel Sentinel - See my note above. You probably think this is overcosted. It's not.
Rust Tick - never dead, and a Puppeteer you only have to pay for once is nice, even if it's somewhat limited in it's tricksiness.
Trigon of Rage - I only recharged this once. Three activations is plenty.
Horizon Spellbomb - House, though I obviously wouldn't have played it without the red splash
Gold Myr - etc.
Palladium Myr - also carries an axe and lures removal
Argentum Armor - I wish I hadn't opened two of these but an active one is basically game over, as it turns everything into an Eldrazi.
Contagion Engine - zomg, really.
12 Plains
4 Mountain

Round 1 I played against Tony, who was playing what appeared over the next day to be a pretty standard infect deck. A lot of little guys who give you poison counters, a few tricks, some removal. The games were reasonable but he was able to force through enough poison each time. I did end up mulliganing twice and that might have been the problem, but I think the bigger problem was I just didn't know how to deal with an infect deck yet, and he ran a bit more removal than is typical for those types of deck.

Round 2 I played against a very nice goldfish playing a defensive GW deck with no apparent win conditions. Once I was able to work my way through his Wall of Tanglewood and various lifegainers, I won handily.

Round 3 was a singularly unmemorable beatdown of an infect deck, played by someone who wasn't as good at deckbuilding as my first round opponent. He snuck a game 2 win against me but it wasn't enough. Contagion Engine just wins games. Nearly everyone at the top tables had one. It's basically a Plague Wind that gives you random positive effects like; add a counter to your Trigon and, give the other dude a poison counter. At this point, it was around 4:15 am and I had yet to see my Elspeth, except a brief appearance in a 7-card, no-land hand. That was about to change.

Round 4 I played against a solid red blue deck, with lots of red blue things, like hard counters, burn and Confiscate effects. Side note: if WoTC never prints another Confiscate, it'll be too soon. Being hit with your own guys is spectacularly unfun, especially when they didn't even have to die first. Game one, I finally saw Elspeth, which was convenient, since I was being beaten about the head and neck with one of my own guys. I won. Game 2 was epic central. We went back and forth for a while until I got Elspeth online and fired off her ultimate ability, leaving myself with an indestructible golem carrying an indestructible axe and a Soldier token and my opponent with one card in hand. Unfortunately for me, that card was an Arc Trail, killing off Elspeth and a token for a grand total of two mana. No problem though, because I still have five power on the table, 27 life and...he ripped a Volition Reins. Hey, no problem, I still have like 5 draw steps. Of course, I can't get my equipment back until I rip a creature, and my draws for the rest of the game were, and I remember this clearly, Plains, Plains, Plains, Plains, Plains. Nice win. Then I won game 3 with Elspeth. w00t. Planeswalkers are good.

Round 5 was the difference between one pack and six packs, so I needed to concentrate. Unfortunately, that apparently means I can't remember much other than that I won and that both Elspeth and Argentum Armor made an appearance. So, six packs, 4-1 and yay! Fliers with equipment and Planeswalkers are both valid ways to win in this environment. One sided Wrath of Gods are still good, Proliferate is good, poison is interesting and those decks defintely have an "oops, I win" characteristic, but they didn't seem to be unbalanced so yay WoTC. MaRo has stated many times that they wanted to avoid poison as "just another life total". I think there is something to that, but mostly, poison is just another life total, and as long as they don't push the power level too much, it's a lot of fun.

The prerelease was so fun I did it again at noon the next day, but this post is already long enough.