Gearing up for GP Houston Pt. 1

Ok guys, I’m finally at a point where I can start writing again. Sorry for the long absence but sometimes things come up. Since I’ve last written several things have happened Prerelease/Release of Dragon’s Maze, Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze, and most recently the release of Modern Masters. My original thought on my first post back was going to be my thoughts on Dragon’s Maze and my picks for best and worst cards, but with Grand Prix Houston coming up this weekend and just having my wisdom teeth removed I decided to sit around in my drugged state and crack some packs. So today, tomorrow, and Friday I’m going to walk you guys through my thought process behind making the decks out of the card pools I’ve opened. Each day will be a different sort of card pool in its immediate representation in what kind of deck to build, to me at least. I’m sure that when you guys read this some of you might see a different deck to build, and I’ll be interested to hear what you guys came up with.

So moving on, today will be a card pool that has some mild difficulty to it. First I want to start by saying that when I play block sealed I look for two kinds of decks. Either a Grixis agro list maining Rakdos cards while splashing blue for some good Izzet combat tricks, or a Naya agro/midrange list. So when I opened my first Dragon’s Maze pack and saw that it had Fluxcharger, Nivix Cyclops, and Weapon Surge I was pumped, especially when the second Dragon’s Maze pack had another Fluxcharger and Weapon Surge things were really looking good. I even managed to stumble onto a Rubblebelt Maaka and Maze Rusher. So by the time I finished going through my Dragon’s Maze packs I knew that I was firmly into Izzet colors and was looking for my third color to splash for. While I wanted to keep my grixis strategy the only good black cards to make use of my Izzet creature from Dragon’s Maze would be Far//Away and Fatal Fumes, meaning that I would be open to running RUG if a good amount of decent Gruul cards came our way in the Gatecrash packs, which would go great with the Zhur-Taa Druid.

"Play cards in sealed that look cool" - Brad Nelson

Once I moved into the Gatecrash packs it seemed that RUG might be the better choice for the deck. I pulled several good green creatures and a Predator’s Rapport, a Madcap Skills, a Frilled Oculus, and a WreckingOgre. Besides those, nothing really of note for our colors besides a pretty iffy Sage’s Row Denizen that eventually made it into the deck.  Even though there were some good green cards I was still planning on attempting to force Grixis after I had all of my packs open, but I was still open to going RUG if that was the better deck that presented itself.

After opening the Return to Ravnica packs it was a pretty easy choice. While there weren’t very many good black cards pulled from the RtR packs, I was gifted with a nice blood crypt along with some more blue and red spells like Tower Drake, Frostburn Weird, Lobber Crew, and possibly one of my favorite cards from RtR draft Dynacharge.  So while there is a good argument to play RUG instead of Grixis, there was one good argument for playing Grixis after the RtR packs and that was the Blood Crypt. Looking through most of the other cards in the pool there weren’t many good mana fixers for the deck besides the Blood Crypt and an Izzet Cluestone.  With this in mind I decided to make the splash for black since I don’t like the sound of going a third color without some form of fixing seeing as though the main colors don’t even have mana support. 

And the Demon Lord said, "Thou shalt have mana fixing"!

Alright now onto the actual deck, if you missed the link above the card pool and deck can be found here. After gushing so hard about them earlier on the Fluxchargers, Nivix Cyclops, and the Weapon Surges had to be instant includes. Adding Cloudfin Raptor gives some reach as well as a random chance of a one drop and with how most of the deck is going to go, it will be able to consistently evolve.  A card that I feel got a lot of well-deserved love in RtR limited was Lobber Crew, and I was glad to have one in this pool. While I wasn’t playing very many gold cards, it’s still a good body with an ability that shouldn’t go unnoticed.  Other solid inclusions in the deck are Maze Rusher, Rubblebelt Maaka, Wrecking Ogre, and Hired Torturer. The three red creatures represent good bodies, and in the case of the Maaka and Ogre their blood rush offer a couple more combat tricks to help push through the last few points of damage. While Hired Torturer works as a good mana sink if the match gets taken into the late game.  For instants as ways to utilize our Fluxchargers and Nivix Cyclops the deck has a Dimir Charm, a Dynacharge, a Far//Away, and two Weapon Surges. Three of the instants are good combat tricks with low overload cost that can make what seems like the worst combat lean in our favor, with Dimir Charm being both a good utility and kill spell alongside Far//Away. As a few couple random additions I threw in a Civic Saber and a Madcap Skills just as cheap and effective options for extra damage. Lastly for land it has a Blood Crypt, seven Islands, six Mountains, and three Swamps giving seven sources apiece on the deck’s main colors and four sources for the splash color. 

Wescoe's claimed only addition to his ProTour winning deck

The deck looks very solid and tested well against a RUG deck my friend threw together with another pool of cards, and managed to pull off a curve of Cloudfin Raptor -> Frostburn Weird -> Frilled Oculus -> Nivix Cyclops. While I know that is as close to a dream hand as the deck could get I was certainly very strong especially when I screwed my opponent out of needed land with Dimir Charm and also equipped my weird with Civic Saber. However, despite performing well there are some cards I would drop from the list Crosstown Courier was just a card for me to throw in and fill up some space, but with Madcap Skills he could definitely serve some use. The same goes for Sage’s Row Denizen, there certainly are a good number of blue creatures in the list to make use of the ability I just don’t think it would be a winning strategy without some Dimir mill support. Another card I would drop would be the Roustabout. I put him in the list because of his regeneration could keep him around almost indefinitely as a blocker, but depending on the matchup he would probably be dropped for another Hired Torturer.

Well guys that’s the first sealed pool and the deck I made from it. Tell me what you guys think of what I built and how you would have built it differently out of the same card pool.

Talk to you later,

Zack

Praying this could never happen