Journey Into Nyx Pre-Release

[Duckay]

I know I'm ages of the curve a bit again, but this is a thread for talking about everyone's prerelease experience. Colour choices, sweet opens, bizarre interactions, whatever moves you.

[VectorZero]

My white prerelease deck. No major value opens but went 4-0 with Centaur/Swiftclaw beats. The strive combat tricks were really flexible and allowed me to take down some big guys (best was taking down a 7/7 centaur battle master and 4/4 staunch hearted warrior with my 3 3/3s and only lost one guy.) Instant speed sac renowned weaver to trigger Harvestguard when flunging into a wall of deathtouchers is also nice.

[korvys]

Went white, nothing super powerful, so just made red/white with a good curve and no synergy. People stumbled over their mana, or trying to rely on their bombs, and I just removed them or tapped them, and attacked them a bunch of times.

Went 3-1, losing to a much better version of my own deck (much faster, all the heroic, etc).

[Duckay]

I went green, even though White was in the back of my mind and may have been a better choice. My pool was rubbish, but I scraped it together as best I could. At the moment I am 3-1 with one round left to go.

[Duckay]

Ended up going 4-1. Will post a picture / list of my deck later on. I wasn't really happy with it at first but obviously I made it work.

[Kapol]

How did Hero's Bane run for you? I thought he'd be pretty strong, but there's enough downside to make me unsure.

[Duckay]

Well, he is essentially just a big dumb guy, so he mostly just gets chump blocked all day, but I also had the constellation guy that gives trample and the constellation guy that gives unblockable so it worked out okay.

[Juliamon]

Picked red, started opening my packs... most of my red is 4cmc and up and one of the non-seeded rares is my dragon that I have a promo of and like hell I'm running two mediocre 7-drops, there's ONE white playable (out of like, five white cards total), lousy green with only a Voyaging Satyr for ramp... black gives me Keepsake Gorgon, Gary, Sip, Whip of Erebos, the new minotaur deathtouch lord. I look at my red again, literally only have two 1-drop creatures: Nyxborn Rollicker and Akroan Crusader. I try for 10 minutes to make BR work but the curve is just a wall that starts at 3. Gave up and went UR with the small but decent blue pool, since I had a Flamespeaker Adept and plenty of scry including the starfish.

It was a misery. The starfish showed up in the first game, and never again. Flamespeaker never showed up. I lost every single game and went home with a consolation pack. But hey, you're not a true Izzet member if your creations don't blow up in your face once in awhile! (I'd even worn my Izzet tee to the event.) Should I have forced the black after all? We'll never know.

There WAS a Mana Confluence in my pool, so there was that.

edit: took some photos of my pool, you can look at it here.

[guidance]

My pool was pretty crap, which is weird because I didn't have bad cards. Every colour was spread very thin. I had some good white, some good red, some good black, but not enough. So I went G/U, which was also full of decent cards but it all started at 4 mana, and I had just an acolyte for ramp. I went 1-2 which is pretty much all I could hope for in my pool. I didn't open anything good, in fact with my pity pack I opened a total of 3 out of the 5 promos.

[Asthanius]

Regarding Heroes' Bane, he won me games. He's most useful when you have a few good blockers out in addition to him, so that you can swing with him without needing to worry about the crack back.

I also got him to 128/128, but then I ran out of room to put dice on the card so I stopped pumping him.

[Duckay]

Subsequently did a Two-Headed Giant, and me and my partner won. I would say it was our great teamwork and magic skills but we also had 5 mythic rares between the two of us.

[Asthanius]

Subsequently did a Two-Headed Giant, and me and my partner won. I would say it was our great teamwork and magic skills but we also had 5 mythic rares between the two of us.

The person next to me pulled a Godsend, Athreos, and a foil Athreos.

[Lord Hosk]

I had a really meh pool from a red box with no mare than 6 creatures in a color, went UW with daxos, wingsteed rider, akroan sky guard, favored hoplite a dauntless onslaught and two hopeful eidolons and two gods willings. never drew any of that but the gods willings,

I didnt cast a spell until turn 5 one game. wingsteed rider in hand with three targeting spells 2 islands and a plains. drew 3 islands another targeting then tap cat on turn 5 which I played. game was over turn 6.

I get bad pools, I get bad draws, but going to turn 18 with a uw heroic agro deck and losing to a lightning strike is just sucky.


I put together a RB deck with 6 minitaurs including both gold ones and won against another guy who dropped but I doubt it would have done any better.

I helped a guy rebuild his 4 color deck into a RW deck and he won two packs so I guess thats good.

I should have driven out to detroit and drafted with lrr instead.

[W1LG3RtheCyan]

I ran 90% of my blue/red pool.

Rares in deck:
Keranos, God of Storms
Harness by Force
Spawn of Thraxes
Dictate of the Twin Gods

[VectorZero]

Went 3-1 playing Selesnya again, off a green pack this time. Pulled Nylea and the centaur lord, but only got two 5 drop centaurs. Could've gone simic perhaps, but the wingsteed rider, oppressive rays, cranes and ajani's prescence were too valuable. Natures panoply was again a star.

[Dominic Appleguard]

My pool was pretty lackluster. I ended up going Izzet and couldn't get my mana base working properly for some silly reason.

Did anybody see a "God pack" at the prerelease? Someone at my event opened a pack with all 15 gods in it. She wasn't able to make a winning deck out of her pool, but she was able to sell them to the store at the end and make out like a bandit.

[WickedBoy6]

I played in the beginners' and the regular one today. Went 1-2 in beginners with a green-with-red-splash. Hero's Bane was the card of the day, SO many people were running it.

Went 3-1 in the regular running a very nice blue/black full of counter, draw, and deathtouch. Font of Fortunes put in some work, as did Pharika's Chosen and Doomwake Giant. However, the final guy I faced played a SICK white/black full of lifegain, drain, and that HORRIBLE Oppressive Rays. Who decided to make that W to cast at COMMON???

P.S. 15-year old son played, as well, went 1-2 and 0-4, but the store was nice enough to give everyone who played bonus prizes, so he got a pack and pulled a Godsend! HIS SECOND ONE OF THE DAY!

[Lord Hosk]

How could you open all 15 gods?

5 packs, 1 mythic rare slot 1 foil slot 10 slots
1 seeded pack with 1 journey into nyx rare slot.

2 theros packs 5 theros gods, 1 slot short

1 Born of the gods pack 5 born of the gods gods. 3 slots short

2 Journey into Nyx packs plus 1 Seeded pack 5 journey into Nyx gods exactly the right number of slots

The box is 4 slots short to get all 15 gods even if you were the luckiest person in the world.

[AdmiralMemo]

How could you open all 15 gods?

5 packs, 1 mythic rare slot 1 foil slot 10 slots
1 seeded pack with 1 journey into nyx rare slot.

2 theros packs 5 theros gods, 1 slot short

1 Born of the gods pack 5 born of the gods gods. 3 slots short

2 Journey into Nyx packs plus 1 Seeded pack 5 journey into Nyx gods exactly the right number of slots

The box is 4 slots short to get all 15 gods even if you were the luckiest person in the world.

There are apparently "God Packs" floating around in JOU. They look like regular packs, but instead of a normal JOU pack, it's all 15 gods instead.

[WickedBoy6]

Wait...so that's a legit thing? I thought it was just a hoax!

Also, decktime! This is the deck from the main tournament, not the beginners'. I had already deconstructed it for rares and stuff.

Brain Maggot
Cloaked Siren
Doomwake Giant
Dreadbringer Lampads
Felhide Brawler
Felhide Minotaur
Fleshmad Steed
Nimbus Naiad
2 Pharika's Chosen
Rotted Hulk
2 Squelching Leeches

Aspect of Gorgon
2 Countermand
Dictate of Erebos
Font of Fortunes
Font of Return
Necrobite
Nullify
Pharika's Cure
Pin to the Earth
Polymorphous Rush
Read the Bones

7 Islands
8 Swamps
Unknown Shores

I didn't realize it was 41 until the final game. Looking back, I could've done without either Font of Return - which I only used once - or Dictate of Erebos - which only ever showed up once. Plus, the Lampads should've been a second Doomwake - I got the promo, then pulled one from the packs. Other than that, it worked fine. Font of Fortunes was amazing, as was Doomwake when I timed it to kill all of their */1s. Cloaked Siren is also fun. Flash Flyer with 3 attack does some business.

[Lord Hosk]

So its like the foil mutivault, a really good promotional thing that could have sold at least an extra few hundred units that wizards just fails to say anything about.

[WickedBoy6]

It might be. There's still no word if it's legit, or if people are just jumping on the bandwagon of a hoax. I just wonder what this would do to the value of all the Gods, if there's packs out there with every single one. I'm sure they're hyper-rare, but still.

[Dominic Appleguard]

Well, my LGS had a god pack opened with a table full of witnesses. So the only thing I can say for certain is that such a pack existed, which means either 1) Wizards did it to drum up the hype, or 2) my store opened sealed products early to assemble all five JOU gods, then gave away said valuable cards for the sole apparent purpose of fulfilling a reddit rumor. I think the former is more likely.

As to the depreciation of the gods...I'd estimate that 1 in 3 people at my prerelease opened a god. So the existence of a god pack maybe...doubled the total number of gods added to circulation at that event.
For a THS god like Purphoros (like the one I opened...sigh), it's a drop in the bucket. For the JOU five, though, that's a moderately big deal. I don't know a lot about the Meta or the scuttlebutt surrounding this batch of cards, but somebody estimated the value of a "god pack" at 150-250 USD. Which is bonkers.

[WickedBoy6]

150-250? Obviously, that has to be post-opened, otherwise, how would one know? But still, that seems like a lot for all 15 Gods. True, SCG lists the Gods total at $147 for all of them, but that's because the JOU ones are listed anywhere from $10 for Pharika, $12 for Kruphix, $20 for Keranos and Iroas, each, and a whopping $30 for Atheros. I only pulled a Thassa last night, which I believe was traded in the Rares-for-Slivers trade I did.

[Dominic Appleguard]

Yeah...I said 250 because that was the first value I heard, then it was corrected down to 150. Both might be hyperbolic, but who knows? It's too early to say how the gods will affect the standard meta.