Card Game Resource Systems

It’s Tuesday, I haven’t been playing anything new recently, and I need something to write about this week because breaking a habit is the killer of goals.

So today I’m just going to be rambling about resource systems in card games, mostly collectible card games. Also I’m going to be focused on what I’m calling Primary resource systems, IE, the resource generally used to take actions in the game.

Yes, life and cards in hand are resources. They’re not what we’re talking about today.

As a brief note, this is going to be in roughly chronological order of the games release, and non-exhaustive as it’s only going to cover games I’ve played. I’ll quickly explain the mechanic, I’ll give my opinion on in, and I’ll move on.

All that said, lets get started with….

Ancient Era

Yes, I could have called it something else, but all these games came out over 25 years ago.

Magic: The Gathering – 1993

The oldest card game in this list, Magic is an undeniable influence on pretty much everything on this list, either mechanically or thematically.

It’s primary resource system is lands. Lands are a card type that go into the players primary deck, a single one can be played each turn. They’re turned sideways to use them, and at the start of a players turn, all of their lands refresh.

They are also deeply flawed. You don’t have to take my word for it on that one, because once we get to the “modern” era of card games in this list, it will become clear that every card game in the last 10 years started with someone looking at lands, and going “Yeah, no, we’re not doing that.”

This flaw comes in three parts: first, that lands don’t do anything other than be lands, and secondly, they’re in your main deck. This means that they’ll be a fair number of games where you don’t draw them when you need them, and do draw them when you don’t. And finally, even if you do draw lands that you want, when you need them, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be the color you want.

That said, their use as resource trackers and “1 a turn” escalation element means that almost everyone else is going to copy them.

Pokemon TCG – 1996

Of course, with Pokemon, we’re not in that modern era yet. So instead of a good clean fix for lands being in your deck, Pokemon has energy. On the surface, energy is similar in a lot of ways to land. Like lands, they don’t do anything else, they start in your deck, and you can only play one a turn.

However, unlike Magic, most cards in Pokemon are “free”to play, with Pokemon themselves simply not doing very much until they have enough energy to use their attacks. Pokemon also has a lot more card draw then Magic, so getting stuck with clogged hands is rarer, but still happens.

As a result, instead of an escalating resource pool, energy is more a set of thresholds that can be manipulated and protected, especially when you consider that if the Pokemon that energy is attached to is knocked out, that energy is lost. And you can still only play one Energy per turn.

I do think it’s worth noting that TCG Pocket, the mobile friendly varient of the Pokemon TCG got rid of Energy when it had the chance.

Yu-Gi-Oh – 1999

The last pre-modern game on this list, Yu-Gi-Oh’s primary resource isn’t a land equivalent. Instead, I’d consider it to be a combination of “cards in hand” and the single “normal summon” a player gets each turn.

This gives it a distinctly different texture from pretty much everything else on this list. While many of the games here have a sense of slow pacing and escalation, anyone whose played any Yugioh in the last 5 years will be aware of it has the gentle pacing of a rail-gun combined with a roller coaster.

Frankly, as a resource system, I don’t like it very much. It does give Yugioh a very distinct feeling from everything else, but it also means that sometimes games are over before you even get to take a turn.

Middle Era – 2010 to 2016

Is this an arbitrary grouping? Yes. Will that stop me? No.

Force of Will – 2012 (Japanese Release)

And so we reach the first semi-modern game on the list, and the start of attempts to fix the land problem. While it emulates magic in color and card types, one thing it doesn’t do is copy land. Instead, all of your Magic Stones (lands) go in their own separate deck, and whenever you need to play one, you just pull one at random out of that deck.

This solves 2 of the 3 problems with lands, but doesn’t solve getting colors that you don’t want.

Still, it’s a start.

Hearthstone – 2014

Hearthstone, being a digital game, has a lot of tools that other card games don’t. One of those is perfect tracking of game state. It uses this to get rid of lands completely, and replace them with mana. You get one mana crystal per turn, you spend mana from them to play cards, and they refill at the start of your turn.

Its generally perfect as a replacement system, but one that’s a bit tricky to actually copy into paper because it’s a huge pain to track, as it requires using something other than cards for maintaining game state. Not a problem in a digital game, bit of a pain in a non-digital one.

Modern Era

Hey look, we’re finally trying to fix lands.

One Piece -2022 (Japan Release)

It feels weird to me that One Piece has technically been around longer then everything else on this list, mostly because I just started playing it, but whatever.

One Pieces primary resource is DON. It’s actually very good. Each player starts with 10 DON cards in their DON deck, gets 2 additional DON after the first turn turn, and it also has a secondary mechanic where it can be used as a basic pump spell for characters you have out. Oh, and because you get two a turn, but the total number is capped, the game has some neat space to play around with making cards “cost” putting DON back into the DON deck without feeling as losing a resource would in other games.

It’s great, and I have no complaints, except that I might have called it something else.

Gem Blenders – 2023

Ah, Gem Blenders. Gem Blenders is a bit of a weird one to start with, and unlike most of the other stuff in the Modern Era, isn’t using a land replacement style system.

Instead, it’s back to Pokemon’s energy system with Gems, except now instead of thresholds for attacks, they’re thresholds for evolution. It’s a bit too entwined with the rest of the games systems to concisely comment on, but I will note that the game does have the same problems as Pokemon does. A bit better then lands, but not much.

Disney Lorcana – 2023

Lorcana’s primary resource is Ink, and much like the next two items on this list, it’s going to solve the land problem by making everything a land! Well, mostly everything. Instead of a 1 per turn land system, Lorcana lets you put 1 card per turn facedown into your inkwell.

But not all cards! Only cards with a specific border. To simplify things, this pretty much just means that all cards have a flag for if they can be played as lands or not, with more powerful cards lacking said flag, as a mechanism to make them more painful to dead-draw.

It’s perfectly fine system.

Altered – 2024 / Star Wars Unlimited -2024

Both Altered and Star Wars Unlimited use effectively the exact same system, so I’m just gonna group them together. At the start of the turn, both players draw two cards from their deck, then can choose to put one card from their hand into their resource pool.

Again, another pretty straight forward system that tries to solve the problems with land.

Gundam Card Game – 2025

Gundam uses a system similar to One Piece, with each player getting a single Resource card per turn from a Resource deck. That said, it does have one small twist in that cards have both a resource cost, and level requirement. This means that a card with a Level of 4, and a cost of 1 can be played for 1 resource, but can’t be played before you have 4 resources in play (Usually turn 4).

It’s not my favorite system to actually play with, but it’s a functional one at least.

Wrap Up, and some thoughts.

I opened this article with a discussion of Magic: The Gathering’s resource system, and I think that pretty much every post 2010 card game resource system can be seen as an attempt to fix three big problems with that system.

To recap, those problems are:

  1. Not drawing resource cards when you need them.
  2. Drawing resource cards when you don’t need them.
  3. Not having the right type of resource cards to play cards.

Through this lens, we can see that there are two main fixes for these problems:

  1. Every card is now a land! (Lorcana/Altered/Star Wars Unlimted)
    OR
  2. Lands are their own special deck! (Force of Will/One Piece TCG/Gundam)

These are better systems, but the one thing we lose is the element of multi-color decks, and I don’t actually know anyone whose tried to fix that yet.

Anyway, happy Tuesday. I’ve spent close to two hours on this now, I’m gonna go get some breakfast.

One Piece Card Game

I had a busy weekend. I played a lot of Deadlock, I lost horribly at a Magic draft, and I fixed a lot of technology for one of my parents. I got absolutely none of the work I had hoped to do done, but I did get a chance to try out the One Piece Card Game.

Yes, it really is capitalized like that.

Wait, what’s One Piece?

One Piece is a manga series that’s been running since 1997, which is to say it’s only slightly younger than me. I could say a lot of things about it, but they’re not relevant to this review. All you really need to know is that it’s an adventure series, it’s been running for an incredibly long time, and… I quite like it.

No really, I’ve been reading this series on and off for probably close to 20 years. I check weekly for updates. Thinking about it, One Piece and Pokemon are probably the two longest-running franchises I have interest in.

So, a card game (I like those!) based on a manga (specifically a series that I really enjoy). I should love this right?

Right?

The Gameplay

Well, I love the gameplay at least, even from my limited exposure yesterday. There’s a bunch of cool systems here, and I’m going to try to hit the highlights.

First up, like all modern card games, One Piece CG sets out to solve the land problem. But it does so in a different way than some of its peers. You have a side deck of 10 DON cards. Then, each turn after the first, you flip out 2 of the them, and that’s the whole resource system.

In addition to being tapped for mana, DON can also be put onto your Character and Leader cards to temporarily buff them on your turn. I liked this, because it meant I felt like I always had something to do with my resources.

Other neat systems include the game’s life tracking. This is effectively Pokemon’s prize card system, but reversed to become a catch-up mechanic. Short version: when you take damage to your life, you get cards. I like it.

Combat also has combat tricks, and they’re done in a way that doesn’t require me explaining the stack to someone, while also making a vast number of cards multi-modal. I liked that as well. Combat is also a bit different from other games, but not in anyway that I feel compelled to elaborate. It provides lots of interesting choices, and I like it.

So. Bunch of great systems

The Things I don’t like

Let’s imagine there’s a Harry Potter TCG. Let’s imagine it’s very popular, and while we’re imagining things, let imagine JK Rowling isn’t a massive TERF.

I know, I’m asking you to imagine a lot.

But while we’re in this beautiful alternate universe, let’s say that one of the sets is based on book 6. Imagine it’s called “Snape Kills Dumbledore,” and the cover art is a great big picture of Snape blasting Dumbledore with Avada Kadavra.

That would feel kind of odd, right? Kind of spoilery?

This is something the One Piece TCG does. Absolutely huge plot points are just… completely spoiled/revealed in the names and designs of the sets? And the cards?

I dunno. It just feels weird.

There’s a bunch of other things that add to that weirdness, at least for me. I consider myself a One Piece fan, but I’m purely a fan of the manga. One of the decks that I played (And enjoyed playing!) was based around characters from a spin-off video game. A video game that reviewed quite badly.

I love One Piece as a manga, because of stuff like this.

Not 3D models that look like this.

Also, two other minor annoyances.

  1. Some of these card names are ridiculous.

Like, I’m sorry. What?

2. Many of the cards have character names displayed in the standard Japanese way, which is to say family name and then given name. The problem I have with this is that there is at least one archetype (Vinsmokes) where this makes it a bit of a pain to actually read and process the cards. This is minor, I’m sure I’d get used to it if I played enough, but it feels unnecessary to include the full family name because it’s also irrelevant to the mechanics of the game?

I dunno. Please don’t take this as me being culturally insensitive. But I’m just… frustrated by design decisions that while authentic, make the game harder to play.

Also, while this is just a hunch, and playing a few games of a TCG isn’t enough to really get a good read on something like this, I kind of dislike that the game seems to be following archetype-based design as opposed to color based design. It’s just a vibe, but it’s still there.

Overall

Much like with Star Wars Unlimited, I actually think these systems are great, but I’m a bit turned off by the theming. Which is weird, because I like One Piece and I don’t give a shit about Star Wars.

It feels weird to say that I’d excitedly play more One Piece, but have zero intention of picking up any decks or cards? Especially at some of the prices I’m seeing, like, $50 for the non-basic starter deck? I’m good.

Anyway. Great game. Cool systems.

Not sure I want to spend any money on it.

Super Battle Mon

Super Battle Mon is a sort of micro-TCG, where decks are 7 cards (10 total if you have a sideboard), games are 6-7 minutes long, and you can play without a table. More on that last one later. I quite like it!

Image of the Super Battle Mon Starter Deck Box Set

It’s also in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign for a pair of mini-expansion structure decks. So if any of this sounds fun, I’d encourage you to go check it out and consider pledging.

The goal of Super Battle Mon is quite simple. Each player starts with their entire deck in their hand, and each turn both players play a Mon. After resolving each Mon’s abilities, you compare your total Mons’ power to your opponents’, and the player with lower power discards a card. This continues until both players can’t play any more cards, and the player with the most Mons in play wins.

Two decks of Super Battle Mon cards are laid out on a card mat.

So what’s the catch? Well, there are quite a few. Many Mons can be cheated into play. Mons also have costs that have to paid by discarding cards, and each card spent paying those costs is one less Mon in play in the long run. There are mind games on what your opponent’s next Mon will be, and there are counter plays to overly devastating strategies. (Looking at you Capybara.)

And all of it is packed into a very short game that can be played in just a few minutes. And honestly, that form factor is a large part of my enjoyment. Games are so short that even when I did get blown up, I just dug into my collection and built a new deck.

Overall Thoughts

TCG’s as hobbies are notorious for being time and money sinks, but with Super Battle Mon, every booster pack is a deck. It’s possible to build a deck, play it, rebuild it, play it again, and then scrap it and build a new one in less time than a single game of Magic.

Is it a perfect game?

Well, no. Not yet. There’s a fair number of errata for the first set, and the ability resolution system is a bit clunky. Not a bad system. Just a bit tricky to parse correctly.

Still, Super Battle Mon does an excellent job of delivering on what it’s trying to do: the bite size TCG experience, without the pain points of most modern TCG’s.

And since they managed to fulfill their first crowdfunding campaign, I feel pretty comfortable pointing folks at the second one. So maybe if you want to play a card game with more playing and deck building then just buying cards, check it out.

I drafted Innistrad: Remastered

Ever since my Brother’s War writeup, it’s been a bit of a tradition on the blog to write about the first Magic event I do for each set. As such, it’s time to talk about Innistrad: Remastered.

The first Innistrad was the current set when I actually first started playing Magic. Despite that, I don’t actually have any strong personal feelings for the set, or even the plane. Vampires. Zombies. Blah blah blah. I don’t care.

Still, Innistrad has brought me one of my favorite cards in the game: Emrakul, The Promised End.

Fun Fact: Before even drafting the set I bought a copy of this for $45, because in the eternal words of Penny Arcade, “I am a corporate whore”.

How much do I like this card? Well, enough that I made a whole ass video that is pretty much just me simping for Emrakul.

Now, where were we?

Oh. Right. Drafting this new set.

The Draft

After having brutally learned my lesson at my last draft, a Top 8 in an RCQ, this time I was prepared. I would not just pick rares. I would not just follow my first pick directly into a garbage pool. I would be strong.

Then the universe decided to tempt me by giving me a first pack Vanquish the Horde, followed by being passed a Liesa, Forgotten Archangel.

As the week willed fool that I am, I took the bait.

Or perhaps it wasn’t just bait.

Over the following series of events in the drafts, I was handed a perfectly reasonable set of cards in my color. Multiple Thraben Inspectors. Three copies of Eaten Alive.

It was at this point that I decided to see if I could make white/black work, and the answer turned out to be “Yes, maybe.”

There was only really one tough choice during the draft. Late in pack three, I was handed a pack with a choice between Infernal Grasp, and Restoration Angel.

A difficult choice.

This was tricky. I already had a wide number of removal spells, meaning that Infernal Grasp was maybe less useful. On the other hand, it was hard to view restoration angel as a real bomb. Sure, it’s a 3/4 for 4 flier, that can protect something, but Infernal Grasp was instant speed, unlike all of my other sorcery speed cards.

After much internal debate, I went Infernal Grasp. Would it work out for me? Only time could tell.

Here’s my deck and the rest of the pool.

Generally speaking, this was an aggro list that tried to chunk its opponent for enough life that it could go wide in the later game. Everything was fairly cheap—and even the Eldrazi could be cheated in around turn four with Emerge.

So how well did that game plan go?

The Games

That’s right. It’s time for the games! Round one was… a bye.

I spent most of wandering the store, losing at Street Fighter, and playing a bit of Bosconian. It passed quickly enough, and it was time for round 2.

Round two was a bit of a slugfest. I was playing into a fairly reasonable green/blue deck. The one downside to my draft was that if the game went long, I was very dependent on getting one of my larger bombs or Blood Artist to actually close out games.

Fortunately, after we went to top-decking, (while I still had favorable board state), I drew into Infernal Grasp. With that, I was able to remove my opponent’s combo of Mist Raven and Deadeye Navigator, and pull out a win. This was repeated in game two, giving me a 2-0 win, and 2-0 record.

And then it was time for Match 3.

Match three was against a person I’m going to refer as “Player X.” They had drafted green/blue with a black splash.

Player X is very good at Magic, and probably a stronger drafter than I am. They’ve also been my opponent in a few other drafts recently. So it was with a sense of trepidation that I went into match 3.

That sense would be justified when game one went to 40 minutes, and turned into a game that I just barely won because…. Player X somewhat milled themself out.

Not exactly a clean victory.

As a result of the length of game one, game two went to time. A time that I used to squeak out a draw. I think it’s worth noting here that had we fully played out game two, Player X would have won, and I suspect they would have won game three. They had a generally stronger deck than I did, and despite my early game pressure, even with my bombs, I simply would not have been able to push through their Spider Spawning.

As a result of (or perhaps despite) this however, I found myself at 3-0, and as the winner of draft!

Reaping the Spoils

They say you never forget your first love. I don’t know if that’s entirely true.

That said, I have not forgotten my first favorite Magic card, Deadeye Navigator.

I just love Deadeye Navigator. My very first standard deck tried to use it and Acidic Slime to remove my opponent’s mana base. Was it good? No. Do I use Deadeye Navigator often in my decks these days? Still no.

But this was the card that really got me into Magic. It’s the card that showed me how fun the game can be. I no longer have my first Deadeye Navigator. But after last night, that’s no longer a problem because I now have a play set of both it, and Acidic Slime.

I enjoyed drafting Innistrad, but it’s hard to say if that’s just because I won, or because I enjoy the set. As I noted above, this has never really been my set in the first place, so even if I came away with a sense of ambivalence, I think that would have been fine.

But I came away excited, a bit bummed out that I likely wouldn’t have the chance to draft the set further, as it won’t be coming to Magic: Arena. Is is a perfect snapshot of the best the Innistrad blocks have to offer? No. But it’s plenty fun.

4th Place at The Fourth Place (Regional Championship Qualifier)

Ed Note: This article uses a few specific bits of terminology related playing limited Magic: The Gathering, mostly the acronym B.R.E.A.D. If you’re not familiar with the term/acronym, a brief read of this Stack overflow paragraph defines them well.

I participated in the first Regional Championship Qualifier at The Fourth Place over the weekend. As this is one of the more competitive events I’ve ever done, I thought I’d talk about the experience.

This was a Limited RCQ, starting with 5 rounds of sealed, and then cutting to Top 8 for a draft. The set for both was Foundations. But before I get into the event, let’s talk about prep!

Prep

I…. did not prep much. I prepped more than I have for most other sealed events I’ve done, but much less than I could have. I reviewed a fair number of sealed pools, I looked at some articles, and I did two drafts of the set prior. The first draft was on Arena, and I lost every single match quite badly. The second was a smaller in-person event where I won.

I do think the prep made a difference, but I also think especially in the draft, I could have done much better with my picks. More on that later.

Sealed

For the sealed portion of the event, this was the deck I ended up building.

Link to the full pool.

After opening all my packs I was pretty confident I would end up in green. I had bombs in Scavenging Ooze, Mossborn Hydra, Sylvan Scavenging, and Ghalta, Primal Hunger. I also had removal in Bushwhack and Bite Down, and and a few giant growths.

My secondary color wasn’t as clear.

Looking at the rest of the pool, I scratched off white and blue as secondaries. They didn’t offer the bombs of red or black, and had limited amounts of mediocre removal.

Red had two big bombs in Shivan Dragon and Twinflame Tyrant, but it didn’t have any targeted removal before 5 mana, and even then, it wasn’t instant speed.

Black won out as a secondary color on the strength of its removal (Eaten Alive, and 2x Bake Into A Pie), and the fact that it still provided a very solid bomb in High-Society Hunter. My read at the time was that I had plenty of bombs in green, and more removal would serve me better in the sealed Environment.

Looking back at the pool now, I do think there was a strong argument for green/red, but that wasn’t choice I made at the time.

Deck
1 Ambush Wolf
1 Apothecary Stomper
2 Bake into a Pie
1 Beast-Kin Ranger
1 Bite Down
1 Burglar Rat
1 Bushwhack
1 Cackling Prowler
1 Campus Guide
1 Eaten Alive
3 Evolving Wilds
7 Forest
1 Ghalta, Primal Hunger
1 Giant Growth
1 High-Society Hunter
1 Mossborn Hydra
1 Revenge of the Rats
1 Scavenging Ooze
7 Swamp
1 Sylvan Scavenging
1 Tragic Banshee
1 Vampire Gourmand
1 Wary Thespian
1 Fake Your Own Death
1 Crypt Feaster

Sideboard
1 Crypt Feaster
1 Aegis Turtle
1 Armasaur Guide
2 Axgard Cavalry
1 Banishing Light
1 Blanchwood Armor
2 Brazen Scourge
1 Cat Collector
1 Claws Out
1 Clinquant Skymage
1 Crystal Barricade
1 Drake Hatcher
1 Dreadwing Scavenger
1 Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen
1 Erudite Wizard
1 Essence Scatter
1 Exemplar of Light
1 Firebrand Archer
1 Fishing Pole
1 Fleeting Distraction
1 Fleeting Flight
1 Giant Growth
1 Gleaming Barrier
1 Goldvein Pick
1 Guarded Heir
1 Healer's Hawk
1 Imprisoned in the Moon
2 Incinerating Blast
2 Mocking Sprite
1 Needletooth Pack
1 Quick-Draw Katana
1 Refute
1 Rogue's Passage
1 Ruby, Daring Tracker
1 Seeker's Folly
2 Seismic Rupture
1 Self-Reflection
1 Shivan Dragon
1 Sower of Chaos
1 Spectral Sailor
1 Spitfire Lagac
1 Strix Lookout
1 Sun-Blessed Healer
1 Sure Strike
1 Think Twice
1 Twinflame Tyrant
1 Vanguard Seraph

Critiques of the Deck

I made two spicy decisions in the deckbuilding. The first was not splashing for Twinflame Tyrant, despite having a Campus Guide and three Evolving Wilds.

I think this was the right choice. Twinflame is two red pips, and my deck has 8~ (more on this in a moment) double pip cards. It was much more important to fix my base so that I could drop my double pip bombs, than it was to enable a single additional bomb at the cost of less consistency.

The second decision was including Cackling Prowler over Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen. This was a mistake, and it was a mistake that I would proceed to fix the entire night, swapping the two after pretty much every game 1. I thought that the ward 2 on Prowler was more important than reach on Dwynen. I was very wrong. There are a lot of flyers in this set, and something that can deal with the birds was more important than something that took an extra two mana to blow up.

Matches

Generally speaking, this is where I would talk about matches. Unfortunately, after playing 9 hours of magic in a row, I don’t remember my opponents’ decks, and I did not take notes.

So instead, here are a few fun moments!

One opponent got out Extravagant Replication. This didn’t worry me, until suddenly they had four copies of Spitfire Lagac.

In another game, I was forced to burn 3 cards in Ambush Wolf, Giant Growth, and Bushwhack and seven life just to deal with Sire of Seven Deaths. I still lost somehow. Maybe it was the 3 for 1 and 14 life differential. Who can say.

Finally, in my last set of games, despite mostly being deadweight every other match, Revenge of the Rats finally did some work, giving me enough fodder to sac into Vampire Gourmand to push through, and get enough cards to recover from an incredibly bad situations.

Ultimately, I finished with a record of 3 – 1 -2, which was enough to put me into the top 8.

Top 8 Draft

And now for the moment of truth.

Deck
1 Authority of the Consuls
1 Bake into a Pie
1 Day of Judgment
1 Exsanguinate
1 Felidar Savior
1 Healer's Hawk
1 Infestation Sage
1 Macabre Waltz
3 Make Your Move
2 Marauding Blight-Priest
2 Midnight Snack
9 Plains
1 Sanguine Syphoner
1 Skyknight Squire
1 Stromkirk Bloodthief
8 Swamp
1 Vampire Soulcaller
3 Vanguard Seraph
1 Youthful Valkyrie

Sideboard
2 Aegis Turtle
1 Archmage of Runes
1 Ashroot Animist
1 Bigfin Bouncer
1 Cackling Prowler
1 Consuming Aberration
1 Fleeting Distraction
1 Good-Fortune Unicorn
1 Grappling Kraken
1 Lightshell Duo
1 Mossborn Hydra
2 Run Away Together
1 Slumbering Cerberus
1 Sure Strike

If you are looking at this list with some level of confusion and profanity, I promise you. There is an explanation for why there is so much blue, when I am not even in the color. It is not a good explanation, because it was not made via good decisions. But there is an explanation, and it’s Consuming Aberration.

I have a bad habit, one that I may now be cured of purely as a result of how horrible this draft went. If the rare in the first pack looks like a bomb, I will take it. And then I will continue to try to pick into those colors, even if I really, really shouldn’t.

As a result, there are a lot of blue cards in this pool, instead of anything remotely useful or good.

There is a second card in this pack that tells a story, and it’s this.

This was not a first pick. It was a much later pick. And should probably have been a sign to me that not a single person at the table was going green/red. Did I listen to this sign? Did I pick the two Mossborn Hydras that were passed me to me, and the other strong red cards?

No. Of course I didn’t.

Instead, after, picking up a Day of Judgment and an Authority of Consuls, and proceeded to try to force Black/White as hard as possible in packs 2-3 to salvage the situation.

Top 8 Matches

I don’t know if the universe took pity on me, or if everyone at the table was having a rough time, but I did in fact manage to squeak through round one before being eliminated handily in round 2.

For round 1, I had an incredible stroke of luck, getting Authority of Consuls early into a blue/white go-wide deck in both games. This was an incredible bit of bad fortune for them, as it pretty much single-handedly turned off their deck’s ability to flash in Resolute Reinforcements to stall me. It also allowed me to get extra turns of ping in, as even when they got their larger flyers, they came in tapped.

Round 2, however, was the buck finally stopped. My opponent was playing midrange Grixis, with a fair amount of threshold dependent cards, and I just got stomped. While the games were slogs, they managed to both get board presence with a bunch of fairly useful cards, and even Day of Judgement couldn’t save me from Sphinx of Forgotten Lore, and Kioara, the Rising Tide, resulting in me going down in two consecutive losses.

While I didn’t stick around to watch finals, it did look like both players were playing three color decks, something I thought was interesting.

Tone and Overall Thoughts

My goal for the event was to get into the Top 8. This might sound intimidating, until you realize it was capped at 20 entries, meaning it was really more of a “Finish in the top 40%”.

I made a lot of mistakes. By my count, I’d put it at something like 4-5 misplays, and that’s not even counting missed triggers. Arena has made me very good at spotting play options, and outs. But it’s made me very bad at keeping track of my own triggers, and asking to hold priority at turn end.

My prep did help. I don’t know how much, but it did make a difference in some of the deck building, and knowing that certain cards I would have otherwise written off were actually bombs.

My draft was terrible. I had exactly 23 cards in my colors, and no fixing.

Generally speaking, this was a pretty chill and polite event, and I hope even the more competitive events at The Fourth Place stay this way. There was no shouting, and no real issues/conflicts, with players generally being polite but firm on various rulings.

This was a good event, and I wish I was more excited about the top 4 finish, but as I’m me, anything other than complete victory will always feel like a bit of a wash. I do think I’d try another Sealed RCQ though, as long as the set was good.

PS.
The counts on this sealed pool look wonky at first, but this pool does not include 6 lands I opened, and the also the system doesn’t seem to like to count lands. But was 84 cards, as I’ve spent all morning double checking to make sure I got it right. It’s a similar case for the draft pool, as I didn’t include the lands.