Subject: report - Urza's Saga Prerelease - Atlanta Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 10:07:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Kevin Denelsbeck To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com This is a report for the Urza's Saga Prerelease held at Neutral Ground-Atlanta on September 26, 1998. I attended with my friend Skip Faulkner and his brother Chris. They live in southern Atlanta (Jonesboro?), right by the airport, a goodly distance from Alpharetta where NG-Atlanta is. However, I live even farther away (Carrollton), so I spent the night at their place and we roused ourselves at about 6:15am. After the usual preparations, we were in the car and got to the shopping center at around 8:30am. The prerelease was held in some vacant shop space in the same shopping center as NG-Atlanta. New Wave was running the tourney in 100-person "flights", and even with our relatively early arrival we didn't make the first flight. It turns out that New Wave had actually been running tourneys all night long, starting at midnight I think, so there were some weary Urza's Saga veterans in our flight. Things got rolling relatively quickly. We registered decks but ended up using the same decks to expedite matters. Here's the deck I used: 3 Veil of Birds 2 Pendrell Drake 1 Zephid 1 Hermetic Study 1 Rescind 1 Zephid's Embrace 1 Goblin Patrol 2 Goblin Raider 1 Goblin War Buggy 2 Viashino Outrider 1 Shivan Hellkite 1 Shower of Sparks 1 Fiery Mantle 1 Jagged Lightning 1 Fault Line 2 Symbiosis 1 Blasted Landscape 7 Island 7 Mountain 4 Forest Some stuff I left out: In Black, I could've included a few good creatures (Hollow Dogs, Phyrexian Ghoul) and perhaps used my Pestilence. I also had Victimize and Vile Requiem. In Blue, I had Veiled Serpent and Lingering Mirage - not a bad combo, as sealed-deck goes - but I wanted my deck a bit more lean and self-sufficient than that. Green in Urza's Saga has great creatures. I got Hidden Spider, Hidden Ancients, Treetop Rangers, Titania's Chosen, and Argothian Swine. Venomous Fangs and Lull were also tempting choices, but I decided to make my Green commitment very light, using only the Symbioses, which are schweet in sealed. In White, I got a solid selection of useful weenies (Opal Caryatid, Monk Realist, Sanctum Custodian among others) and spells (2 Congregates, a Brilliant Halo, Absolute Grace), but I hardly ever play White in sealed and this day was no exception. I only left out a couple of Red spells: Falter and Destructive Urge. Both were tough choices to leave out, but I like leanness! I was thinking of giving a complete rundown of the round-by-round action, but my notes and memory are not detailed enough to give a good account. I ended up going 6-1 with the deck, losing in the 6th round to Lynn Miller, who spanked me silly for mana-flooding in both games. (Since I was running 19 lands out of 41 cards, I suppose I was due at some point, even after the mulligan reshuffles.) Suffice it to say that Grady Smith won our flight, going 7-0 with some Dragon Blood tech. For going 6-1, I got 9 booster packs; in retrospect, I wish the payoff had been bigger. It was a lot of time and work, though admittedly fun. My friends who dropped out and joined side tourneys (@$15 for a starter and two boosters) came out ahead, I think. What I'll do is give some anecdotal impressions from the gameplay. Veil of Birds - If you've been looking for Flying Men replacements, these guys might be the ticket. With 3 of them, I was usually plopping one down very early in each game, and we all know that flying is always strong in a limited environment. With the Symbioses in my deck, the Birds did a lot of damage, mostly of a-nick-here,-a-gouge-there nature. In sealed, it's hard for your opponent to avoid animating these guys. In constructed, a permission deck may be able to avoid it but most decks won't. A pretty good creature for U. Zephid - VERY tough to deal with. Occasionally a problem for its owner as well, since you can't use Symbiosis and other great creature enhancements, but you can't have it all, can you? Probably too expensive for Constructed unless you're using Oath of Druids or reanimation, for which cases there are probably better choices. Hermetic Study - Fire Whip replacement, pretty much. Obviously, very strong in sealed. Might be useful with some of the nifty creatures in US that untap easily (Horseshoe Crab, Morphling) or have a special ability when dealing damage (Order of Yawgmoth). I can imagine a Hermetic Horseshoe deck that could be absolutely horrendous, especially if you drop a Robe of Mirrors on the Crab. We might finally have the Tim deck that is tourney-worthy. Rescind - MVP for me. Often the key element in the finishing stroke. Highly recommended for sealed. Zephid's Embrace- Putting this on a creature usually meant game for me. However, I didn't run into the anti-flying tech that Green is flush with. Echo creatures in general - I don't think we'll be seeing too many of these in Constructed. Sure, they're cheap(er), but having to pay the cost again is a major impediment to early situational development. One thing that becomes interesting in sealed is that you have to hedge your bets early in the game if you're paying the Echo cost. For example, since you have to pay the cost in your upkeep, you may have to make an educated guess about which land (if any) to leave untapped. Pick the wrong one and you may be unable to cast the creature that you draw. This happened a few times to me and makes for interesting little decisions. Goblin War Buggy - Sort of a Ving Rhames card: funny and strong! Viashino Outrider - Perhaps my best creature. A midrange fatty that is worth the Echo, and is hard to deal with in US sealed. A Zephid's-Embraced Outrider won me a game or two. Shivan Hellkite - Never got it out. Pretty tough customer. Watch out for Confiscate, though. Shower of Sparks - Quite a bargain for R. Recommended for sealed, and might be worth a look in Sligh-type Constructed, for an ultra-lean mana curve. You could always toss the 1 point of creature damage on a Flunky or an Ironclaw. Fiery Mantle and the "endless enchantments" - Extremely strong in sealed, and as Len Blado said, certainly worth examining for Constructed decks using the new Enchantress. Note, however, that causing them to fizzle when cast will put them in the graveyard permanently (they have to hit the graveyard from play to return to their owner's hand). I recommend removing the target in response to the "endless enchantment"'s casting. Fault Line - The Volcanic Geyser of Urza's Saga. Obviously a Real Good Card in sealed, since you can wipe out the opposition during your opponent's discard phase, but I'm not sure it fills much of a niche in Constructed. Symbiosis - Find a way to include this card in your sealed deck, if you should be lucky enough to get it in your deck or boosters. This may become The One Card That Must Always Be Considered When Attacking Or Blocking In Urza's Cycle Limited. It took down more creatures for me than Fault Line, and almost amounts to Green direct damage. The Green creatures - Urza's Saga has some freakishly big creatures for reasonable costs if you're willing to play Echo and sleeping enchantments. Winding Wurm pounded me into hamburger in one game (fortunately, in one of the other games in the match, I drew a Rescind ). Jamie Wakefield has complained (yet again) about the lack of creature removal for Green in the new set. I think the answer is simple: volume! What I mean is that Green's creature removal is its own (massive) creatures! A great way to get rid of your opponent's creatures is to have them thrown down as speed bumps in front of your dangerously big fatties. The green creatures in Urza's are better than in previous sets - they're bigger, cheaper, and have useful abilities. The sleeping enchantments alone will cause many an opponent to step extremely lightly, and there is a great cadre of "regular" creatures with various evasion abilities. And the Elves look strong, too. Monogreen creature decks in the new Constructed will be as tough as anything. Cycling - I am fairly pessimistic that this will see much use in either Limited or Constructed. More specifically, while plenty of cards that have Cycling will find their ways into decks (perhaps exclusively sealed ones), I don't think the Cycling itself will be used much. I had 3 Cycling cards in my deck (Blasted Landscape and 2 Pendrell Drakes) and I used Cycling twice, both times being a Landscape and once because I was in dire trouble and needed the card. Perhaps the intention for Cycling in Constructed was to give you "options", but in general the mechanism seems weak. The Fluctuator might make it tractable, but I remain skeptical until I see it work. GENERAL THOUGHTS ON THE SET For Limited, much better balance than Rath Cycle. As someone sitting near me said, Rath is often about who gets the shadows. The US cards reward skill and play nuance better, and the Echo cards offer some respite if mana hose strikes. (As a matter of fact, if you run a lot of Echo, you might want to skimp on your mana a little since you won't be able to fully utilize it anyway. Hmmm.) For Constructed, hard to say yet. I think Show and Tell is gonna be big. I think Worship+(Hawkeater Moth|Zephid) will be a pretty tough lock to break, especially with backup countermagic. Get ready for Millstone/Grindstone/Whetstone decks. Get ready for amazing combo decks. In other words, strongly consider playing Blue. Blue Weenie/Merfolk might be the most generally competitive deck. PROPS All my opponents were cool. Skip and Chris for the room, board, and ride. New Wave for running a pretty efficient tournament. The poor Hooters girls who got stuck on wing-duty at a Magic tournament. Skip and I couldn't decide if it was charity work or perhaps some kind of plea-bargain arrangement. Matt Wilson for signing my cards. SLOPS Only one. A judge, who shall remain unnamed, was kind of a jerk. After we were seated for one round, he made some hoarse announcement that was drowned out by the chatter around me. I had been paying attention to him because he had already issued warnings to people who started playing too early, so I wanted to be good-and-sure of what he said, but it was simply impossible to hear him above the ambient noise. So I got his attention and asked, "I'm sorry, judge, what did you say?" He gets this aggravated look on his face, walks around the table until he's directly behind me, and from about 3 inches away *yells* "I-SAID-YOU-MAY-BEGIN!!!!!!" It was deafening, humiliating, and totally uncalled-for. I realize that he probably was tired of answering stupid questions, but I didn't much appreciate his assumption that I wasn't paying attention. Later on, after leaving the building to find some friends who were eating next door, I made the mistake, upon my return, of asking this judge how much time was left in the current round. Once more, the bereaved look, and he replies, "AGAIN, there are 10 minutes left." I didn't ask him any more questions that day, and will avoid him in the future, if at all possible.