My colors were pretty evenly split, and I probably could have made a playable deck in almost any combination, so I followed my rares and my dual lands:
Sorin is probably the most game-breaking rare I opened, and I had a few vampires and lifegain synergies to work with:
Sadly, I never got to experience using Sorin's first ability on Bloodthirsty Aerialist, which would have been truly disgusting (two +1/+1 counters per turn), but he still worked well with the other stuff.
Steel Overseer is an unassuming card, but it is about as good as it gets for a 2-drop. It's good on its own, but I put in a few other artifact creatures for the occasional bonus:
Prismite and Anvilwrought Raptor are marginal on their own, but I did like the extra source of multicolored mana in this deck, and the first strike flier was also a nice target for Sorin's first ability.
There were a few other nice interactions in the deck as well, like Gorging Vulture plus Blood from Bone to get a big creature into play and another in hand on turn 4, or Gauntlets of Light plus Griffin Sentinel to get a 5-damage vigilant flier.
Here are the sideboard cards I actually used. I had some others that might have come in for certain matchups, but never did:
They brought back protection from colors and color hosing cards in this set, and it made for a slightly stronger sideboard plan. Noxious Grasp and Unchained Berserker were both great when I needed them. In my deck, Kethis basically reads "3/4" with no other text, so I only wanted him when a 3/4 was good (like against 3/3s).
Brief summary of the gameplay:
Round 1 vs. Temur (blue-red-green) Elementals
This deck had two Voracious Hydras. I played two very competitive games and lost both, but they were excellent games. In the first game I missed a chance to trigger Griffin Protector before attacking for 1 extra damage, and that might have made the difference (he was at 1 life at the end), but he made a similar mistake in the second game by not playing a creature before combat that gave his other creature trample, which allowed me another turn or two. Loss, 0-2.
Round 2 vs. Sultai (blue-black-green) Yarok
I never saw Yarok in play, but that was his promo so he built around its ability. The parts of the deck I faced were not able to keep up with my deck. In the second game, I ended up with one of the most ridiculous board states I've ever had in limited, with Sorin at about 12 loyalty, and Vampire of the Dire Moon, Steel Overseer, and Prismite all with 5 or more +1/+1 counters. Steel Overseer was a 9/9 and I had 44 life when that game ended. Win, 2-0.
Round 3 vs. Jeskai (white-blue-red) Tempo
I rarely expect to see a truly aggressive deck in sealed, but this was a good deck built around cheap fliers, Marauder's Axe, and tap or bounce effects. He got the first game super fast. I sided in a bunch of red cards and 2 mountains to speed up for game 2, and I had a very aggressive start that he couldn't keep up with. In the third game I made a pretty basic planeswalker mistake. He had a 1/1 and a 2/2 flier, and I played Sorin and dropped Epicure of Blood into play with his third ability, essentially trading Sorin for the ability to have a 4/4 on turn 3. I was holding Shock in hand and should have taken 1 turn more to set up my board so that I could have gotten long term value out of Sorin. The game was fairly close but he was pressuring me the whole way. Loss, 1-2.
Round 4 vs. White-Blue Fliers
This was the daughter of a guy who comes to a lot of the prereleases, and she had a pretty strong set of fliers led by Sephara, Sky's Blade and Dungeon Geists. First game I simply had the better draw. Second game she got all the fliers set up and I couldn't handle Sephara when she showed up. Third game I went off with Sorin and she couldn't stop it. Win, 2-1.
So no prize for me at 5-5 in games and 2-2 in matches, but that's fine. I did get some pretty good cards out of my packs, including promo Kaalia at ~$20, Sorin at $16, Lotus Field at $12, Kethis at $6, Scheming Symmetry at $5, and Steel Overseer at $3. Some of those will undoubtedly drop as the set ages, but Steel Overseer is a Modern staple and a few of these are cards that Commander players will want.
One final note on this set: the tokens are great! They've gone to a full art format, and they've even included basic rules information on the back of some of them. Pretty nice!
Thanks for reading!
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