Ravnica Allegiance Prerelease 2019-01-19

Prerelease time!

The guilds this time around are Azorius (white-blue), Orzhov (white-black), Simic (blue-green), Rakdos (black-red), and Gruul (red-green).  I chose Azorius partly because I like blue-white in Limited and partly because it was the least popular guild, along with Orzhov.  The spikes were taking Gruul because it looks like the strongest guild at face value, and the money drafters were taking Simic because apparently Vannifar is the chase prerelease promo this time around.

For once I remembered to take a picture of my seeded pack before mixing it in with everything else.

Every prerelease kit has 5 normal packs and one pack that is only cards from your guild (or guildless cards in your color pair).  In addition to a rare or mythic promo, you are guaranteed to get a Guildgate and a Locket, and it's possible that you always get a Guildmage also but I'm not sure.  I was sad not to see Azorius Knight-Arbiter or Lawmage's Binding, which I consider the best two gold commons in Azorius.  In the end, I only played 7 of these 15 cards, while staying in guild with my deck, so it wasn't a great seed from that standpoint.  For comparison, I played 28 cards that I opened (and 12 basic lands), so the remaining 21 cards I used were from my other 5 packs, for an average of just over 4 cards per pack.  This is still better than my previous prerelease where I switched colors and didn't play my seeded guild at all (although I switched from white-green to black-green, so cards from my seeded pack did still go into my deck).

Usually the rares play a big part in what I build in Sealed, so lets see what rares I got (plus one inconsequential foil common):

I actually had a Breeding Pool and traded it for Godless Shrine after the tournament.  Emergency Powers is flashy but in my opinion not good in Sealed (and other people seconded this).  But the Angel is a big time card and the Lumbering Battlement is strong.

I ended up building a Bant deck with green as the splash.

Not including Tome of the Guildpact, which doesn't come on until turn 5 or later, I had 10 blue sources, 8 white sources, and 5 green sources, which is good enough to reasonably support Azorius and a few Simic cards.  Biogenic Upgrade is such a powerful closer with fliers that I put it in even with the double green cost.  If I had gotten better removal, I probably would have played a more controlling deck, but I felt like I had to splash in the two copies of Applied Biomancy and try to play a more tempo-oriented game instead.  This led to me cutting some really good cards like 2 copies of Impassioned Orator and high drops like Sphinx of the Guildpact and Archway Angel, and keeping cheaper cards with activated abilities instead for late game mana sinks.  I don't think I necessarily built the best deck from this pool, but I do think I identified its strengths well and capitalized on them, as borne out by the gameplay.

High Alert was the one card I don't think was optimal, but I just really wanted to play it, and its activated ability had a chance to make up for the fact that it doesn't boost many of my creatures very much (and hurts the Senate Griffins).

Here are my extra sleeved cards/sideboard:

The top 3 were the main ones I used in games, depending on opposing creature sizes.

Round 1 vs. Gruul (splashing blue).
He had some good Gruul beaters, but he was mostly using riot to give haste instead of a +1/+1 counter, which I think is incorrect most of the time.  I had just enough taps and bounces to beat him at 1 life in game 1.  In game 2 I got off to a better start and won easily after he decided to turn my Senate Guildmage into a 3/3 Frog Lizard token that he didn't have a plan for.  Win 2-0.

Round 2 vs. Rakdos.
This was the round that got away.  Game 1 he had a bunch of little deathtouch creatures and I had a hard time keeping the board clear enough with my minimal removal.  I stayed in the game a long time by drawing extra cards with Tome of the Guildpact, but he answered by drawing 3 cards with Rix Maadi Reveler and I never had a chance to turn the tables.  Game 2 I flashed in Angel of Grace and ate his attacker, then he conceded quickly when he realized he wasn't going to be able to answer the Angel.

Game 3 I got off to a good start with little creatures, and he played a Burning-Tree Vandal with a +1/+1 counter.  On the pivotal turn, I had the 1/3 Gateway Sneak untapped and he had the 3/2 Vandal.  I was holding Applied Biomancy to make the block and win combat.  He cast Rambling Ruin, which meant creatures with 1 power could not block.  I thought I was still ok because I could pump my creature before blocks, so I let it resolve.  He attacked and I cast Applied Biomancy to bounce the Rambling Ruin and pump the Sneak to 2/4.  He said he didn't think I could block, and I immediately called for a judge.  The judge (who I know and trust) looked up some stuff on his phone and said that it wouldn't be able to block because it was too small when the Rambling Ruin resolved.  I accepted it, and didn't block.  Then after we completed the turn cycle and were on my opponent's following turn, the judge came back and said he was wrong, and it worked the way that I thought it did.

Anyhow, despite all that, I was still in position to win with Biogenic Upgrade and 4 creatures.  He swung in with 9 power and I took it down to 8 life, then on my turn he had one or two cards in hand and all his mana up with 8 life himself.  I cast Biogenic Upgrade, thought about my targets a minute, then decided to put all the counters on Senate Courier to minimize the chance that he blew it out with damage based removal, making it 7/10.  My other creatures had 1, 1, and 2 power (and the 2 power one had afterlife).  I gave the owl vigilance with its ability.  I didn't really know what I needed to play around, so I just attacked with all, and he had Get the Point to kill my owl and go down to 4 life, then win on the backswing!  I hadn't seen Get the Point over the course of 3 games, and when he didn't kill the owl in response to the Upgrade, I was pretty confident that he couldn't kill it -- worse case maybe he could flash in Spire Mangler, which I had seen previously, to block it, but it still had vigilance and could stop a lethal attack back.  This loss was on me, and I should have played more conservatively and spread the counters around, or held back at least one more creature to block.  But it was a bitter pill knowing I also would have almost definitely won if my perfectly planned play had been judged correctly several turns earlier.  But that's life and that's Magic, and I'd rather be a gracious loser and learn from my mistakes.  It was a fun and close match.  Loss, 1-2.

Round 3 vs. Rakdos.
This time I was matched up against a kid who was probably 8 - 10 years old.  He knew how to play in a general sense, but he was missing some basics.  He asked me if I wanted to go first, and I nudged us toward rolling dice to decide randomly.  He did a single pile shuffle, and I took his deck and shuffled it a couple times, and then again in the second game, after he told me the top of the deck was random because he hadn't used it and the bottom of the deck was just the cards from the first game ("Why should I shuffle?  Those weren't my good cards so I'd rather not draw them again.").  The gameplay was very lopsided, as I had excellent starts in both games.  First game I got Gateway Sneak and High Alert, and I proceeded to play Guildgates for the next 3 turns and attack for 3 plus a card draw unimpeded.  In the second game I got a 6/7 Lumbering Battlement in play and then put 6 counters on it with Biogenic Upgrade.  Win, 2-0.

Round 4 opponent wanted to split and not play any games because he was going to go do something else, so we rolled the dice and I got the round win and 4 of our 7 prize packs.

So overall it was a good experience.  If I had won Round 2, who knows what I would have faced in Round 3 at 2-0 instead of 1-1, so I'm completely satisfied with the outcome.  I came away with about $33 in card value (promo Emergency Powers ~$10, Angel of Grace ~$15, Godless Shrine ~7, Revival // Revenge ~$1) plus 4 RNA packs, which is good.  The Emergency Powers and Angel could lose value, and Revival // Revenge will eventually be bulk, but Godless Shrine is a card I wanted for Standard and it will hold its value long term.

Thanks for reading!