So as I tweeted, I played in the Scars of Mirrodin Magic The Gathering pre-release this past Saturday. Here’s a more detailed report of the event and how it went for me.
The rules are simple: construct a deck of at least 40 cards from 6 boosters (containing 15 cards each). Land is provided. Then play five best-of-three rounds for the chance to win prizes including up to a box of boosters. You need to be in the top 8 after five rounds for prize contention.
We were given 30 minutes to construct our decks from the boosters. I eagerly ripped them all open looking for poison (Infect actually) cards and found… two. Yes, only two cards in my 90 had the keyword Infect on them.
So scratch my plans of building a poison deck.
I then took a second look at what I had. The colour of which I had the fewest was red. Furthermore the cards were very uninspiring – seemingly overcosted (in terms of CMC or activation cost) creatures and not much else. I instantly ignored red.
Artifacts I placed aside. I had a great deal of them, which was unsurprising since Mirrodin is an artifact expansion. I knew whatever colour I played, artifacts would prominently feature in my deck.
Green and black were similarly uninspiring. A weird mix of combo-y creatures and dull spells were in my selection. Not bad cards per se, just (probably) not effective in a prerelease situation.
This left me with white and blue. Each were tempting, and I had the most cards of each. But white seemed the most likely to actually win me games, especially due to the following two cards:
Given I was going to include artifacts – four of which were equipment – I had reasonable expectations the above could produce me a few tokens during my games.
Other notables that made their way into my deck:
The angel-bomb never went off. Many times I sat with it in hand – and the mana to cast it – hoping to erase a few fatties my opponent had tapped. Although I cast it a few times, it killed not one single creature. Perilous Myr on the other hand was ruthlessly efficient, and probably helped me along in a few of my wins.
So white/artifact it was. Exactly 40 cards. 16 lands, 17 creatures, 4 equipments, 2 sorceries, 1 instant.
Round One: 2-0
My first opponent played Black/Green/Blue. So inefficient was his deck that I didn’t even know he was playing green until the second game. My guess was his goal was poison/control, but his cards, land and draws were very slow (and, being honest, unlucky). He did manage to play these though:
But to no avail. I beat him quickly and very soundly, and my life was over 20 in each case. I was enthused and encouraged by the fact that one game was won on the back of my Myrsmith and the other my cat regent. In each case however, this card (also in my deck) was a boon:
I had the Deathmantle on her…
Round Two: 0-2
My opponent was a child, and he had a “how can someone be so lucky?” artifact deck with a splash of white in it. So many good cards, and in multiples. Including these:
He beat me soundly and convincingly in each game. But the second game in particular was basically my loss. A no-land draw led to a one-land mulligan draw. I didn’t want to risk five cards so went with one land and then failed to draw any at all for the rest of the game (which I think was only 5 turns).
Only afterwards did I realize I had made a terrible error in misreading one of my cards that helped this opponent greatly. Twice he pulled artifacts I had revoked out of the graveyard – but they should have been exiled. Who knows how things may have changed had I noticed.
Round Three: 0-2
My next opponent was perhaps even more blessed by the gods of luck than my previous, because he drew both of the following from his 6 boosters:
However only the dragon was in his deck (he showed me the other after our games). His deck was a focused, fast poison deck. In both games he drew the dragon in his opening hand and played it as soon as he could (often before turn five due to Scars reprinting the mana Myrs).
I would experience my first and only poison defeats against this opponent, and in each case I was well ahead in life (in one game I was more than 20 life over him). His strat was ignore his life and just go for the infect kill, and it worked twice. Of course having that monster dragon helped.
Even though I lost the games were very enjoyable. I felt that each were close, and could have gone either way.
Round Four: 2-1
In each round, players are matched against opponents with similar win/loss ratios. So now I would face someone else that had only won (overall) one of his three rounds.
His deck was a hodgepodge of all sorts of stuff – not really easily categorizable. It also seemed to lack a gimmick (it was blue/green/artifact) and was very slow. Even so, he got both of these out in the first game:
Ouch and ouch! However he also (foolishly, I thought) put two -1/-1 counters on my sentinel:
Which gave me a great, low health-cost Slagworm blocker. I had my cat-regent pumping out tokens as well, which blocked his juggernaut every turn. Things quickly became a stalemate… and the board got completely locked down. The game went on and on and ended up lasting almost 35 minutes! At the very end he won with his life at 2. I only had 5 cards left to draw from as well. A fun game.
Things were very different for the next two though. In each case I drew well and pressed the offensive very quickly, taking great advantage of my monocoloured deck. He lost each game in less than 5 minutes, so I grabbed the overall win.
Oh yes, he also played Lux Cannon in the first game, plus he had time to use it. This meant all my opponents so far had drawn – and played – mythic rares. I don’t think I saw a single mythic played at the Eldrazi prerelease…
Round Five: 2-0
Surprise surprise, this hit the table quickly:
Sigh, another mythic. However this, my final opponent, didn’t really know how to use it. His green/black deck seemed to be a poison deck but the player made many mistakes and frankly would have probably lost even if I didn’t have a ‘win-the-lottery’ opening hand each time that led to more cat tokens than anyone would care to face (in one game: 8 2/2 cats on my battlefield at one time).
As we played he confessed it was his return to MTG after not playing for 13 years. He had played in tournaments from Alpha through to Homelands and had then walked away. He was now returning since his wife was insisting he either play with his cards (which he still owns, including multiple copies of the power nine), or sell them!
So he chose to play.
Even though he was the weakest of my opponents that day, he was perhaps the most fun to play against. I actually even felt a bit guilty as those cats kept popping out of my four-times-equipped regent and I sailed to two easy wins.
But I got the feeling he had fun himself, and that’s what matters most in the end.
So my final rank was 10th out of 24, which meant I just missed out on the final rounds and a prize. I enjoyed the event a lot though, and plan on attending the pre-release for Mirrodin Besieged when it comes out 3 or so months from now 🙂