Innistrad Prerelease Fun!
Hello all and welcome to Innistrad.
Among our little store community I have been fairly vocal about my dislike for Innistrad as a set. This is mostly due to my distaste for the transform mechanic and my absolutely unalterable hatred for horror as a genre. Despite all this, and a schedule that made it practically impossible for me to attend a prerelease, I dragged myself out to the Friday night Midnight prerelease event at my local store: TOGIT. I was a zombie (pun intended) all of Saturday and most of Sunday as a result of getting home Saturday morning at around 6am not sleeping all night and staying up watching my daughter all day, but I admit, I had fun. I'm still not sold on the set, but I do like a lot of cards for constructed and playing it in limited wasn't horrible.
Side note - I was sitting across from Emmett who had shown up to crack some packs early, then go home and get some sleep without playing. His pool was just all out insane and it was physically painful for me to watch him drop after having pulled the best sealed deck I have seen in a long time. Some highlights from his WB crazy were: Lilliana of the Veil, Isolated Chapel, the 4/4 flying black demon with the Phyrexian Arena effect stapled on for 5 mana, double intimidate white 2/2, Screeching Bat, a bunch of white removal, some good black removal, the town crier flash 1/4 untap your dudes guy, good beaters in both colors and Unburial Rites. (Emmett, correct me if I am misremembering any of these, but I think I got them all right from my one look through your deck.) I would have payed good money to switch pools with him. Sigh.
We sit down with our packs a little after midnight Saturday morning and start cracking our six sealed boosters. My pool was not the busted constructed money card pool that I was hoping for, by any means, but had some strong limited cards. I quickly eliminated blue as not having enough flying (I know! Blue has a ton of flying in this set, I just didn't get any...sigh) or other good utility cards. Green was just overall poor with nothing strong to speak of, and White had some good removal plus two of the 2/2 intimidate for WW, but not enough other creatures to make it worth more than a splash. I certainly wasn't going to be splashing a card I want to play turn 2 with a WW cost as my third color, so that was out. That left black and red.
Now, I'm not a fan of red or green in this set. Not in limited. Not that they can't be played or that they aren't good, just that the largest concentration of transform cards are found in those two colors, being the werewolf colors and all, so I wasn't too happy to be forced into red. My red however was the nuts in limited: early aggressive creatures, amazing removal, and a mid/late game bomb that will win games all by itself. My black was pretty strong as well giving me some late game card advantage, removal and some needed beaters.
Here's the list I sleeved up:
8 Swamp
9 Mountain
1 Traveler's Amulet
1 Graveyard Shovel
1 Cobbled Wings
1 Galvanic Juggernaut (So many people left this in the SB... WHY?!?)
1 Demonmail Hauberk
1 Geistflame
2 Bloodcrazed Neonate
1 Nightbird's Clutches (with a second in the board for the stalling or dinosaur match up)
1 Rakish Heir
1 Crossway Vampire
1 Brimstone Volley (So good)
1 Tormented Pariah
2 Night Revelers (that got switched out for the black 4/3 vamps that get counters against players without humans)
1 Falkenrath Marauders (the bomb of bombs all night)
1 Ghoulcaller's Chant
1 Victim of Night (which got boarded for the Nightbird's Clutches in the matches where it was mostly dead, although this was surprisingly a rare occurrence)
2 Walking Corpse
1 Screeching Bat (Which annoyingly is NOT a vampire until it transforms. Have I mentioned I don't like transform cards despite this one being amazing in limited?)
1 Corpse Lunge
1 Moan of the Unhallowed (Is this card constructed playable? Probably not but it felt that way all night)
I went 4-1 on the night.
I won so many games by just curving out with a Neonate turn 2, a Crossway Vampire turn 3, a Walking Corpse and a Nightbird's Clutches turn 4 and a Falkenrath Marauders turn 5. Yes this happened. A lot. I really felt like even if they had removal it wouldn't matter in those cases the opening plays were so strong. I only lost one match all night to another player who went 4-1, and I lost due to my own play mistake, and a stupid second keep, although his deck was really strong and he played it well. Since I made top 8, it was 6am when the top 8 was announced, and pretty much everyone wanted to go home; we all split the packs and the eight of us left with nine packs each. I probably would have played one less swamp and one more mountain in hindsight.
A couple of things I learned about Innistrad Sealed:
Mike
Among our little store community I have been fairly vocal about my dislike for Innistrad as a set. This is mostly due to my distaste for the transform mechanic and my absolutely unalterable hatred for horror as a genre. Despite all this, and a schedule that made it practically impossible for me to attend a prerelease, I dragged myself out to the Friday night Midnight prerelease event at my local store: TOGIT. I was a zombie (pun intended) all of Saturday and most of Sunday as a result of getting home Saturday morning at around 6am not sleeping all night and staying up watching my daughter all day, but I admit, I had fun. I'm still not sold on the set, but I do like a lot of cards for constructed and playing it in limited wasn't horrible.
Side note - I was sitting across from Emmett who had shown up to crack some packs early, then go home and get some sleep without playing. His pool was just all out insane and it was physically painful for me to watch him drop after having pulled the best sealed deck I have seen in a long time. Some highlights from his WB crazy were: Lilliana of the Veil, Isolated Chapel, the 4/4 flying black demon with the Phyrexian Arena effect stapled on for 5 mana, double intimidate white 2/2, Screeching Bat, a bunch of white removal, some good black removal, the town crier flash 1/4 untap your dudes guy, good beaters in both colors and Unburial Rites. (Emmett, correct me if I am misremembering any of these, but I think I got them all right from my one look through your deck.) I would have payed good money to switch pools with him. Sigh.
We sit down with our packs a little after midnight Saturday morning and start cracking our six sealed boosters. My pool was not the busted constructed money card pool that I was hoping for, by any means, but had some strong limited cards. I quickly eliminated blue as not having enough flying (I know! Blue has a ton of flying in this set, I just didn't get any...sigh) or other good utility cards. Green was just overall poor with nothing strong to speak of, and White had some good removal plus two of the 2/2 intimidate for WW, but not enough other creatures to make it worth more than a splash. I certainly wasn't going to be splashing a card I want to play turn 2 with a WW cost as my third color, so that was out. That left black and red.
Now, I'm not a fan of red or green in this set. Not in limited. Not that they can't be played or that they aren't good, just that the largest concentration of transform cards are found in those two colors, being the werewolf colors and all, so I wasn't too happy to be forced into red. My red however was the nuts in limited: early aggressive creatures, amazing removal, and a mid/late game bomb that will win games all by itself. My black was pretty strong as well giving me some late game card advantage, removal and some needed beaters.
Here's the list I sleeved up:
8 Swamp
9 Mountain
1 Traveler's Amulet
1 Graveyard Shovel
1 Cobbled Wings
1 Galvanic Juggernaut (So many people left this in the SB... WHY?!?)
1 Demonmail Hauberk
1 Geistflame
2 Bloodcrazed Neonate
1 Nightbird's Clutches (with a second in the board for the stalling or dinosaur match up)
1 Rakish Heir
1 Crossway Vampire
1 Brimstone Volley (So good)
1 Tormented Pariah
2 Night Revelers (that got switched out for the black 4/3 vamps that get counters against players without humans)
1 Falkenrath Marauders (the bomb of bombs all night)
1 Ghoulcaller's Chant
1 Victim of Night (which got boarded for the Nightbird's Clutches in the matches where it was mostly dead, although this was surprisingly a rare occurrence)
2 Walking Corpse
1 Screeching Bat (Which annoyingly is NOT a vampire until it transforms. Have I mentioned I don't like transform cards despite this one being amazing in limited?)
1 Corpse Lunge
1 Moan of the Unhallowed (Is this card constructed playable? Probably not but it felt that way all night)
I went 4-1 on the night.
I won so many games by just curving out with a Neonate turn 2, a Crossway Vampire turn 3, a Walking Corpse and a Nightbird's Clutches turn 4 and a Falkenrath Marauders turn 5. Yes this happened. A lot. I really felt like even if they had removal it wouldn't matter in those cases the opening plays were so strong. I only lost one match all night to another player who went 4-1, and I lost due to my own play mistake, and a stupid second keep, although his deck was really strong and he played it well. Since I made top 8, it was 6am when the top 8 was announced, and pretty much everyone wanted to go home; we all split the packs and the eight of us left with nine packs each. I probably would have played one less swamp and one more mountain in hindsight.
A couple of things I learned about Innistrad Sealed:
- It's a faster format than people initially give it credit for.
- People trade critters a LOT to turn on Morbid, making the right play to NOT BLOCK AND TRADE many more times than you'd think, also speeding up the format.
- Galvanic Juggernaut is the nuts. Play with it and see for yourself, but it's really really good.
- Brimstone Volley is constructed playable in standard.
- MD ways to break through blockers, and there are a lot of good ones in the format.
- You want to play a sac outlet, as you can't always rely on your opponent to kill off your creatures when you want them to die. I played Demonmail Hauberk and did not regret it ever.
- Even without the zombie clause a 1 mana gravedigger (without the dude attached) is really strong allowing you to advance your board AND get a guy back in the same turn, sometimes playing the guy you just returned. Flashback on your best guy for 1 more black mana as the flashback cost? Yes please! Playing UB zombies? Then this card is just the all out nuts.
- Walking corpse is a good guy! No, really!
- Rakish Heir might just make Vampires a deck again all by itself. Wish it had more good one drops than just the Noble, but still.
- Moan of the Unhallowed is excellent.
- Graveyard Shovel is surprisingly useful. Keeping your opponents graveyard clear of cards is pretty good, and sometimes gaining life from your own or their creatures is just bonus. This gets rid of a LOT of things that would be really annoying otherwise.
Mike
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