Theros Prerelease

As usual, I picked the Sunday prerelease at the Comic Shop for the Theros prerelease, mainly as it means I don't have to stay up as late (I have a son who is teething to do that...). As a change from my usual preparation, I didn't have time to finish listening to the Limited Resources podcast beforehand. 

I arrived in St Albans fairly early on, so wandered around briefly before waiting around outside for the shop to open. Before registration, I let Kaleb have a wander around before his granddad picked him up to look after him for the day. This did involve a couple of dashes outside to the courtyard (and to some probably wet socks). 

Getting started, I picked the green path. I was considering the black one, but wasn't impressed by the promo. Well, I wasn't blown away by any of the promos really, and green looked interesting, plus I liked the Hero card. 

Opening my pool, none of my colours seemed particularly deep, with a lot of just random bits in all the colours. I was going to be green regardless, just because I had more cards in that colour, most of which were decent enough, so went around narrowing down a second colour. Blue and White didn't seem to have a high amount of playables, and black seemed a little too thin. Some expensive removal and 2 Read the Bones, but nothing that exciting, so I went with red. This choice was helped by a number of removal spells in red.

My deck was fairly aggressive, with a little bit of reach for longer games, and overall I think I was helped by a lot of removal that I could use, and some sizable creatures. 

To be honest, I thought the deck was fairly mediocre. But I managed to go 4-1 (lost in the finals), so it can't have been that bad. 

Modern removal

This is sort of a follow on from my last post about the mono black infect deck I've been putting together. So far I have found a good sideboard card to try out so will try to get two more copies, this card being Sadistic Sacrament. Three mana is about the top end I want to be hitting for sideboard cards, and this is one that doesn't require a card to already be in my opponents graveyard.

I have also taken out a Liliana and a Rime Transfusion for two extra Plague Stingers. I've been thinking about replacing the Night's Whispers too, initially with Tezeret's Gambit, but that new card in Theros (Scry 2, draw 2, lose 2) looks equally interesting so I want to play two of each to see if one is better.

Also in Theros is Thoughtsieze which I mentioned I would like to get. Will initially just replace Inquisition with them as I get them, but I'd ideally like to play 4 Thoughtsieze and 2 Inquisition, but I'm not sure what to take out for the two extra.

I've been mulling over my removal suite. I've taken out Devour in Shadow and Disfigure for an extra Devour Flesh and Dismember (3 of each). My reasoning is that I'm usually going to be wanting to remove just one creature, so Devour Flesh does that fine while getting around indestructible and Hexproof and, as previously mentioned, the infect deck doesn't care about life gain.

I've put Dismember in as it is a good Disfigure replacement as I can cast it for one mana if I really need to, and it will kill a lot more. The bonus over Devour in Shadow is that I can spend less life sometimes and it gets around indestructible in addition to regeneration (which Devour in Shadow also gets around). Devour Flesh should handle anything over 5 toughness, but -1/-1 counters from my creatures will also shrink things down into Dismember range. The big creatures that I saw at the tournament aren't affected by Devour in Shadow anyway (both Eldrazi, one indestructible, one has protection from coloured spells, so Devour Flesh is better here as it will actually do something).

I'm not sure what I need for mass removal. Infest seems reasonable for now in the sideboard, but I'll have to play some more creature heavy decks to make up my mind. I'm not sure whether Damnation would be better here or whether the extra mana is too much of a drawback. Similarly for Mutilate, but I think Damnation would be better in that case anyway.

I'm not sure when I'll next get a chance to play the deck, hopefully I'll be able to update it some more first.