My pool sucked too.Four rounds into the five round prerelease, and I've gotten my ass kicked by everyone. I haven't won a single game. I had a bad pool with little good removal, including none in black, and no good threats that didn't also have bad cards in the rest of that color. I started out U/B/G but then changed to R/G splashing blue for a Confiscation Coup. But then every single match, I drew the three Islands I included (I also had two Renegade Maps). For a while, I chocked it up to bad draws, but I just had to relearn the lesson that, no, it's my fault for building my deck like that. It's too late to win any prizes, but I just removed blue and the maps from my deck, and hopefully I can win this last one.
WINDING CONSTRICTOR
Do you know how backbreaking it is to put down the Tusker and drop two +1/+1s on your whole team
4x Fretwork Colony
3x Rishkar, Peema Renegade
4x Scrounging Bandar
2x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
4x Tireless Tracker
4x Winding Constrictor
3x Yahenni, Undying Partisan
4x Fatal Push
4x Animation Module
3x Oath of Ajani
2x Nissa, Vital Force
1x Aether Hub
2x Blooming Marsh
2x Canopy Vista
8x Forest
2x Fortified Village
3x Hissing Quagmire
1x Shambling Vent
4x Swamp
One of my AER packs had Quicksmith Rebel(foil) and Quicksmith Spy, which I thought was cute. I'm still disappointed this wasn't a full cycle, though: was there a reason? Something storyline-related or something?
Your neighbour is, at least in sealed. Energy creation has been very toned down compared to Kaladesh and it does get blocked to trade by 2/3s. You could make it work with enough combat tricks but then again it's a 2/2 that dies to pretty much anything.My other rares were pretty terrible: Lightning Runner (am I missing something? A neighbor referred to him as a 'bomb' and one of us is horribly wrong about him)
I forgot to mention, the guy that had 2 felidar and Saheeli in his pool also had a ninth bridge patrol, and won one of his rounds with an infinitely big ninth bridge. Fun.
I decided that it was probably not worth it to drive one and a half hours in one direction in the midst of winter to participate in the pre-release
seeing how everyone else is miserable, it was probably the right choice
oh well, I'm more excited for Amonkhet anyway
Oh no, the format is fantastic. It's only bad in the very small chance that someone opens Saheeli and Felidar Guardian.
Did anyone else's pre-release have kits that contained a bunch of yellow/faded cards. Our store had tons of them, mostly the Kaladesh cards, but some Aether Revolt too. They look like piss. Even my Black Vise that I opened from my prize packs (so not from the pre-release kits, but an actual booster box) is faded.
It's really good in a RG energy deck, but not terribly exciting elsewhere. A lot of the red and green energy creatures have attack triggers, so getting a second combat phase is a big deal. It's a bit of a win-more card though.My other rares were pretty terrible: Lightning Runner (am I missing something? A neighbor referred to him as a 'bomb' and one of us is horribly wrong about him)
Do people not understand that Fatal Push is not that good in Standard yet?
Dunno stopped playing in the beta. But I went from my initial 4 to 2 trying it out.Do people not understand that Fatal Push is not that good in Standard yet?
Vessel of Nascency is pretty good for it and I imagine WB aristocrats are going to have a nice time with it.I mean, you can't trigger revolt without goofy stuff in Standard. I'm just wondering why people keep saying "yeah but X dies to Fatal Push!" as though people are going to play decks with 4 Fatal Push in them.
Yeah, it's a clear modern plant.Do people not understand that Fatal Push is not that good in Standard yet?
No, it's to tie into the draft strategy for red and blue. Those are the colors that care most about having artifacts on the battlefield. It's the same reason why only white and red have Modification cards that turn vehicles into creatures: those are the colors in draft that care most about vehicles.
Yeah, it's a clear modern plant.
Wait, really? That was definitely a black think in KLD, and I'm not seeing much of a change in AER. Red's got a couple Improvisers at common, but it still looks to me like black is at least as artifacts-matters as red is, especially when you add a pack of KLD into the mix...
I wonder if it might be a good idea for Prerelease Packs to start including one piece of common removal from each color. Ex:
Unlike the Theros method of including a particular rare with the packs, this wouldn't make games too samey, since who the hell's going to notice that everyone playing red has Chandra's Revolution? Though this needs to be removal that doesn't become too great if you have multiples, which is why I didn't include Shock.
This should help bad pools, since you're always guaranteed some removal, without making good pools less exciting.
Every color cares about artifacts in Kaladesh block, but each cares in different ways. If you look at black's commons, black cares more about sacrificing artifacts in this set, which is also part of the black/red draft strategy.