M11 Report: Fatpack Battles! (Kelley)

Well, I know the local GYGO Fatpack battle for M11 was almost a week ago, but as I was clearing out my room I stumbled across my sealed pool intact, so because I haven't done an article in awhile (I know, but I, being the Captain of Team Real, have real life issues to tackle doesn't leave me much time to play MODO anymore) I decided I'd write up my pool.



For those who don't know what a Fatpack battle is, it's a special event that GYGO does on the Friday Morning / Thursday Night of the set's release, where you buy a Fatpack and you build a sealed deck with the 8 packs, so it's even more degenerate then a regular sealed deck.  It usually boils down to how many bomb rares you open.  Usually when school is in session you get about 80-100 people but we only had 50-60 because school is out at the particular time.

[Sealed Pool]
1 Ajani's Mantra
1 Angelic Arbiter [R]
1 Blinding Mage
1 Celestial Purge
1 Cloud Crusader
1 Elite Vanguard
1 Excommunicate
2 Holy Strength
1 Inspired Charge
1 Mighty Leap
1 Pacifism
1 Roc Egg
1 Safe Passage
2 Siege Mastodon
1 Silence [R]
1 Solemn Offering
1 Squadron Hawk
1 Tireless Missionaries

1 AEther Adept
1 Air Servant
2 Armored Cancrix
2 Augury Owl
1 Azure Drake
1 Call to Mind
1 Conundrum Sphinx [R]
1 Diminish
1 Flashfreeze
3 Harbor Serpent
1 Jace's Erasure
1 Mana Leak
1 Merfolk Spy
1 Mind Control
1 Negate
1 Phantom Beast
1 Preordain (foil)
1 Scroll Thief
1 Sleep
2 Tome Scour
1 Unsummon
1 Water Servant

1 Barony Vampire
1 Black Knight
2 Bloodthrone Vampire
1 Child of Night
1 Corrupt
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Gravedigger
1 Haunting Echoes [R]
2 Liliana's Specter
1 Necrotic Plague [R]
1 Nightwing Shade
2 Quag Sickness
1 Rise from the Grave
1 Stabbing Pain
1 Unholy Strength
1 Viscera Seer

1 Berserkers of Blood Ridge
2 Fling
1 Goblin Balloon Brigade
2 Goblin Piker
2 Goblin Tunneler
1 Manic Vandal
2 Pyretic Ritual
1 Pyroclasm
1 Shiv's Embrace
1 Thunder Strike
1 Volcanic Strength
1 Vulshok Berserker

1 Acidic Slime
1 Cudgel Troll
2 Cultivate
1 Fog
2 Garruk's Companion
1 Garruk's Packleader
2 Giant Growth
1 Hunters' Feast
1 Mitotic Slime [R]
1 Nature's Spiral
1 Plummet
2 Primal Cocoon
1 Prized Unicorn
1 Protean Hydra [R]
1 Runeclaw Bear
2 Sacred Wolf
2 Yavimaya Wurm

1 Dragon's Claw
1 Kraken's Eye
1 Sorcerer's Strongbox
1 Stone Golem

1 Mystifying Maze [R]
2 Terramorphic Expanse
[/Sealed Pool]

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Well, first the green stuck out as me as pretty decent with two playable bombs and a lot of solid creatures, along with two Cultivates to establish a splash.  Red was out of the picture immediately unless I wanted to splash Pyroclasm because of course I opened 2x of all the worst commons.  White has Arbiter, Blinding Mage, Pacifism, and some mediocre cards so I was limiting to a splash for Pacifism if I wanted it.  That left me down to deciding between black and blue.  Blue has bombs in Mind Control, Conundrum Sphinx, Sleep, and Air Servant.  Black has the only removal in the pool with 2x Quag Sickness, 2x Specter, Corrupt, and Rise from the Grave.  I really thought blue was more solid though at one point Matt took a look at it and asked why I wasn't playing black.  I thought I'd put Rise from the Grave in as the black splash.  So I fanned out all my blue and green playables and eventually came up with this:

[deck]
1 Diminish
1 Preordain
1 Pacifism
1 Mana Leak
1 Negate
2 Cultivate
1 Sleep
1 Mind Control

2 Garruk's Companion
1 AEther Adept
1 Cudgel Troll
1 Azure Drake
1 Conundrum Sphinx
1 Water Servant
1 Acidic Slime
1 Garruk's Packleader
1 Mitotic Slime
1 Protean Hydra (counted him as a 5+ drop)
1 Air Servant
2 Yavimaya Wurm

7 Island
7 Forest
1 Mystifying Maze
2 Terramorphic Expanse
[/deck]

If you're wondering why there isn't a Plains in the deck that is because I forgot to put one in before R1.  I won G1R1 but while in the middle of it I tried to crack a Terramorphic Expanse for a Plains only to find out I didn't have one...Stupid I know.

Sideboard that was relevant was: Plummet (struggled with what to take out), 2x Harbor Servant (for the Wurms), Flashfreeze (for Negate or Azure Drake).

I feel like the deck was decent, though a lack of 2-3 drops could hurt a bit and set me behind against certain decks.  But I had so many game winners that all I had to do was get to the late game.  The card that underperformed was Azure Drake, which just felt clunky in the deck and I found myself siding it out half the time.  I was pleasantly surprised with Water Drake, just like Jacob and a few of the others were, it was a house on the ground by far.

Anyways, I don't recall my matches in much great detail:

I know R1 I played Alex Valencourt, who's a cool dude, and I beat him 2-0 because his deck was bad.  I think he 0-2 dropped.

R2 I played Jay Semerad, another cool dude, but he misplayed G2 and G3 and I ended up winning.  His deck was completely better then mine but he was tired and playing bad so he decided to 1-1 drop.  While this was going on Kai was right next to me and lost to a kid that was R/W packing Baneslayer, 2 Prodigal Pyromancers, 2 Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Sword of Vengeance, 2 Blinding Mage, Hoarding Dragon, and a bunch of other sick cards I am forgetting.  He was a casual player and you could tell that Kai was a bit frustrated and he will say he misplayed but what can you do against 6 rare.dec?  I wish I opened that good of sealed pools.

Of course in R3 I had to play the guy that just beat Kai and my deck was pretty cold.  I found out quickly that my deck really had no way to beat a Blinding Mage and all he did was get me to 8 and Fireballed me for 5 and Lightning Bolted me.  I mis-sideboarded by not siding in Pyroclasm because it kills his whole team.  G2 I made the bluff of the century.  I have a bunch of dudes while he's at like 16, and I'm at 4 and dead on the swingback to his unblockable flier, dubs Blinding Mage, and Tom.  I drew the card for turn and pretended like it was an insane bomb (it was mana leak), put my hands over my mouth, and swung with my team with about 11 or 12 power in attackers.  He didn't have mana to tap my guys.  He thought long and hard and eventually blocked with both blinding mages, and went to something like 8, when he definitely didn't have to, and it gave me a turn to live and probably beat him next turn, except, oh wait, he had Lightning Bolt to kill me when I was at 3 next turn.  Glad he slowrolled that one.  I was pretty proud of myself  after that though.

I went on to win the next two rounds to make it into top 8 going 4-1, along with Kai, Demars, Walton, AJ, and three other people that I don't know.  We decided to split since the split was half a box and only first or second could get better prize then that.  So all in all it was one of my first successes at a Fatpack battle, since I usually open the nut low pool.  I played pretty well all day and turned a 0 Mythic, near 0 removal pool into a top 8 finisher.