Core Set 2019 Prerelease

Here's a conversation close to one that must have taken place at Wizards of the Coast several months ago:

"OK, it's a close up picture of a sword, right? But the hilt is carved to look like the face of a gallant knight. And the crossguard is formed by his luxurious beard spilling over the hand of whoever's holding it."
"Yeah, sounds perfect, Johnny, draw it up!"

I know that's not how art descriptions work, but it's an at least plausible story of how we got John Stanko's art for Sigiled Sword of Valeron, the very first card I saw from my Core Set 2019 prerelease pack. How we got the CARD Sigiled Sword of Valeron itself is another story, as someone had to decide to place it within the plane of Alara, where the Bant faction is known for its knights. Whatever its history, what you get is a very impressive piece of Magic.

It happened to be my promo card, so it was foil and had the date stamped on it. That also meant I could use it in my prerelease deck, regardless of what colors I picked, due to its versatility of being a colorless artifact. And it could almost go in any deck regardless of strategy, as this equipment CREATES creature tokens, making it pure upside in any deck that's interested in attacking.

I had this in mind when I opened my six packs of M19 and prepared to build my sealed deck. I took the same approach that I saw LSV take in his first M19 sealed video - a video he posted seemingly in place of the completion of his set reviews, which didn't conclude until after my prerelease event was over, depriving me of some valuable insight... but anyway, the approach is to first separate all your rares and look for patterns or bombs.

As it happened, the only thing my rares shared were that none of them had anything in common with any of the other ones. All six rares had a different color identity: White, blUe, Black, Red, Green, and none (i.e. Colorless). And given that diversity, I'll go over each color in order of impressiveness of that rare.

Blue had a flying threat that is a win both in value and in flavor. First seen in the first dated core set, Magic 2010, the Djinn of Wishes literally enters the battlefield ready to grant you three wishes (i.e. free cards) for the low low price of four mana each time (i.e. 2UU). Even though this is what Djinni (Genies?) are best known for, I much prefer the more belligerent attitude of Zahid from Dominaria. The helpful djinn was not the only flying threat, as Horizon Scholar returns from the Greek mythology plane Theros, establishing a very strong top end. Add in some marginal card advantage engines (Sift, Anticipate, both reprints), some marginal removal (Dwindle, Uncomfortable Chill), some less-than marginal academic creatures (2x Tolarian Scholar, Scholar of Stars, one of each), and a self-only Clone (Mirror Image), and you have ... not a lot of impact. (There were a couple of other Artifact synergies in there, but I'll save that for the Colorless section.)

One of the terms describing green mana in a printout of the color wheel that I made is "growth," which is also in the name of the Green rare I pulled. Prodigious Growth can make something permanently BIG, +7/+7 in fact, which is the same size as the new set's only Treefolk, Ghastbark Twins, of which my sealed pool had two (one foil)... which makes four twins total. Those beefy bark boys weren't the only huge green creatures at my disposal: I also had a copious amount of dinos (3x Colossal Dreadmaw), rhinos (3x Rhox Oracle), and wolves (2x Thornhide Wolves), which makes for 57 total power, but for 92 total mana. But what was missing from the classic green strategy is any way to ramp up to those giant creatures. I did have two low drop Elves, but rather than being ones that tap for mana or dig for lands, they were a dorky vigilance bear and a Naturalize-on-a-stick. Just playing a bunch of big creatures and hoping to hit every land drop did not seem like a viable strategy.

I liked the look of Red's rare because I knew it had a place in the metagame as an important part of the "sacrifice for value" deck. Dark-Dweller Oracle is what's known as a "sac outlet," in that it lets you spend one of your own creatures as a resource, in this case, being able to cast the top card of your library. This doesn't sound great unless you combine it with a "take control" card like Act of Treason (which I incidentally had one of), allowing you to set up the combo of stealing your opponenent's creature, attacking them with it, then sacrificing it while it's still under your influence. DDO also had the benefit of being a Goblin, who paired well with other new tribe members Goblin Motivator and Volley Veteran. Rounding out the cheaper-than-green's four-power creatures were 2x Havoc Devil and an Onakke Ogre (whose weird pinhead-plus-tusks art kind of freaks me out). And for the top end, I had a Limited Edition Alpha reprint Fire Elemental and 2x direct-damage mainstays Lava Axe. Not a single piece of damage based removal.

Perhaps LSV put it best in his aforementioned M19 set review when describing Suncleanser, the White rare in my pool:

This is a clean and elegant answer to the now-banned energy deck in Standard, or something. In Limited, this will play as a 1/4 for 2, and every now and then will knock some counters off an Ajani’s Pridemate.

It's not the worst card to have, since it gums up the ground, and it's a new card, and it shares a creature type with another white 2-drop in my pool (Daybreak Chaplain), but it's far from exciting or a build-around. The most exciting white card I had was one of two common Elks in the set, the Star-Crowned Stag, although that's only really good in certain circumstances. There was an opportunity for value and fun flavor interaction with Novice Knight, an undercosted 2/3 that can't attack unless it's enchanted or equipped, and Knight's Pledge, a buffing enchantment... not to mention the aforementioned Sigiled Sword, and a couple other artifacts that... oh what the heck, I'll go into them now, since those were basically all my playable white cards.

Marauder's Axe isn't super cool, but it's fairly cheap and on-brand with the Novice Knight plan. Rogue's Gloves are similarly cheap, but the payoff isn't nearly as immediate. Arcane Encyclopedia is just a card-advantage engine. And as long as we're here, I might as well talk about the Blue component, as Gearsmith Prodigy and Aerial Engineer (who is both Blue and White) both get buffed if you control an artifact, and my 2x Gearsmith Guardian are colorless, but they get buffed if you control a blue creature. Also Explosive Apparatus counts as removal and Gargoyle Sentinel is an expensive but effective way to attack in the air.

Last and actually least is the colorless rare, Desecrated Tomb, which could make you a bunch of Bats... but only if you can have creatures LEAVE your graveyard, which only about eight cards in the set can make happen, and only two of those at common. But my Black rare was even more comically useless as a card in Limited format in general (and my sealed pool in particular), Liliana, Untouched by Death. She's a planeswalker, and a key character in the storyline of the most recent expert level expansion, Dominaria, where she ended up in the clutches of the flashback-antagonist of thsi Core Set's storyline, Nicol Bolas. But the particular version of her that shows up in M19 LITERALLY does nothing unless you have a ton of cards with the Zombie subtype. It turns out that I had four cards that reference Zombies in my pool... but they were 4x Doomed Dissenters, none of which interact with Liliana, since they are Humans that only make Zombie tokens when they die (i.e. go INTO the graveyard).

The rest of my Black commons and uncommons, however, seemed pretty powerful, starting with a Murder and 2x Strangling Spores. ... On a side note, the two most prominent descriptors of black mana on my above-mentioned color wheel printout are "Death" and "Decay." And I always point out that black mana is so much more than that, it's about ambition, and doing whatever it takes to win, regardless of the cost. But looking at these two premium removal cards, maybe death and decay is just what that color does best. Considering also that my best black creatures were Vampires (Child of Night and 2x Skymarch Bloodletter from Ixalan's Legion of Dusk) and Skeletons (2x Skeleton Archer, a card whose name is exactly its subtypes, which strikes me as both really fun, and really lazy) really drives the point (stake?) home. I also had a Plague Mare, one of the extended cycle of color-hoser Horses, which struck me as a sideboard card, and Poison-Tip Archer, this one an Elf with skin and everything, but which also had green in its mana cost, so it would require a splash.

Looking at these cards presented to me, I decided to go Red/Black Aggro, not just because I had a Cinder Barrens (the R/B dual tapland), but also because I felt that would be the archetype best able to take advantage of the "always be attacking" style that would suit the promo Sword, and because I really wanted to pop off that Act of Treason/Dark-Dweller Oracle combo. (Spoiler Alert: I didn't.) In fact, I lost the first two matches, both to basically identical Blue/Black control decks (except with only one running Tezzeret). The only games I won were the ones where I got the Sword going, as the rest of my creatures were too ineffective to take over the game. However, I did win my final two matches, one against a Red/White lifegain/dragons deck, also running the above-suggested Sigiled Sword/Novice Knight combo, and the other against a Green/Blue mill deck, with 2x Millstone and 1x Psychic Corrosion... one of which I pulled in my one pack of prize support, and which is immediately going into my Phenax Commander deck... posisbly for Curse of the Bloody Tome, but maybe for Jace's Erasure... Now I just need to keep my eye open for a Patient Rebuilding, which is what I probably should have done with my deck before racing headlong into the Aggro strategy.

Looking back, I probably should have added the Encyclopedia... but, I thought, Aggro can't usually afford to take a turn off just to draw cards. And I should have splashed for the Elf Archer... but, I thought, it's not very aggressive, and my mana would be tough enough anyway: I played 17 lands, and still got totally screwed in two of my deciding games. Actually, looking back, I should probably have ditched the Red altogether and gone with Blue (still splashing the Archer), trying to dig for my Djinn and out-value my opponents to victory. But sadly, the only thing left to do is build that deck now, then buy ANOTHER prerelease pack when Core Set 2019 is officially released on Friday, and battle them against each other in a fishbowl style matchup for no one's benefit in particular...