Scars Prerelease #2 - The Revenge

I had so much fun at the Scars Prerelease that I decided to do another. I could only sleep for about 90 minutes on Saturday morning, so I just powered my way through an episode of the shakes and headed down to Milwaukee Magic for their noon 4 round prerelease. Here's what I opened...

Cardpool
White	Blue	Black
Abuna Acolyte Arrest Auriok Sunchaser Fulgent Distraction Kemba, Kha Regent Seize the Initiative Soul Parry 2 Sunspear Shikari Vigil for the Lost	2 Disperse Grand Architect Lumengrid Drake Neurok Invisimancer Plated Seastrider Screeching Silcaw Steady Progress Stoic Rebuttal Twisted Image	Carnifex Demon Corrupted Harvester Exsanguinate Geth, Lord of the Vault Instill Infection Plague Stinger
Red	Green	Artifact/Land
Assault Strobe Ferrovore 2 Furnace Celebration 2 Goblin Gaveleer Kuldotha Rebirth Ogre Geargrabber Oxidda Daredevil Scoria Elemental Tunnel Ignus Turn to Slag Vulshok Heartstoker	Alpha Tyrranax Blight Mamba Carapace Forger Copperhorn Scout 2 Cystbearer Ezuri's Archers 2 Molder Beast Tel-Jilad Defiance 2 Untamed Might Wing Puncture	2 Bladed Pinions Chrome Steed 2 Corpse Cur Darksteel Myr Flight Spellbomb Glimmerpost Gold Myr Heavy Arbalest Horizon Spellbomb Ichorclaw Myr Iron Myr Liquimetal Coating Memnite Necrogen Censer 2 Necropede Nihil Spellbomb Panic Spellbomb Perilous Myr Rust Tick Silver Myr Snapsail Glider Strider Harness 2 Throne of Geth Tower of Calamities Trigon of Rage Vector Asp 2 Vulshok Replica

This pool pissed me off pretty hard. Two BB bombs with almost no support? A bunch of interesting red cards with no Shatter or Arc Trail? 2 Goblin Gaveleer (or 2 Sunspear Shikari if you prefer) with nothing worth picking up? I tried to build this Red/Black, but ultimately realized I was being pulled toward infect, so I started substituting in infect support cards for "better" cards and ended up with an infect deck that pulls a hell of a late game (Geth, Carnifex). You'll note no Mana Myrs. I think infect is the one of the few (only?) archetypes in Scars sealed that really doesn't want the mana Myrs. Acceleration is pretty unimportant for these decks, metalcraft doesn't help either, and they are ineffective blockers in the mirror.

Blight Mamba - these were all over the tables at the other prerelease and I saw a few here as well. Regeneration flat sucks in the environment. They just die in the mirror. All that said, I think they are the edge of playability in the archetype.
Carapace Forger - This on the other hand is very solid. Don't forget it's an Elf if you open an Ezuri, but the most important thing is, it's a bear with an upside, not just a bear.
Copperhorn Scout - I played very aggressively with this, because even one turn of vigilant attacking can really put your opponent under pressure. Sure, they block him, but hey, that's a blocker they can't use on something else.
2 Cystbearer - This is the kind of card that pulls you into infect. A house in the mirror (if it seems like I am emphasizing the mirror, it's because you will play a ton of it), a 3 butt, double the clock, etc...
Ezuri's Archers - Spiders good
Molder Beast - Two in the pool, but I only played one. He tramples which is nice, but I already had a ton of late game and he doesn't fit naturally into the infect theme.
Tel-Jilad Defiance - Here's where I admit that for the last 6 years, I thought that was Tel-Jihad. RTFC. Also, this card is awesome, say it with me, "in the environment".
2 Untamed Might - These are finishers that have utility and having two meant I could burn one early for something minor.
Carnifex Demon - This card doesn't say win the game. Other than that...
Geth, Lord of the Vault - This card also doesn't say win the game. Still...
Instill Infection - This is so good. I will always play this if I am playing black. The moment I realized I could hit Precursor Golem, I definitely giggled. Ancestral Recall is good.
2 Corpse Cur - Speaking of cards that are good in the mirror. You can trade infect guys early, knowing this guy will show up to bail you out. You can sac guys to Throne of Geth, knowing this guy is around. Is awesome. Would play again.
Horizon Spellbomb
2 Necropede - This card is incredibly important in the mirror. 2-for-1s all over the place. Does nasty things with Throne of Geth and Corpse Cur, not to mention Carnifex Demon.
Rust Tick
Strider Harness - Pump equipment only in infect decks.
2 Throne of Geth - I've already discussed all the reasons this is awesome above. Except for metalcraft. That's awesome too. And counters for Trigon of Rage and Carnifex Demon and poison counters for your opponent. The B bombs were my all stars, but this is the utility player that allowed my all stars to shine. Kind of like Craig Counsell.
Trigon of Rage - Again, three counters with no color commitment is awesome.
11 Forest
5 Swamp

No Exsanguinate. That's not how this deck wins. I felt like I built a great deck for the mirror match, and what did I get round one? The mirror. Unfortunately, I lost but I am 90% certain it was a draw dependent loss. Also, my opponent played very well in never leaving me an opportunity to get in unblocked. Both games ended with the winning Untamed Might in hand with no way to get through. Maybe that so subpar Plague Stinger should have made it in.

Rounds 2 and 3 were against pretty goldfishy players and I won handily both times.

Round 4 had a very fun, tightly contested game 1, where I was able to equip Strider Harness for the final point of damage the turn before he was to kill me. Game 2 was notable for my opponent nearly coming back from a mull to 4 on the play with an early Precursor Golem, but then I played the Ancestral and it was game over on an Untamed Might poison kill. 3-1 was good for 4 packs.

I think the jury is still out on the infect deck archetype. It can win out of nowhere, which is always fun, but I am just not sure it's "good" enough. Infect is very easily disruptible and you better have some kind of fatty boom-boom to finish the job if your infect can't get there for one reason or another. It seemed like the best decks were playing planeswalkers. Big surprise there. Oh, and one other note, about Tainted Strike (B, Instant, Target creature gets +1/0 and gains infect until EOT). People were splashing this into powerful decks as a finisher. There are a lot of ways to deal 9 damage in a turn and B is a nice way to turn that into a game win. Spike will need to block for a while here.

Finally, if there are any new players reading this, stop playing Vigil for the Lost. Your opponent does a little dance inside his head every time he sees you play it.

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.

Back

So, after a long hiatus, CBG is back on the Magic horse. TooSarcastic invited me to a birthday Cube, then JBro invited me to a birthday mitotic draft and lo and behold, the effin Scars of Mirrodin prerelease was this weekend and the point is...I thought I was out, but they keep pulling me back in. One of the dudes in the playgroup has started a podcast (whose name i will pimp once he gets back to me) but I think there's a place for a more active blog. I'm going to rehash my two prerelease pools here and we can talk it out.

Previews

I am kind of looking forward to Shards of Alara, even if it does have cats with tits. Honestly, I know those artists study anatomy. What is up with the cats with tits?

So I am one of those guys who doesn't like checking out the unofficial spoilers. I know this puts me in the distinct minority in the present playgroup but there's something tremendously fun for me about cracking packs and reading cards for the first time. I am fairly certain that I would quit Magic if they stopped printing new sets. Opening packs at a prerelease and reading every card (even though I know I should just be sorting by color as fast as I can) is the bomb. It's fun to categorize (here's the new naturalize, I can't believe they printed a 5/5 flyer that draws cards for 5 in blue (actually I can believe that) here's a bear, etc...) as they come fresh from the pack. I totally understand the impulse for spoilers but for me, the prerelease is my one chance to understand the set in a pure way, uncolored by other people's perceptions. I get to experience it as entirely my own. I wish they were able to release a set 100% spoiler-free sometime, but if wishes were horses, we'd all smell like horseshit. That's all for this week.

--CBG