M14 Sealed: A Beginner Guide to Sealed

You’re fairly new to Magic: the Gathering and your local game store is releasing a brand new core set this Friday. You’re excited to throw down your entry fee and start casting spells. But maybe you have some questions that have you worried (and have you searching for help). How does this whole sealed tournament thing work anyway? How do you know which cards to choose in building a deck? Hopefully this Beginner’s Guide to Sealed will answer some of your questions.

Sealed is an awesome limited format that helps you become familiar with a new set as it exposes you to a wide variety of new cards and leaves plenty of room for creativity in deck building. If you haven’t played in a sealed tournament before, you get 6 booster packs to build a deck with a minimum of 40 cards. In this type of environment, you should assume that you will be in two colors. It’s highly unlikely that you will get enough playable cards to stay in one color, and going three colors (without a lot of mana fixing) typically just makes your deck vulnerable to not being able to play spells because you don’t have the right mana. After you paid your entry fee and loitered around the display cases waiting for the call-ahead stragglers to show up, you’ll be seated and handed your 6 booster packs. After you’re given the “OK” to open your packs, it’s time to start figuring out what deck you’ll be making.

Here’s the steps I take when building a deck in a sealed tournament. Hopefully this method will help you or at least give you some ideas for how you want to organize your cards.

1. Remember BREAD (Bombs, Removal, Evasion/Efficiency, Aggro/Ability, Dregs). If you don’t know what BREAD is in relation to deck building, then here’s a quick rundown. BREAD is an acronym that helps players remember the order of importance in the types of cards for limited play. Bombs are the cards that will win the game unless they are answered almost immediately (see [card]Kalonian Hydra[/card]). Removal are the cards that remove threats from the battlefield–these are typically the best answers to Bombs (see [card]Doom Blade[/card]). Evasion refers to creatures that have an advantage in getting around blockers and dealing combat damage to a player such as creatures with Flying, Intimidate, or to a lesser extent Trample. Efficiency means the cards that have the greatest return of advantage for the amount of resources you have to put into them. Efficiency may be a little harder to explain, but these cards come in the form of [card]Mind Rot[/card], [card]Divination[/card], [card]Into the Wilds[/card], and [card]Young Pyromancer[/card]. Aggro/Ability are the creatures that form the backbone of your army by giving you ways to kill your opponent by dealing damage ([card]Minotaur Abomination[/card]) or by giving you the building blocks to build an overwhelming advantage ([card]Predatory Sliver[/card]). Dregs are the rest of the cards that are too situational to belong in your main deck or they don’t have any synergy with the rest of your deck.
2. Separate the cards into piles. Start by separating cards into separate piles by color, artifact, and non-basic land. Since M14 doesn’t have any dual color cards, there aren’t too many piles to deal with.
3. Divide each pile into two piles of creature cards and non creature cards. I also take note of how many removal spells or removal effects I have for each color.
4. Determine the strongest color. The color with creatures of varying mana costs and the most removal spells will most likely be your strongest color. Sometimes two or even three colors are standing out for whatever reason. Either you have a bomb or two in one color that you really

The new core set M14 was prereleased this past weekend, and I had the opportunity to play a sealed tournament with the new cards. Here’s what I opened:

What would you build with this pool?

After opening so many sweet White removal cards, [card]Pacifism[/card], and removal effects, [card]Banisher Priest[/card], I knew White was my main color. Then I noticed I had some pretty awesome efficient Green cards like [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card], [card]Into the Wilds[/card], and then [card]Brindle Boar[/card] which helps turn the fringe playable [card]Angelic Accord[/card] into a good card. Also, my only bomb was the [card]Garruk’s Horde[/card] which was the final push to send me into Green. So I put together all of my removal and efficient cards to build a pretty sweet White and Green Life Gain deck.

Here’s what I played with:

1x [card]Angelic Accord[/card]
1x [card]Angelic Wall[/card]
2x [card]Banisher Priest[/card]
1x [card]Capashen Knight[/card]
1x [card]Celestial Flare[/card]
1x [card]Dawnstrike Paladin[/card]
1x [card]Divine Favor[/card]
2x [card]Fiendslayer Paladin[/card]
1x [card]Fortify[/card]
1x [card]Pacifism[/card]
1x [card]Show of Valor[/card]
1x [card]Soulmender[/card]
1x [card]Wall of Swords[/card]
1x [card]Brindle Boar[/card]
2x [card]Elvish Mystic[/card]
1x [card]Garruk’s Horde[/card]
1x [card]Giant Growth[/card]
1x [card]Into the Wilds[/card]
1x [card]Rumbling Baloth[/card]
1x [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card]
9x [card]Plains[/card]
7x [card]Forest[/card]

Normally, I always run 17 lands to ensure that I have the mana to play spells, but with this deck, I was confidant in my low curve and [card]Elvish Mystic[/card] to pull through for me. They didn’t let me down, and I ended up going 4-0 with this deck. Having so much access to removal and efficient cards really pulled me ahead. Some highlights from the event were [card]Into the Wilds[/card] saving me from top decking lands in crucial moments in Round 1 and getting to eventually play a [card]Garruk’s Horde[/card] to make a come from behind win. Also, getting to combine [card]Scavenging Ooze[/card] and [card]Angelic Accord[/card] was an excellent way to end a stalemate in Round 4.

If you have any questions or comments, please post below. This being my first post, I’m also open to any constructive criticism.

Thanks for reading!