GP London Day 3 - Sunday - Please Not Black White!

So we were booked in for the 8:30am Super Sunday Series Sealed event and after the really long day of the main event and with 110 Tix in my wallet already I am hoping to do providing my pool is ok.

So we crack the packs and as I am showing my cards to the register I am seeing a lot of Black and my brain is going "NOOOO NOT AGAIN!" so I hand off my cards and get them registered. When I get the back I see I have a big Black pool but luckily I have landed a very good green pool to go with it. So I beginning building a Black Green Artifact deck so that I can sack puzzle knots to a Marionette Master.

The deck was doing well and ended up going 2-3 until I dropped as prizes were going to be out of reach for me. This left me feeling good after another solid performance we then jumped in on Standard On-demand event which was a welcome couple of games as after playing Limited the entire weekend.

So I ended up with 160 Tix in my wallet which allowed me to get 10 packs of Kaladesh, 1 pack of each Theros set for a chaos draft and 1 pack each of Origins, 2015 and 2014 for random pack openings.

 

So overall the experience was a positive one, loved the games and my opponents were all interesting people from around the world even as far as Vancouver Canada! So me and the lads have all chatted and we decided that we are going to attend GP Liverpool next year which again is a limited event but we feel that Limited is a great format as it means everyone is at an even starting level rather than buying yourself into high rankings with a $200 standard/modern deck.

So that is it for this Blog I hope you enjoyed following along I will be doing the same for next year for GP Liverpool so catch you all next time!

GP London Day 2 - Saturday - OMG What Do I Do!

So up early (more due to always being up early with my young son) went and had a very large and hearty breakfast as I just knew we were not going to get a lunch break. The boys turned up to drop there stuff of at my room so they didn't have to drag it around for the day.

We all then went to the hall to go to our tables and wait for the inevitable start of the GP. So the box is put on the table and I we go through the process of opening packs and registering the cards of the guys opposite you and then you get the pool back and I'm in trouble! I do not have a bomb I opened a lot of combo artifacts such as animation module & dynavolt tower, I then look at how many creatures I have in the colours and my favourite Red & Green are sorely lacking in a massive way with like 7 creatures in total. So I look my other colours Black is the strongest and both White and Blue are equal so this leaves me down looking at the evasion strategy so after doing a few sealed events I have seen that flying is best evasion as in this set there is not a lot of reach so White gives me a total of 11 power in the air Blue only gives me 9 so I went down the route of Black White Artifact this revolved around playing game 1 with animation module and decotion module to generate energy for thriving ibex and thriving rats and getting lots of servos from the modules.

So first two rounds I lost both 0-2 so was feeling very deflated but I regrouped and decided to look at my deck and what I had in the rest of my pool and decided to sleeve up a blue side board. Then I have no idea what happened but my deck started working and I mean working I was either winning game 1 then subbing out the modules for removal or I was losing game one and subbing in removal to destroy my opponents key creatures. I ended the main event at 5:30 going all the way to round 7 of 9 on a 3-4 record which would not be good enough to make day 2. But what a first experience of doing a main event at a GP and I can say I am hooked and already look forward to GP Liverpool 2017.

So after finishing the main event I entered a on demand draft and then me and the lads called it a day went for some well deserved food and pint! which went down like water and called it a night.

My final post for day 3 of the GP will be up soon!

GP London Day 1 - Friday - Lets Do This!

So over the next few days I will be releasing some posts on my experiences from the GP!

So Friday was an early start but arrived at the Excel in London for 9am and waiting outside of the hall was an experience in its self as I was surrounded by my fellow planeswalkers who were chatting, trading and gaming and I have never seen so many of us in one place.

So the hall opens and its mental the free mini masters event is what everyone is waiting for as why wouldn't you want a free pack of Kaladesh! The only downside was it was abit manic but when you have like hundreds of people jumping at the chance to play the judges did an amazing job! So I got through to round 3 of the mini masters with no big noteworthy pulls!

So after a quick tour around the vendors I jumped in on the Last Chance Sealed event and wow the atmosphere was a bit intense, I mean obviously it was going to be as everyone wants to win byes for the main event. But being that the event is single elimination it was extra pressure on building and registering a good deck. So I ended up doing a Black Blue artifact control had only 2 noteworthy pulls one being a the Aethersquall Ancient and the other being Static Orb! which by the way is hilarious to play with I played it 2 out of the 3 games but lost in game 3 due to getting mana flooded and having no action to deal with an ever growing board state!

So after a lunch stop with Steve we ended up getting ourselves into the Channel Fireball Sealed Foiled Again event so firstly I will say the foil promo's were straight up jank sylvan scrying, crumbling vestige and spatial contortion were the foil promo's I received. Oh yes I went 3-0 and I have to say that one card I opened was the reason I got the 3 wins and it was Authority of the Consuls was such a good card. As my opponents were always on the back foot and being a turn behind each time was dragging there decks down a lot hell I am even considering building a prison deck for standard!

So we ended up finishing for the day at 9:30pm so had been playing magic for just under 12 hours which left me feeling tired so went back to the hotel and chilled in the bar having a beer surrounded by magic players playing standard and modern. So keep your eyes posted for my next post which will be the main event.

Sealed Practice on Kaladesh Release Weekend!

So welcome back all gosh what a manic weekend! Driving all the way to Blackpool and back and then running a sealed practice session with the lads on Sunday.... body is very tired. But anyway here are some more things we have learned, please note we are not experts on limited format for MtG but we were playing our rounds at 50 mins and apart from 1 round all games finished with 10 mins to spare on average.

Pump for the win!
So we all know that combat tricks are generally best sideboard and most of the time are used to save creatures in combat situations. But using them on unblocked creatures to get either extra damage through or to finish the game is such a good way to win games. So the best trick in the set is Built to Smash! this 1 drop can end the game and if you get it on an artifact creature even the vehicles when crewed it gains +3/+3 and trample this makes it such a good card.

Don't count on getting gold cards!
One thing that I have noticed from not only opening the booster box but in the bundle to is the lack of gold cards. (From my bundle of 10 booster packs there was only 3 gold cards out of 150 cards that is a 0.2%) Now sometimes they are not needed but in other times they can be key pieces to making your sealed deck work such as Voltaic Brawler or Contraband Kingpin giving you extra punch or fixing your draws with scry's!

Do not put too much land in your deck!
One of the lads was running 18 lands for colour fixing this is a no no! I have found that the max land in total to run is 16 in which ever ratio you like for 2 colours. If I go 3 colour which I have only once you need to look at having fixing in terms of artifacts/creatures giving you opportunities for generating mana of the correct colour. Otherwise you just have to have the correct ratio of coloured lands and shuffle well (sacrificing some dice to the card gods can help also) and if your opening hand doesn't have one of each colour/fixing then mulligan to 6 or even 5 to achieve it as running 3 colours is hard.


Masterpiece does not guarantee victory!
Yes from my booster box one of the lads pulled the Sword of Feast and Famine! Which you can imagine had me jumping up and down for joy! He did play with it in his deck but found that like a true bomb when playing sealed if it wasn't in his opening hand he never drew into it. But it was impressive when it did hit the board and was hitting his opponent causing not only for him to discard cards but untapping all his land!

So it was a good practice and we all managed to finished before the round timer went apart from 1 game. But me and the lads are prepped for the GP as best we can be, planning on entering a last chance sealed trial on the Friday of the GP so will update you on that.