Dragon's Maze Prerelease Discussion

[Kapol]

A day early here, but I think some people might have already been to their local prerelease. This thread is to share our experiences, joys, and thoughts on the new set's prerelease.

Which guilds did we see destroying? Which did we see being 'ehhhh?' Did any of us open anything awesome? What do those of us who haven't been to one yet hope to open? What guilds are we/have we played?

All these questions and more can be yours if you post in this thread!

[AzureAngel17]

My prerelease is sometime tomorrow. Likely either 5PM or 10PM EDT (possibly both, I had a good paycheck this week).

I'm going Orzhov (hopefully), so depending on my ally I could wind up either in aggro/extort (Rakdos/Boros), midrangey value (Selesnya/Golgari), or controlgasm (Azorius/Dimir). I'd like to pull Azorius for the second pack for some fun Detain/Extort power plays, though there isn't a whole lot of either in the DGM packs.

The Vorthos in me doesn't want Selesnya though, since the guild philosophies are pretty far apart.

Oh, and random question: has anyone else ever gotten a guild pack with no rare? I missed the Ravnica prerelease, but wound up with a Rakdos guildbox and the included (unopened) packs, but the only rare in the guild pack was the Hellsteed.

[Dubious_wolf]

Orzhov.
Getting ready now. Listening to the set review from LR.
plotting some strategies.
Gonna be a blast!

[Lord Hosk]

oh man, I opened some sick stuff!

ALL THIS STUFF

(I will edit later)

[ZePancakes]

Went Dimir, ally was Izzet. Didn't pull anything amazing (no pun intended) Managed to go 1-3 with two of my losses being very close.

A guy was dickish one time as he was under the assumption that Frostburn Weirds ability can only be activated one per turn citing that it was like extort. This was when I was swinging for lethal so I had to get a judge to explain as he was being stubborn.

I also got a neat Dimir badge and a sick Simic metal pin.

The rares I got from my packs:
Progenitor Mimic
Godless Shrine
Advent of the Wurm
Renegade Krasis
Notion Thief
Undercity Plague
Conjured Currency

[Dominic Appleguard]

"Like extort"? Seriously?

Somebody needs to spend more time in the Ask a Judge thread.

Or, you know, play with firebreathing creatures. Or shades. Or any one of the hundreds of cards that have been designed around that mechanic.

[Kapol]

So just got back from my first prerelease. Ended up going to a midnight one with some FNM folk (having just gotten second at FNM, whoo!).

I pulled some good stuff. Voice, the detain every upkeep, the boros champion, Aetherguy, blue primordial, the 2 drop 2/2 flash with pro blue... pretty good. Went Simic (SIMIC FOR LIFE!) and got Azorious as my partner. The night ran on. It was hot, tiring, and my feet are killing me.

I'll go into more detail later, but if you get Aetherguy, PLAY HIM. If you're opponent can't kill him by your next turn, he ends the game pretty much. Being able to hit with 8 unblockable which your opponent can't get rid of is AMAZING.

I went 4/2. Got 17th and 10 prize packs. They didn't have enough, so I got 4 packs now and have to drive an hour out of my way to get 6 more. Pulled two shocks from thos I did get though. And I was pissed because I was SOOOO close to getting 16th, which would have been 18 PACKS. A friend who came with us got top 8 and a booster box (also half now, half later deal).

[ZePancakes]

I would of been able to handle the situation if his attitude wasn't as hostile as it was.

This was for the decider, we were 1 match a piece as well so I wasn't going to be like "Fine, fine let's move on," like I would be in casual play.

[Lemegeton]

so my trend continues of getting shitty beyond shitty pools at sealed events.
dimiar and rakdos. dimir pack was pathetic, Sepulchral primordial was the rare which was a joke as the rest of the pack had 0 mill cards. Rakdos rare was Rakdos himself and only drew him once and couldn't even cast him, by DM packs were very poor too. the good cards were not in colors i could realistically play. managed to win first match 2-0 and was downhill from there. was destroyed in 2nd match. 3rd could have gone either way, last round went to 5 life each and he got a better topdeck. but my last match i swear i nearly screamed. mull to 5 in 1st round and then didnt draw a single land and was dead in 4 turns. 2nd round i had to mull to 5 again and it lasted longer but his card advantage won out.
in such a bad mood now.

the funny thing was the booster 1 won from my 1 win and my participation booster had sooooo much better rares in them. got a plasm capture and a sweet foil vorel of the hull.

[Dubious_wolf]

Got sick didn't get to play... >:(

[Lemegeton]

Got sick didn't get to play... >:(

ok I concede your pre-release story sucks worse than mine

[Kapol]

so my trend continues of getting shitty beyond shitty pools at sealed events.
dimiar and rakdos. dimir pack was pathetic, Sepulchral primordial was the rare which was a joke as the rest of the pack had 0 mill cards. Rakdos rare was Rakdos himself and only drew him once and couldn't even cast him, by DM packs were very poor too. the good cards were not in colors i could realistically play. managed to win first match 2-0 and was downhill from there. was destroyed in 2nd match. 3rd could have gone either way, last round went to 5 life each and he got a better topdeck. but my last match i swear i nearly screamed. mull to 5 in 1st round and then didnt draw a single land and was dead in 4 turns. 2nd round i had to mull to 5 again and it lasted longer but his card advantage won out.
in such a bad mood now.

the funny thing was the booster 1 won from my 1 win and my participation booster had sooooo much better rares in them. got a plasm capture and a sweet foil vorel of the hull.

Honestly, your first problem sounds like it was that you went Dimir. From the order, it sounds like that was your plan. And given Dimir's track record... that was just a bad plan. Not to mention, from the sounds of it, you forced yourself to stay in colors. If you have better cards in other colors, or at least cards that work better together, than it's better to play them instead.

That said, my second prerelease was a wiff for roughly the same reason. I play Selesnya and got Gruul, but ended up going 4 color pretty much the entire time. I got a lot of fixing. It just never came together very well. Might talk about more later.

[AdmiralMemo]

When does this come out on MtGO? About 2 weeks?

[Lord Hosk]

I had a amazing pool, I went boros,I got Azorius as a ally, I went white splash red on the back of frontline medic, Marshal Glory, Tijic, Soul tide, Arrest, Azorius Arrester, Guardian of the gateless, 2 Sunspire Gate keepers, a Smeltward Gatekeeper, 2 Viashino Firstblade, a Skynight legionair, and a armory guard with some other cards.

I only had one boros gate, so I ran two azorious and two gruul to support the gatekeepers and the armory guard. I ran Douglas Shuler 1390 mountains and Jesper Myrfors 1395 plains which are not only from the same set, but I believe show the same mountain range.

I won the first 3, lost the 4th on HORRIBLE mana screw, first 7 6 no land 5 1 land keep never drew another, second 7 all land, 6 2 land keep, ended up drawing 1 more. I drew on the 5th match because I was scared of a mana screw and kept bad hands which lost me the first game and drew out the second really long so we went to turns 4 turns into game three. I won round 6 and ended up 8th out of 64 players, the top 8 split the total top prizes and I took 14 packs which I sold for 60 bucks. The girl I sold them to opened 3 foil shocks and a voice of resurgence.


Someone who had 2 wins (and had not played the card yet) played the promo maze to "filter his deck" and got DQed in round three.

OHH! and in the local area, Bumps are 75 cent cards.

IM RICH! Apperently there is a bit of a local speculators market on commons and uncommons. One guy said he has a Ebay page where thats all he sells. He buys tens of thousands of bulk cards sorts them and then sells them if they get over a dollar. seems like a lot of work to me but he says he loves sorting cards and he makes about 5000 a year.

[Lemegeton]

so my trend continues of getting shitty beyond shitty pools at sealed events.
dimiar and rakdos. dimir pack was pathetic, Sepulchral primordial was the rare which was a joke as the rest of the pack had 0 mill cards. Rakdos rare was Rakdos himself and only drew him once and couldn't even cast him, by DM packs were very poor too. the good cards were not in colors i could realistically play. managed to win first match 2-0 and was downhill from there. was destroyed in 2nd match. 3rd could have gone either way, last round went to 5 life each and he got a better topdeck. but my last match i swear i nearly screamed. mull to 5 in 1st round and then didnt draw a single land and was dead in 4 turns. 2nd round i had to mull to 5 again and it lasted longer but his card advantage won out.
in such a bad mood now.

the funny thing was the booster 1 won from my 1 win and my participation booster had sooooo much better rares in them. got a plasm capture and a sweet foil vorel of the hull.

Honestly, your first problem sounds like it was that you went Dimir. From the order, it sounds like that was your plan. And given Dimir's track record... that was just a bad plan. Not to mention, from the sounds of it, you forced yourself to stay in colors. If you have better cards in other colors, or at least cards that work better together, than it's better to play them instead.
.

i actually did nothing of the sort. i dumped dimir without a second thought and built a deck with the rakdos stuff and some good boros cards i got in the dgm packs. i ran 4 colors in the end too.
originally i figured that all the signs were that dgm would be a slower limited format so the dimir mill would be worth a shot.

[Lord Hosk]

There was a guy there who hadn't played since 4th edition when he was in high school. we were talking and he said something to the effect of "so my buddy finally convinced me to try playing again, and he brings me in when instead of mono colored decks where you Bashed their faces with your red, green or white deck, Killed all their stuff with a black deck, and did weird stuff with the blue deck no one played and now I have to play 4 colors, and I have to "fix my mana cards" and there are 40 different strategies to each combo of colors. my friend is a dick"

Im glad I came back during AVR and watched LRR draft so I got used to multi colored decks. Although where I played before "splashing" wasnt unheard of.

[Dubious_wolf]

Deputy of Aquitals. Such a good card. I might just want to construct a deck around him.

[ZePancakes]

I went into it hoping for good Dimir mill but went the control route and having unblockable creatures to sneak through with cipher cards attached. My high instant and sorcery count allowed for Nivix Cyclops to be a welcome addition where just using Far & Away allows for a 14 damage hit if you have two of them.

[Duckay]

I went to two prerelease events. Did fairly poorly at the first (pulled Izzet / Boros and ran RWB midrange), but came third in the second (pulled Rakdos / Golgari; ended up cutting the green and splashing white for the Boros champion, Tithe Drinker and two copies of Warleader's Helix).

A friend of mine had poorer luck; in the second event, he pulled two copies of Maze's End in his boosters and looked ready to cry.

[Dominic Appleguard]

I was golgari/dimir to start, but then I opened ral zarek and it morphed into Four Color Mono Greed. I went 2-2 and split for prizes, so I felt pretty good.

[AzureAngel17]

Had a pretty good first pool, Orzhov with Azorius backup, including Lavinia, Luminate Primordial, Pontiff of Blight, Notion Thief, and Jelenn Sphinx, plus my first ever shockland, conveniently a Godless Shrine. I was run over round one by a straight Boros player that I think may have been cheating (he had two non-foil Madcap Skills in the first prerelease and two non-foil Zur-Taa Swine in the second), but went 3-1 with RAWR Azorius extorting fliers.

Second pool had some great stuff, but it never came together and I went 1-3. Highlights included OBZEDAT, Tajic, and Mirko Vosk. The last round I just stuffed all my 19 best cards in with a bunch of gates and fixing and went for it and had my 3 most fun games of the night. Opponents really just kind of gape when you're running 5 color and casting big stuff.

[Kapol]

i actually did nothing of the sort. i dumped dimir without a second thought and built a deck with the rakdos stuff and some good boros cards i got in the dgm packs. i ran 4 colors in the end too.
originally i figured that all the signs were that dgm would be a slower limited format so the dimir mill would be worth a shot.

My mistake. I've been tired because going to FNM, a midnight prerelease, another after that, and driving for 3 hours on top of that leaves on a bit without thought. Long day.

Honestly, I'm beginning to learn that, when they say 'slower format,' they mean 'play fast aggro or lose.' A lot of the decks I lost to were playing Boros, Gruul, or Rakdos. And those seemed to be pretty common for high-ranking decks too.

(he had two non-foil Madcap Skills in the first prerelease and two non-foil Zur-Taa Swine in the second),

Did you report him to a judge? If not, you should have, because that's not possible I think. From what I've seen, there aren't any foils in those packs, and there shouldn't be more than one of any given card even in guild packs. And considering only one guild pack was from Gatecrash, that means he would have had to get TWO doubles from ONE Gruul pack.

[Drecon]

My prerelease was super fun. I chose Izzet and got Gruul as an ally. It was okay, but my green wasn't really worth it.

I settled on a Grixis deck playing Niv-Mizzet, AEtherling and a certain vampire that might have been spoiled by LRR.

I went 2-3, not a performance I'm very happy with but I had some fun moments.

One match I played against an opponent who had both Supreme Verdict and Obzedat. I managed to counter the Obzedat in the first two games but sadly he had it the third game too. Our decks seemed pretty evenly matched though and I never felt out of it at any time.

In one game I had a Maze Abomination alongside Niv-Mizzet. Turns out, giving him Deathtouch is pretty good.

The format seems to revolve mostly around who has the best bombs. With a slow-format, ample ability to splash any and all colors and at least 6 rares... It felt kind of random is some games.

That said, I'm pretty sure there was an unusual amount of high-rated players at this particular tournament so I shouldn't feel too bad about it.
I had fun in most of the matches, except for the one where my opponent, who was obviously not a good player, was just ripping the perfect sequence of cards each time, while my deck failed to give me anything useful in any of the games.

[AzureAngel17]

(he had two non-foil Madcap Skills in the first prerelease and two non-foil Zur-Taa Swine in the second),

Did you report him to a judge? If not, you should have, because that's not possible I think. From what I've seen, there aren't any foils in those packs, and there shouldn't be more than one of any given card even in guild packs. And considering only one guild pack was from Gatecrash, that means he would have had to get TWO doubles from ONE Gruul pack.

Almost. I was going to until the guy just got steamrolled in every game in the second prerelease I was there for (though he won the first). I'm pretty new at that store and he appeared to be a regular who was in quite good standing with the store owners, so I didn't want to be that person after he did so poorly when I was set to finger him as a cheater. And I was terrified of being wrong, since I've had messed up guild packs as well (my RTR prerelease pack had no rare in the guild pack). I was matched against him in the third round and tried to resolve a Slaughter Games against him to see his library, but it never came through.

[phlip]

I managed to 4-0 with Boros/Azorius - picking up the more aggro-tempo Azorius cards around a solid Boros base and crushed faces with it. The other prereleases I got a few 3-1s and 2-2s, and ended up 17-7 for the weekend, which I'm pretty happy with.

I also got quite lucky with the maze-running... for many of the prereleases I just happened to be in the guild that had by far the most people, and stomped the maze race. So I have 4 "Champion of the Maze" codes, and one "Maze Runner".

One 2-2 was a horrible 4-colour monstrosity... that surprisingly didn't have colour problems very often... with all 6 guildgates being useful, a Transguild Promenade and a Prophetic Prism I usually had my base 3 colours by turn 2 or 3, and the splash in enough time. I did however get screwed on mana quantity pretty much every game, stalling out on 2 or 3 in most games, with quite a few 4s in the deck. The games I won, my opponent also got starved of either land or spells, and I had time to recover. I don't feel like I got too unlucky, though, my deck wasn't very good, even when it hit its land drops.
The other 2-2 I was straight Selesnya... none of the other three colours seemed to be worth splashing. And that deck was reasonable... though I had some bad luck (and punted a couple of key games).

I haven't cracked my prize boosters yet, but just from what I opened in the prereleases, I have a handful of shock lands, Progenitor Mimic, Aurelia, 2 Clan Defiances, 4 of the maze runners (two twice, including the Polite Mind Sampler), a foil Putrefy, and a pile of other assorted rares, guild-logo tokens, signet badges, and alt-art Plains.

Good times. I had a lot of fun, and it starts to make up for missing all the GTC prereleases with the flu.

Re: rules interactions... I did hear after-the-fact about someone who had this "amazing combo" where they'd Agoraphobia a big guy, Runner's Bane it while its power was low, and then bounce the Agoraphobia to hand, to repeat on another creature. Unfortunately, that's not how Runner's Bane works - it's a restriction on what it's allowed to enchant, so if the enchanted creature ever goes above 3, the aura falls off as an SBA (just like animating a keyrune and enchanting it with an "Enchant Creature" - the aura falls off when it goes back to being just an artifact). I had to explain that a couple of times during the tournament, with the a couple of "Are you sure you want to put Runner's Bane on my Kraul Warrior/Beetleform Mage?" and a couple of hastily-retargeted spells...