In a semi-continuation from last week, here’s Tony’s second Sealed pool. This is the hardest build I’ve had yet. To work!
Heralds of Galactus:
Galan, Famished
Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Optimistic Youth
Frankie Raye ◊ Nova, Soul Searcher
Silver Surfer, Righteous Protector
Destroyer, Harbinger of Devastation
2 The Fallen One, The Forgotten
Galactus, The Maker
The Power Cosmic Unleashed
Relentless Onslaught
Cosmic Necessity
Worldship
Tony sure has an ability to open Frankie Raye. That’s five copies in two Sealed Packs! Unfortunately, this time his Heralds setup is much more disjointed than last time. Two 1-drops, a solitary 3-drop, a lonely 5-drop, three 6-drops, and a 7-drop is an ugly curve. The Power Cosmic Unleashed is a good Sealed Pack card, but the others aren’t good enough to make us want to push for Heralds. I really don’t like Cosmic Necessity, and Worldship is dangerous with Kree in the format. Relentless Onslaught is an okay card, but too many people seem to overlook its 4 threshold cost when they really shouldn’t. Hopefully our other teams are better.
Kree:
Talla Ron, Lunatic Legion
Kree Soldiers, Army
Dr. Minerva, Starforce
Captain Att-Lass, Starforce
Kree Commandos, Army
Commander Dylon Cir, Lunatic Legion
Ultimus, Starforce
Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
Supremor, Starforce
The Lunatic Legion
2 Hala
Kree seems a little messy on the curve, but all of the important bits are there. We have two press 2-drops, the best press 3-drop, a press 4-drop, and Ronan, who is a strong curve character on his own. Double Hala is a nice touch, giving us insurance on our attacks and making sure we can throw a few wrenches in the works when defending. I would have liked a little more Kree overall, but we could have seven or eight cards to work with if our pool ends up not being everything we hoped for.
Doom:
Valeria Von Doom, Heir to Latveria
Moloids, Army
Kang, One of Many
Lancer, Samantha Dunbar
Iron Man, Illuminati
Divinity, Vampiric General
Invisible Woman, Baroness Von Doom
Sub-Mariner, Illuminati
Mr. Fantastic, Doom’s Adversary
Ultron ◊ Ultron 11, Army
Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant
Dorma, Atlantean General
Time Thief
Master of Puppets
Doomstadt, Castle Doom
The Doom characters seem quite strong at first, but they are also not quite tight enough to make them an automatic choice. There are exceptionally strong characters like Divinity, Ultron, and the 6-drop Doom, but there are also some filler characters like Iron Man and Invisible Woman on the team. A glut of 4-drops doesn’t help our cause, and neither does the lack of strong non-character support. Still, right now things are looking a bit grim, and this is probably the best team we have seen so far.
Inhumans:
Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend
Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth
Black Bolt, Illuminati
Tonaja, The Responsible One
Human Torch, Sparky
2 Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans
2 Invisible Woman, Flame On!
Black Bolt, Devastating Decree
The Royal Guard
2 The Outside World
Waking the Ancestors
The Substructure
At least we get some decent 3-drops here. Human Torch and Tonaja are both okay, and the several Black Bolts we have at our disposal are our best bet yet. Lockjaw is normally a card I really like in Sealed, but it loses a lot of its utility without a 4- or 6-drop to find on the first turn. Franklin Richards can be amazing, but there don’t seem to be many cards we can combo with him at the moment. Getting a pump here could be invaluable, even if I am not much of a fan of the other non-character cards (Waking the Ancestors and The Outside World). Sealed Pack tends to be a world of pumps first and foremost, but it seems with this pool we might have to improvise.
Infinity Watch:
Moondragon, Protector of the Mind Gem
Thanos, Protector of the Reality Gem
Adam Warlock, Protector of the Soul Gem
Skrull:
2 Titannus, Alien Conqueror
Other:
Dr. Strange, Illuminati
Mr. Sinister, Supreme Geneticist
Adam Warlock won’t be seeing play this week. Still, although this pool has been all frowns up until now, we do have access to a really good combo with Valeria and Moondragon. In fact, considering we don’t seem to have many pumps, this could be a big part of our deck. If we’re really lucky, we could draw Franklin and be able to protect that fragile counter atop Moondragon. The other non-major-team characters are all a little late on the curve right now, but we should bear them in mind when we start filling out the edges of our deck.
Plot Twists:
Sworn Enemies
For the Glory of Doom!, Team-Up
Pressed into Service, Team-Up
Alien Insurrection
Starforce Strike
Gathering the Watch
Super Genius
Locations:
The Kyln
Negative Zone, Shadow Dimension
At least we got two Team-Ups! The two “ATK while defending” pumps are also looking like auto-inclusions, as is Sworn Enemies. Heck, at this stage we may finally get to play The Kyln after cutting it so many times before! Negative Zone also looks decent. Apart from Gathering the Watch, all the non-character cards seem likely to see play.
It seems as though the Doom and Inhumans teams have the most depth. Let’s see what we get if we put these two teams together in the interest of trying to establish a basic curve:
Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth
Black Bolt, Illuminati
Lancer, Samantha Dunbar
Tonaja, The Responsible One
Human Torch, Sparky
Iron Man, Illuminati
Divinity, Vampiric General
Sub-Mariner, Illuminati
Mr. Fantastic, Doom’s Adversary
Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans
Ultron ◊ Ultron 11, Army
Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant
There are a number of issues with this skeleton. For starters, we are including some cards like Mr. Fantastic and Iron Man that are generally mediocre (this after already cutting narrow cards like Kang). We also come up a little short on the 3-drop and 6-drop count. Overall, it seems as though our pool is too weak to even suggest a basic two-team curve. Without strong non-character cards, there is also little incentive to continue along this path.
We can’t hide the fact that we have quite a poor pool, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. You have to be prepared to make the most of your bad pools as much as you anticipate coasting through the Swiss with your good ones. In fact, making the most of your bad pools is a much more important skill. Most players can build decent decks from strong pools; only the best players can do something with a suboptimal pile of cards.
When looking at an unfavorable Sealed pool, you should be trying really hard to do something different. You will need to push the envelope in places you might not normally push, give the risky cards more slack, and take a few chances. You can’t rely on your solid cards to get you out of trouble because you won’t have them, so you need to make your opponents play you rather than just out-draw you.
With that in mind, let’s start by cutting the chaff. Let’s get rid of Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic, and then sub in the Moondragon-Valeria combo we noticed before. Let’s also add the non-character cards so that we have a better idea of where we might want to go with our deck.
Valeria Von Doom, Heir to Latveria
Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth
Black Bolt, Illuminati
Lancer, Samantha Dunbar
Tonaja, The Responsible One
Human Torch, Sparky
Divinity, Vampiric General
Sub-Mariner, Illuminati
Moondragon, Protector of the Mind Gem
Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans
Ultron ◊ Ultron 11, Army
Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant
Sworn Enemies
For the Glory of Doom!, Team-Up
Pressed into Service, Team-Up
Alien Insurrection
Starforce Strike
Super Genius
The Royal Guard
The Kyln
Negative Zone, Shadow Dimension
You may question the inclusion of Super Genius at this stage, but it clearly works well with Moondragon and Valeria, and it looks like we will need all the deck manipulation we can get. Although we don’t have that many Inhumans characters right now (only five), we are so short on pumps that we really have to take a risk on The Royal Guard.
At the moment we still have a few weak spots, but we do have potential game-breakers we can work on to try to push the proverbial envelope. We have already gone through the Moondragon-Valeria interaction, but we also have another extremely strong 4-drop in Divinity. Valeria helps out there too (as fodder), but we will probably need more help in this regard. A push for more weenies would help us out here, saving us from KO’ing resources with our best card.
We might want to give the deck more focus around Divinity, but we also can’t afford to ignore that we are pretty short on 3-drops and 6-drops. Overall, the 3-drops are pretty weak in this pool, and they are a much bigger priority than the 6-drop situation at this stage. Turn 3 is very important in Sealed Pack play. It isn’t especially important that you do exceedingly well on that turn; it is much more significant that you don’t fall behind. A loose 3-drop on your opponent’s side of the board can cause havoc, adding an average of +5 ATK to his or her potential attacks, as well as creating the ever-present threat of clogging reinforcement channels.
Looking over the pool we still seem pretty much bereft of options. Kree does have Commander Dylon Cir, who is excellent, but that still leaves us short, as neither Iron Man nor Frankie Raye seems to do much in this deck. We can’t really afford to play mediocre characters when the rest of our deck needs everything it can get. We need to take a few chances. We could go in with only three 3-drops, but I would like to have some better compensation before we so disadvantage ourselves.
This is a tight spot for any deckbuilder. My preference would be to kill two birds with one stone and move for a small Kree press contingent by adding the two good Kree press 2-drops. Dr. Minerva isn’t great as a splash, but she could be fine on later turns when we are potentially teamed-up. Although adding her and Att-Lass would give us five 2-drops, we can always press one and play another on turn 3, and thus almost get away with only having three 3-drops. Furthermore, this gives us some options later in the game.
On top of all this, adding the Kree gives us a good enough reason to run Ronan (who is excellent) over Sub-Mariner (who is filler in a deck like this). Now we have a mid-curve with only very strong characters, and although we are scrimping a little on various points of recruitment, overall our deck is much more synergistic because of it. Given that our Kree are all early drops, we can probably even get away with running a Hala now.
This is where I would put the deck now:
Valeria Von Doom, Heir to Latveria
Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth
Black Bolt, Illuminati
Lancer, Samantha Dunbar
Dr. Minerva, Starforce
Captain Att-Lass, Starforce
Commander Dylon Cir, Lunatic Legion
Tonaja, The Responsible One
Human Torch, Sparky
Divinity, Vampiric General
Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
Moondragon, Protector of the Mind Gem
Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans
Ultron ◊ Ultron 11, Army
Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant
Sworn Enemies
For the Glory of Doom!, Team-Up
Pressed into Service, Team-Up
Alien Insurrection
Starforce Strike
Super Genius
The Royal Guard
The Kyln
Negative Zone, Shadow Dimension
Hala
We seem to have run out of options in the non-character department, so we will probably simply run twenty characters—Pressed into Service can help us take some of the pressure off of the resource row. With only fifteen characters locked in at the moment, however, we have some choices to make. Although we are still short of the desirable number of 6-drops, we might want to stress the lower end of the curve as well. With Divinity and the press contingent in the deck, we might want to try to hit a character on the first turn. I am a fan of Talla Ron, and Moloids would certainly help with our strict Divinity requirements if we are unable to land a Team-Up.
I think our deck needs to be as aggressive as possible. We probably cannot compete with other decks in a curve-on-curve slog. We are hoping that we can either draw large amounts of cards with Moondragon or breakthrough with Divinity. Although we do have a few other little combos in the deck (Franklin and Ronan; press in the late-game), we are going to need to press an advantage early and try to hold it. I would add Talla Ron and Moloids for sure, and I would also bring Lockjaw back. Although we don’t have a 4-drop or 6-drop to find with him, that isn’t as important anymore. The emphasis is now on pressure, and Lockjaw allows us to keep a hand with him in it and be assured of hitting a 2- or 3-drop, whichever we lack. Most of these characters have 2 ATK, which is also a big plus.
That leaves us with two character slots. With a 4-5-3-3-2-1 curve (turns 1-6) at the moment, we are probably pushing it to add a 7-drop. Really we don’t have the staying power. We will want the even initiatives with this deck, and if we can’t win on turn 6, we aren’t likely to win while defending on turn 7 anyway.
While I am not normally a fan of Supremor, I think this is finally his sort of deck. There are enough 1-drops to sate him if we need him on turn 7, but more importantly, he’s the sort of risky payoff card we need to run to stand a chance with this deck. This leaves us a final slot to fill, and we have an interesting situation. The second 5-drop Black Bolt is by far the best character we have lying around, but does the deck really need another 5-drop? Our best drops in the deck are our 4-drops, even if playing Moondragon on turn 5 seems terrible. Then again, we do only have three 4-drops at the moment. We could always bring back Sub-Mariner, but I’m going to stick with sheer power of Black Bolt (and bring some power-ups in). This deck is prepared to miss curve on turn 3 or 4 already, so we might as well add the most powerful card we have left.
This leaves the final deck as:
Characters:
Lockjaw, Inhuman’s Best Friend
Talla Ron, Lunatic Legion
Valeria Von Doom, Heir to Latveria
Moloids, Army
Franklin Richards, Creator of Counter-Earth
Black Bolt, Illuminati
Lancer, Samantha Dunbar
Dr. Minerva, Starforce
Captain Att-Lass, Starforce
Commander Dylon Cir, Lunatic Legion
Tonaja, The Responsible One
Human Torch, Sparky
Divinity, Vampiric General
Ronan the Accuser, Starforce
Moondragon, Protector of the Mind Gem
2 Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans
Ultron ◊ Ultron 11, Army
Dr. Doom, Sorcerous Savant
Supremor, Starforce
Plot Twists
Sworn Enemies
For the Glory of Doom!, Team-Up
Pressed into Service, Team-Up
Alien Insurrection
Starforce Strike
Super Genius
The Royal Guard
Locations
The Kyln
Negative Zone, Shadow Dimension
Hala
This deck probably looks a bit all over the place to the uninitiated, but I am pretty confident this is close to the best build we could get from this pool. In the end we have a bit of a lopsided aggro deck that has a few interesting synergies and a whole lot of craziness inside. Sometimes you need to build a deck that will take you for a ride, and when you do, it’s best to keep your eyes open and realize that it really isn’t that bad after all.