My Kaladesh prerelase experience

I played the Kaladesh prerelease. Overall I was very impressed by the format. It seemed like tons of fun. I was poorly prepared and it felt almost like back in the day when I had to read all of the cards.

The new league structure is fantastic. No longer did I need to book six consecutive hours to my wife's despair - no, now I could just play the matches at my convenience. Very neat.

This is the pool I was presented with and the deck building decisions I made. What deck would you have built?



Red Green was very strong. In all the matches I played except the last one, a RG deck won the match. Sadly, however, that deck was not always one.

The first match clearly showed me the power of my deck as I crushed my opponent with RG violence.



In the second match I once again applied brute force and beat my UG Energy opponent to a pulp.




So much violence!

After that it did not go too well. You can see the rest of the matches in the playlist provided below:

Tales from the Magic 2015 Prerelease

When I am writing this I just finished my 5th M15 Prerelease Sealed (its good to have bots).

My first impression
* The sealed format is faster than the M14 draft format, but not by much. 7-drops are playable.
* The blue and the green prerelease cards are reasons not to choose those colors.
* The white and the red prerelease cards are good but expensive. Siege Dragon is a nuisance for many decks.
* Indulgent Tormentor is broken and by far the best card. I have taken black every time and never looked back.
* Red seems like the best color if you ignore the prerelease cards.

A sample tournament

In this (my 5th event, #3 on the my Youtube Channel) I once again selected Black but ended up with two of the white prerelease card as well - Resolute Archangel.

This was my deck

1 Evolving Wilds
8 Plains
9 Swamps

1 Typhoid Rats
1 Kinsbaile Skirmisher
1 Oreskor Swiftclaw
1 Bronze Sable
1 Carrion Crow
1 Witch's Familiar
1 Gargoyle Sentinel
1 Razorfoot Griffin
1 Gravedigger
1 Rotfeaster Maggot
2 Shadowcloak Vampire
1 Indulgent Tormentor
1 Soul of New Phyrexia
2 Resolute Archangel

1 Ulcerate
1 Sign in Blood
1 Pillar of Light
1 Solemn Offering
1 Stab Wound
1 Triplicate Spirits


I had seen so many artifacts in the format that I decided to maindeck one Solemn Offering. I am not sure that was correct.

I go through my decisions when building the deck in this video.



These are the first three rounds, all of them wins. Some easy, some very hard.



In the fourth round I faced a really good Simic deck in the final. He had great synergies with bouncing guys and ETB creatures (such as the Hydra). Could my broken prerelease cards win the day?

Me and my buddies will play more M15 prerelease events. You can follow it all in the below playlist



I hope you enjoy this new core set as much as I do.

Living the dream in Magic 2014 Limited

I have done a lot of M14 Phantom Sealed Deck events lately. They are the best + EV tournaments on Magic Online (if you are a better than average player) and they are very fun.

This time I managed to build a very ambitious deck, having the power of Angelic Accord + Bogbrew Witch + Bubbling Cauldron + Dark Prophecy + Festering Newt. Think about it. That is quite hard to beat.

The question that remains then is: Did I manage to do it?

Well, find our for yourself by watching the video below:


Here is the deck list: 10 Swamp 7 Plains 1 Haunted Plate Mail 1 Celestial Flare 1 Sentinel Sliver 1 Auramancer 2 Pacifism 1 Bonescythe Sliver 1 Minotaur Abomination 2 Mark of the Vampire 1 Siege Mastodon 1 Dark Prophecy 1 Liturgy of Blood 1 Capashen Knight 1 Blood Bairn 1 Griffin Sentinel 1 Deathgaze Cockatrice 1 Bogbrew Witch 1 Corpse Hauler 1 Angelic Accord 1 Bubbling Cauldron 1 Festering Newt 1 Sengir Vampire Follow my YouTube channel at youtube.com/MagicGatheringStrat for more M14 goodies.

Two videos from the Born of the Gods prerelease

The first two players on the MagicGatheringStrat team have played the Prerelease.

Brennon takes on this Prerelease Event



Julien crushes this Prerelease draft and has some great insights into the format:





You will find more Born of the Gods videos on Youtube.com/MagicGatheringStrat

The details of the Born of the Gods Prerelease and Release Events can be found here: https://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/01132014

The New Player Limited tournaments are nerfed

For a long time, the 4-man New Player Sealed Deck and the 4-man New Played Drafts have been the limited tournaments with the best EV on Magic Online. If you were a decent player, you could go infinite on these fairly easily. Not anymore. Starting today, the cost of the 4-man tournaments have increased from 1 Event Ticket + 1 New Player Ticket to 1 Event Ticket + 2 New Player Tickets without a corresponding prize increase.

It was probably too good  anyway. For some reason we get a truly horrid -EV Scheduled Sealed Deck tournament you can play for 5 New Player Tickets as well.

They also fixed the long-running Pauper bugs with the cards Oubliette and Kaervek's Torch. Finally.

Here is the announcement: http://community.wizards.com/content/blog/4051771

As a sidenote, the 4-man tournaments are still the best EV limited tournaments on Magic Online.