Practical tips for building a sealed deck

Beyond the guiding principles derived from the limited pool of cards characteristic of SF, it is possible to highlight a number of practical recommendations that may make it easier for new players to manage the building of their decks in this environment.

Overcoming the time problem

More time to build the deck means a better build. In constructed, the player can devote days, even weeks to improving their decks (in addition to this, the tendency is to choose a deck that has already won competitions). In DF, the time is limited, but the player is already committed to certain colors and knows most of the cards that will be included in the deck. A significant part of the construction of the deck in drafts is done while choosing the cards themselves.

In SF the problem is more acute. The player is required to study the cards, decide which colors to play and which cards of the chosen colors to include in a deck within 30–45 minutes. This is a liability but also an advantage for those who come to tournaments more prepared. If it is a pre-release tournament, then studying the cards before the competition saves a lot of time. Assessing cards in a limited environment is not always a simple task and therefore takes a lot of time. Various sites on the Internet publish the cards a few days before the competition, and this allows players to become acquainted with them ahead of time. Do not be satisfied with a quick reading of the cards. They must be analyzed according to the principles outlined in the previous chapters while emphasizing the unique characteristics of the new set.

Choosing the main colors

The most common way to choose the colors is to arrange the card pool according to the colors while separating the high-quality and playable cards (categories A & B) from the rest. It is better to take out cards that are borderline in this respect at this initial stage and look at them again only after the colors have been chosen or if there is serious hesitation regarding which color to choose. The cards from the first group must be arranged with the ‘bombs’ at the top of each color so that they have a special weight in the decision. At this point, you can get a good impression of the depth of the different colors. Depth is the number of high-quality or playable cards a certain color has (usually it is 50%–60% of the number of cards in that color). The minimum depth needed to choose a certain color as the main color in a deck is 7–8 high quality or playable cards. Be careful not to choose a main color that is too short just because the quality of the top cards is high. Such a choice will almost always require the use of many cards from a lower category (category C- fillers) or include too many cards of a third color and this may seriously harm the consistency of the deck due to mana problems. If we are lucky and one of the colors has an unusual depth (for example 10–11) of high-quality or playable cards, this allows us more flexibility in choosing the second color (which could be much shorter).

At this stage we have not yet chosen our main colors but have only marked for ourselves the colors with the minimum depth to serve as an option. In most cases, this sorting eliminates two colors from being used as primary colors in a deck. Now, the two colors to be played must be chosen. This is done according to two criteria that should already be familiar to readers. The first criterion is the quality of the cards in each of the remaining colors. Here the presence of ‘bombs’ in different colors is very important. The second, more important criterion is the ability to assemble a deck with a strategic idea, meaning achieve functional synergy. You have to choose the colors and the cards within the colors that contribute to each other and enable a ‘battle-plan’ that has an internal logic (some players call it: win condition).

Choosing the color of the splash

In SF, it’s common to choose a third color for your deck, but you shouldn’t do it automatically. Adding a third color can hurt your deck’s operational synergy, so make sure the benefits are worth the risks. Before adding a third color, check if you have at least 22–23 playable cards in both of your main colors. If you do, then you might want to skip the third color altogether. If you do need a third color, think carefully about which color to choose. Sometimes, there might be a really strong card that it’s tempting to add, even if it doesn’t really fit with your deck’s strategy. But it’s better to choose a color that can help address your main colors’ weaknesses. For example, if your main colors are white and blue and you don’t have much removal, it might be better to add a third color that can help with that rather than adding another powerful creature.

Using side-board

In SF, there are a lot of cards to choose from in the side-board, more than in any other format. Experienced players know that it’s common to switch the color of their splash after the first game to get better cards against the opponent’s deck. Sometimes, players even change their main colors to better handle a certain deck, which is pretty hard to do in draft format. Since there isn’t much time between games, it’s a good idea to plan for these changes when building your deck. This way, you can be prepared for different situations and have a better chance of winning against specific opponents.

Be safe! Be bold!

The variability of pool card quality in SF gives some (lucky) players an inherent advantage. Knowing this should influence the way you build your deck. A careful and objective analysis of the quality of the card pool is very important. An especially good card pool, with high quality cards in two colors and a few bombs, prioritizes a low-risk strategy in which the operative randomness is reduced. However, some cards nowadays are just too strong not to play in sealed. Some of the best cards in the format are worth playing even if their color is relatively shallow (for example, Sunfall from March of the Machine).

Sunfall

mana costs:
mana amount: 5
complexity: 2

Too strong not to bw played!

Appendix:

Let’s imagine a draft of 8 players. Each player in this draft has 3 boosters with 15 cards each. All players open booster #1 and pass the cards in a circle, until all the cards are chosen. Let’s call it a round. In each round, each player gets to see a number of cards as follows:

15+14+13+12+11+10+9+8 =92 (the reason I stopped at 8 is because the next booster to be passed to the player was the one she opened). So, in a draft of 8 players each player gets to see 276 different cards: 3*92=276. Please note: this is not a pool of 276 cards from which the player can choose as she wishes (as in SF) because the player who chooses one card is forced to give up most of the other cards (he will only get one more choice from the same booster, at most). However, the very possibility of choosing the cards from a wide group and, above all, cooperation between the players (expressed in the division of colors between them) allows the building of a consistent and higher quality deck compared to SF. To illustrate the importance of cooperation in draft, let’s assume that in the draft the players decide to choose cards only according to their absolute value (ignoring considerations of consistency). In this case, at the end of the draft, each player will have 45 cards of different qualities in 5 different colors, just like in SF, except that the pool is half the size.