Shadowmoor Prerelease - Apr 20, 2008

Finally, my cold streak ended yesterday at the Shadowmoor Prerelease. :) I went 4-0 on Flight B (despite Jovs and I arriving at around 9am at Galleria), and won 4 booster packs and a Shadowmoor t-shirt. :)

A few notes from the tourney:

- I put only 16 lands in my deck because I couldn't choose any creature to cut. I decided it was OK since I had a pretty low mana curve. And apparently, I was right -- up until game 1 of the 4th round when I mulliganed to 5 (the only time I ever mulliganed the whole day). Most definitely, luck was in my side on this day -- what can I say, luck is part of the game. :)

- I think I did a pretty good job in deck construction this time, compared with my last Limited tourney, the Morningtide prerelease. I first sorted the cards by color, with the new hybrid cards on a separate pile in between its 2 colors. Then, I removed the "non usable" cards -- spells that work on the graveyard, artifact/enchantment hate (SB stuff), 1cc spells (none stood out as being usable), really high cc spells, etc. Afterwards, I looked for bombs among the remaining cards. None stood out, so I just chose the colors with the most number of "good" cards, and ended up with a RG deck utilizing the new mechanics of the set -- Wither, Persist, and Conspire. Finally, I sorted the cards in order of cc, for mana curve purposes. The RG deck pretty much built itself, with most of my creatures being Grizzly Bears or Hill Giants with abilities, a few fatties for the late game, and some removal & combat tricks.

- My MVPs were:


I never lost a game where this fatty came out. Even if the blocking creature would gain wither, it never did enough "withering" on the Wurm to make it less of a threat. Usually it would go down to just 4/4 or 5/5 and it would still be enough to be the biggest creature on the board.


Getting this bad guy out at turn 3 in Limited is really good, to say the least. :) I'm going to be looking for more copies of this card for Constructed. I think it may have potential for inclusion in red decks.


This card basically says, "Kill your opponent's biggest creature."

- Here are some good cards among my prerelease cards & booster packs won:


A 3cc tutor for black looks very good. A lot of potential here for breaking the format.


Really good size and awesome ability for her casting cost... but something's missing though... why is there no Flash?


Game changing effect... I'm not sure if it would be useable in Standard though, given the really high cc.

So many good cards, so little time (actual release is on Friday, May 2). And with the new WotC ruling, Shadowmoor will already be Standard-legal on the date of the release (FNM!)! I'm REALLY excited for this new set. And it helped a lot that things got off to a good start in the prerelease. :)