MTG – Journey into Nyx Pre-Release Report

by | Apr 30, 2014

Found time to play in the Journey into Nyx Pre-Release on Sunday.  I originally wanted to play white because the promo (Dawnbringer Charioteers) had pretty cool art, was a good beater in sealed and goes well in my cube.  Unfortunately I registered late so all the white was taken and I ended going blue (the promo was Scourge of Fleets which has cool art and I figured was a pretty bomby card when played).

The pool I opened was ok but nothing spectacular.  I did not have many of the powerful blue commons and uncommons (no Hour of Need, no Voyage's End, no Griptide, no Sea God's Revenge) and no removal from any colour (aside from some enchantment removal in green).  I had a lot of good 5-drops but no acceleration of any sort to ramp into them, so the deck I built ended up being some weird mid-range aggro/control style deck with a bunch of powerful 5-drops and some cheap tricks/filler creatures at the lower casting costs.

My deck consisted of
Not the greatest deck but considering the cards I got, it was the best one I could come up with in my opinion.  My full card pool can be found after the report.

Game 1 - Won 2-0
Faced off against a GW deck that had no real synergy.  My opponent must have had a bad pool as I don't recall any real bomb card and I was able to play my flyers and win that way.  He did have an Athreos, God of Passage out early on game 2 but I managed to play around it.

Game 2 - Lost 1-2
Played a GW deck packing a fair amount of removal.  2x Time to Feed, Deicide, Banishing Light and some good creatures (Mistcutter Hydra absolutely wrecked me in game 2 and 3).  I managed to take the first game as I was able to hold off his early rush until I got a Humbler of Mortals followed by my Scourge of Fleets and then shortly after that I was able to drop an enchantment and play Mischief and Mayhem on both of my fatties to trample over for the win.  The 2nd and 3rd games though I couldn't find my fat creatures fast enough to overcome the early removal and Mistcutter Hydra.

Game 3 - Lost 0-2
Another GW deck but this one was super fast.  Not a lot of removal but just a lot of fast aggressive creatures like Golden Hind, Eagle of the Watch, Oreskos Swiftclaw all backed up by a Dictate of Heliod and other auras.  Both games I could not keep up with the early beats.

Game 4 - Lost 0-2
A fast aggressive RG deck.  Lots of 1 and 2 drops backed up by auras and combat tricks.  At this point I didn't really care too much if I won or lost so I played pretty badly and made some horrible plays.

First time since Scars of Mirrodin  that I didn't Top 8 a pre-release event but oh well, that's the nature of sealed sometimes.  Hopefully at the next event (M15 release I think) I'll get a better pool.  In the meanwhile I'm already thinking about what cards from Journey into Nyx I want to add to my cube and what they will replace.


My full card pool sorted by colour:
Not sure what else I could have done with this pool.  Maybe tried for a Bant Heroic? But with no fixing that would be difficult if not impossible.  Maybe UW flyers would have been better?  But that leaves me with really no removal whatsoever and there are a lot of enchantments in the block.

Oh well, the event passed and hopefully I will have better luck next time.