There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
In preparation for the event, several DC local Magic players have been doing a lot of testing for the format. Tommy and I recently teamed with another Massdrop pro, Jarvis Yu, for a practice session versus former US National and Pro Tour champion Matt Linde, perennial fossil Patrick “PatJ” Johnson, and King of Mortgages Brendan McKay. I was hoping to use the pool we opened as a case study in Dominaria team sealed, but our pool was extremely overpowered and, in the end, kind of boring to write about. Our first deck was a WB knights deck featuring 4 unconditional removal spells, History of Benalia, Aryel, Knight of Windgrace, and Demonlord Belzenlok. The second deck was UR flyers/spells deck that played Karn, Scion of Urza, 3 Fiery Interventions, 2 Fight with Fire, and a Jaya Ballard to help power them out. The last deck was GBru deck which included all the mana fixing in the pool in order to play as many of our legends as possible (Slimefoot, the Stowaway, Hallar, the Firefletcher, Grand Warlord Radha, Tatyova, Benthic Druid, and Darigaaz, Reincarnated) and leverage them with our 3 Ancient Animus and Karn’s Temporal Sundering. Each of our decks had multiple haymakers and multiple answers to our opponent’s threats. Unsurprisingly we were able to quickly take the first 5 matches and win the contest.
Afterwards all of us examined the other team’s pool to see if there were different and potentially better ways to build the 3 decks. Here is the pool in question:
Rewinding a few weeks back to GP Columbus which was also Dominaria team limited, the general consensus was that when looking at a Dominaria team sealed pool you wanted to find the GB deck. Given the number of saprolings synergy cards at common and uncommon, most pools will have a functional GB deck. Next you wanted to see if you had a UR wizards deck, and then based around the existence of these decks in your pool, see what “other” decks you could assemble. Often times the third deck would end up WB as black generally has a decent amount of splashable removal. Our playtest opponents used this strategy and first put together this GB saprolings shell:
Next up they tried making the best use of their “legends matter” cards and assembled the below WRb sketch. This deck, while stretching the mana base a bit, takes advantage of Blackblade Reforged and jams as many legends as possible to be able to play Jaya’s Immolating Inferno. While this deck is probably not as strong at the GB deck, it has some very aggressive openers and can quickly take down any deck not prepared for an aggressive start.
After the matches played out and with the group as a whole looking at the pool, we tried to look at the pool through a different lens. Instead of looking at it from a perspective of “Where is the GB deck?” and/or “Do we have UR wizards?” we tried to identify the powerful interactions that were possible with what we had:
After seeing the Warcaller/Flame of Keld package, we wanted to see what a mono red deck might look like:
Next we attempted to build around the extremely powerful “legends matter” cards in our pool – Karn’s Temporal Sundering, Jaya’s Immolating Inferno, and Blackblade Reforged:
If you ever played with The Mirari Conjecture in limited, you know how it can snowball, especially if you have ways to blink or bounce it. We next wanted to focus on building a deck around it:
Finally we put together a WB deck, leveraging the gold cards and best of the bunch from the two colors:
Unfortunately this is about as far as we got as it was getting late on a school night, so we were not able to actually play with these new builds. However, everyone seemed to agree that as a whole, the builds we came up with as a group to be stronger than the original decks and made better use of the cards presented by the tough pool.
Going into a team sealed event, while it’s a good idea to have some high level understanding of common strategies in the format, it’s also important to stay flexible and know when your pool doesn’t fall into those strategies. In the above pool we had a great GB deck, but by falling into the trap of GB being a “must play” if you have the cards for it, the other decks suffered. Instead of strictly looking at the powerful color combinations, also look at synergies and payoffs. Here’s the short list for Dominaria:
• Color fixers with gold cards and splashable cards
• Tribal synergies like saprolings and wizards
• Legends matter cards with legends
• Historic matters cards with legends, artifacts, and sagas
• Artifacts matter cards with artifacts
• Kicker matters cards with cards with kicker and kicker enablers
• Build-around cards like The Mirari Conjecture, Lich’s Mastery, or Precognition Field
Clearly many of the above seem fairly obvious, but when you’re under a 60-minute build clock trying build 3 different decks, a lot of these considerations get ignored. It’s not easy to look at all options when you are facing a time crunch, so my best advice to you is to practice building some team sealed pools untimed. The more reps you get building and playing with a legendary sorceries deck or a wizards deck, or a The Antiquities War deck, etc. etc., the faster you will be at identifying what your pool has and doesn’t have.
I hope this helped you gain a better understanding of how I approach limited deck building, and maybe this will open up some new ideas and options for you and your team in your next event. Hope to see you all in DC this weekend!
Previous Articles · Meet the Massdrop Teams: http://dro.ps/mtg-team-announce · *2nd* at Pro Tour Ixalan: http://dro.ps/ixalan · Unclaimed Creature Types: http://dro.ps/ari-creatures · Why I Never Drop From Tournaments: http://dro.ps/eric-nevergiveup · The Art of Sideboard Construction - Sultai Energy: http://dro.ps/jon-sideboard · A Commoner’s View on Pauper: http://dro.ps/mark-pauper · Blue Moon Beach Control: http://dro.ps/scott-bluemoon · Top 5 Modern Decks: http://dro.ps/pascal-modern · Storm in Vintage Cube: http://dro.ps/ben-storm · An Early Look at Rivals for Standard: http://dro.ps/shaun-rivals · A Standard Approach to Evaluating New Cards: http://dro.ps/rob-newcards · Drafting Rivals of Ixalan: http://dro.ps/tim-ixalan · Team Sealed Secrets: http://dro.ps/eric-secrets · Steal My Standard Ideas: http://dro.ps/tommy-secrets · Vexing Devil. Any Questions?: http://dro.ps/jon-devil · Team Massdrop Rivals of Ixalan Limited Primer: http://dro.ps/ari-primer · Gestation of RG Eldrazi: http://dro.ps/ben-gestation · Top Tim Tournament Training Tips: http://dro.ps/tim-tips · What Makes Someone Bogle?: http://dro.ps/tommy-bogle · A Pauper Adventure: http://dro.ps/pascal-pauper · Blue Moon at GP Phoenix: http://dro.ps/rob-bluemoon · Brawling into Dominaria: http://dro.ps/scott-brawling · Looking at The Current Lands(cape) of Legacy http://dro.ps/jarvis-land · Deconstructing Dominaria Limited: http://dro.ps/jon-dominaria · Diving into Dominaria Standard: http://dro.ps/mark-dominaria · What are your.. drives?: http://dro.ps/tommy-drives · Top 10 Cards for Dominaria Modern: http://dro.ps/rob-dominaria · Brewing Standard with Dominaria: http://dro.ps/pascal-dominaria