Amonkhet Prerelease!

[ladof]

Howdy folks, I figured I'd get the Prerelease thread going bright and early (thanks, daughter. How'd you know Dad got home two hours ago and didn't really want sleep? Sigh.)

So I went to the midnight prerelease (first prerelease I've gone to.) It was a blast. The set seems like it's going to be a lot of fun, and there were quite a few different approaches to the decks last night (BW Zombies, which I did, had a few representatives, XG ramp had a few players. One guy built a URB Trials/cycling deck that looked like a lot of fun.)

Here's the deck I played. https://deckstats.net/decks/57155/714370-bw-prerelease

I ended up going 2 - 1 - 1 and finishing in 8th overall. A few things I noticed playing the deck were:

Annointer Priest (this is spelled wrong in the site's spreadsheets, btw. It's Anointer Priest on the card.) is really good, especially combined with Liliana, Death's Majesty or Embalm cards.
Speaking of Embalm, Oketra's Attendant is neat because you can cycle, then cast the zombie version. It's a little expensive for a 3/3 flyer, but it works well in limited formats with a low draw count.
Cycling is amazing for colors that don't normally have good access to draw (duh, I'm sure a lot of people thought of this, lol.)
Final Reward being Instant speed a huge lifesaver.
Cradle of the Accursed is great in a zombie deck, particularly in sealed. If you need a creature in a hurry, you probably don't need the colorless land that much. And it combos the priest.
Seraph of the Sun will win a game single handed if you can get it out. It forced me to put Forsake the Worldly in the deck over something in case it got enchanted, but the card I pulled out wasn't that great anyway (for this night - Scarab Feast.)
The God cards are neat, but they're kind of slow. I only saw one or two actually in play and they rarely got to do much before being removed. (I pulled two, red and blue, and didn't even really consider either, but that's more the rest of the colors' pools were pretty shallow.)
Liliana is really good. Gideon is okayish.
Nest of Scarabs is terrifying. I didn't get to play the deck that had it, but he had a massive wall of bugs at a few points.


So how about y'all? How was your night (or day, as the weekend rolls on)? What neat cards did you pull or find fun to play with? Oh, and making the Obelisk for the Trials from Facebook was worth it. It took about 30 minutes (if you're quick and don't care too much about being perfect), the answers were mostly online with a little digging and I got a full art Swamp with Bolas horns. Well worth the effort.

[Mnemosyne]

I didn't do too great, but I pulled some decent cards. I went to three, hoping to do better each time, alas... that wasn't the case.
Midnight was great fun, but my pool was terrible, ended up going with a synergy Black/White Zombie deck without any decent bombs nor mana fixing. Which let me tell you is important when you are up against a deck that drops Gideon turn 3 and Honored Hydra turn 6. (2:0) - In the end.

First Pool (Rares)

• Dusk/Dawn (Promo)
• Plague Belcher
• Dispossess
• Combat Celebrant
• Neheb, the Worthy
• Heaven/Earth
• Channeler Initiate

The Second pool was decent, I had some great pools, but with a very limited number of uncommon/common draws in any one colour. I ended up running some midrange Bant combination. Using Gideon (how could I not?) I relied too much on my bombs, without anything cohesive to gel it all together. I lost the first match, my opponent made some great, annoying plays, using an azorius control deck that had an answer to everything I played! Gideon's Intervention on my Honored Hydra was beyond annoying. I ended up going 1:1:0 which was my worst performance, getting mana screwed against a Rakdos aggro deck in the last game.


Second Pool (Best Pool)

• Gideon of the Trials
• Glory-Bound Initiate
• Regal Caracal (promo)
• Honored Hydra
• Cascading Cataracts
• Canyon Slough
• Failure/Comply

The third and last day was the best of the results, finally going positive! (2:1:0) Everything was going well, I felt confident in my deck, for once, with a great deal of Black/White to draw on. Bontu the Glorified was a great card, an especially easy card to activate. Many of my opponents misread his activation choosing to kill a blocker of mine, before combat, allowing Bontu to subsequently block. Liliana's Mastery did some exceptional work, giving my white/black zombies a boost late game. I played two fierce matches, one involved an Izzet Aggro deck that utilised Glorybringer (which is brutal) and cartouche of knowledge to supplement his creatures with evasion.
The one that I am surprised to have won was based on a mistake made by my opponent, one which he misread my board state, he would have won had he either waited a turn or, realised that I could not swing back after his attack. (Like I was going to tell him? Haha) Tbh he was running a disgusting Gruul deck that had Samut Voice of Dissent and Sandwurm Convergence, which if you had no Enchantment Removal like me = handing him the win, when I couldn't get passed the endstep token onslaught.

Third Pool

• Liliana's Mastery (promo)
• Commit/Memory
• Bontu the Glorified
• Dispossess
• Dread Wanderer
• Mouth/Feed
• Channeler Initiate x2