u/TheVintageCubeChef

The chef is back with another trophy deck for your consideration!

Pack 1 was a bit all over the place signal wise but Pack 2 and Pack 3 I was rewarded for sticking to my bomb and got paid off with so many uncommons (15 in deck +3 rares). Deck felt so oppressive after turn 3 and the double scroll-smith with helping hand was a pretty fun synergy. I got to cast helping hand 4 times in a row one game and it turns out if you do that it's pretty great!

Flashback and steal the show are also in my sideboard but I felt they weren't great in this deck given the low count of instants and sorceries and my general desire to empty the graveyard. Would you have run either?

Full draft on my channel alongside all the games! Under the same name as I am here :D

I struggle to believe anyone else in my pod was playing the deck. I have 3 more 2 drops in the sideboard including an additional mascot. I know my rank regressed since I took a break after MagicCon but this is still silly. Got passed all the rares except for the prof and all were 3+ picks deep into a pack 2 or 3. Full draft and games are on my YT if you wanna watch the poor souls who had to face this curve!

Would you have run a 4th mascot over my other options? With all the surveilling docent and stonegilder seemed better but I thought it was a close choice.

Argument: The highest quality deck in a sealed pool is not always the best deck for winning.

A few weeks ago I made This Post and about how to tackle the SOS limited meta. In it and the video analysis I did on my channel, I made some strong claims about the Strixhaven limited environment and how to best approach it. The thesis of which was that in a format with exactly two dominant decks, your deck should always either be one of them OR specifically tuned to beat one or both of them. Last week at Magic Con Vegas I competed at my first ever Limited Championship Qualifier and got to put my own theories to the test and the results were awesome! The full video going over my sealed pool (I kept it of course), the deck I built, and my notes from all 8 rounds of sealed can be found in this video but I wanted to give those that prefer to read a recap as well!

Context:

The Limited Championship is a new tourney series that follows a similar structure to the pro tour with the core difference being that EVERY step of the tourney is either sealed or draft. There are many ways to get invites to the championship next year but the main way is through qualifier events at magic cons. They feature 8ish rounds of sealed before a cut to top 32 where it become single elimination draft. The winner of each pod gets an invite!

My Goal:

This was my first time ever competing in a tournament level competitive event for MTG since the pro tour never interested me given my 100% dedication to limited. This new series is right up my alley. As a realist, my goal was to prize, which meant reaching top 128 in the sealed rounds. Top 64 got better prizing and of course top 32 made it to day 2. I figured I would be at a disadvantage compared to people used to the long form tourney and much stricter ruleset so I set my goals accordingly!

My Sealed Pool:

Bad. Immediately apparent that this was not a pool where I would have advantage against even the average pool for the event. As I opened my cards I was already struggling to identify a clear lane but I had prepared too much to just give up from the start! I came into the event with a plan and even if it didn't work I wanted to put it to the test. If you want to assess it yourself look here. I also ran a contest over the last week for my community to see what people would have built from the pool so if you want to challenge yourself before you read on, take a stab at the deck you would have made and comment it or send it to me in my discord!

I built many versions of the pool in the shockingly short time you are given to submit your deck. As a reminder, events of this level require you to submit a list of your exact starting deck. Although you can sideboard for games 2/3, game 1 must always begin with that exact list of cards so no pressure! I quickly realized I did not have a refined aggro deck in silverquill or Lorehold in my pool which eliminated playing pure aggro from the consideration. A lack of any one drops or signpost 2 drops made that gameplan too weak. Although I had the red capstone, the deck had little way to deal with the powerful greed decks of the format and would easily lose to the alternate win-cons so many people would open and play like Mathemagics and traumatic critique. The greedier deck wins the greed v greed matchup and I just did not have the rares, interaction, or converge uncommons to support that strategy.

This meant I had to build a non-meta deck, and per my own advice the only winning non-meta deck is NOT a school but a strategy: pure tempo. Every card needed to be proactive to both the board or enable you to keep with the real aggro powerhouses of the format. The built in school engines and strategies are too slow unless hyper refined (something I have only really seen in draft not sealed). Efficient removal and early game to ward off low curve silverquill and lorehold decks and an aggressive gameplan to put pressure on the greed decks was all I cared about. If I was going to win, I was going to have to force uncomfortable board states and make my opponent have the right answers at the right time. It also meant I was playing with risk and relying heavily on strong starts that snowball the game.

I make an interesting argument for this deck and build: The highest quality deck in a sealed pool is not always the best deck for winning.

Looking at my pool, it is clear that the deck I ran is not using all the best cards I opened. Purely based on stats and card quality a midrange Jeskai build would likely have a higher average card quality and it is the deck most of my community submitted. But it has a pretty huge issue: It matches up terribly into the greed deck AND the hyper Aggro decks. I scrapped it in favor of a more lean and proactive mardu build focused on forcing out interaction early and then winning off a powerful mid-game threat. Never letting off the gas and forcing my opponent to respect cards I didn't necessarily have in my deck. If I was going to beat powerful meta sealed pools, this deck at least gave me a chance to do it!

Funny enough, this deck does quite poorly into the traditional engine strategies for each of the schools. Simple, 2 color decks with build arounds will make my weak removal package struggle and will be able to accrue more value than I can. But that's not the meta. The meta is greed and hyper aggro so that is what I built this deck to face!

The Games:

My predictions were all correct! In 8 rounds of sealed I played against 5 versions of greed decks (3+ colors with 1 or more late game single card win condition) and 3 versions of white based aggro (1 silverquill, 1 lorehold, 1 silverquill splashing (maybe incorrectly) for 2 blue bomb rares).

This post would be SO long if I covered all the games and matches but to summarize: my deck did exactly what I built it to do. It stole game after game from under bomby greedy decks and was able to battle in the trenches against the pure aggro game plan! My rares were often not the difference makers, as I won many games off of efficient curve outs and saving key removal for game winning swings. Almost every match went to game 3 as I had to mulligan aggressively to guarantee high tempo curves. In total I went 6-2, just barely missing top cut after all the 6-1s in the final round realized if they all drew they would all make top 32. As I explain in the video my tie breakers werent great but my record meant I prized (full SOS draft box with a placement around 50th) and with the sealed pool I opened this was certainly an over-performance! My two losses were to the refined aggro strategies and both came down to the game 3 under 5 health wire!! From what I can tell, both the people I lost to were in the 6-1-1 group that made day 2 and rightfully so as they played very well and had great pools to go with it!

I hope my experiences give you a little more faith in the SOS format and that it really has a lot more to offer than just the two meta decks! I will respond to any and all questions you have about the run and my view of the meta and would love to know how you would have tackled the sealed pool!!

Edit to add another way to view the sealed pool: https://sealeddeck.tech/ccoaiCyhRE

Full draft will be on my channel tomorrow but this deck was the grindiest thing I think I have ever played. Most games were won off either double traumatic critiquing through the Wisdom of the Ages / Pigment Wrangler. Even got to OTK an opponent for 21 to the dome! This format is tough but so so fun!!

I have seen a lot of discussion here, in discords, and amongst content creators on a variety of platforms regarding struggles with lanes and being in the right deck for SOS draft. This format is tough, and there are many factors that contribute to it being a complex set to navigate and many of them boil down to two core factors IMO:

1. This is one of if not the most dedicated 5 color pair deck we have seen to date. Not only is there less overlap between the 5 supported color pairs (no 3 color rares, off color pair lands, or hybrid cards) but there are 10 non-rare gold cards for each college. This makes lanes feel very rigid and the decision to jump out of one and into another a high risk endeavor that can sink your entire draft. Not jumping lanes can be just as large a disaster if you are getting cut or the cards just aren't being opened for your school.
2. Maximum greed 5 color piles are very real and have great match-ups into the slower school strategies. This makes for games where your in-lane deck and engine both looses in the early game to hyper aggro decks with open lanes AND to the late game value pile of converge, even when you drafted how your school seems to be built. These greed decks pilfer key cards from some schools while both enabling and getting crushed by the more aggressive 2 color schools (WR and BW) and yet you see them in many games and they make up a large share of drafted decks.

So what should you do about it? How do you even approach such a polarized meta? I posted a video this morning covering what a draft meta is and why you should care, along with more data and explanation of the below if you are interested in more: https://youtu.be/q50dRwj2Xck?si=g-FQjTKz5zadg1MT

• Play into the meta!
  • In a split meta like this, standing in the middle is dangerous. Drafting a value pile without access to all the converge and multicolor win cons will leave you with a weaker deck that can easily get out greeded in games. It also struggles often against dedicated curve outs in BW and RW that want to prevent you from ever getting to use your value- truly the worst of both worlds!
  • Instead, commit early to one of the two poles and stick to it. The better is the aggro deck but it requires a more open lane and for you to get the critical mass of premium 1s, 2s, and 3s to prevent fighting the overwhelming late game temur+ piles will barf onto the board from turn 5 on. Generally in the greed deck match up the greediest deck wins. More converge and one off color sources with higher curves wins when neither player intends to really start the game until turn 4, 5, 6.
• Counter the meta!
  • 2 color decks are all still viable, but not the way the top of the box school guide recommends. All of them thrive in aggressive tempo oriented shells. Yes, even Quandrix! Play creature focused, disruptive, and then rely on either counter magic or premium interaction to push through hit after hit with your early curve!
  • These lean tempo decks get the privilege to play their pip committal cheap commons and uncommons ON CURVE and with impunity. They require less picks for fixing and shouldnt be as worried about disruption that is not multi-purpose to dealing with both aggro and greed piles. Bounce spells, tap down effects, and a low curve will allow you to brawl with aggro AND bull rush greed
  • It is SO important in a game you identify early which deck you are playing against so you dont get swept away by aggro or leave too much space for piles to go late. This is a legit tough draft format even when you draft well so it is a great proving ground to get better!

Hope this helps some! I will be looking at and responding to comments so feel free to contribute your thoughts as well and ask questions! We are all students of the game and I am constantly looking to get better at analysis as well!