Moving Up: Invasion Sealed Deck

Mike Krzywicki

Ice Age/Alliances Limited was often called "Sealed Luck"

A couple years back, when first introduced as a qualifying format, Sealed Deck garnered a reputation among Magic: The Gathering's elite players as an awful, luck-based endeavor. Commonly referred to as "Sealed Luck," this particular Limited format suffered from several problems. The product provided in Ice Age/Alliances Sealed Deck, the format used for Pro Tour Qualifiers for Pro Tour-Atlanta 1996, provided players with a mere sixty-two non-land cards and twenty-two lands with which to build their decks. And, unlike today, the land was not nearly as well collated, so it was possible that the best color in the product provided could have as little as three of that color's land type to support it. Also, many of the earlier Magic: The Gathering releases were not designed with Limited play as a major focus of the card selection, and, as such, there could be as few as one or two playable creatures in ten or more cards of a given color, making it impossible for some competitors to build decks which they could actually compete with. However, Wizards of the Coast responded to the players' collective call to improve the format, because it was a fun way to play. Though Mirage Block and Rath Cycle were improvements, the biggest change didn't show up until Urza's Saga. With the introduction of Urza's Saga, Starter decks were replaced with Tournament Packs, which provided a mandatory thirty land, evenly distributed among the five colors, as well as forty-five cards to play with instead of thirty-eight. And, beginning with the Mirage Block, there has been a definite trend towards including an abundance of reasonably cost-efficient creatures with interesting special abilities in the common and uncommon slots of the respective sets, allowing for practically all players to receive a card pool that gave them a chance at the top eight.

On to the present. We are a few weeks into the Invasion (formerly Mercadian Block) Sealed Deck qualifier season, and, unlike Constructed events, there is no metagame. There is only the one Tournament Pack and two booster packs that everybody receives, so the most crucial aspect of this format is what you do with your Tournament Pack and two boosters. How do you build the best Sealed Deck that your card pool allows? There are a few fundamental rules that are ubiquitous in all forms of Limited play.

Mana - Depending on the mana curve of your creature selection and how many colors you choose to play, anywhere from sixteen to eighteen land in a forty card deck is recommended, and it is strongly advised that you play forty cards to optimize your chances of drawing your best cards. If not given the materials to build a two-color deck, try to avoid an even distribution of mana among the three colors you play. Instead, try to create a two-color deck with a light splash of a third color. For instance, let's say you have a bunch of solid White and Red cards, but not quite enough to fill out a deck. Your Black cards are two removal spells and one good creature that cost single black, and a bunch of creatures that involve two black mana in the casting cost. What you should do here is play the three black spells that don't require double, and play three or four Swamps (depending on how important you deem those black cards to be) plus however many Plains and Mountains it takes to get you to seventeen or eighteen land. If you try to play three colors evenly, you'll often find yourself unable to cast spells, especially double-color ones, as you are decreasing your chances of drawing two of your three land types to increase the chances of drawing the other type.

Creatures - Creatures are always going to be your most efficient means of damaging your opponent, so you should make sure that the colors you decide to play include at least twelve good creatures, preferably as may as possible. 2/2s for three mana (Gray Ogres) with decent special abilities fall under the category of good creatures, but what you should really be looking for is the creatures in your product that are 3/3 or greater for four or five mana (Hill Giants). These are going to be your game breakers, the cards that your opponent will either take massive damage from or use precious creature removal spells on. In Mercadian Masques specifically, there are many two and three mana spellshapers that range in power and toughness from 1/1 to 2/2 which are very playable in some cases, like Kris Mage and Waterfront Bouncer, but be careful not to play too many smaller creatures, as they will, for the most part, sit on the sidelines while you and your opponent are trading your big guns. Creatures with incredible abilities, such as Troubled Healer or Samite Archer, are exceptions to this rule, as their abilities alone justify their casting cost.


Creature Removal/Tricks - The remainder of your deck should be composed of creature removal spells, if you receive any, and tricks. Spells that can remove an opponent's creatures from play are typically highly coveted in Limited formats, despite what at first seems like a very fair exchange, one card for one card. The reason why creature removal is so good is that it will always kill the best (or at least what you deem to be the best) creature on your opponent's side of the board. Also, most good creature removal, such as Vendetta, Terror, and Shock, costs far less mana than the creatures the spells are directed at, so removal spells will in many cases give their player a tempo advantage over their opponent. If you are extremely lucky, you might open up a mass creature removal spell, such as Rout or Earthquake, or a card that offers the ability to repetitively kill creatures, like Predator, Flagship, or Tsabo's Assassin. These cards are not to be passed up ever. They offer such devastating, game-shifting potential that they may change the way you build your deck. That leaves us with tricks, which compose the rest of your deck. Tricks come in many forms, and offer a variety of effects on the game. There are reactive tricks, such as Disenchant, Counterspell, and Cho-Manno's Blessing, which are used mostly to prevent an opponent's gamebreaker from hitting the board or staying around once it hits, or to counter their answer to one of your cards. These are good to pack at least one of in a deck, but don't play too many, or you could end up losing to a creature horde while you're waiting for your opponent to play his or her big threat. Then there are creature pump tricks, like Giant Growth and Mageta's Boon, which can be used to unexpectedly kill an opponent's creature during combat, or potentially kill an opponent if they are low enough on life. While very effective most of the time, be wary that, by playing these cards, you are offering your opponent potential card advantage if they are holding a removal spell (your opponent can trade a Terror, for instance, for your River Boa and Giant Growth before the Boa has an opportunity to deal damage).

Card-drawing and deck manipulation also falls under the trick category. Usually, the sought-after continuous card drawing effects (Jayemdae Tome, Bargaining Table, Archivist) are in the rare slot, so it's not too likely that anyone will receive one, but one-time effects, like Opportunity, Brainstorm, and Gush are also definitely playable. In general, anything that can net you card advantage or drastically improve your hand quality is an automatic slot in your deck, as the only downside to out-drawing your opponent is the fact that you will get decked first, and it rarely comes to that before you overwhelm your opponent with a massive resource advantage. Finally, there are the endgame tricks. These are much scarcer than any other type of trick, and you should pay close attention to your card pool to recognize one of these if it's there. These cards usually either give the ability to tap all of your opponent's creatures on his turn, as is the case with Breaking Wave and Ensnare, or prevent your opponent's creatures from blocking on your turn, like Falter or Panic Attack. This type of card is a huge liability in your hand in the early game, since it doesn't attack, block, or kill anything, but having the ability to draw it in the mid to late game and turn a stalemate (which occurs far more frequently in Sealed Deck than in Draft formats) into a victory more than makes up for it.

These rules were fairly cut and dried for the Mercadian Masques portion of the season, but Invasion Sealed deck is anomalous among Block Sealed Deck formats. For the first time ever, there are multicolored cards in the common slots, and an abundance of gold cards in the uncommon and rare slots where they typically reside in lesser numbers. Additionally, a great number of cards that assist multicolor deck design have been introduced in the form of the Cameos, the uncommon dual lands, green land search and the common "sacrifice" lands. How does this affect deckbuilding strategy?

Green has good access to diverse mana

Mana - Unless you are extremely lucky, it will be difficult to construct an Invasion sealed deck in the traditionally accepted style of two colors or two base colors with a splash of a third. This is because, with the inclusion of common gold cards eating up slots which would otherwise be single color cards, it will be far less likely that any two colors in your card pool will be capable of standing on their own. With Invasion, instead plan on playing three colors spread fairly evenly, or, if you have the cards to accommodate it, maybe even four colors. Besides the Cameos and the dual lands, there is one color that seems especially capable of supporting these strategies: Green. Quiron Elf, Fertile Ground, and Harrow have all been taken from their various sets and reprinted in Invasion to assist with color problems which would otherwise be insurmountable in this multicolor environment, along with the new Nomadic Elf, Quirion Trailblazer and Pulse of Llanowar. All of the aforementioned cards are great for alternative color sources, but the three reprinted ones are especially powerful because they provide mana acceleration as well. Another important factor to deciding your mana base is the number of cantrips (cards that provide an effect, then allow the caster to draw a card) in your deck. Invasion provides more than a few of these cards, and, if you have several relatively inexpensive cantrips in your deck, the amount of land you play should be scaled down slightly to compensate for the accelerated rate at which you will draw through your deck.

Creatures - There probably won't be much choice when it comes to which creatures you choose to include in your deck, since you will most likely be playing all the playable creatures that your best colors yield. There is a noticeable absence of larger creatures in the set, which is instead filled with smaller creatures with interesting special abilities, such as the Apprentices, the Weavers, and the five 2/2 protection from a color multicolor creatures. This means that the larger creatures, like the common kicker creatures (Duskwalker, Faerie Squadron, Pouncing Kavu, Pincer Spider, Benalish Lancer) and even seemingly mediocre ones like the artifact Attendants, are dominant forces once they hit the board and should always find a place in your deck. Of the smaller creatures with special abilities, the best among them are undoubtedly those that contain the ability to tap a creature, such as Thornscape Apprentice, Stormscape Apprentice, and Benalish Trapper. Players who were around for Rath Cycle Sealed will no doubt remember the power of Master Decoy, and, though the rules have changed slightly since then, allowing for tapped blockers to deal damage where they could not under Fifth Edition rules, the ability to neutralize your opponent's best creature for one mana is still an incredible ability in Limited. Of course, if you have enough quality cards to justify playing the colors to accommodate these cards, the Weavers and 2/2 pro-color creatures are fine, but these cards aren't powerful enough on their own to make you go out of your way to include them in your deck. Some cards you may want to keep an eye out for that hasn't yet been mentioned are the Dragons. Invasion, with its plethora of multicolored cards, contains five rare Dragon Legends. Each of these Dragons is a 6/6 flier for six mana with an extremely powerful special ability that can be activated when they deal combat damage, though the 6/6 flier for six mana should be enough to win most Sealed Deck games. If you receive one of these Dragons in your card pool, you should make every attempt to include it in your final deck, but don't fall into the trap of building your deck around one card. Though the Dragons are incredibly powerful, you should always focus on playing your strongest overall colors, because, if you play lesser colors to get your Dragon into your deck, you won't always draw it and will instead be left with the suboptimal cards that you included so you could play the Dragon.

Both removal and a finisher

Creature Removal/Tricks - As with all sets before it, just about all the removal available in Invasion is contained within Black and Red. Scorching Lava and Agonizing Demise are both very good cards on their own, but with their kicker cost, the former becomes an answer to a number of pesky creatures, like Charging Troll and Pyre Zombies, and the latter becomes one of the best game-enders in the set. Exotic Curse and Tribal Flames are great if you have two different basic land types in play, but, as is the way with many Invasion cards, their power is amplified greatly with the inclusion of a third or fourth color in your deck. All the above cards have very splash-friendly casting costs, and should almost never be in your sideboard. Plague Spores is very pricey at six mana with two colors in the casting cost, and the land destruction part of the card is pretty negligible in the mid-game, but the ability to destroy a creature in this set is a valuable ability at any cost, and, coupled with the slow nature of the format, this is a card that should not be overlooked. Black also gets a few goodies in the uncommon and rare slots with Annihilate, Reckless Spite, and the very splashable and powerful Tsabo's Decree, which is unique among Black removal spells in that it can kill one or more Black creatures, while Red gets Breath of Darigaaz and the devastating Urza's Rage.

White isn't typically a color one would expect to have removal, but Invasion brings back Exodus' Shackles, which, although not capable of putting a creature in the graveyard, is capable of always keeping your opponent's best creature tapped once they tap it, and can be reused after a bigger threat hits the table. As far as tricks go, this set has a bunch of them, and the best part is that a lot of them let you draw a card too. Blue has two very powerful weapons in Repulse and Exclude, and Wash Out can be a great game-ender if your opponent's creatures aren't the same color as yours. In green, Explosive Growth is another example of a spell that is great without the kicker mechanic, but, when you have the surplus mana, can turn any attacker into a monstrous threat. Aggressive Urge, while obviously not as good as the Growth, is also extremely playable since there are going to be many situations where you can trade Aggressive Urge, which replaces itself, for your opponent's creature or removal spell, and, even when those situations don't come up, it essentially has cycling since you can just cast it on an opponent's creature during their end step to dig further into your deck. Restraint is a card that probably doesn't look very good at first glance, but it will always prove its worth during combat. This white spell will either absorb all the damage dealt by an unblocked attacker, or prevent that attacker from dealing damage to the creature that blocked it, plus it draws you a card. Liberate is another white card that doesn't seem very impressive, but it actually has many uses. It can be used to counter a removal spell by Liberating the targeted creature, or it can be used in combat after damage goes on the stack to Liberate a creature which has just been assigned lethal damage. Enchant Creature spells usually aren't that good in Sealed Deck, since your opponent is more likely to have some type of removal spell in the colors they choose to play than they would in draft, but multicolor one in Invasion stands out above the rest. Armadillo Cloak is very reminiscent of the Embraces from Urza's Saga, providing a formidable bonus to a creature's power and toughness as well as giving it trample and the ability of Spirit Link. One thing to keep in mind when playing Invasion Sealed Deck, even if you don't have this card in your deck, is that this card is common. That means that if your opponent is playing White and Green, there is a very good chance that this card is in part what convinced them to play the two colors, so you should always keep the possibility that one of their creatures could get Cloaked up in the back of your mind.

Invasion Limited offers players a lot of room for creativity and ingenuity with all the multicolor options available. Just look at the recently completed Grand Prix-Manchester, in which all of the competitors in the top eight draft, including many name players like Darwin Kastle, Zvi Mowshowitz, and Justin Gary, played at least three colors, and in some cases four or five!