Building Blocks: Return to Ravnica Sealed

The spelling is RIBBON not RIBBEN.

Ive done 5 sealeds so far and I really dont like this set. I seem to lack ‘playables’ and forced to branch into 3 or more colors with little fixing and hope I dont get screwed. I went 4-0 and won the tourney with a pretty straight forward RB aggressive deck. No mana issues and went how I imagined.
However, the pre-release I went 1-3 with a 5 color build since I literally had almost no build with 2-3 colors although the good thing was I had the fixing to do so. It was just too slow.
The other 3 I went 3 colors with little fixing and went 2-2 and 1-3.
Drafting is much much better for me. I probably need to work on my deckbuilding skills also.
Pretty sure this is the worst Sealed experience Ive had (I didnt play much of Inn block) since ME4.

You dismissed Rakdos pretty early on, but I think it was your best option. You don’t have good fixing besides the lantern, and you’ve got some very sweet BR cards. Dead Reveler is actually very good, unleashing a 3/4 for 3 early. You should be able to get in enough damage to get a nice-sized Cryptborn Horror. Ragemutt is very good. And your removal would have been outstanding: Stab Wound, Assassin’s Strike, Explosive Impact, 2 Annihilating Fires, Auger Spree, and Dreadbore. That would have been nuts. Plus, your mana base would have been way more consistent. Think you missed a really sweet deck here.

Few playing mistakes here and there like you said… but I think you did OK with an uninspiring (not awful, but not impressive) pool that needed you to be creative and flexible with your deckbuilding. With this pool I’d have probably aimed for a BR (maybe involving Izzet if the mana would suffer it) deck as I’ve found the Justicar’s to be underwhelming versus my expectations thus far. Your BR cards aren’t the deepest in the universe and you don’t have super-bomb rares, but you have so much removal that I think you could get away with it and finish people off with the Perilous Shadows (which are better than I expected.) Of course, that isn’t to say it’d be any better or achieve better results, by no means am I an expert player!

Thanks for posting, always educational to see other people playing and discussing their choices.

In terms of play, the obvious miss to me is not windmilling slamming the Druid’s deference into your green build. I think it is because we have so long come to think of Fog effects as being bad. But, fog effect plus a 1/1 bird or a 3/3 centaur for 2 mana, at instant speed, is more than just a little good — and your deck fairly easily supported it.

I am a little surprised at the lack of love avenging arrow gets. Yes, you, or a creature of your must take damage. Would have come in handy against that Roc, though.

I’ll add my voice to idea that your Rakdos pool is quite good. At its core, it is also a fast enough deck that it could easily run only 16 lands, too.

The problem is that there were only 12 Rakdos creatures you would wan to play (including the Ogre, who is still.. ok.. without a gate). Terrus Wurm is really overcosted, and messes with your curve, and the racketeer is pretty ‘meh’ in a tempo deck. One option is to play the Racketeers, and one Wurm, the 12 decent critters, the 8 non-creature spells (traitorous instinct isn;t good in many builds, but works well in this build). Not terrible.

Another option for the Rakdos would be to take a medium risk by splashing green, say with 1 or 2 forrest, and your two gates… for the Shaman and maybe the centuar herald / token as a reasonable efficient creature, and perhaps Chorus of might as a finisher… With two guidlgates for — one is even on your colors — you might get activate the ogre for offense.