Hello chillen', it's your old Grandpa Growth here. Welcome back to Super Secret Sunday where we talk about under played cards, under the radar strategies, and under-thought thoughts...normally. This week we won't do any of that. This week I will be talking about my experience at the midnight prerelease event for Gatecrash where I played Dimir. I ended up with a very mediocre 3-3 record after losing my final round in extra turns. A win would have guaranteed me a top 8 berth and the chance to play for additional prizes (that I almost assuredly would not have won.
This S^3 could have had several alternate subtitles including: Losing Ransomly, Ransoming away your wins, and Getting Punished. Based on that you could probably infer that I had a Soul Ransom. Well, if you did, you guessed right. I had two. When I was cracking my packs I was pretty excited that I had two awesome rares in my colors, along with a Mind Grind. Unfortunately, things didn't work out for the best. I won't list the entirety of my sealed pool here, but it was generally awful. I didn't have enough playables to run any two color combination. I had the most cards in White and Black, but my White cards were genuinely awful except for an Angelic Skirmisher. Also, I only had 6 total cards that mill, including my guild rare, which while powerful, especially in combination with Mind Grind, was not enough to run a milling strategy. Sad times.
Okay enough sadness. Let's go over some of the big winners and losers from my prerelease experience!
WINNER: Anything with Extort
The nutty thing about the Extort cards, that I didn't really pick up on just from going over the spoiler a few times, was that they are all costed in such a way that the Extort is always like a bonus. Look at this guy. 2/4 Vigilance for 4? Perfectly playable control card in limited. Shuts down ground guys hard. It isn't great against aggro because of how many pump spells there are, but it is great against aggro because you gain near infinite life. I assumed that curving out with battalion guys was the nut draw in the format. I was wrong. It is curving out with Extort guys, then playing cheap removal and draining the opponent for 3 a turn while you hold off their squad with your big booty beaters. Kingpin's Pet, Syndic of Tithes, Thrull Parasite. These cards work way harder than expect. Orzhov is the control deck of this limited environment and it is good enough to combat two of the best aggro decks I have seen in ANY sealed format (Bro-ose, and Grrrrrrruul).
Loser: Keymaster Rogue
This guy is definitely not the master. This format is fast. It is even faster than I imagined it would be. I killed on turn 5 by only commons. There aren't as many ground stalls as there tend to be in sealed deck. Battalion breaks up those situations in a hurry. Bloodrush prevent them from even happening; you just have to always block and your guy always dies. This should theoretically shine against Dimir and Orzhov, but it just doesn't race effectively. Gating isn't easy to pull off in Blue. You might have Evolve counters on your guy or the opponent can have spot removal to force you to gate the Rogue back and waste your turn. I didn't play with this guy, but I played against him. I played against one with a Way of the Thief on it and still won. I am happy to see my opponents playing this nonsense. This is a trap.
Winner: Angelic Skirmisher
It shouldn't come as a huge surprise that a giant flying brawler is good in limited. I stole at least a few wins off of this card. People at my store were somehow unaware that this card said 'each combat' and even late into the tournament I was still explaining to people that yes, I can choose Vigilance on my turn and Lifelink on their turn. Also, I watched a game where someone playing this card attempted to choose Flying, which isn't a thing, but totally should be. I mean, come on. It didn't matter, he chose First Strike and forced some depressing blocks.
Winner: Deathcult Rogue
I had multiples of this guy running around and he was an all star. This guy was my primary win condition. Curve out with evasion dudes and go to work. I found myself wanting more and more of this guy. All I want to do in Black now is play two of these and just start machine gunning my opponents dudes with removal. Aggro control for GC Sealed Deck. Hot.
I am not sure of the accuracy of this statement, but I am pretty sure that he trades with all the other non-rare rogues in the set. He might not be unblockable against Dimir opponents, but he can at least interact favorably with the opponents board. And by interact I mostly mean ignore.
Winner and Loser: Madcap Skills
A friend of mine in Gruul, play a Spire Tracer on 1 and then hooked this up and smashed on turn two. He never cast another spell. He murdered his Boros opponent. It was not close. The other guy was busy casting all manner of Battalion creatures and basically just hoping to race. Turns out that is impossibru. This card is crazy. Don't try to race it. Kill it on sight.
So why is this card a loser? Flavor. What is even going on in this card? is Domri juggling fire? Is that how you become a gigantic unblockable beater? Does that make sense to anyone. Hey, dude my guy has MADSKILLZ so...you can't block him. The skills. They are just, SO mad. Kind of like how I am so mad at the creative department.
Loser: Soul Ransom
This card is was worse in limited than I thought it was going to be. How can you blame me, when has taking your opponent's best guy ever been bad? Control Magic variants are pretty much always a giant beating. This is the true demonstration of how awful the punisher mechanic makes a card. I had two of these and lost multiple times after casting them. Take Foundry champion. Okay, I'll discard two pump spells, get my guy back. Firebreath and just kill you anyway. I had on of these on a 8/8 Rubblebelt Raiders and my opponent didn't even flinch. He just untapped, cast Act of Treason and attacked for about a hundred.
When you need Probe, this is going to be Control Magic. When you need Control Magic this is going to be Probe. Punisher man. It doesn't matter how many cards I am up if I am dead on board. I discovered that you can't even wait to put this on their best guy. You need to use it early, before your opponent can set up a situation where they just kill you with it.
I was also very disappointed with how the timing of the ability worked. They can activate it whenever, effectively letting them just counter this on the spot. This card would be hugely improved if they could only discard as a sorcery, that would at least protect you for a turn. This card was a monumental disappointment. Slightly better than Mind Rot, about a hundred times worse than Control Magic.
That's all for this week zoners. I am off to play Simic in another prerelease event. I'll see you next week with your regularly scheduled hot tech.
Pass.
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