Dragon's Maze Prerelease

It's really sad that I'm tempted to do the triple pre-release again. But it's just too much..  I don't think I've ever been so exhausted as I was after doing 3 GateCrash prereleases in 1 weekend. I'm going to have to limit myself for dragon's maze.

my FNM is doing 5 prereleases

I heard that 1 in 22 packs will have a shockland

Omg that would suck cuz that makes no sence
There are way to few Cards in the set for that to be right
And I need more shocklands so I hope that's wrong

Then buy GTC and RtR. Or let me open your packs, i have good shockland ratio

Quote from: Mozilla butcher on April 23, 2013, 08:37:17 PM

I heard that 1 in 22 packs will have a shockland

Omg that would suck cuz that makes no sence
There are way to few Cards in the set for that to be right
And I need more shocklands so I hope that's wrong

would you rather shocklands drop drastically in value? Or only a little? The way there doing it would make the latter happen. Printing them more often then that would cause the former to happen

Anybody that can post a report of how your midnight release goes will be my heroes.

Anybody that can post a report of how your midnight release goes will be my heroes.

I'll do it.

Quote from: Raiderrob on April 26, 2013, 08:16:41 PM

Anybody that can post a report of how your midnight release goes will be my heroes.

I'll do it.

Thanks!

Id love for the value of shocks to drop...

Shock ratio in the packs seems low, I pulled one but a lot of people didn't. Love the pins though, the maze was eh as a party favor deal

Anybody that can post a report of how your midnight release goes will be my heroes.

Prepare to be hero'ed!

Just got home from an awesome prerelease! And I'm proud to say I took 1st place! IMtG represent!

Here's what I can tell you based on what I played with and against.

I played Rakdos. My ally was Dimir. I'll be honest, my Dimir cards were absolute garbage. I used a total of 4 GateCrash cards in my deck, and cut blue entirely.

My Rakdos pack:
Chaos Imps
Rix Maadi Guildmage
Rakdos Shred Freak
Deviant Glee
Grim Roustabout
Bellows Lizard
Annihilating Fire
Ultimate Price
Rakdos Guildgate
+ some crap I didn't use

My Dimir Pack:
Grisly Spectacle
Wight of Precinct Six
Midnight Recovery
Dimir Guildgate
+ unusable garbage

You guys know these cards so no comments. But here come the Maze cards, I'll comment on each one.

Carnage Gladiator - MVP. No question. This guy singlehandedly won me games. He is the absolute embodiment of everything that Rakdos stands for.
Rubblebelt Maaka x2 - I love these guys. I never once used them as a creature. They are a brutal, uncounterable, red giant growth and should be seen as such. Not only could I cause many dead blockers with this trick, but the +3 for lethal happened pretty often, and it got to the point where I could easily bluff them and get away with attacking my 2/1's into enemy 2/4's to hear 'sigh...no blockers."
Maze Abomination - so-so finisher card. He is a very big deal if you have a lot of multicolored creatures on the field, but has surprisingly little impact for a six drop if not. Still, even by himself, his 5 toughness allows you to swing with him pretty willy-nilly, knowing any blocks against him will likely favor you, and no blocks is 4 damage.
Armed // Dangerous - Armed is a blowout if you get an opportunity to use it. Even at sorcery speed, armed is a huge impact. Sadly, even though I got and included a Golgari Guildgate just for this one fuse card, I was never able to cast Dangerous with it.
Ubul Sar Gatekeepers - if you have the gates, these fellas are pretty good. If not, a vanilla 2/4 for 4 is pretty underwhelming.
Rakdos Drake (foil!) - Love this little fella. It's 3 toughness when unleashed makes it a pretty serious pain to deal with. It's 2 power allows it to deal notable damage, or kill most flyers in the set should they dare to block.
Hired Torturer - I originally added this guy to my deck not noticing he was a defender. I left him in after I realized he's pretty damn good even if I can't swing with him. He's a solid blocker at 2/3, and his ability proved more useful than I expected, allowing me to turn extra mana that I save for regeneration into 2 damage and a free random peek at my opponent 's hand. His ability to deal damage (or rather "loss of life") without having to attack/get by blockers made him a solid finisher in games against blocker-heavy decks like orzhov.
Blood Scrivener - I was honestly pretty disappointed here. I never used the effect - this thing ended up being nothing but a 2/1 for 2 with a target on it's head when my hand size got low. I got much more use out of Rakdos Shred-Freak, which ended up being effectively the same card + haste.
Riot Piker - I gotta say, I like this goblin. Sure, it attacks each turn if able because goblins are stupid, but 2 power and first strike made that okay for quite a few attacks. Slap Deviant Glee on there, and you have one happy goblin, for an extremely low mana cost.
Showstopper - highly disappointing. Was essentially a dead card for me. There was never a situation where I would have preferred to spend 3 mana to do this over playing another card in my hand or spending that mana to regenerate a creature.
Far // Away - I. Love. This. Card. I had 2 Dimir guild gates as my only blue sources, and quite frankly I didn't care, because Away by itself is good enough to be in this deck without a second thought. But if I did have one if those blues? Far and Away fused is a blowout. It has it all - tempo wrecking, removal, opening the path for my attackers...this was one of my favorite cards to see during that draw step.

And that 's my deck. Solid Rakdos, got me to a win. So what impressions did I get of the guilds in general?

Rakdos - obviously I love it, and I did well with it, but the other players playing Rakdos all did pretty well, too, including 4th place and (i think) 7th. It seems like a solid, steady agro guild with enough tricks up its sleeves to make the game more interesting, and to tip the scales in Rakdos' favor.

Golgari - I sadly can't say much as I didn't play against any true Golgari. I can say that the 2/5 deathtouch gorgon is amazing, though. It seemed pretty middle-of-the-pack.

Selesnya - pretty frightening. Had me on edge all night. The white blockers and available tokens to Selesnya can really mess up and slow down a deck like mine. God help you if you see Advent of the Wurm - you're doomed. There is a pretty big lack of populate though - with only one pack of RTR cards (the guild pack), and not much populate in dragon's maze itself, this very crucial keyword kind of..,fades away and you don't see much of it.

Azorious - Azorious did quite poorly, I'm afraid. 2nd to last place on the maze (which has progress based on # of wins). Unfortunately that's about all I can tell you - we were on opposite sides of the room from each other, so I didn't exactly see much of it.

izzet - much like it was in RTR, izzet was hit or miss. One izzet player came in either 3rd or 5th, and very well may have gotten 1st if he hadn't gotten mana screwed against me - I was his only loss of the night. Izzet is full of potential, able to get insane red creatures of Rakdos, Gruul, and Boros, and the substantial blue support found in Azorious, Dimir, and occasionally in Simic. But you need to get luck and get those cards - because without them, izzet's own cards do very little.

Boros - as expected, more people played boros than any other guild. Because of this, Boros won the special "Maze Race" event in the background, giving them all some sort sort of online achievement thingy. The guild itself seems a little less crazy than it did in GateCrash - slowed down from it's super speed. Still very good, but not as dauntingly overpowered as it was at gtc sealed.

Gruul - I think I'm starting to really love these savages. Their creatures are pretty solid, and their level of aggression keeps pace with most of the other guilds pretty easily. But what makes Gruul so truly good is how well they play with other guilds. Bloodrush is incredible, and any guild with red or green that turns creatures sideways and attacks wants to have some Gruul with them! Many of the top decks used Gruul cards, including my own. The Druid that taps for and deals 1 damage to a player is quite a good card, too.

Simic - dead last. I don't know what it is about Simic, but it fails horribly at sealed. Just...don't play it. It'll be fine in draft, but avoid it like the plague at this prerelease.

Dimir - didn't do so well, either. While Dimir does have the possibility to open a very good, very complicated sealed deck, it doesn't appear likely. I cut Dimir from my deck like it were a tumor - and I'm glad I did.

Orzhov - last but not least, the thorn in my side. Orzhov just as obnoxious as ever. It is less likely to have as much extort as before (see ramblings on populate above), it still gets enough to be a problem. On top of that, it gets a few new blockers, a few new combat tricks, and everything else you need to mess with an aggressive opponent like myself.

Hopefully all of this is helpful to someone!  Hope all of you have as much fun as I did last night! Now, I've been up all night. Time to check a few more posts and pass out!

You are the man! Gratz on the win! What was the prize payout? How many showed for the release?

Just shy of a box (30 packs) because the turnout was a bit lighter than expected - only about 50 people. There were closer to 80 at the GateCrash prerelease.

Nice! Where you guys able to pick your ally?

Nice! Where you guys able to pick your ally?

It's a random ally

Quote from: Raiderrob on April 27, 2013, 11:24:06 AM

Nice! Where you guys able to pick your ally?

It's a random ally

I've heard some places are letting people pick. I think it should be totally random. Not sure how my lgs is doing it, he had no clue what was going on.