On Saturday, I played in a Lorwyn Release Tournament at Atomic Comics Emporium. I ended up with 2 wins, 1 loss and 2 draws which was better then I expected given that I have only ever played in one other sealed deck tournament, the prerelease for Mirage and that was over ten years ago. I feel like I could have played a bit better, but I didn’t go with the intention of winning, I just wanted to have a good time and play. In that goal, I succeeded. For the $25 entrance fee, I got five and a half hours of entertainment, a Lorwyn Lift Counter from a random drawing at the end and of course the $16 worth of Lorwyn packs. The write up is a by-product of watching TV and otherwise bumming around the house so its a little longer then expected. Oh well.

Release events for sets are relatively smaller affairs with about 20-24 folks in attendance at the one I was at. The format was sealed deck, which meant that each player got a tournament deck (3 rares, 10 uncommons, 30 lands, 32 commons) and two additional booster packs (1 rares, 3 uncommons and 11 commons a piece) from which to construct a deck of forty or more cards. Additional basic lands are available, and unlike other tournament styles, every card you receive can be used as a “sideboard” between games. A couple of players went so far as to play one set of forty cards in the first game of a match and another forty cards in the second. Not sure how good of a strategy that is depending on the cards they got, but I guess it would keep an opponent guessing in addition to providing a level of amusement.

I like the sealed deck format since it requires a fair amount of originality, creativity and a lucky draw given how small of a card pool you have to work with. Here are the cards I had to work with:

After sorting them by color, artifact and land here was the distribution:

The colors seemed to be distributed relatively evenly with the exception of green which looked pretty unimpressive in both quality and quantity. Since Lorwyn is considered a tribal set and has lots of interaction within and between the tribes, I did a rough count of the cards by tribe. Here is a more exact count:

The more exact counts matched my more hasty observation. Goblins seemed to be the way to go and that meant using black and red. These colors also had some nice non-creature spells which the other colors seemed to lack. In hindsight, I am still happy with the colors I chose. Here is what I played:

Here is how the tournament played out. I earned a draw in my first match against a 60 card blue/white predominately merfolk deck. after winning quickly and then losing in a long, drawn out game which barely left us enough time to start the third game of the match. In the second game I suffered my only loss to a green/white mostly elf deck. After winning and then losing twice as my opponent, a fellow named Josh, sideboarded in a swamp walker and a protection from goblins creature. Josh ended up third in the tournament, which makes me feel better about the loss. I then got a 2-0 win against a green, white and black kithkin/treefolk/elf deck that didn’t get many of its power cards out except Gaddock Teeg who I found very annoying and ended up having to remove at least three times over the course of two games. Next up was another 2-0 win against a deck I can’t really remember much about. I vaguely remember it had red in it. In the first game, my opponent kept a hand with two mountains and a had long spell without land. The second game lasted longer, but I don’t remember it being much of a contest. The last match was my second draw against a deck that was very similar to mine being another red/black goblin deck. The only difference I remember was he had a Boggart Harbinger and a Heat Shimmer which I ended up using my Wild Ricochet on (the only time I got to use it thanks to tapping out and Gaddock Teeg). I won the first game and lost the second game. I managed to get my opponent down to 2 while being at 7 if memory serves before time and the five extra turns of sudden death expired.

Combos and cards that worked better then expected. Inner-Flame Igniter paired with the Soulbright Flamekin provided a great combo which dealt almost twenty damage in two separate games. The Warren Pilferers were very useful getting creatures out of the graveyard. Paired with the champion requirement of the Boggart Mob, it acted as sort of an insurance policy for the cheap 5/5 goblin. Moonglove Extract was very helpful taking out creatures with protection abilities. Finally Fodder Launch proved handy on multiple occasion in getting creatures out of the way while removing a quarter of my opponents life total at relatively little expense.

Now for the underachievers. Thousand-Year Elixir proved to be pretty much worthless. I cannot think of a single time when this artifact was useful, I probably should have replaced it after the first game. Wild Ricochet even though its my type of card didn’t prove very useful. Most of the Lorwyn that I saw were creature spells with very few sorceries and instants. I had it in hand once when one of my opponents played Primal Command but didn’t have the mana. Keeping four mana open with the deck and the mana curve I had just didn’t fit. I still very much like the card though.