From: tjpitts@txdirect.net Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy Subject: Strategy: 5th-Visions Sealed Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 12:10:28 -0500 To many a newbie the header for this post will make no sense whatsoever... Strategy in sealed? What? Oh, come on. It's all about who gets the god cards! Well, anyone who believes that should look and see how many of the top rated t2 players are also top-rated in sealed... I've spent a fair amount of time the last couple weeks practice-drafting decks for the Mainz qualifiers. The site I have used is: http://www.massmed.org/elliott/magic/interface.html I'm sure there are other sites doing much the same thing, but I've had no complaints here... You can generate virtually any sealed packs, from Alpha to Weatherlight, any number of starters and boosters. Good work guys! After drafting about 100 decks, my first cut at the environment is "Fear the man playing blue." In an environment where River Boa is a common, blue is not a viable splash color despite several otherwise strong splash cards: Breezekeeper, Ray, Sheepboy, Dark Maze, Remove Soul, Gaseous Form, etc... Unless your deck is full of ways to kill the Boa, blue is just not a color you can splash... So the player who has chosen to play blue must have the goods: Flood, Grasp, Fat Flyers, multiple counters, Undo, Vanishing, Ray. A typical good player who drop first turn Island is probably working with several cards that will make your life miserable... Black and Green seem to be the strongest colors, as they seem to always be in sealed, unless your name is Paul Gallagher in which case you can bank on having 'constructed deck burn'.... But for the rest of us, black and green seem to be the consistent colors of choice. Black has the edge in removal, especially with the Ratbomb. But Green boasts tons of fat creatures, and common Swampwalker, Islandwalker, and Forestwalkers. Deathgrip and Lifeforce are probably both maindeck cards for their respective colors... Most of the non-Chimera artifact creatures are automatic plays. Wall of Spears, Grapeshot, and Clay Statue are no-brainers. Shapeshifter doesn't make the cut in some decks and rocks in others. A lot of newbies pass on the Golems, but most good players won't. The Matopi in particular is a card that you have to learn to appreciate... Virtually all of the lands that don't say Urza on them are strong. Storage lands rock with X-spells (duh). The bounce lands are only playable in a major color with fat, but are definitely worth it in such a deck. Quicksand is a must play. One factor all players should consider is the prevelance of token generators in the environment. One uncommon and 4 rares generate tokens. A rough guess would say that 1 in 5 decks will contain a token generator. Breeding Pit requires a commitment to black, but it's a card that will steer a player to black in the first place. The four rares are all artifacts and are probably must-plays in every deck. Kaliedoscope tokens are blocking fodder but add mana flexibility as well. Snakes, Poison Snakes, and Wasps all perform beatdown as well as Forcefield duties. Song of Blood and Hearth Charm both allow the tokens to do serious damage, though the Charm is a stronger all-around card... Artifact destruction is likely a must in the main deck as the environment is full of targets. Several 5th rares are unbalanced in sealed (what a shock); but Disk, Book, Millstone, and the token generators are all toys to be broken. Joven's Tools is a definite must-play, must-kill as well... I hope this spurs some sort of discussion, though I suspect the top sealed players will keep their secrets to themselves and the newbies will ignore the possibility of strategy in sealed... Maybe the rest of us can learn from each other... Feel free to laugh at the sealed rating in my .sig, I've played in exactly two sanctioned sealed tourneys :) Email replies always appreciated, forgive the rambling... -- TJ Pitts - Madmart on IRC "Saving Dominia's Forests, One Orcish Lumberjack at a Time" Forests saved so far... 1893 and counting Original Member - Team Fruity-Ass My weak DCI ratings: (someday I'll stop taking fun decks to tourneys) World USA Texas San Antonio 1706 Type II - t-#2885 t-#1498 t-#72 #6 1670 Sealed - t-#2926 t-#1890 #90 #1 1736 Type I - t-#468 t-#326 #10 #2