I know that some of you are going to Grand Prix: Sacramento, as am I. So, I figured I should write a little something about Sealed deck building! I opened up six Theros boosters using this random pack generator that I found online and I’m going to take you through my mind while I build this Sealed Pool. It’s nice to get multiple views upon how to build different Sealed Pools as you might miss something that someone else sees or you might be too attached to a certain card or color, while an outside figure could tell you that you should just play a different color or card. Teamwork! Here’s what I opened:
White:
Heliod’s Emissary
Cavalry Pegasus
Gift of Immortality
Lagonna-Band Elder
Last Breath
Vanquish the Foul
Observant Alseid
Scholar of Atheros
Divine Verdict
Fabled Hero
Hopeful Eidolon x2
Leonin Snarecaster
Ordeal of Heliod
Ray of Dissolution
Ephara’s Warden
-16 Cards
Blue:
Meletis Charlatan
Nimbus Naiad
Voyage’s End
Benthic Giant
Stymied Hopes
Wavecrash Triton x2
Fate Foretold
Lost in a Labyrinth
Mnemonic Wall
Omenspeaker
Breaching Hippocamp
Coastline Chimera
Griptide
Ordeal of Thassa
Triton Fortune Hunter
Vaporkin
-17 Cards
Black:
Cavern Lampad
Cutthroat Maneuver x2
Fellhide Minotaur
Returned Phalanx
Lash of the Whip x2
Erebos’s Emissary
Sip of Hemlock x2
Asphodel Wanderer
Pharika’s Cure
Returned Centaur
Scourgemark
Insatiable Harpy
Read the Bones
-16 Cards
Red:
Akroan Crusader x2
Minotaur Skullcleaver x2
Spearpoint Oread
Messenger’s Speed
Ordeal of Purphoros
Borderland Minotaur
Portent of Betrayal
Deathbellow Raider
Titan’s Strength
Two-Headed Cerebus
-12 Cards
Green:
Hunt the Hunter
Leafcrown Dryad x2
Savage Surge
Commune with the Gods
Defend the Hearth
Nessian Courser
Nylea’s Presence
Nylea’s Emissary
Centaur Battlemaster
Pheres-Band Centaurs
Mistcutter Hydra
Nemesis of Mortals
-13 Cards
Multicolored:
Battlewise Hoplite
Psychic Intrusion
Akroan Hoplite
-3 Cards
Artifacts:
Opaline Unicorn
Witches’ Eye x2
Guardians of Meletis x2
-5 Cards
Land:
Temple of Silence
Unknown Shores
-2 Cards
For your ease, I have bolded all of the rares. That’s the first thing I usually do after I open and sort all of my packs: look for the rares. Normally, your rares are going to be a guide to which colors you should play as they are usually the strongest cards that you will open, but in this instance we opened some not too great rares. Fabled Hero is a GREAT Rare to open, but Meletis Charlatan, Gift of Immortality, Temple of Silence, and Psychic Intrusion aren’t super great for limited. Mistcutter Hydra is also pretty good.
Now, for practice, before you read any further, build a deck using those boosters that I have opened and sorted for you. Practice makes perfect afterall. At the end of this article, compare what you have built with this Sealed Pool against what I would have built with this Sealed Pool and look at the differences that we come upon. You might prefer one way of building your deck to another. Building Sealed decks is difficult, but with practice it becomes far easier. In general, for Theros Sealed, playing 18 lands is correct as there are plenty of manasinks thanks to Bestow and Monstrous. Also, the cards tend to be more expensive. Evasion is always good in limited, so keep that in mind and removal is usually a premium. Combat tricks tend to be much better in Limited than Constructed, and Theros has a lot of combat tricks. Having the right mix of spells and creatures is really important also, especially in Theros Sealed as there are a lot of Heroic enablers or Aura’s that you want to put on your creatures. Thankfully, Bestow dudes count both as an enabler for Heroic but also as a creature. It’s typically better to hold onto your Bestow creatures until you can Bestow them as then you can get maximum value off of it.
As we scroll through White, which I believe to be the strongest color here due to the fact that we have a solid rare, we can see other playables in this color:
Heliod’s Emissary
Gift of Immortality
Lagonna-Band Elder
Last Breath
Vanquish the Foul
Observant Alseid
Scholar of Atheros
Divine Verdict
Fabled Hero
Hopeful Eidolon x2
Leonin Snarecaster
Ordeal of Heliod
Ephara’s Warden
Having both Ordeal of Heliod and Fabled Hero makes me want to play White, especially when I have two Hopeful Eidolons which go great with either of those two cards. I would tend to avoid playing Hopeful Eidolon on the first turn in Limited unless I have an Ordeal in my hand. We have three removal spells in White also, Last Breath (average), Vanquish the Foul (not great) and Divine Verdict (good). The Ray of Dissolution isn’t a card that I like to play Maindeck, but it can end up there and is technically a removal spell sometimes.
Looking at Blue, we have an Ordeal of Thassa, which is great. All the Ordeals are very powerful, especially if you can play it on turn two.
Meletis Charlatan
Nimbus Naiad
Voyage’s End
Wavecrash Triton x2
Fate Foretold
Lost in a Labyrinth
Mnemonic Wall
Omenspeaker
Coastline Chimera
Griptide
Ordeal of Thassa
Triton Fortune Hunter
Vaporkin
Besides the Ordeal, we don’t have much going for us here. Just two very good removal spells (Griptide and Voyage’s End) and two great fliers in Nimbus Naiad and Vaporkin. Blue makes a great pair with White and allows us to play our Battlewise Hoplite too. This is a strong consideration of the two colors I would want to play.
Cavern Lampad
Cutthroat Maneuver x2
Fellhide Minotaur
Returned Phalanx
Lash of the Whip x2
Erebos’s Emissary
Sip of Hemlock x2
Pharika’s Cure
Returned Centaur
Scourgemark
Insatiable Harpy
Read the Bones
Now, Black has it all (almost). We have an insane combat trick in Cutthroat Maneuver (two of them!) and we have a boatload of removal spells between two Sip of Hemlock, two Lash of the Whip, and the Pharika’s Cure. We also have solid creatures in Insatiable Harpy, Cavern Lampad, Erebos’s Emissary and the Fellhide Minotaur, but besides those cards Black is lacking in the creature department. I really miss Gray Merchant of Asphodel right now. He or Disciple of Phenax would be perfect to go with the rest of these Black cards. If we do pair Black with another color, it has to be because of the creatures in that color.
Akroan Crusader x2
Minotaur Skullcleaver x2
Spearpoint Oread
Ordeal of Purphoros
Borderland Minotaur
Portent of Betrayal
Deathbellow Raider
Titan’s Strength
Two-Headed Cerebus
It’s very easy to see that Red will not make the cut. We simply have no removal spells in Red, no big rares or great cards that stand out except for the Ordeal, which we would want to be more Red for. I think it’s easy to say that we won’t be Red.
Leafcrown Dryad x2
Savage Surge
Commune with the Gods
Nessian Courser
Nylea’s Presence
Nylea’s Emissary
Centaur Battlemaster
Mistcutter Hydra
Nemesis of Mortals
Green doesn’t have a lot of playables here, but it’s got a few. Mistcutter is the huge appealing card here. Most of the other cards aren’t too impressive though. I think we can do without playing Green, but think about splashing that Mistcutter Hydra. I don’t get excited by Green too much here. I want a Nessian Asp if I’m playing Green as I believe that to be the best Green common behind Voyaging Satyr, which is another common we don’t have.
Battlewise Hoplite
Psychic Intrusion
Akroan Hoplite
Opaline Unicorn
Witches’ Eye x2
Guardians of Meletis x2
Temple of Silence
Unknown Shores
These are our remaining cards. It’s unlikely that we will end up playing Unknown Shores, but if we want to Mistcutter Hydra someone, it’s an option for that. Opaline Unicorn is a card that I like if you are going for a more late-game oriented deck and it also can allow us to splash that Mistcutter Hydra if we would like. The Witches’ Eye’s, Guardians’, Psychic Intrusion and Akroan Hoplite (because of our weak Red) are all unplayable cards. They just don’t do anything relevant. The Temple of Silence will most likely make any iteration of the deck as Scry-lands are always good and it’s likely that we will be at least White or Black.
The next question is WU, WB, UB, or WUB. I think that White is overall the best color and I don’t think I want to play Blue with Black, even though we could have a sweet control deck, because I prefer to be aggressive in this format and I want to play the White cards more than any of the other cards. Make sure that you have your curve in mind when you are building your deck. You don’t want to get run over in the early game and you don’t want to be outclassed in the midgame.
Hopeful Eidolon x2
Leonin Snarecaster
Lagonna-Band Elder
Observant Alseid
Scholar of Atheros
Fellhide Minotaur
Fabled Hero
Insatiable Harpy
Heliod’s Emissary
Cavern Lampad
Erebos’s Emissary
Pharika’s Cure
Ordeal of Heliod
Last Breath
Read the Bones
Divine Verdict
Cutthroat Maneuver x2
Lash of the Whip x2
Sip of Hemlock x2
1 Temple of Silence
8 Plains
8 Swamp
This is likely the version of the WB deck that I would build. I don’t think you need 18 lands with a Scry-land and a lower curve, but it wouldn’t hurt. There isn’t really a card I want to cut for the Plains anyway, so whatever. Drawing lands in this deck is not bad because you have Hopeful Eidolon (basically a four-drop), Observant Alseid and both the Emissaries to help you with manaflood. In addition, all of you removal spells are pretty costly. I really don’t want to go less than 12 creatures in this deck. A Cutthroat Maneuver could be cut, but I’ve never played with the card and it seems pretty bonkers to me, but we do only have 12 creatures and kind of want the extra land. I’ve never played with Gift of Immortality, so I don’t know how good it is, but it seems not great to me, so I left it out.
Hopeful Eidolon x2
Leonin Snarecaster
Vaporkin
Omenspeaker
Battlewise Hoplite
Lagonna-Band Elder
Observant Alseid
Fabled Hero
Nimbus Naiad
Triton Fortune Hunter
Wavecrash Triton x2
Heliod’s Emissary
Ordeal of Thassa
Ordeal of Heliod
Fate Foretold
Voyage’s End
Last Breath
Gift of Immortality
Griptide
Divine Verdict
Vanquish the Foul
8 Plains
8 Island
1 Temple of Silence
This deck looks pretty good to me. We have a lower, aggressive curve with some evasion. We have five Heroic dudes and nine ways to trigger them and that isn’t counting the Last Breath (which can target Fabled Hero or Battlewise Hoplite while they are 2 power to trigger the Heroic, but it won’t exile the creature as they will have greater than two power before the Last Breath resolves). We also have decent removal spells and some great tempo spells along with some good defense and two Ordeals that we have two creatures to cast on on the second turn.
I’m not too sure which build I like more, but I have a feeling that I would end up going with the UW version because it looks smoother. The WB Version has more powerful cards, but they are late-game cards and removal spells. I think that given the card pool that we have, the deck that is more streamlined towards the earlier turns will be better as we don’t have any great cards in the lategame.
So, how close were you to the two above lists? If you chose Green or Red to play, I’d be pretty surprised and interested in how you got that to work. If you built a more controlling deck using White, Blue or Black, I can see that working. Don’t take my builds as an absolute though. I’m 100% sure that this isn’t the best deck that can be built with this Sealed Pool, but nobody ever builds their Sealed Pools correctly. Nearly everyone at larger Magic tournaments that are Sealed go and talk to their buddies after Deck Construction to get tips on how they would have built it, how good it looks and what could be changed. Everyone has a different opinion on deck building, so what may be something that you think is wrong, could end up being right! Or the opposite may be true. You cannot change your decklist from the one that you give to the judges at the end of Deck Registration, but you can make changes to your deck in between games and it is not uncommon for people to board into a whole new color and change their deck. Maybe you didn’t realize how good this one color was with another until your friend told you, and sideboarding into a new deck gives you a chance to trust them over yourself and try it out. Or perhaps, you just think that your deck has a bad matchup and that changing a color could be more beneficial to you than just playing with what you already have built. I have a strong belief that you should sideboard in every single Limited game, even if it’s just a single card or your whole deck.
Overall, Sealed Deck building is challenging, but with some post-build advice from friends and some practice it is easy to become better. Hope that you all enjoyed this little Sealed Pool practice, and I’ll most likely do another for Born of the Gods before the Prerelease and at the very latest, before the Release. Thanks for the read!
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Nugames.
Thanks for the breakdown Noah. Wanted to thank you for a fun read and offer some personal opinions on the strength of each deck. While I think the UW deck plays the best cards, a lot of sealed pools will have immense ability to disregard damage, a Merchant against the UW Deck seems completely back breaking, as does Nylea’s Disciple. It’s a personal opinion that the aggressive deck would lack inevitability, and get grinded out of matches by larger creatures like Nessian asp, or any deck that finds itself with adequate lifegain/removal.
The Black deck seems better suited to the sealed environment, it can survive early aggro, Remove your opponents bombs, and grind out wins with Scholar of Aetheros, Cavern Lampad, or Insatiable harpy. I think Gift of Immortality is just ok, but it can create an infinite chump blocker, which is useful. Not playing returned Phalnax in the WB deck is a mistake, because even though you can’t attack with it. It’s a brutal wall against aggressive decks.
Alternatively, a blue splash in the WB deck seems really good. With Griptide and Voyages end adding to your tempo package, and the unicorn and Unknown Shores to make it relatively painless.
Plus, I actually think you’re undervaluing Psychic Intrusion, the ability to steal your opponents bomb can be absolutely crushing in a format so dominated by bombs. Imagine stealing your opponents Elspeth on turn five, it’s an unlikely scenario, but the list of good cards to swipe goes on and on. And it’s likely you’ll hit something good against a similarly controlling deck, so it’s a fine Sideboard, if not Mainboard consideration. And lastly Cutthroat Maneuver isn’t great , I would keep it in due to the Life point swings it can create, but I’d happily trade it for Voyages End or Griptide.
Hope I gave you some food for thought, and that you’re not rolling your eyes at my feedback. ^^
GLHF at GP Sac.