Today I played the Mega Last Chance Trial - RIXalan Sealed Deck format and a Chaos Sealed.
The Trial was for a chance to get byes in the main event, which is also Sealed. It was good practice for me because:
- It was only my second time playing RIXalan (that's my personal nickname for Ixalan + Rivals of Ixalan), and my first time since the prerelease.
- It was my first time playing a "Competitive REL" (rules enforcement level) event.
Since the main event is both of those things, the Trial was practice as much as anything for me.
At Competitive REL, deck registration consists of each player opening and quickly going through their packs while being observed by their registration partner to make sure they don't have the wrong number of cards at any rarity (you have literally one minute to do this), then each player passing their deck to their partner to be entered onto a checklist sheet. Then you count again to make sure everything is right, and give the checklist and cards back to their owner. You build your deck and write down what cards are in your deck on the checklist, then you turn your checklist in. Then you have to play exactly that deck for game 1 each round, after which you can sideboard anything you want. During this whole process, you're not allowed to talk to your neighbors about their cards because that could be illegal assistance.
I won't go through all the deckbuilding, but suffice to say I wasn't extremely impressed with my rares and their synergy with my other cards, and I had terrible mana fixing so it was not easy to play 3 colors. So I realized I had a ton of vampires and good black/white removal, and I made as aggressive a deck as I could. I went with 15 lands because if your deck isn't bomby and you don't have any mana sinks for the late game, you really want every card you draw to be as impactful as possible.
Here's the main deck:
The goal was to flood the board with early attackers, use removal to chip away, then close out the game with a flier or Gruesome Fate (which is a horrible card no one should ever play).
Some mini combos from this deck!
Tendershoot Dryad was a card I would definitely have splashed with better mana fixing, but I held it out and used a sideboard package to play it in later games (taking out 4 spells and 1 Plains):
As it turned out, I never managed to play it. But that's ok because I did pretty well!
Round 1 vs. J. Win in 3 against Jund (black-red-green) Goodstuff! Got a kill with Gruesome Fate! 2-1.
Round 2 vs. A. Win in 2 games against Blue-Green stuff! I was on fire this round. 2-0.
Round 3 vs. P. I finally met my match against Red-Green Dinosaurs. He had some wicked combos with enrage mechanic. 0-2.
This was a single elimination event, so I was done after the loss.
Matches: 2-1. Games 4-3. Not bad for this deck, especially since I mulliganed I think 4 times. My 6 card hands were pretty good.
Here are my rares. Terrible value in this pool. Hadana's Climb is a couple dollars, and the rest is under a dollar. I also got 100 prize tickets, which is about $15.
Then I ran to the front and barely registered in time for Chaos Sealed! This is sealed deck using a semi-random pile of packs. They gave each player 2 groups of 3 packs. Each group had 1 expensive pack and 2 cheap packs. The Masters sets were particularly good for this because they tend to have higher quality cards, but you can get lucky with any set.
Here are my packs. I've only played with about half of these sets before, so scanning the less familiar cards was challenging.
After dithering around a bit, I decided Battlegrace Angel was my best bomb for winning games, and I built this monstrosity of a deck (it varied some, but this was my favorite version):
The good news was that it was really hard to lose with this deck because it has a ton of removal and lifegain, and Typhoid Rats, Dutiful Thrull, and Creepy Doll are really hard for opponents to attack through. Basilica Screecher gives a ton of value over the long game and is a ridiculous common. The bad news was it was really hard to win, because most of my creatures attack for 1 or 2, and people usually killed my Angel. The Thirsting Axe is wacky -- it usually makes people block, but because my creatures are weak, they usually trade in combat even with the +4/+0. Again I didn't have much in the way of mana fixing, so Tasigur was just an underpowered Gurmag Angler in this deck, whereas if I had been playing green or blue he might have been awesome.
Round 1 vs. A. A was playing a blue-green deck with some good combos but not a lot of individually powerful cards. We drew in 3 games after going to time. 1-1-1
Round 2 vs. X. X had some dangerous stuff in his white-blue, including Westvale Abbey and Invocation of Saint Traft. We traded wins and then went to time and drew. 1-1-1. I made a mistake in Game 2 that might have been the difference, forgetting one activation of the Bat's extort ability (X hit 1 life in that game but won).
Round 3 vs. C. C was 0-2 and didn't care much about winning, but his deck was a pretty reasonable pile of 4-color stuff. I got it in 2 very long games (if he had won the second game, we might have had yet another draw). 2-0.
With a 1-0-2 record, I got 70 tickets (about $10.50). Here are my rares, foils, and money cards. Tasigur is about $1.50, Remand is about $5, and the rest are all less than $1. So it wasn't a great value, but it was a ton of fun. Side note, I tried to make the double Cellar Doors work at first, but I quickly realized that spending 3 mana for about a 40% chance of making a zombie is a bad deal.
I'll be back with more after playing in the main event!
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