TFT SET 4 Common Openers

 This is intended as a resource for my students, but if you've stumbled upon this feel free to use it.

VANGUARD SHARPS WITH DUSK

• Garen in center to maximize spin damage.  Melee units will group around Garen.
• Vayne/Nidalee on opposite sides.  Plays around Jarvan IV and Assassins on a single side.
• Nidalee on opposite side of opposing units to maximize spear damage.
• Thresh has some options, right behind Garen to shield Garen to maximize spin damage, or as a bait unit, pictured above, to protect Vayne.  We're protecting Vayne as she's on the unsafe side, mirror this positioning if that's not the case.

Traits: Vanguard, Dusk, Sharpshooter

Natural Progression: Warlord, add Jarvan IV or VI

 

 KEEPER/WARLORD

• Need to position on right side on board.  Otherwise you can't get Nidalee behind both Elise/Jarvan.
• Garen in front of Jarvan/Elise.  Like the above composition, you're trying to get as many units as possible to surround Garen while he spins.  Keeper shield will generally allow a full spin.
• Maximize Keeper Value.
  

Traits: Keeper, Warlord

Natural Progression: Sharpshooter, add Vayne, Vanguard, add Wukong/Thresh/Hecarim

 

                      

KEEPER/CULTIST

• Similar to above, must be run on right side of board to keep Twisted Fate behind Keepers.
• Can also be run at top right of board.  Better against no assassins and no to little AOE damage, advantage is all of your units are fighting together, rather than Pyke starting the fight by himself.
• Maximize Keeper Value.

Traits: Keeper, Cultist

Natural Progression: Assassin, add Diana. 

 QUICK TIPS: WIN MORE EARLY FIGHTS

1. Frontline all of your units during the first creep rounds! This can buy you an extra second to make your decisions, like if you want to make 10 gold early, prelevel, make a certain 2 star unit, etc.  It's mostly about putting less pressure on you to be fast.
2.  Put in Warlord units during the creep rounds.  Yes, it gives you a stack for winning.  It's easy to scoff at 20 HP and 2 AP, but early fights are very volatile, and surviving an extra auto, or making a unit take one less auto, is often enough to turn an entire fight around.  Getting multiple stacks of Warlord, or playing multiple Warlords during a creep round, is a huge advantage, giving you an extra 40-60 HP to work with, which is 2 extra autos.
3.  Think about Frontline/Backline.  Securing Vanguards by picking up Wukong/Garen is great, as is Brawlers with Tahm + Maokai.  Same goes for backline, although you only have Sharps (Vayne/Nidalee) to work with
4. Slam one item, and play your components.  If you have a 2 item start, generally make whatever you can unless it's Zephyr or Redemption.  Give Bow/Sword to a unit with range and high base attack speed, like a Nidalee, and not to someone like Tahm Kench, with .5 base attack speed and no range.
5. Scout everyone!  Don't let your Nidalee die to a Zed, give it a bodyguard and Zed will be irrelevant.  No one has Jarvan? Don't play around it, clump your units together.
   

 

Sealed Away MTG Episode 14

If you've come looking for deck picks, you've come to the right place.

 

 The 2nd place PTQ Sealed deck.

 

 The sideboard.

Deck I drafted in T8, losing in the finals to Beekeeper.

Link to the show.

Happy New Year everyone!

Kevin

Sealed Away MTG Episode 13

Link to the podcast.

It's been almost a month since I've posted anything here, mostly for a lack of anything interesting to say.  Expect some updates soon (really).

Here's a sweet deck from today, 4 color AdHENGERs.  This draft pod miraculously produced multiple Green based ramp decks; I played my first round in pod and managed to come out on top.

Until next time,
Kevin

Sealed Away MTG Episode 10: Throne of Eldraine Build Arounds

In a great twist of irony, I had to learn a few things with Audacity so that I could actually release this.  The audio from minute 5~ to minute 15~ is pretty shaky, and was previously too quiet.  I must have moved my mic away from my face really far, and then fixed it around the 15 minute mark.

Anyway, here's the show.

As promised, here's a link to Zvi's article about the London Mulligan, which is definitely worth a look.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg

Not Even in Limited; Go Back to Vancouver

First, the article that inspired this one, here.

 Zvi's been a famed Magic writer longer than I've been effectively playing the game.  To very briefly summarize the above linked article, Zvi advocates for a reversal of the London Mulligan, citing repetitive gameplay, while laying out some of the benefits but mostly the many drawbacks it provides.

The London Mulligan refers to the current mulligan rules, where you put back cards from your hand to the bottom of your library equal to how many mulligans you've taken.  Mulliganing to 6, for example, leads to drawing a new hand of 7, and placing 1 chosen card to the bottom, 1 being equivalent to times mulliganed.  I've been a naysayer of the London Mulligan since it's debut; I despise anything that increases idle time in Magic, such as shuffling and major complexity.  The London Mulligan makes it better to mulligan, meaning more shuffling and thus, more idle time.

Initially I was somewhat swayed to the prevailing opinion, that this would increase skill, increase agency, and by extension make Magic a better, more fun game for myself.  Whenever presenting my thoughts on the matter, I always prefaced it with "I know I'm in the minority" or some other mitigating statement.  It's tough to go against everyone else, especially when you're not even confident that your thoughts have merit.

Again from Zvi's article, and from many others I've seen discussing the matter, such as LSV in a recent stream; people seem to find the issue in constructed formats, and don't take issue with it in Limited.  As someone who barely touches constructed, most of my London Mulligan experience is in Limited, and I see it as a net negative.

Hand Comparison Contest

Sit yourself down at a fictional table, playing a deck you've just theoretically drafted against a phantom opponent.  You draw your opening hand; it's an acceptable 4 land and 3 mediocre spell hand, and you decide to ship it back.  Your opponent does the same, shrugging briefly before shipping their 7 back.  On 6 now you've got much better options, 4 land again but our spells represent a perfect, backbreaking curve, with our 4 drop bomb rare supported by our best turn 2 and turn 3 plays.  As we intelligently won the die roll, we rub our hands together, expecting to make short work of our opponent. It turns out that our opponent also has a great one, but as we're up first and have that 4 mana rare, we crush them before they can really get going.

Obviously this isn't the most common of scenarios, but I think it illustrates a few of my problems with London Mulligans.  When Mulligans are less punishing, we see better hands more often, and when comparing good to great hands there's often not much of a game being played.  The best hands in Limited often allow for no real agency from the other side; you kill everything they play, you curve great cards into your great rare, you pull off some powerful combination, maybe a Lucky Clover and Harvest Fear.  Your opponent lines up the right interaction? Great, now they're the winner.  They don't? A crushing and swift defeat.  I believe there's some exacerbation of the play/draw difference at play as well, an awful thing when being on the play is generally such a large and free advantage.

• Less punishing mulligans lead to games disproportionately about opening hands, reducing agency.
• Being on the play is in part balanced by more punishing mulligans.  As being on the play is advantageous, there's no reason to make it more so.

Reduced Novelty

 

If I was to define Limited in an abstract way, it'd be a competition at who can maneuver novel scenarios best.  Limited is a format where redundancy is a big investment; most decks will only have duplicates of a few cards and basic lands.  Despite the format having a small cardpool, usually in the 250 card range, you might go 4 or 5 matches without seeing some of the good common cards, and many more without seeing more conditional ones, or let alone rares and mythics.  For a Throne of Eldraine example, I've only had one Outlaw's Merriment cast against me in at least 200 matches played.  The sense of mystery, where I never really know what I'm going to play with or play against always keeps me coming back, and has fueled my passion for Limited over the years.

The London Mulligan represents an uncomfortable amount of erosion of this novelty.  I could honestly do with more variance, as the adapting is what makes Limited interesting, and having more draws that are more centered around whatever each player's best few cards are makes things less interesting. Someone I follow on Twitter, who I'll credit in this article later on if I can identify them, said something to the effect of "[The London Mulligan leads to less scrappy games]".  Limited is all about scrappy games, and piecing together victory with a bunch of semi-random puzzle pieces.  I'm against anything that reduces what I think is the best thing about Magic Limited.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg

Shape of the Throne

After over a month of release time, Throne of Eldraine's Limited metagame has nearly settled.  Expect some more shake-ups after the coming Mythic Championship in Richmond, as many of the best players in the world will debut strategies that have been kept under wraps in preparation.  Since release I've heard it all; descriptions of Throne of Eldraine's relative speed or metagame ranging from incredibly fast to incredibly slow and everything in between.  Despite the huge variance in perceived speed, Throne of Eldraine is defined by slow and grindy cards, and the current metagame only represents how the playerbase is choosing to attack them.

Not Format Warping, Format Shaping

Amidst all of the speculation and opinions strongly presented, the format has some hard facts that have a huge influence on the format.  Defensive creatures are generally X/3s and X/4s, and offensive creatures generally have 2 or 3 power.  In general, a cheap defensive creature will hold a comparable cheap offensive creature at bay.  Removal spells are strong, enabling positive trades on mana and often have bonuses, such as Bake into a Pie's Food or Searing Barrage's 3 damage to the player.  Card draw is plentiful, existing at good rates on multiple commons.  Combat tricks are also strong, but weak and expensive to compensate for attached creatures, and not just strong as combat tricks.

If we can take all of the above for granted, we already know a lot about what our decks need to look like in a broad sense.  Aggressive decks can't just get invalidated by a few high-toughness blockers, meaning we should seek evasive creatures, and cheap ways to push through them such as Rimrock Knight and Outflank.  We can also attack slower decks with Brimestone Trebuchet and Tempting Witch, as they can't be blocked.  Folding to a removal spell or two is also not an option, raising the stock of Order of Midnight and Forever Young.

Defensive deckbuilding now builds off this aggressive blueprint.  We want lifegain to beat cards we can't block, and instant speed removal to beat out combat tricks that get past our high toughness blockers.  Beating evasive creatures has obvious importance now, so we'll need fliers of our own or lots of removal to stop them from getting past us.  Aggressive decks now must function in a world where opponents know and compensate for their ways of getting an edge. This is how the metagame forms, as players try to beat the strategies that are beating them, having the higher level strategy to both beat out opposing counter play while keeping intact whatever made the initial strategy functional.

The Suspects

As in any Limited format, lots of cards have an influence on how good one another are, so I'm not going to try to highlight them all, just the biggest ones.  These aren't the necessarily the strongest cards in the format, but the ones decks must be able to beat.

Merfolk Secretkeeper

The bane Arena players everywhere, Merfolk Secretkeeper is the defining defensive creature of the format, playing double duty as early defense and win condition for a cheap price.  Merfolk Secretkeeper pressures slow decks to have a way of not decking out, such as Forever Young, and faster decks to have cheap tricks to get through it, such as Barge In.

Biggest Influence on...
Rimrock Knight.  Boulder Rush is the most effective way to beat out a Merfolk Secretkeeper based strategy, as there's a huge punishment for blocking, the only thing Merfolk Secretkeeper can do.

Edgewall Innkeeper

Keeping the keeper theme intact, Edgewall Innkeeper forces decks to have removal spells.  Not effective removal spells, but actual ways to send creatures from the battlefield to the graveyard or exile.  No deck no matter how aggressive or defensive is immune to an opponent up a billion cards, putting a premium on killing this powerful uncommon.

Biggest Influence on...
Scalding Cauldron.  White, Blue, and to a lesser extent Green really struggle to actually kill something dead, and Scalding Cauldron insures that your deck has a way of not just losing to Edgewall Innkeeper.

Revenge of Ravens

Small creatures really suffer against Revenge of Ravens, such as the tokens from Improbable Alliance, and defensive creatures like Corridor Monitor or Tempting Witch suffer a similar fate.  Even 2 power creatures aren't effective facing down Revenge of Ravens, as you're effectively paying life to reduce your opponent's at a 1/1 rate.  Every deck needs some way of beating this, whether it's mill, a disenchant, or big creatures.

Biggest Influence on...
Turn into a Pumpkin.  Improbable Alliance decks generally have the toughest time beating Revenge of Ravens, so you can use Turn into a Pumpkin to kill your opponent in one swing, or bounce it to counter it later on.

In the face of a constantly functioning format speed, keep in mind the powerful cards that the format is swinging around, rather than the metagame of the day.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg

Sealed Away MTG Episode 8

Podcast here.

As promised, here's my mono-Black deck.

I'm much happier just posting a few articles and the podcast each week, so expect the current schedule to continue for the foreseeable future.

I hope you all have a great week.

Kevin
@sealed awaymtg