My Magic 2015 Prerelease, Two Months Late

My friends and I were all at an adult men's retreat during the actual Magic 2015 prerelease, so at the urging of one individual, six of us bought prerelease seeded card pools and had our own home-brewed event this past weekend. I randomly drew green (we opted for two green packs since most of us are EDH players), so Phytotitan and I went to work attempting to ruinate my friends/opponents on the battlefield. During the round robin play that ensued, I didn't win a single game (that counted). Here's a little about the embarrassment of a deck I ran into that tournament with.

When looking at a sealed pool, I tend to do what Channefireball's Conley does: separate all the rares and see what color they represent. Opening your packs consecutively makes that somewhat easy to do, but what it makes harder is getting a feel for the entire card pool without forming preconceived notions. I present my findings now:

GREEN
The prerelease version of the aggressive Phytotitan and the defense-oriented Hornet Nest were in my seeded pack, along with a Siege Wurm, one of the best green commons. For mana fixing, and to take advantage of the Convoke mechanic, I found an Elvish Mystic and Satyr Wayfinder. A Genesis Hydra was in one of my other five packs, so at least for high upside cards, Green was in the lead.

BLUE
Jalira, Master Polymorphist is a flavor win, starring in an episode of the Uncharted Realms series on Wizards of the Coast's (confusingly redone) website. (I hope you like accepting cookies!) However she doesn't have a really useful mechanic unless you're trying to fill your graveyard (which I just might be, in Green) or have a bunch of dumb low drops to upgrade to. One such dumb low drop (in my situation) was the Chief Engineer, who I have respect for because there is an Artifact deck in M15 and he's in it. But the only Artifacts I had were Meteorite, Will-Forged Golem (who already has Convoke) and Grindclock (which is NOT in the aforementioned M15 Artifact deck...).

BLACK
Cruel Sadist was the only rare in Black, but her direct damage / self pump ability was a convenient option for dealing with tokens: she could ping insects or spirits and make herself big enough to block soldiers. Couple that with the fact that my only other good removal options (double Flesh to Dust, double Crippling Blight) and my best beatdown options (double Shadowcloak Vampire, double Accursed Spirit) were in Black , I tried to go for the Golgari shell. Plus, it would have been a great setup had I managed to draw a Garruk, but no such luck...

WHITE / RED
Even though I had no rares from these colors, I did pull a Triplicate Spirits and Seraph of the Masses, which in retrospect might have been good enough to build around. (The one red playable I opened, Inferno Fist, was not.) Between matches - when you go 0-20, sometimes you lose pretty fast and have time to socialize - my buddy and I put together a White/Blue deck, which consisted of using pretty much every white and blue card I had, playable or no. Maybe I'll write about that one later on if I don't get too depressed from rehashing my ineptitude.


WHAT WENT WRONG
The first match, against the Blue mage, I got blown out by evasion: in Game 1, I didn't happen to draw as many Crippling Blights as he did Welkin Terns, and in Game 2, Spectra Ward and Invisibility did some work. The second match was against the other Green mage, but his deck was surprisingly Red and White... so I got aggro'd out pretty hard. Match three was against the Black mage, who picked green as his secondary color after drawing both the green promo AND Hornet Queen, a card that's not any less broken in Core Set Limited as it is in EDH.

In match four, against the Red mage, Triplicate Spirits proved why it's such an epic card, although I did get to 2-for-1 his Siege Dragon with Flesh to Dust just as it was about to be Marked by Honor (which was in turn searched for by Heliod's Pilgrim, so I guess it's more of a 2.5-for-1). Then the fifth match was against the White mage, who was saved by Resolute Archangel exactly once, then followed that game up with both Avacyn AND Soul of Theros. Also it didn't help that I missed with Genesis Hydra both times I was able to cast it and also with Satyr Wayfinder two out of four times. Needless to say it was a bit of a frustrating day for me in the blind eternities.


But what about that Azorius deck we built for funsies? Well, later that night I playtested it against my Green Black deck and it won both games of the match with Seraph of the Masses. Come to think of it, I wonder if I might have been better served with swapping the Black for the White, going Selesnya and just saying 'stuff it' to removal. My guess is that I would have been, but unless any of my friends saved their limited decks and want a rematch, the world will never know. At least Khans of Tarkir comes out soon, but of course I will be out of town for that prerelease as well. Anyone up for a home-brewed prerelease event sometime in November?