ROE Prerelease

[RogueMTG]

Did anyone else play? What did you think of the limited format?


So far I don't think I'm a big fan. It seemed like for 6-8 turns or so you were allowed to play normal strategic magic. Then whoever hit their 8th-10th landdrop off the top of their deck first just won the game on the spot with an ultra swingy Eldrazi bomb. It wasn't exactly fun, even when it was me doing the crushing.

[Phoenix Ignition]

I found that fast red white decks are quite good. I went 3-1 both days of the prerelease with it, losing to landscrew and lighthouse chronologist. I didn't find the eldrazi particularly hard to beat if you got decent removal.

Pretty much playing a bunch of leveling guys gives you a strong deck, but overall it's really the mythics that win games, not playskill. Skargan dragon guy, light house chronologist, giddean, and a few others really just ruined the games because whoever dropped the first one won.

[DownSyndromeKarl]

I played in a draft and went Red/Green. I found the format reminiscent of n00b days, when I thought Shivan Dragon was the best creature ever made. I had a ton of fun with it although the games didn't really start until turn 4 or 5. The Timmy in anyone should love this format. oh, and i dont think it's dependent on getting Eldrazi in play. As a matter of fact, I think that Artisan of Kozilek is one of the best in the set. Other than him, none of the Eldrazi really helped much. the Levelers can be pretty amazing though.

[android]

I played RW early/mid deck with levelers and Hellion Eruption. I had Ulamog and Ulamog's Crusher but rarely made it to late game to cast them. Yeah, every game was basically jostling for board control with levelers/removal into turn 4/5 Hatcher into turn 5/6 Hellion Eruption or Deathless Angel with my MVP of the day Ogre's Cleaver. Lost to Eldrazi.dec and Grb lot's of creature deck. Eldrazi.dec was lame. Basically turn 6 Crusher into turn 7 Eldrazi Conscription on Crusher. I was light on removal and I was trying to use it early to win mid game. Went 5-2 but lost one round to poor draws in two games (crushed him in one game). Kind of a lame format strategy-wise but fun for playing with my friends who don't know how to play magic ala 1993.

[Rune]

I went undefeated in the swiss with a RW (splash Consuming Vapors) aggro deck. I chose not to play any Eldrazi creatures in my deck (I think I had 2 common ones). Everyone seemed really obsessed with casting the big monsters, but in reality there are a ton of outs to them in the format.. I think they are a bit overrated. I won several games against opponents who spent the entire game ramping up to them, only to have them stolen by my "threaten" cards (don't remember names).

[jrsthethird]

I had a removal-heavy RB deck:

2 Vendetta
1 Staggershock
1 Flame Slash
1 (Reveal a creature card from hand, target creature gets -X/-X until EOT)
2 Goblin Arsonist
2 (1R burn for 1, make an Eldrazi Spawn)
1 Shrivel

Rares I got were
Hellcarver Demon - guy is nuts! He only went off in one game but it went from slow, boring Magic to me pretty much auto-winning
Magmaw - a little slow, but great with Pawn of Ulamog to finish off an opponent
Devastating Summons - left this out early on, but then added it later. One time it gave me enough Magmaw tokens to finish them off, the second time making 2 6/6's when we were in topdeck mode.

Played 1 Crusher and 1 Artisan. My favorite turn was when I hit my 8th land and dropped Crusher. He Heat Rays it, so the next turn I drop Artisan and return the Crusher. He has another Heat Ray, takes out the Crusher, and I play the Gravedigger Imp and get Crusher back again. It doesn't matter, but I thought it was great.

[Atwa]

I went 3-1-1 and ended 5th (out of 32 people) with a BGu Eldrazi deck.

I got lot of ways to play spawn tokens and search for land, had decent removal (Consuming Vapors, Kiss, that rebound Deathtouch instant) and pulled an Emakhul out of my first booster. I dicided not to play for the win, but rather to cast Emakhul at least once. I pulled it off twice :)

Now I normally don't play limited, but I rather liked the format. It really stirred the Timmy I am and had lot's of fun all day.

I do want to say that the White planeswalker is broken. I faced him twice, accounting for the loss and 1 very long game I took after resolving 3 Eldrazis! Best play I made was being able to cast Vapors after Vapors, with the wall which lets you take a sorcery card from your grave and the flying 1/1 Raise Dead to recast the wall

Best part of the day was someone actually pulled it off to use the ultimate on Spawnshire of Ulamog and dropped Emakhul, Korzelek and some common Eldrazis. Talk about powerplay :)

[n00bas4urus_r3x]

I played in a 2HG with a friend, going 2-1. We lost to the guys that were at the same table as us for opening our packs. We were joking with them about the picking the right packs and such. Their pool was amazing. They had Gideon, Lord of Shatterskull Pass, Momentous Fall, Kargan Dragonlord and a Sphinx of Magosi. We got mana screwed and bombed out of that game.

I played a r/w weenie deck that I was fairly impressed with, and my partner played a b/g Eldrazi ramp. The levelers were pretty good all day, the strongest we had either being Nirkana Cutthroat or Student of Warfare. Wrap in Flames won us the first two games, and allowed us to take out Gideon in our last match. Fantastic limited card.

[Virel]

I missed the Prelease but drafted in the afternoon. Got a fairly good BW deck. Put my opponet at 1 life game 1 but lost. Game 2 mana screwed at 3 lands (opening hand and not another land to be found). Turned out the draft was single elimination so I threw $15 away to play two games. Reminded why I dislike draft. Key was high that eight mana or so and dropping your bomb.

I wasn't impressed with any of the cards - mine or my opponents.

I wouldn't draft this set again.

[jrsthethird]

I do want to say that the White planeswalker is broken. I faced him twice, accounting for the loss and 1 very long game I took after resolving 3 Eldrazis!

I faced him once. A swift Vendetta to the face after he tried to swing at me did the trick.

I'm excited to draft this set. It's swingy but you have the chance to completely steamroll people with Eldrazi and that sounds like a lot of fun.

[EssKay]

Went 3-2, lost one round due to an automatic game loss (damn you McNuggets!) and mana screw. A little frustrating since we played for fun afterwards and it seemed like a good matchup. Overall the set seems pretty fun in limited, but in a "summer action blockbuster" kind of way. The toughest decisions I had to make all day were what to spend 11 mana on.

Aura Gnarlid seems like a house, and Overgrown Battlement + Vent Sentinel = good times.

[DownSyndromeKarl]

Aura Gnarlid seems like a house

QFT. This guys is great in Gw or Gu limited decks.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I went 4-1-1 with GW aggro at the prerelease and 3-2 with UW at the launch party today. Both times i tried to make normal looking decks rather than including big fat creatures, and it seemed to work quite well in the format. My loses were either to manascrew or to good non-Eldrazi decks.

The white Invoker has won me several games.

EDIT. Oh, and i made the coolest play today, by the way! I take control of one of my opponents small creatures with Domestication. He has a Gideon in play and on his next turn he makes Gideon a creature with his ultimate ability; i play Aura Finesse moving Domestication to Gideon and gain control of it, and get to keep him as he is no longer a creature at the end of my turn :laugh:

[xTrainx]

At the release yesterday, I went 2-0, and then my deck proceeded to crap out on me.

Mull to six every game after that, and each game either get colorscrewed or manascrewed.

[dahcmai]

We had something like 48 people at our pre-release and I made the top 8 with a G/W deck mainly made up of levelers and totem auras. Kind of a ride it until it dies style. It was quite good, though the best I saw was R/G with levelers and it was plain fast as hell. That Beastbreaker is silly. If you get multiples, you plain win. I do agree that it is a format of who gets their mythic out first though and that made me a little sad. The mythics are entirely too good, but luckily they are mythic so you can't count on seeing them over and over, though I did see that red 4cc mythic that levels up into a 6/6 all damned day. So frustrating.

All in all, it was a fun format, though I don't think I'd play it again since the mythic thing is seriously skewing the results. I'd have to say R/G or mono-U were the best. Mono-U if you get the right stuff is sick. Truly fast and mean.

Maybe I just didn't see too many of the eldrazi. I only saw a few of the uncommon and common ones and they didn't seem to amazing. I saw a few of the "It which was taken" and even he seemed meh. I had a Knight of Cliffhaven loaded up with umbras at a 14/19 staring at him as he flew over for the wins in one game. lol Go go super card disadvantage dude, win!

[T is for TOOL]

The prerelease at the store I visited had a total attendance of 35 people. I played the following decklist:

Blue
2x Champion's Drake
1x Coralhelm Commander
1x Domestication
1x Frostwind Invoker
2x Halimar Wavewatch
1x Narcolepsy
1x Regress
1x Sea Gate Oracle
2x Venerated Teacher
12 cards

White
1x Affa Guard Hound
1x Gideon Jura
1x Guard Duty
1x Ikiral Outrider
1x Knight of Cliffhaven
1x Kor Line-Slinger
1x Oust
1x Puncturing Light
1x Repel the Darkness
1x Totem-Guide Hartebeest
10 cards

Artifacts
1x Dreamstone Hedron
1 cards

Lands
9x Islands
8x Plains

I ended up first in the sealed event at 6-0. Most of the decks that I faced were either G/W or G/R. The game generally played out with me dropping early walls to stave off early beats, and removing key threats ( Aura Gnarlid is ridiculous!). Surprisingly I was usually able to go on the offensive early midgame (turns 5-6), thanks to Champion's Drake. I'd have a level-up creature out with a counter on it, and Venerated Teacher would enable me to immediately swing for 4. This was the same gameflow that occurred against more removal heavy decks like R/B. Oust and Regress were both fantastic in the R/B matchup when they sac'd all their Spawn tokens to power out an Eldrazi. The other type of matchup was against other U decks, which I won primarily on the backs of the Halimar Wavewatchs when they eventually became 6/6 Islandwalkers (ripping Jura off the top helped too!).

I haven't had a chance to draft yet, but I think that Oust is one of the best removal pieces in the set.

[EssKay]

The mythics are entirely too good, but luckily they are mythic so you can't count on seeing them over and over, though I did see that red 4cc mythic that levels up into a 6/6 all damned day. So frustrating.


You mean Lord of Shatterskull Pass? You probably saw him all day b/c he's rare and not mythic. I got one at the pre-release and personally didn't feel him to be that good, except for soaking up removal almost instantly. Really at best he's a 6/6 for 6 mana, which really isn't that impressive, unless you can get him to stick around long enough to get him to level 6, and even then he's just begging for Oust or Induce Despair or something.