Saturday 8 May 2010

Prerelease Report - Rise of the Eldrazi Online Prerelease

By Wagz

Hi all! We're going to try something a little different this week - for the first time on the Team Leeds Blog we have videos. You'll have to excuse the quality as this is an experiment using screen capture software. Firstly, here is my pool:



and the deck I made from it:

8 Island
2 Mountain
7 Forest
1 Forked Bolt
1 Skywatcher Adept
1 See Beyond
1 Deprive
1 Narcolepsy
1 Bramblesnap
1 Halimar Wavewatch
1 Nest Invader
1 Growth Spasm
1 Snake Umbra
1 Aura Gnarlid
1 Guard Gomazoa
1 Sea Gate Oracle
1 Sporecap Spider
1 Kozilek's Predator
1 Merfolk Skyscout
1 Ondu Giant
2 Drake Umbra
1 Broodwarden
1 Frostwind Invoker
1 Stomper Cub
1 Heat Ray

The deck seems okay, a bit of removal, bit of card advantage, couple of bombs (Drake Umbra). Basically I wanted to play cards which I would be happy to draw at any time and would give me options against a lot of decks. Here's how I fared:
(n.b. videos are of replays due to wishing to save on file size and also I don't have a microphone FML - enjoy!)



or external links:

Match 1 Game 1
Match 1 Game 2
Match 1 Game 3

Match 2 Game 1
Match 2 Game 2
Match 2 Game 3

Match 3 Game 1 - Modo did not give me the replay for this one, presumably because (on the play) I went turn 3 Growth Spasm, turn 4 Kozilek's Predator, turn 5 Drake Umbra, turn 6 Snake Umbra and Heat Ray his Nirkana Revenant which got a scoop. 1 Massive guy is obviously good enough.
Match 3 Game 2
Match 3 Game 3

Match 4 Game 1
Match 4 Game 2
Match 4 Game 3

I made a few punts in the last match and one on match 2 game 2 turn 3 which worked out okay but overall I think I played pretty tightly and had a good deck. Bramblesnap is an obvious winner but basically it seems like if you keep up the aggression and get every point of damage in it should be okay. Who needs massive Eldrazi anyway? Any comments are welcome below, thanks for watching :D

p.s. no spoilers about match results, but comments on plays are extremely welcome.

8 comments:

  1. What exactly happened when he attacked with Ulamog and your board disappeared? Also you could have done with moving his revealed cards (Top of his library with Channelers) out of the way. But otherwise good and your play seemed pretty solid

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. @Neil, I sacced 4 guys and took the 10 so I could activate my Blue Invoker and fly over for lethal - he needed a removal spell or a flier to stop that plan. I tried moving the revealed cards one time but it didn't seem to budge so I'll try harder next time. I might extend it to seeing the stack next time but I was being wary of file size this time around.

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  4. Regressing your land seemed to pay off in the end (: landfall? Really good to watch anyway :).

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  5. Richard Smith8 May 2010 at 11:57

    Nice stuff. More video footage is always good. What did you use?

    As for the games, I've only watched the first one so far, and I've no idea what your land balance was in that deck, but M1G1, that seems like an pretty bad keep! You need two Islands asap, followed by another Forest, and Deprive's pretty much a dead card in that particular opener. I suppose you can move some non-double-coloured mana spells around if you do get to Oracle. Still don't think it's a keeper though, even if it did come off for you. :)

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  6. Richard Smith8 May 2010 at 12:02

    Ok, it doesn't seem to have posted my initial comment, which was something along the lines of 'very nice, more video footage is always good, what did you use for it?', followed by my saying that whilst I've only watched the first game so far, isn't that first keep pretty terrible? You absolutely must get an island in your first couple of draws, and from there, you ideally need another one, and another Forest. I suppose that if you hit Oracle, you can move some non-double-coloured casting cost spells around, but it still doesn't seem like a keeper, even if it did come off for you!

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  7. Yeah, it's being a bit funny atm. I agree it wasn't the best keep but I was on the draw in sealed and I'll take any excuse to keep a hand. I used Cam Studio which is open source. It seems quite good and it's very easy to use.

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  8. Richard Smith8 May 2010 at 17:50

    Ended up with a double post in the end. I dunno, maybe I mulligan too aggressively, I'm not sure. I don't like keeping hands that need a fair bit of luck to get there though. Went 3-1 in a pre-release myself this morning. Awakening Zone's pretty nuts, I don't think I lost a game where it became active.

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