Last weekend I played in a GPT for Grand Prix Ottawa. My plan had been to take notes on the decks I played against and use them as a starting point to write about the archetypes in Khans of Tarkir Sealed. I thought it would be an interesting exercise in seeing what people were playing and function somewhat as a tournament report. Unfortunately, this plan didn’t work out. First of all, after starting 3-0, pairings and tournament size allowed me to double draw into the Top 8, so I only played three rounds of sealed. Secondly, I didn’t play against any really clear archetypes. It seemed that the best way to distinguish between decks was either by the colour they were not playing, or by the big bomb they were playing towards. This has not been my experience in draft at all. Having done some sealed prep for that GPT and now having done a couple additional dailies, I want to address the differences between Sealed and Draft in this format.

First of all, this is a huge topic. Draft and Sealed tend to be grouped together simply by their state as Limited formats. This is reasonable since they use the same card pool in the same ratios, but it ends up costing us when we try to switch between formats. A lot of our play decisions are intuitive. While it is important to be aware of all the decisions we are making – and there is tons of magic literature on how to get better at this – we still sometimes take lines based on our past experiences. This is good. It means that we are used to a format and can process small decisions in the background, saving our mental energy. However, when we are switching from Draft to Sealed, or vice-versa, sometimes these decisions are wrong. It becomes important to re-establish why we feel that something is correct. A good way to do this is by explicitly considering what makes the formats different.

Something that I keep coming back to is the power level of this set. The average card is very good and the strong commons are surprisingly close to bombs. The cycle of common tri-colour morphs are all cards that can be absolutely game defining; and they are common; and there are five of them. Overall, we can expect to not only have enough playables, but to have too many. This is a trend that has been going for a couple sets now. We are no longer having to scrounge through our extra cards for a 22nd or 23rd card. Instead, we are staring at our deck trying to figure out what we can cut.

Playing with a stronger card pool doesn’t simply make the average card better; it also makes the average deck more focused. This happens because our cards are able to perform an increased number of roles – because they are stronger overall. When we choose to play cards that aren’t able to do multiple things, it is because they are exceptionally good at one thing. In aggregate, this means that we need fewer cards to make our deck function and are able to choose particular auxiliary cards that will have a defined effect on the game. In draft, we see this constantly. The Black/White warrior deck plays a lot of very powerful warriors. A card like [card]Chief of the Scale[/card] is able to work as a lord that enables your warriors to attack profitably and as a 2/3 for two which can block morphs favourably. Since the deck has access to a strong two-way card like this, it can afford to spend slots on more narrowly aggressive cards like [card]Raiders’ Spoils[/card] and [card]Rush of Battle[/card]. This is a defining element of Khans’ draft.

I had expected this to hold true for Sealed, which is why I had planned to talk about archetypes. We already know that this didn’t work out. Why not? In past sets, Sealed formats have diverged most drastically from Drafts when the latter is focused on very narrow strategies and the overall card quality is lower. In Avacyn Restored, the Sealed format was completely different from Draft because the most powerful Draft decks were linear Red/White human and Green/Blue tempo decks. In Sealed, we were unable to get the specific cards en masse which enabled these strategies. Clearly though, this isn’t the case for KTK since we know that the average card is powerful and the strong decks are often simply colour and speed based: Mardu Aggro, Jeskai Tempo, Sultai Control. Why then is Sealed so different?

The answer is in the fixing. Since the average card quality is so high and there are two full cycles of very good colour fixing lands, our ability to play strong cards goes up. In Sealed, we often will have access to so many exceptionally strong and versatile cards that we no longer need to play the linear cards at all. Our ability to be adaptive trumps our need to be direct. When we open our six packs and see that we have 7-9 dual lands, our ability to simply cherry pick the best cards from each colour increases greatly. The cost of being greedy goes down. Furthermore, the strongest cards in this format are almost universally gold coloured, so we are incentivized to play our duals regardless. Once we are playing the duals, the cost of playing more colours is decreased even further.

This is why I believe that so many people are playing four or five colours in Sealed. It is why so many of these decks are at the top tables, and it is why we see so few truly linear decks. The questions we now want to ask are “how do we use this information to build better Sealed decks?” and “what do we do differently than in Draft?”

The first thing we have to do is understand what our lands allow. Before we go about just jamming all of our best cards into a deck we have to both understand what we can support, and understand the cost of each colour. If we only have one or two blue duals, then playing blue as a main colour requires that we play six to eight islands, that’s six or more lands that don’t make other colours. Every colour we play has both a cost (in having to consistently get another mana type) and a benefit (in increasing the power level of our deck). In order to decide whether a colour is worthwhile we have to balance these two. If we have a ton of duals then the cost is low, and if the colour’s cards are significantly better than the cards we would be playing otherwise, then it is most likely worthwhile. However, the inverse is also true. It is important to recognize that each card we add replaces a card that would otherwise fill its place. Sure [card]Snowhorn Rider[/card] is very powerful, but how much more so than [card]Glacial Stalker[/card]? Perhaps trying to play it off our one red dual and a mountain isn’t worthwhile for the upgrade that it represents over the blue morph. We need to acknowledge that there is a cost to playing all of these colours. Jay Lansdaal wrote an excellent article about this for ManaDeprived following GP Orlando.

So how do we play a deck that has a super high power level, but can still play its cards? The best strategy I’ve found is to play one or two colours and splash off of these. This strategy is highly benefited by morphs. If all of our cards are either White or have morph, the cost of not hitting our colours on time is relatively low, but the upside for hitting our colours is very high. Furthermore, if we have a high density of one colour, it ensures that we can be playing spells which will bridge the gap to the point where we can play our haymakers.

That is the second part of the equation: we have to have haymakers. The cards which we are playing off of our additional colours can’t just be good – they have to singlehandedly have a profound impact on the game regardless of the state it is in. In the case of the big bombs this is obvious. It is very clear that [card]Duneblast[/card] is game changing. The difference between a [card]Tuskguard Captain[/card] and an [card]Abzan Falconer[/card] is less so. In this case, the Falconer is a worthwhile splash (assuming we have the mana) because the ability to make a group of creatures fly is good both offensively and defensively. It can completely change the complexion of the board and the combat math when it hits the battlefield. Conversely, the Captain’s effect is only relevant on offense, a 3/4 trampler is significantly worse on defense than a 3/4 flyer (after they have outlasted). This is the reason why I’ve found [card]Ankle Shanker[/card] to be a bad splash – if we are slowing down our deck to play another colour, we want cards which thrive in the game type we are trying to set up. We want to splash two-way players like Dwight Howard, not a bunch of James Hardens.

If the strategy is to go big when our mana can reasonably support it, what do we do when it can’t? We have to reasonably expect that the top tables of a tournament are going to have decks with decent mana and powerful threats. So, if we can’t join them, we have to go the other direction. While the linear decks are less prevalent, that doesn’t mean they are impossible. When building these decks in Sealed, we just have to be prepared to consistently run into large powerful plays in the late game. Someone in the room has [card]Sagu Mauler[/card] and [card]Surrak Dragonclaw[/card]. How do we plan on beating them?

In this context the efficient removal spells become even more important. One card which has probably the biggest gap between Draft and Sealed is [card]Force Away[/card]. While it is good in Draft, it is pretty much essential to any linear blue deck in Sealed. When your opponent expects to stabilize by flipping their [card]Abzan Guide[/card] at six life, being able to remove it and their eight mana investment for only two – while perhaps also adding to your board – can be back breaking. Another card which has a lot more value in Sealed is [card]Rite of the Serpent[/card]. We are much more likely to run into the guy with two [card]Snowhorn Rider[/card]s and two [card]Abzan Guide[/card]s than the girl with four [card]Mardu Hordechief[/card]s. When these beefy dudes are trying to stonewall us, a Rite can completely crush their plan. The linear deck has to be prepared to tussle, because no one is missing powerful cards – there are just too many in the format.

So what exactly are we doing differently than Draft? In Sealed we have to be prepared to face higher-powered, less focused decks. Our opponents are more likely to be playing versatile bombs than powerful snipers. In Sealed Raider’s Spoils often lives in sideboards. With this expectation we have to choose one of three angles to beat whoever sits down across from us. We can go more powerful, more consistent, or more linear. Practically, this means that if we look at our packs and see great fixing then we might want to play all of the colours and the strongest cards. If we see less than great fixing and a pair of deep colours, we might want to make a point of not trying to splash a fourth or perhaps even third colour. Finally, if our pool seems to be missing the top end all together, we should try to put together a linear plan which can beat a less optimized opponent.

These options may seem obvious. As we become stronger as players, they become increasingly intuitive. What we should be doing though, is being aware of the choices we are making and why we are making them. As well as our play decisions, this awareness applies to choosing our decks. In Sealed, the deck we build is a choice. Let’s be aware of the choices we make.