Of course, coming from a background of rogue deck building, many people associate me with constructed more often than not. While that would have been possible back in the day, during the time of split Pro Tours, these days, each player needs to be much more well rounded than they used to. While my limited game might not be as flashy as my constructed decks, I like to think that it is just as strong (if not stronger).
When it comes to limited though, there is a big misconception that draft is where the skill lies and sealed is a format that boils down to luck too often. While it may be true that draft is more skill intensive than sealed (and that is far from a given), there is no way that sealed lags that far behind. In reality, sealed just rewards a different set of skills than draft does but so many people see the bombs that are opened and then chalk up the format as high variance. Magic, by its nature, contains variance though, and sealed just highlights a different part of it.
With a pair of Grand Prixs both sporting the Innistrad/Dark Ascension limited format, I thought today would be a good time to discuss some of my guidelines for Sealed. During set reviews, I give all of the cards a limited rating, but that is most influenced by draft, as it is the most common form of limited. Sealed can often be a completely different Beast though and it often changes based on the block that is currently being opened. We will get to that in a minute though, for now, lets kick this off:
Power or Speed
While some formats may lean toward a certain aspect as far as premier strategies, Innistrad is fairly flexible. If you look at a format like Zendikar, while Sealed was much slower than draft, it was still incredibly fast. Because of this, some cards that would typically be sealed bombs, like Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet, might be a little worse than you would expect. The card is obviously perfectly playable and would make every Black deck in Sealed, but thinking that it will be your trump for the format might get you in over your head.
Innistrad on the other hand, allows for either quick aggressive strategies, or slower but more powerful decks. Generally, you want to steer clear of midrange strategies with only a moderate power level though, as the fast decks will outrace and the powerful decks will go over the top of you.
Some of the best aggressive strategies for Innistrad include GW aggro and BR aggro. Both decks are pretty similar to the way you would expect them to be in draft though. BR relies heavily on its powerful one-drops and wants a decent looking curve, often slightly heavy on the three-drops, with as much removal as you can provide to back it up. Nightbird's Clutches and Markov Warlord are some key finishers in such a deck. GW wants a low curve with a lot of combat tricks and as many Travel Preparations as you can fit in your deck. Other color combinations can certainly end up with an aggressive pool, but these two will be the most common ones.
As for building a powerful deck, well that just comes down to maximizing your bombs. I have written about this before for general sealed strategy, and it remains true for Innistrad. Isolate your bombs, and in particular, the colors that are most dense in the bomb department, and see if the decks you can build around them are worth the effort. In general, having to play one or two mediocre cards, like Ghoulcaller's Chant or Saving Grasp, is probably worth the sacrifice if you are picking up Bloodline Keeper or Angelic Overseer on the exchange.
For the midrange contingent that you should be avoiding, this includes most of the combo-eque decks which work fine in draft, but rarely come together in sealed. This means Burning Vengeance or Spider Spawning should be avoided if at all possible. Yes, on occasion someone will open two Burning Vengeance and a Secrets of the Dead with plenty of flashback to fuel them, but those should be the exceptions, not the rule.
Colors Schmolors
A question I get a lot of the time when it comes to Sealed, is what color preferences I have. While some formats, like Scars of Mirrodin, have color combinations that are better than others, I don't think that is the right mentality to have for most sealed formats. In Scars, RW was the best because it contained a lot of artifact removal and traditional removal, along with above average creatures at all rarities. Innistrad does not have the same linear as Scars though, and graveyard removal is sideboard material at best.
This means that your color preferences should be expanded as a result. There is no one color in Innistrad sealed that I want to be more than some other color. Instead, I let the density of each color along with my bombs preference dictate where I should end up. If that happens to be UG, then so be it.
Preferences in draft make more sense, as each color combination has a certain style to it and you are drafting a strategy. In sealed, a set strategy is much more rare, and you are instead just trying to maximize either the power level or the speed of your deck, If you have four bomb rares in UG, you should probably be playing those colors, even if traditionally those colors lack removal. Maybe you have enough Prey Upons and Claustrophobia to make it work, or maybe you can splash your removal, but do not abandon the colors purely off of preference. If you have a legitimate reason to avoid those colors, do so, but do not treat Sealed the way you would Draft.
Understanding the Ugly Ducklings
Due to the nature of draft, we often get complacent as a pack winds down and we are given our “dregs.” Yes, on occasion a solid sideboard option may find its way to us in the late picks, but that is all we ever see: sideboard options. And to be fair, in draft, that is typically what we are seeing, but you really need to be able to switch mentalities when it comes to sealed.
There are a lot of good sideboard options, that should often be main decked in sealed. The flagship for this theory is Deathmark in M11 sealed (or even M12 sealed for that matter). White and/or Green were so commonly played in sealed, that main decking a situational removal spell would Reap benefits more often than not. Let's take a look at some of the sideboard options Innistrad offers that should get consideration for main decks in sealed.
Most of these are cards that register to us as situational, and for the most part they are, but when you are looking at a sealed format, you really need to expand your horizons from draft. In sealed, people draw from an individual pool rather than a collective pool like in draft, which means each individual is more likely to have things like artifacts, fliers, or bombs in their deck. Preempting those things by being partially “sideboarded” ahead of time can make the difference in any given match you play. Do not make the mistake of instantly throwing these into your unplayables pile as you sort your pool. It takes some outside of the box thinking to make the best out of a pool and including one of these as your 23rd card can certainly be that boost...
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I Never Met A Sideboard...
Before there were ever these fancy sleep-in specials available to players with byes, nearly every limited Grand Prix, you could walk around the venue and find packs of players huddled around each other with a pool laid out in between them. This happens every limited tournament. What is occurring, is that one player is bringing up his pool to another one and asking what they would have done. Naturally more people get involved and before you know, the pool has been rebuilt entirely as the way the consensus of the group would have built it. Naturally, this tends to mean a more optimally built deck for your given pool.
Now comes the important part though. For those not familiar with the practice, this is where the owner of the pool has to take on some responsibility. You cannot just show up to the next round with your newly built pool, as you have already registered a deck from it. What you can do though, is sideboard into your new deck. (Have the new deck sleeved and ready to go in order to more effortlessly make the switch).
So what does this mean for you during the actual sealed portion? Well it means you should take the maximum building time and look through possible alternative builds for your pool. Not only will this give your friends who help you Rebuild the pool a good place to jump off from, but it also puts you into the mind set of playing with those cards. This might seem trivial, but switching into a new deck often requires an entirely new philosophy with how you want each game to go and getting your mind to go along with that can be difficult without that type of trigger.
Know Your Outs
As we have alluded to on numerous occasions already, sealed does contain its fair number of bombs. Theoretically, as you win round by round, the decks get better and therefore the bombs contained within also get better. Of course, playskill can offset this a little bit, but the correlation is certainly there. Because of this, you need to be aware of every possible out to a given bomb that you can find in your pool.
It is easy to recognize that the Brimstone Volley in your deck is going to help you take out a Bloodline Keeper, but do you also recognize that Smite the Monstrous is a potential out? Obviously it is far from ideal, but recognizing that can give you a huge advantage if you end up running into said bomb. Maybe the solution you are looking for is more effective than that even. Say your BR opponent has a Ravenous Demon that might give you trouble on the flip side. Recognizing that Crushing Vines is an out to that Beast even when the opponent has no artifacts or fliers elsewhere is a crucial skill to have.
Those examples are fairly straightforward of course, so maybe the point was a bit convoluted. Consider solutions that are a little more inventive and may be too involved to come up with during the three minutes you have for sideboarding. Say your RG Werewolves deck just ran up against a deck that has a pair of pesky Elite Inquisitors and you have no reasonable way to remove them. If you had fully explored your pool during building, maybe you recognized that you had a Burning Vengeance in the sideboard but only 4 sorceries with flashback to support it. Well while that is hardly enough to support an entire deck, it might be a fine package to bring in against the Elite Inquisitors.
Wrap Up
I hope this rounded out some of the things I did not get to talk about the last time I delved into sealed and applied them specifically to Innistrad. Sealed is very much about finding solutions with a limited number of tools available, as the name limited would imply. Some outside the box thinking and prep work can often make these situations much smoother and more rewarding. Hopefully this weekend, some of these strategies get applied and I see you in the Top 8! Good luck as always in your Modern PTQs!
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