I went to a Lorwyn Pre-Release on Friday. It went well. I went 3-0 in my pod and got 2nd place overall after a cut to top 4. That said I also think I got quite lucky.
If you just want to read and see the deck+pool, click here. Otherwise, I’ll be talking about the whole experience.
Pre-Event Prep
I did a little more prep then I usually do for events, but still not a huge amount. First, I did what I consider the bare minimum: Reading through every card in the set on Scryfall. However, unlike some sets, I did this with a friend. I’ve always found having a second pair of eyes, and a chance to discuss things helps spot interactions or mechanics I might otherwise miss.
One thing this early review did make us do was think about Curious Colossus, and check how exactly it’s effect worked. And while this was completely irrelevant to me, my buddy ended up opening TWO copies of it, and making it a build-around in his pool, something that might not have happened if we hadn’t known it wasn’t temporary.
Next up, we did some test pools on Draft Sim. This is not usually something we do, but we had some time, so we loaded up some Sealed Pools for Lorwyn Eclipsed, built some decks, and put in the time to play two to three games with each. I’m always a bit leary of trying to take too many lessons from a single pool sim, but I think playing a few gave me a much better sense of the format, and the cards in it.
Having said that, here were my key takeaways.
- The lack of any two-color lands felt quite weird after Avatar and Final Fantasy, though to be fair, Edge also only had one fixer below rare in command bridge. In either case, running 3 colors “felt” more risky to me.
- Removal felt much lighter then many other sets in the past. (Below the rare slot at least!) It was hard to tell if this was just our test pools, or removal was just generally at more of premium in general.
- The lack of removal meant that bombs tended to stick around MUCH longer then they might otherwise, making them all the more valuable. Same thing for fliers.
- Red/Blue seemed like a weak pool to build in sealed. (Side note: Having played tonight, I’ve actually revised my opinion on this, mostly because of Tanufel Rimespeaker.)
So, my assumption going into the night was that it would be a bit of a sloggy format populated with some very scary bombs, and less removal then usual.
Deckbuilding and Pool
(To see the full pool, click this link)
After opening my packs, the assumption about removal felt fairly accurate. My kit promo was a Blood Crypt, and normally I’d be be excited about a foil shockland, but not when it’s only worth $10 instead of being an extra playable bomb. I had a single boardwipe in white, 2 red bolts, zero blue counterspells and a single return to hand, two flier killers in green, and 4-ish peices of removal in black.
My rares also failed to inspire confidence. I opened zero mythics, and another shockland, meaning two of my rare slots were somewhat dead. Between High Perfect Morcant, Maralen, Fae Ascendant, and Selfless Safewright, I decided to go into black green, splashing blue just to be able to drop Maralen.
Here’s what I ended up making.
Looking back at this, I do find myself questioning my choices, but not a huge amount. My gameplan was simple: stall out the game long enough to get either Morcant or Maralen, and use their triggered abilities to take over the game. While it was possibly a good idea to run red instead of one of those two primary colors, I was worried I wouldn’t have the curve to support red/black in a winning gameplan, or seige breakers to support red/green. And at the same time, my bombs were all multicolor.
It’s quite possible there is a better deck in this pool, or a few more blue cards I could have tossed in to improve this list, but at the time I felt fairly choked off by already having no fight spells, and figured I’d take my chances. I also thought if I got smoked round 1, and I’d swap in red as a primary color.
As a side note: for my first two games, I had a second Unforgiving Aim, instead of Requiting Hex.
Match Performance
Match 1 was a set of games into someone playing Red/Black goblin aggro. Game 1 was won by a somewhat unlike hero: My single copy of Rooftop Percher. 5 mana for a 3/3 flier isn’t fantastic, but I was valuing fliers highly, and figured the rider abilities couldn’t hurt. As it turned out, we both ended up filling our boards, and I was the only person with evasion.
My opponent also missed several opportunities to dig for an answer to the Percher with Gristle Glutton, and I suspect if they’d played a bit more aggressively, they would have likely beaten me. As it was, I got lucky.
In fact, that luck continued with game 2! My opponent flooded out, and I just beat them down before they could play anything to stop me. Again. Luck.
Match 2 was the game that made me reconsider my opinions about the elemental archtype. My opponent was running Green/Blue/Red with an elemental focus. I don’t have any particular memories of game 1 outside of having to spend Bogslither’s Embrace on a Tanufel Rimespeaker to stop them from getting massive card advantage, but it was a close run thing.
Game 2 turned when I managed to drop Maralen, and pull enough cards with her from their deck to get commanding board position, and force my way through, mostly off of an Unexpected Assistance.
This brought up match 3. My opponent was a friend of mine who’d also gone 2-0 fairly convincingly, and while I manged to win game 1, I lost game 2. Going into game three, things seemed to be going against me as my buddy managed to put out a massive swarm of smaller bodies and Kithkin tokens, with a Timid Shieldbearer backing them up.
Unfortunately for him, Magic the Gathering is a game where luck can just absolutely screw you. I managed to get out Maralen once again, and Maralen immediately pulled Adept Watershaper off the top of his deck. With that out, I was able to continually push into his board, and eventually force lethal in an all out push by Blight Rotting his pumped Reaping Willow.
With my 3-0 record, I made it to top cut. I won’t go into the details here, but at the store I play at, just playing more matches gives better prizing, so I was cheerful about getting to play at least one more match before getting defeated.
In what was becoming a regular theme of the night, match 4 (a best of 1) ended fairly quickly after my opponent flooded out, and I dropped a series of 2 and 3 drops into a fairly early Selfless Safewright and end the game before too much happened.
At this point though, my luck finally ran out. In the best of 1 finals match, I milled Maralen with my own Scarblade Scout, and then got solidly chipped down and out by Rooftop Percher, and Shore Lurker. Honestly, I wasn’t that surprised, as my opponent had built a deck that didn’t rely on it’s bombs as much as mine did. Looking back at my games, at least 2 or 3 of them turned on critical top decks, and my opponents not drawing into removal.
Still, 2nd place isn’t too bad.
Overall
Lorwyn is an interesting set. I think at least a few of my opponents deserved to take games off me that they didn’t manage to, but hey, that’s the nature of luck.
Personally, I’m a little underwhelmed by Lorwyn. Games felt very tense, but never felt very exciting, if that makes sense. I don’t have a strong feeling yet about if the set is a “bad” limited set, and I suspect it’ll be a much better experience in draft then sealed, where typal can really shine, and removal will be easier to grab.
It was a bit of a bummer to see that all the shock lands I opened weren’t worth very much, and the the lack of foil stamped cards also was a bummer. I don’t know that I’d do more 6-pack sealed of Lorwyn, but I do want to try to draft it at least.
Anyway, that’s all for today. I’ve been going full tilt all weekend since Friday. It is 1:00 AM Sunday. I am going to sleep.
Then I will write about my One Piece Pre-release, and Donkey Kong Banaza, and this F1 Arcade went to, and Horses.
But for now, sleep.