M15 pre-release Experience

Yes, that's how the box looked like if you didn't go to the pre-release and this is the color I picked.

I went with this!

Deck Idea is a simple R/B beatdown plan. Just spawn threats after threats and lay down Indulging Tormentor to continue to fuel the aggression. At worse, opponents will take 3 or lose 1 creature if there are no responses. Chandra will help to push away smaller creatures or basically give me card advantage. 

The decklist includes a few notable cards as listed;

2x Indulgent Tormentor

1x Chandra, Pyromaster

2x Inferno Fist

1x Sign in Blood

1x Cone of Flame

1x Necrogen Scudder

My unused card pool.

The thing about my unused card pool is that blue didn't do much for me if I were to use it. Most of the spells delay time and doesn't give a lot of pressure as how my red and black colour pool does. 

Green was slighly better, but the curve for green is very high with no mana accelerators. 

White was my ideal sideboard, as I had Avacyn, Guardian Angel and a couple of lifegain spells. But, the creatures were quite small to begin with and with the presence of removals all around in limited, I cannot risk that as mainboard. 

Artifacts? Let's just say I overlooked Meteorite,

Score: 1-2

Round 1: (2-1) 

Met a really nice guy and I really enjoyed our game. Most of the time I'm able to get my plan out and start beating through. The only issue was the moment Soul of Innistrad enters the battlefield, I have no way around it other than outracing the opponent. It's not the ability that is the threat. It's the fact that it is a 6/6 deathtouch that makes it a problem.

Lost Game 1 due to his creatures are out bigger than mine and I'm basically banging into a wall while he continuously applied pressure and had a few combat tricks up his sleeves to bounce or remove my creatures.

My opponent's Hornet Queen showed up in game 2 and it deserves a mention as a relevant limited bomb becuase it gave me a hard time to swing out without sacrifices. Luckily Chandra, Pyromaster was on board for me to pick off the creatures slowly while laying threats. Indulgent Tormentor is an all-star here. Laying him on board basically means a 2-turn clock. 

Game 3 basically is a curve into Indulging Tormentor and a straight beatdown as the opponent lacks another green source to cast the Hornet Queen. It is revealed that he had 2 of those on hand.

Notable cards: 

• Typhoid Rats (extremely powerful blocker)
• Hornet Queen
• Inferno Fist (Good buff with a good ability. Able to remove some creatures or target a 2 damage to player)
• Soul of Innistrad (pain in the ass to remove or deal)

Round 2: (1-2) 

Basically this game is an interesting one. Meteorite, Grindclock and Souls of xxxxxxx can really foil any game plans. I lost in round 1 due to that 3 cards. The Soul on board here was Soul of Shandalar. I thought Soul of Innistrad was bad. Let me tell you, Shandalar is worse. As most of my creatures are quite small, his 3 damage can basically deal with most of my threats. I could bring back a game in game 2 because my creatures are slightly faster, but I eventually lost game 3 for the same reason as game 1. I was at 11 life when I conceded the game but I could not survive the next round as Soul of Shandalar and another creature would deal me for lethal.

Notable cards: 

• Meteorite (limited bomb. Don't underestimate this card! blows out small threats + mana fixing)
• Soul of Shandalar

Round 3: (1-2) 

This round is very simple; who has a faster plan? I lost out this one for the fact that his Meteorites blew out my early game plan, setting me back quite a bit. He also had removals on hand to remove my Indulgent Tormentors. He was also a mirror in the colours so intimidate also didn't work on him.

I came close to winning for most of the rounds, except one or two which I had conceded or lost with opponent with more than 10 life. Generally I would manage to bring him down to below 7 or 6 life which is pretty close I think as it would be a 1-turn difference or so that would make or break the game. In short, I really enjoyed my 3 games. The prize pack was disappointing; I opened up Aggressive Mining, which is not bad if I am playing RDW on a casual level. Nevertheless, it's still a good game.

This also my first post dedicated in posting my own games. I think you would have realised that I normally would discuss about trades, finance, etc, but Magic is not just about that. The fun and best element to that entire Trading Card Game is the play of the game itself. No, I'm not some big time or strong player who will kill the FNM or Pre-releases. I'm just another average player who wants to go there to have fun. It's an attempt and also an excuse for me to go play more events so I have more coverage for the blog. So I'll look at the response and my time to see if I want to continue on this kind of posts. If the response is good and my time permits, I'll do more coverage with the focus on Modern, EDH and casual pre-release games.

Meantime, stay tuned!