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I could not get out to the Saturday Alara Reborn Pre-Release but did manage to make it out to the Sunday one. I was happy to find that we did have more than enough players (to make it a DCI sanctioned event) and several players who were playing in the tourney the previous day but simply could not get enough of the new card goodness.
Here is the Match summary ( 2 - 2 ) . . .
Match One (Stewart) : Game 1 - Win, Game 2 - Win.
Match Two (Brian) : Game 1 - Win, Game 2 - Loss, Game 3 - Win.
Match Three (Mike) : Game 1 - Win, Game 2 - Loss, Game 3 - Loss.
Match Four (Pat) : Game 1 - Loss, Game 2 - Win, Game 3 - Loss.
Winning decks in this tournament were typically a Jund build - unfortunately, I had put together and Bant deck. I am totally ineffective in the sealed environment but must admit that I may have played only less than a dozen times or so. Having said that, I must also admit that I am seeing some marginal improvement. I thoroughly enjoy building decks and play-testing these in the constructed standard environment but realise that variety is good.
You can check out this video summary of the Alara Reborn Pre-Release and see the notes below.
This is the build I went with . . .
BANT BUILD (G/W/U) - 40 Cards
17 LANDS : 5 x Forrest, 6 x Plains, 5 x Island, Seaside Citadel
1 Drops : Valiant Guard, Court Homonculus, Might of Alara2 Drops : Knotvine Palladin, Steward of Valeron, Esper Stormblade, Cylian Elf, Call to Heel, Aven Squire
3 Drops : 2 x Rhox Warmonk, Lorescale Coatle, Winged Coatl, Guardian of Akarasa, Parasitic Strix, Obelisk of Bant
4 Drops : 2 x Bant Sojourners5 Drops : Waveskimmer Aven
6 Drops : Sigiled Behemoth
7 Drops : Rockcaster Platoon, Yoked Ploughbeast
8 Drops : Kederekt Leviathan
Hindsight is a beeotch - After the event, I went home, grabbed a beverage and looked at the card pool again. This is what I should have played . . .
ALTERNATE JUND BUILD (B/R/G) - 40 Cards
17 Lands : 6 x Swamps, 6 x Mountains, 5 x Forests
1 Drops : Hissing Iguanar, Shadowfeed2 Drops : Jund Hackblade, 2 x Goblin Outlander, Maniacal Rage, Dragon fodder
3 Drops : Nyxathid, Knotvine Mystic, Matca Rioters, Savage Hunger, Branching Bolt, Wandering Goblins, Dark Temper, Llightning Talons, Resounding Thunder, Pestilent Kathari
4 Drops : Scavenger Drake, Sewn Eye Drake, Singe-Mind Ogre5 Drops : Voracious Dragon
6 Drops : Morbid Bloom, Valley Rannet
Hey - I might even make it out to the proper Alara Reborn Release event (because I am salivating for that Knight of New Alara) and be much wiser for the above silliness. I did bring home a pack I won which provided me a Filigree Angel so I guess the day was not a complete loss.
. . . by-the-way - Does anyone else think that the art on both pre-release cards is worse than the regular cards ?
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7 comments:
ARB is crazy difficult to build out of (at least I thought so). I'm a very visual person, so when every card is essentially the same gold color, my mind wigs out and I can't seem to focus. Did any cards stick out that you were playing?
Also, no Borderposts?! :-(
I played in an ARB tourney on Saturday with a full thirty participants! I ended up with a mixed Naya/Jund build...I don't remember what I ran. The new cards that impressed me the most that I got to actually play with were: Trace of Abundance, Caldera Hellion, Captured Sunlight, and Marisi's Twinclaws. Favorite plays of my day: Cascading a Lightning Talons onto the Twinclaws and using a Cavern Thoctar and Soul's Fire to take out the last six life of my opponent. I was at two life. Woo! I went 3-2 got tenth out of the thirty and won two packs.
Wah - no borderposts. I guess what I was most impressed with the 2 Pancake Flippers and the Knotvine Palladin, other than that it was a blur . . . still kicking myself - should have went with B/R/G Jund.
I opened a Maelstrom Nexus, and tried to build a 5C Esper-centric deck around that.
First Round went great.
Second Round was a draw.
The rest, I lost.
Why? Not enough fatties.
I got killed by Equipment *three times*. Once with a Loxodon War Armadillo alone, once with the Armadillo AND Mage Slayer on the same critter (swing, you take 6, you can't block, take 6 more, I gain 12.), once with Unscythe, Killer of Kings.
ARB doesn't have near enough artifact kill with the number of artifacts, and if you don't play Jund or Naya fatties, forget it.
You're gonna die.
I loved bituminous blast. I was so lucky that I had THREE of them in my pack and TWO terminates too! The Cascade effect seems to be pretty awesome. One question, how come my pre-release tournament was a sealed deck built using 3 Shards and 3 Alara Reborn packs, while yours is 2,2,2? And yes, its funny that pretty much everyone was building a Jund/Naya build. haha
Three Bituminous Blasts and Two Terminates ?!?! - That kind of luck is NOT natural - half of me hates you and half of me wants to be you when you opened those packs. ;-) Very Nice !
HAHA. Yes I loved my luck. The guy who opened it said, "who ever gets this after the shuffle is one lucky ****er". Speaking of getting killed the same way over and over again, the card I came to hate during the tournament was Colossal Might. So many times I went "bituminous blast, you're guy is dead", and he goes, "nope" and tapes just TWO mana and pumps his guy up. Annoyingly cheap and crazy
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