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The Changing Metagame

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Every once in a while at a prerelease, there is a color or faction to pick and it isn't particularly close. Ever since "seeded" packs became a thing, players began theorycrafting trying to see which box to pick to give them the edge. Sure, you get 5 random packs, but that one seeded pack will most likely determine what you play. Not always, and my post from a few days ago revealing the Green-Red deck I had splashing white for Constricting Sliver and Piercing Light seems a little silly when you realize I opted for the black seeded pack and had practically no black playables. I reasoned that black had the best promo of the bunch and the bet removal also in the form of Ulcerate and Flesh to Dust so I went with it. I was not alone.

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Also, not many of you are following Danny on Twitter, so go do that now.

However, as the weekend progressed, things shifted a bit.

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UW? Although those colors seemed very weak at the outset, having flying creatures can get there and blue white has Welkin Tern and Sungrace Pegasus while black has ....Carrion Crow and "Hope I topdeck an Ulcerate"[card image not found].

What does all of this mean?

It would seem that, super anecdotally, blue-white fliers can be a real thing. Would you want to force it in your next sealed pool? Maybe not, since you're not guaranteed a Resolute Archangel. But maybe. I expect UW skies to be a legitimate draft archetype as always. But it may not be as bad in sealed as originally pontificated.

3 thoughts on “The Changing Metagame

  1. I picked blue white aggro/fliers due to how awesome blue is in this set and how strong white pairs with it. Wanted to go blue red artifacts but it wasnt there.

    Lost 1 match to a guy with soul of theros and innistrad and ob nixilis and the black promo (won the tournament)

    Lost another match to me misreading the goblin landmine thinking it can burn me out.

    It’s good.

  2. Interesting enough, I found red to be the best color for me. r/w (picking red) and r/g (picking green) in two pre-releases and for a third I picked black and ended up u/w. Black was light and more removal and threats in the other colors.

    The siege dragon I pulled from one of the packs when I picked green and also goblin rabblemaster, but the thundering giant did a ton of work to get me to 3-0-1.

    r/w was sick, when 4-0 on this one, white removal paired with the promo and a hoarding dragon and a bunch of small threats…

    I know I got awesome pools for each of the pre-releases, the red was just amazing. I mean, I didn’t even see the green promo in r/g in any game and still won with 3 runeclaw bears and the 4 drop 2/2 that lets you draw a card (2x) and 3 elvish mystics. I really feel my green was just support.

    Overall, it was the same, everyone picking black because of the promo, typhoid rats and ulcerate. But I never found it that strong or a problem. A lot of people shored up their decks with uncommon artifacts when using black.

    my white/blue adventure was sick, but I made a mistake running the 1/3 wall in u because it didn’t help me when I needed it to be a non-defender and the token was dead. By sick, soul of theros, ajani, scuttles, jalina, aetherspouts, chasm skulker, just to name the rares. I did badly with it. If there were more rounds I probably would have done more with it, but it was only 3 rounds and went 0-2-1 with it.

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