Last night saw the finals of the Team Sealed where Infinite Misers, comprising Paul Ross, The Ben Seck (TBS), and Jonathan Luey, took on Australia/New Zealand team The Four Horsemen, made up of Shaun Hayward, Kakarot Turker and Darren Ying.

This was the first major trial of the new Team Sealed sanctioned format that will feature at the upcoming $10K. Beginning on Friday night, teams partook in a Sealed Pack tournament, creating three decks from 10 packs. The top 2 teams after 4 rounds went through to a 6-player draft last night, with one round for the finals.

Be it luck, fate, or just smooth good looks, after one round last night of intense draft play, the Misers brought home all the marbles. Winning 2-0 (with the infamous TBS’s match undetermined  — “We saved him from embarrassment,” says Paul), they walk away with bragging rights, and a whole lot of geek street cred.

We caught up with the guys at the wee crack of dawn this morning and talked strategy, success, and the irresistible pull a Teams Sealed title has with the ladies.

Crisis is notorious for being quite an archetypal Sealed / Draft set. Were there 3 specific deck archetypes that you were trying to build?

Paul:  I was given the job of drafting Villains United, because that's all I can be trusted with.

TBS: Because he's a noob.

Paul: (Laughs). Nice. Like it. Anyway . . . Villains went excellently! Our opponents had a VU deck also, but I felt pretty uncontested during the draft. I had pretty much a mono-VU deck, only a couple of splash cards, and managed to score 4 Systematic Torture, and a couple of Grand Gesture

TBS:  How was Grand Gesture for you?

Paul: I actually didn't really draw it much.

TBS:  That's good . . . you probably would have screwed it up. I like forcing a strategy hard once I see it open up. John and I didn't really have an archetype going into it, but I ended up drafting JSA with a splash of Checkmate. The main theme of my deck ended up being Earth 2, centered on Brainiac, Earth 2. The good thing about drafting an Earth 2 deck is that it uses cards that other decks don't really value highly, so the stuff I needed was relatively well under-drafted.

What were the great scores in your pool? 

Paul:  Well, I got Pastor Freeze (it’s the collar, Paul insists), which is always good. It got passed to me through another guy.

TBS:  I don't think it's that unusual to get Freeze passed to you, Paul.

Paul: Well, I think you're unusual. 4 Systematic Torture is always good. Even though I only played three. TBS suggested three, and of course —

TBS: It was the right number. (Laughs all around) I had two Brainiacs, which was awesome — it was no worries drawing into them — and also Lois Lane, Earth 2, which of course makes things heaps easier.

Any surprising selections that worked out well? 

Paul:  (So excited he’s actually bouncing around in his seat) Oh yeah, yeah, actually yeah! Return Fire! was a 30th card. I liked it, but TBS didn't. Key play in in my game was that I was getting bashed by Ragman, Redeemer of Souls in Knight Armor into my 8 ATK/11 DEF Cheshire, Jade, and I had Return Fire! to exhaust him, and then played Defend Yourself! to bash him back. So we traded stuns, and I had Systematic Torture to finish him off. All because of Return Fire, Ben!

TBS:  I don't think there was anything unexpectedly good for me. I think that Shaun has a penchant for drafting Checkmate/Dr. Fate decks.

Ed:  Err. That’s great Ben, but what does this have to do with anything we were talking about?

TBS: Oh. Nothing. I just wanted to give him a beat.

Overall, what do you think it was that took you guys to the top?  Consistency across all your decks? Particularly good win conditions? 

Paul:  I think just sticking to the plan. I noticed that when we were building, the other guys had literally no VU cards in their piles. They didn't even take splash cards of VU for their decks. So I think by sticking to the plan, we were able to create pretty consistent decks that were tight to play with. And of course, Jonathan is a king player in Sydney, which is always great when you have an albatross like Ben Seck around your team’s neck.