My First 9-0 Sealed League

Hey guys,

I'm thrilled to inform you that just now I finished my first 9-0 league. The pool I opened was insane. I played 5 of the 6 rares I opened and all of them were creme de la creme. Without further ado here's the deck I played and the pool I opened.

DECKBUILDING

As you can see the pool is really insane. There were stuff to do in every color and all of them were good. Initially I thought about running green as a main. After a strong consideration I decided that it might not be the best idea since the green in this pool has a bit of a high manacurve. Having all the high cost green cards and all the high cost bombs was not optimal at all so I decided to go with some lower curve colors. The two Amulets really helped for my fixing and since I was already happily set into red I needed just to decide my second color.

Blue is descent and Naga Oracle and Strategic Planing excel in the kind of deck I'm building. However if I went with Blue that meant that I had to either splash both B and W or lose Grind to Dust and Farm to Market. Since both these are way better in quality than any of the blue cards in the pool I decided that even though White was a bit more aggressive it was the better option.

Since I was running 2 Traveler's Amulet I think that going down to 16 lands was the optimal choice. Yes, I do have some 5-6-7 mana cards, but I had stuff to do in the early game too. All in all I think it was the correct decision. There were games where it took some time to cast my most powerful finishers, but with the great quality removal I didn't stumble a lot. There were even a few games where I won with pure aggression.

AFTERMATH

This deck was insane. I only got only three game losses and the last one was caused by a huge mistake I made due to over-excitment (I tapped my mana wrong and didn't leave a black for Banewhip Punnisher activation). I had all the right answers throughout all 9 matches and most of them were heavily onesided. I can only imagine what went through this guys head when he decided to Doomfall my hand (the card he exiled was Bolas)

 

IN CONCLUSION

I'd like to say that even though the pool was really good I feel great for managing to pilot it to a 9-0. There are a lot of stuff that could have gone wrong and kinda did. I lost my first match to timeout, but got reimbursed (with nullification of the game) since I had problems with the client and just couldn't do anything. So yeah, even though this is an insane deck I think that getting the 9-0 is a real accomplishment and I'm very happy that I did it. Hopefully I will manage to do it again soon. As for the time being I'm joyful about this one. P.S. I want to thank the Limited Resources show and team. They have really helped improve a lot and I strongly recommend to check the podcast if you want to learn a thing or two.

May the hearth of the cards be with you,
Tonyo

UPS AND DOWNS

Time for another update!

Last week was a pretty bad one for me. I've had some really bad results and it just seemed like I couldn't do it. I was feeling that I was tilting and wasn't playing at my best. I finished 4-5 in the last 3 leagues. But then I decided that it's time to stop and consider my mistakes. I started looking over the decks I played and immediately started finding a way to build them better, or improve my manabase, or that I built a miracle deck that needed 4 or 5 things to happen consecutively in order to make this big finish. Unfortunately MTGO has decided that it's time to stop saving my history, so I can't exactly show you my decks.

Nevertheless I think that I've managed to come to my senses. I really took a breath and spend a whole day watching replays from previous games and analyzing my mistakes. I've found that some of the decks I built seemed awesome on paper but the manabase was so ridiculous and with a very small chance to actually work. I've caught myself playing like a maniac vs my opponents open mana and getting blown out.

Anyway the next day came and with my eyes opened I decided to give it another go. With having all 4-5s at least I was getting some PP back. I managed to take a snap at my last deck, and a DECK indeed it was.

  
DECKBUILDING

There was stuff in every color to play. The rares were good and most were playable. one of the most important things though was that I build the deck like 5 times in order to make sure I was playing the best version there is. My first major decision was that I was going to play Green. I had the most (good) rares in that color and the deserts needed to make Hour of Promise good. I also had stuff to ramp into. The best rare in the pool is the Angel IMO. I wanted to play it but white didn't seem like a good main color due to low amount of good playables. I looked into black splashing red first since I had a trial - cartouche combo, a gold GR card and the Ammit Eternal.

I built the GBR deck and I didn't feel excited at all. I was leaving my best cards out - Glyph Keeper and Angel. I didn't have enough deserts and all in all I wasn't feeling excited for this deck. I started thinking what would I miss from this deck. The removal was descent, but I had good removal in white and blue too. After building the GUW deck I started to feel it. This deck just felt right and made me excited to go into game one. I was winning and the deck was very consistent. I had a game or two where I drew the wrong kind of mana at the wrong time, but most of the time Vizier helped cast my creatures without any trouble and Hour fetched me the needed lands.


GAMES 

I was having an almost perfect run (I had like 2 or 3 game losses) till 7-0. AND THEN CAME THE HORROR. The most ridiculous UR deck I've ever faced. He bounced my stuff, open fired my face and pretty much destroyed everything I managed to stick on the board while smashing my face too. I manage to take a game, but both games he won were heavily one-sided. He had 3 Riddleforms in his deck and I was facing at least 2 of them every game. Every removal he had turned into like 3 cmc - remove target creature and deal 6 to face of opponent. It was hard. I was so disappointed that my streak had to end. I picked myself up though and joined the queue for my next game.

AND THEN CAME THE SAME HORROR. I was matched with the same person. So we went again. Miraculously I won game one. Next game he was on the play and destroyed me so fast. Riddleform into Riddleform into removal is a powerfull combo and it did the job. I started sideboarding but I didn't know what to do. I looked at my pool and made a decision. I took out all the WU cards, sided in my Red Aggressive stuff, and went into race mode. His deck was just too good and I didn't want to risk having a slow start. Open fire is a great way to deal with Riddleform and I had descent aggressive red options. The deck wasn't as strong as the GUW, but it was definitely faster. I managed to steal the last game with a Trial of Zeal to the face as a finisher and I was celebrating.

AFTERMATH

My first 8-1!!! I would have been much happier for a 9-0, but this is an excellent result too. If it were a GP I would make day 2 and have a descent shot at top 8. Unfortunately it is not, but it has lifted my spirits a lot. As a conclusion I'd like to remind you that if you feel yourself getting in a rut you should really rethink you last 10-15 games and the decisions you made. Perhaps you weren't as flooded as you thought and there were mistakes that costed you a game or two, or even five.

May the hearth of the cards be with you,
Tonyo

GETTING THE HANG OF IT

Hey Guys,

Me again. Even though I had a bumpy start I've been doing pretty good in the last few days (link to stats in the right or bottom if you're on a mobile). I've opened some nice pools and even though I lost some matches I slowly began getting the hang of things and winning more. Here are the pools I got in the last few day. Feel free to comment what would you change and if you feel like how I should have built them differently.

16.08.17

17.08.17

NEW POOL 

The pool we're going to discuss today is quite interesting and I had a lot of fun both building and playing it. It had a descent amount of playables in pretty much all the colors. The most cool thing though (and a first for me) was that all the rares were in the same color. Well one was a land and one was a colorless, but it's still quite a thing getting actually 2 rares and 2 mythics in the same color. Here's what the pool looked like.

BY RARITY

BY COLOR

As you can see there are a lot of cool cards present. There's things to do in pretty much every color. Also worth noting is that we have a cycling desert in all the colors which serve as a protection from flooding. Initially I thought this should be a Green 5 or 4 color deck but after a close analysis of the colors I went in a different direction. Here are the colors sorted and ready for analysis. 

WHITE

BLACK

BLUE

RED

GREEN

COLORLESS

WHITE - I'd say that white is the 2nd worst color we have after black. The Steward of Solidarity combos well with the Tah-Crop Elite, but other than that there's nothing else exciting in white. The Saving Grace has been increasing in value in my eyes and is definitely a spell worth running. It saves you in races and can sometimes be a lot of value when played in the right spot.

BLACK - The worst color we have. The trial is descent and we did open a cartouche in blue, so there's a combo we can explore into, but other than that I don't see anything pulling us into black.

RED - I know that Blue is next, but it's the most exciting color so I'll leave it for last. Our red is pretty good. The curve is a bit high, but we have some premium creatures and premium removal. The Gilded Cerodon and the Minotaurs can also help us finish games. The only card I'm not excited about playing in red is probably the Hyena Pack, but it is also a descent creature and I have no problem running it in a deck where we're short on creatures.

GREEN - We have some good stuff in green and we have the Gift of Paradise and Oasis Ritualist if we want to run a multi-color green deck. However when I tried to build it the green felt more like a splash since we have a lot of good stuff in red and blue. After a short consideration I decided that the green was simply not good enough to use as a main color and it felt like we're only giving up the Ambuscade.

COLORLESS - We opened some pretty good colorless cards. The mirage mirror is great in controlling decks. Sunset Pyramid provides us with card advantage and can help us scry lands to the bottom in the late game. The Manalith helps us splash if we need to and the River Hoopoe is definitely a card I'd like to run in the deck, since it's another form of card advantage in the late game.

BLUE - Now we're talking business. Although blue is often referred as the worst color in Limited since it requires a lot of buildaround to be worth playing it we managed to open some pretty strong cards. The cartouche allows us to splash for the Black Trial if we want to, but since I'm already splashing green I decided to skip on the Trial. Kefnet is great in sealed and in the lategame can provide us with serious card advantage. Slamming him on turn 3 is also a powerfull play vs some slow decks (scroll to the bottom to see image). Unesh is also a great card for controlling decks, it is a big body and provides a descent card advantage since you can chose the cards drawn. Kefnet's Last Word is probaby the best card in this cycle. Turn 4 get your best thing might not be the best play, but when the opponent is out of cards is quite devastating. We also have some descent counter spell to go with the rest of the color.

All in all we have a really good Blue pool and we're happy to run it as our main color. Paired with red gives us a great controlling deck with a good amount of reach in the late game.

 

AFTERMATH

We managed to finish 6-3 with the deck. It matched up a bit bad against heavy aggro and after watching a replay of some of the games I also saw that I didn't play optimally in some of the cases. I also had some pretty awesome games. Kefnet over-performed pretty much every time I could play it. Watch the replays below for one of the greatest comebacks I ever had. I was mana screwed in all three games but managed to win the match and I have to say it felt pretty awesome.





Another awesome moment I had was a slam dunk Kefnet turn 3. Here's the result.

Even though the deck was pretty strong my performance wasn't great. I'm happy about a 6-3 since it is a winning record, but I feel that there's a lot of room for improvement. I had a lot of fun playing this deck though and I'm happy with the results. Thanks all for sticking up till the end and I'll see you next week.

May the hearth of the cards be with you,
Tonyo

INTRODUCTION

Hey guys,

Let’s start the first post with a little introduction. My name is Tonyo and I’ve been playing MTG for about an year now. I’m a huge fan of limited formats and this is mostly what I’m playing. Since I have a crappy work schedule I can’t afford to go to my LGS and play magic with real people very often, therefore I spend most of my magic budget online. In the past few months I began noticing that I spent less and less money charging my account with tix. After some thinking I might have finally figured how to go infinite at limited (or at least spend a very little amount of money). I’m starting this blog so I can keep track of my accomplishments and hopefully entertain a few people on my way to glory. I think that’s enough of an introduction, now let’s get down to business.

WHY SEALED

Perhaps a lot of you wonder – WHY SEALED? Well here’s the thing. As random as sealed seems to most people draft in MTGO is also the exact same amount of random. In draft leagues you don’t play with the people from your draft pod, so there’s a chance you end up playing versus a player that just had better packs in his pod. So basically draft in Leagues is the same amount of random as Sealed. I haven’t done the actual calculations but in draft you only get 2 pack for a 2-1 (approx 7 tix of value for a 12 tix draft). In Sealed Friendly League if you end up 6-3 (same win % as 2-1) you get 280 play points. Assuming that you will use these to enter more events you get 28tix reward at 6-3 for a 24tix event. What I’m basically saying is that it’s much easier to go infinite in Sealed than it is in Draft.

GOALS

And now lets talk a bit about my goals.
1. Reach 1800 Limited Rating on my MTGO account (currently 1700)
2. Manage to end the year with some tickets left in my account without actually spending any money on MTGO except my initial 96 tix which I’m starting with (4 Friendly Sealed Entries)
3. Share this blog and hopefully get some readers 
4. Go to GP London in January and qualify for day 2 (at least)

FIRST POOL

The pool I got for my first public build was kinda bad, but hopefully this will be one of those initial impressions where you readers will be like OMG he must be a really OK player if he managed to finish 6-3 with this pool. Here’s the full list of cards that I opened.

BY RARITY	BY COLOR

At first glance we're happy to see Samut. It's definitely one of the stronger cards in Amonkhet, even though it pales a bit in comparison to the mythics from HOU. Rhonas's Last Stand goes well with our Samut and that's pretty much all that is exciting in the Rares department. Hollow One and Djeru are fine cards, but not the rares we want and Throne is nothing to get excited about IMO.

After Sorting by color we see that White and Blue are basically unplayable. Desert's Hold is a card we're definitely looking to splash if we end up short on removal, and if we're that desperate we can consider a Sand Blast too. With all that in mind let's check the playable colors we have.

BLACK	RED

GREEN	COLORLESS

BLACK - We have a reasonable curve in black topping at 4. Our 2 drops are not the best, but are descent. In the 3 drop slot we have some descent removal creatures. Wander in Death is a great spell and we're happy to play one of in pretty much any deck. At the 4 drop we have some filler creatures, a nice removal - Torment of Venom and probably one of the most controversial cards in the format - Torment of Scarabs. I'm still not sure how good this card is but I play it on occasions and so far I'm neither impressed nor disappointed.

RED - We have 3 really good red cards in Manticore Eternal, Sand Strangler and Open Fire. Unfortunately we don't have that many deserts in the right colors to make Sand Strangler awesome. Fervent Paincaster is also kinda good. The rest in red are mostly filler cards and we're definitely not that exited about them.

GREEN - Unfortunately green is also not that potent. We have descent cards but not enough playables to jump into green right away. We do have some descent late game threats and some ok early game in the Frilled Sandwalla, Feral Prowler and Rhonas's Last Stand.

COLORLESS - Wall of Forgotten Pharaohs is a card I really like. It is a fine early game blocker and when turned on it is a form of reach. Manalith can help us splash and Hollow One is a descent creature. All in all nothing that exciting here.

DECKBUILDING

After reviewing our colors I think that we're certainly going to be Black. It has the most straight up playable cards and since our other colors are kinda short we need them. Here are the two builds I was considering.

Creatures: 16; Lands: 17	Creatures: 16; Lands: 17

In the end I like the Green Black deck better. It has a bit of a clunky mana base, but it is far more suited to deal with late game threats (and present such) and has a better card quality IMO. The red deck is fine and I'm definitely prepared to switch if I'm up against some aggro deck running a bunch of x/1s.

AFTERMATH

We managed to finish 4-5. A slight bump in the beginning, but nevertheless we're going forward. I think that the pool was not the best and I would have been happy to end up like a 5-4. Nevertheless we won 120 playpoints which, which is kinda ok. I also managed to get 1 ticket for the rares in the pool. The matches were interesting, but I was struggling to keep up with my opponents. I bumped into some aggro decks which were way out of my league. I've managed to cast Samut and get her unsummoned, countered and puncture blowed, however there was also a game that went turn 3 manalith, turn 4 samut turn 5 kill. The best moment I had though didn't involve Samut. I can only imagine what pain my opponent was going through when this happened...

My first post became kinda lengthy so I'll be wrapping it up. I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't have a blasting start, but things will turn up. Thank you all for getting to the end with me, and I'll be waiting for you next time.

I'll try to make posts like this two or three times a week. I'll create a schedule as soon as I get the hang of this blog thing and am able to make some plans about when to play and when to write. 

May the hearth of the cards be with you,
Tonyo