Magic 2014 Prerelease Sealed Deck

Magic 2014 prerelease was held this weekend. At first I wanted to take part in the midnight prerelease but after previous experience from the Dragon's Maze midnight prerelease I decided against it. I was up all night playing Magic anyway so getting to the local game store in the morning was quite difficult. At 8:50 I got on the tram heading in the direction of the LGS.

Some time later 37 players were seated and we received our product. I opened the booster packs and sorted them by color. Then I checked the cards in them... green and black seemed solid. Blue had pretty nice cards but I decided for BG combination that would be purely aggro. My deck looked like this:

Elvish Mystic
Wring Flesh
Child of Night
Kalonian Tusker
Voracious Wurm
Predatory Sliver
2x Undead Minotaur
Witchstalker
Fireshrieker
Blood Bairn
2x Advocate of the Beast
Quaq Sickness
Trollhide
2x Mark of the Vampire
Hunt the Weak
Accursed Spirit
Rampaging Baloth
Woodhorn Behemoth
Vastwood Hydra
Sengir Vampire

Round 1
I kept a nice hand with a nice curve. But I got stuck on three lands for quite some time. In the meantime my opponent played Ogre Battledriver that I couldn't deal with without the 4th land. After he tossed few creatures at me that dealt roughly 13 damage I finally drew the fourth land so I could kill finally kill the creature. I decided against it though and played Mark of the Vampire instead on one of my creatures. The creature gained me four life. In the following turn I played Hunt the Weak and let the creature fight Battledriver. A turn later I equipped Accursed Spirit with Mark on it with Fireshrieker (still had to attack twice). In game two I managed to play both of my Marks and my opponent had no response to that. (my life totals when the games ended were 48 and 36 which also meant that I could check one of Ajani's achievements)

Round 2
In round two I played against GW Slivers that were getting quite annoying. Vigilance, pump and double strike can be deadly. Anyway I saved Hunt the Weak for Bonescythe Sliver and then it was quite easy...My creatures could attack and not die in the attack.

Round 3
UB Flyers. Cheap and fast flyers especially Trained Condors + some merfolks dealt damage quite quickly. Even with Mark of the Vampire on a 3/3 body I went down to 10 before I finally managed to win. Hopefully my Mark of the Vampire on Witchstalker was such a big threat that Sengir Vampire and some other creature blocked it and I could thus take care of the Vampire. In game two I sided in Shrivel (and Plumet) and I had it in my opener. My opponent once again started with Coral Merfolk followed by two Trained Condors. I played the Shrivel (with a 3/3 body in play already) and destroyed all the opposing creatures. I thought that this would mean a good game but my opponent still had other creatures to play and they were even more annoying (3 toughness creatures). He also Pacified one of my creatures and the creature that later got enchanted with Mark of the Vampire ended up under Claustrophobia. I had Blood Bairn in play though and I was attacking with it each turn sacrificing some of my creatures so I would kill the opposing ones. This worked out well even though not THAT well as I would expect as my opponent still had some tricks and it cost my whole hand to safe the Blood Bairn. Only Blood Bairn survived on the table after this. My opponent then played a 1/3 flyer followed by a 2/2. I drew a 2/3 creature and attacked with those two. Wring Flesh helped me kill one of the creatures. My opponent did not draw a blocker so he died a turn later.

Round 4
I played against Bant. I dealt some damage early. My opponent dealt with my creatures quite easily and even countered one. My opponent eventually tapped out fully so I played my hydra making it quite big. My opponent ran out of cards to deal with it and lost. In game two I mulled to 4 and I even managed to do some serious missplays otherwise it would not have been that bad. Still I played agaisnt a good player and a good deck so the chances of winning were low. In game three I started with Child of Night. Opponent played a bigger creature and tapped out. So I enchanted my Child with Trollhide and attacked. That was the last attack of the Child of Night. Later there were creatures on both our sides and I needed to draw something that could bypass those - a flyer or Accursed Spirit. I drew the spirit, played it. Later I enchanted it with Mark of the Vampire. My opponent drew Claustrophobia. My hand was full of cards requiring double green and I had 5 swamps and 1 forest in play. Eventually I drew the second forest so I played my bomb - Vastwood Hydra and won few turns later.

Round 5
This was the only round in which my hands seemed rather bad. I traded my 3/3 with Mark of the Vampire with two other creates hoping to draw some other creatures that could deal some damage. My opponents creatures were better though - they could fly and Charging Griffin with Lightning Talons was simply an overkill. In game two I kept yet once again hand that was discutable but wasn't bad. This time though I was overrun by slivers... Later though Bonescythe Sliver showed up and wrecked my whole army (I killed the three slivers as well).

After this my opponent played 2 Master of Diversion and one more creature. I couldn't deal with it and lost.

Round 6
UW Flyers with Angel of Thune this time. I won somehow even though I have to say that Fortify is a card that made me cry in this round. In the second game I was drawing lands since my fifth land drop. I was playing them so my Woodborn Behemoth could be 8/8 Trample. When I played the 8th land my opponent played Frost Breath on it and another creature so I couldn't attack with for 8. I played Sengir Vampire that ended up tapped by Claustrophobia. But then my Wurm could attack once again and won me that game and I could also get Garruk's Achievement card.

5:1 in the end. I won some booster packs. There was nothing in them as usual^_^. After that we went to play more Magic. I was really tired. At 4 am I went to sleep so I would be able to get up for that day's prerelease. After 30 minutes of trying to persuade myself to get up (8 am) I actually got up and went to play more Magic 2014^_^.