Friday, October 26, 2012
Monday, October 1, 2012
PRE RELEASE THOUGHTS!
Hello everyone!
The first thing I have to say about this weekend is, IT WAS A BLAST! Its been sometime now that wizards is trying to make the pre-release experience different, and after the Mirrodin/Phyrexian war, the the Innistrad block finishing with the Hellvault in Avacyn Restored, we all felt that something was still missing. Specially with the last, I personally think that miracle was already too frustrating mechanic to play against (BONEFIRE YOU), the opening of the Vault was just, tedious. Angel tokens? Oversized cards? And yet to know that some people got special ones and others not?
But not this time... Wizards nailed it with the guilds! None of the rares that were given with the guild packs were that overpowered, and you could choose any guild and do well with it. The boxes were really nice, and at least here in Paris I didnt hear much stories about shops going out of supplies and not letting people choosing their guilds (except for sunday night). Every store was full, and I know that a bunch of people didnt get the chance to play for not finding a place... But I guess that's how things are going to be from now on. Its unfortunate that most of this people only come to pre-releases, and as a competitive player I would love to see other formats bring that many players to our tournaments, but that's another topic.
Later this week Ill provide you with the deck lists of all the 3 PR that I went, as well as the interesting things that happened in some of the matches, so for now I just want to talk about some of the impressions I had for the format:
- THIS IS NOT HOW ITS GOING TO LOOK LIKE
Even though you still have 5 normal ravnica boosters, the weight of having a guild oriented pack, was too heavy. Being sure that you will always have at least one gate, or one keyrune made all the difference... so even if your other packs didn't offer you nothing to your guild, you always had the possibility to splash your original colors. My first pool, I didn't open any door (except of the one in my guild pack), any keyrune, any Promenades, or duals. I was basically obliged to stick to Azorious, without any splash (most of the azorious good cards are the gold ones), so I didn't want to take the risk to play a 3rd color without fixing... My deck was fine, but playing straight 2 colors also means you are probably doing less powerful stuff than your opponents. Not having the guild pack also means you are not always going to have a big finisher. Some games really came down to having balance decks, and being able to get your Guild card to the field before your opponent does. A special note should be made to Rakdos, where you have more than 60% of the set's removal, and that's the reason most of the wining decks were from this guild. I am looking forward to being able to play a normal sealed to really see how its going to look like.
- GREEN IS BETTER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE
One of the readers came to me on facebook to tell me that he thought green was the best color to be playing with at the Pre-Release. I asked him why, and he said becouse of the color fixing. I told him that I didn't think that was necessarily truth, as you already had the keyrunes and the gates, so that would be enough fixing. Well, he was right. And the reason is that this three cards were just awesome:
Having 2 or 3 of this means that you can play almost any cards from your pool, and only playing powerful spells its what you want to be doing in this format. The best decks I saw this weekend were 3 or 4 colors, and they all played some amount of green. You also get creatures to sacrifice to edict effects, and to some of your own black removal. I think I will pick this cards high in draft.
- LAST CONSIDERATIONS
A lot of the games that I saw and played, both players were able to establish a good board presence, and weren't able to do anything to change the situation, so it came down to:
- One creature with evasion;
- Populate;
- Combat tricks;
- Other forms of damages than combat.
With that information, I want to highlight a few cards:
This are some of the cards that can completly change the board state, or force you to go in a different direction... In draft isnt going to be that easy to see the Mythiques and Rares, but in sealed you never know what your opponent can have.
Thats it for today, hope you have enjoyed!
See you guys soon!
The first thing I have to say about this weekend is, IT WAS A BLAST! Its been sometime now that wizards is trying to make the pre-release experience different, and after the Mirrodin/Phyrexian war, the the Innistrad block finishing with the Hellvault in Avacyn Restored, we all felt that something was still missing. Specially with the last, I personally think that miracle was already too frustrating mechanic to play against (BONEFIRE YOU), the opening of the Vault was just, tedious. Angel tokens? Oversized cards? And yet to know that some people got special ones and others not?
But not this time... Wizards nailed it with the guilds! None of the rares that were given with the guild packs were that overpowered, and you could choose any guild and do well with it. The boxes were really nice, and at least here in Paris I didnt hear much stories about shops going out of supplies and not letting people choosing their guilds (except for sunday night). Every store was full, and I know that a bunch of people didnt get the chance to play for not finding a place... But I guess that's how things are going to be from now on. Its unfortunate that most of this people only come to pre-releases, and as a competitive player I would love to see other formats bring that many players to our tournaments, but that's another topic.
Later this week Ill provide you with the deck lists of all the 3 PR that I went, as well as the interesting things that happened in some of the matches, so for now I just want to talk about some of the impressions I had for the format:
- THIS IS NOT HOW ITS GOING TO LOOK LIKE
Even though you still have 5 normal ravnica boosters, the weight of having a guild oriented pack, was too heavy. Being sure that you will always have at least one gate, or one keyrune made all the difference... so even if your other packs didn't offer you nothing to your guild, you always had the possibility to splash your original colors. My first pool, I didn't open any door (except of the one in my guild pack), any keyrune, any Promenades, or duals. I was basically obliged to stick to Azorious, without any splash (most of the azorious good cards are the gold ones), so I didn't want to take the risk to play a 3rd color without fixing... My deck was fine, but playing straight 2 colors also means you are probably doing less powerful stuff than your opponents. Not having the guild pack also means you are not always going to have a big finisher. Some games really came down to having balance decks, and being able to get your Guild card to the field before your opponent does. A special note should be made to Rakdos, where you have more than 60% of the set's removal, and that's the reason most of the wining decks were from this guild. I am looking forward to being able to play a normal sealed to really see how its going to look like.
- GREEN IS BETTER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE
One of the readers came to me on facebook to tell me that he thought green was the best color to be playing with at the Pre-Release. I asked him why, and he said becouse of the color fixing. I told him that I didn't think that was necessarily truth, as you already had the keyrunes and the gates, so that would be enough fixing. Well, he was right. And the reason is that this three cards were just awesome:
Having 2 or 3 of this means that you can play almost any cards from your pool, and only playing powerful spells its what you want to be doing in this format. The best decks I saw this weekend were 3 or 4 colors, and they all played some amount of green. You also get creatures to sacrifice to edict effects, and to some of your own black removal. I think I will pick this cards high in draft.
- LAST CONSIDERATIONS
A lot of the games that I saw and played, both players were able to establish a good board presence, and weren't able to do anything to change the situation, so it came down to:
- One creature with evasion;
- Populate;
- Combat tricks;
- Other forms of damages than combat.
With that information, I want to highlight a few cards:
This are some of the cards that can completly change the board state, or force you to go in a different direction... In draft isnt going to be that easy to see the Mythiques and Rares, but in sealed you never know what your opponent can have.
Thats it for today, hope you have enjoyed!
See you guys soon!
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