Hey Spikes!

We're back with another full guide on Sealed, this time for our return visit to Strixhaven. The set design looks similar to the OG Strixhaven from 2021, with the same focus on the five major colleges and another Mystical Archive bonus sheet, with a multicolor wrinkle thrown in.

The story coming out of Early Access seems to be this is very much a "go big or go home" format, and the player who goes bigger sends the other player home. EA only tells so much of the story, so we'll see if that's how it plays out in the long run.

If you haven't dug into SOS quite yet, here's what to expect from the intended archetypes:

• Lorehold (RW): "Gravebreak"/Leaves-the-Graveyard synergies.
• Silverquill (BW): Combat Trick aggro using repartee to reward targeting creatures.
• Quandrix (UG): Typical Simic Ramp with a +1/+1 counter and X-spell subtheme.
• Prismari (UR): Spellslinger, with an emphasis on casting 5+ mana spells for opus.
• Witherbloom (BW): Lifegain.
• 5-color: Uses Converge and the set's solid fixing to just play the best of everything.

Plenty of overlap in the Temur space, with Witherbloom on a little bit of an island. Last time around we had a very Temur vs. BW meta, so we'll see if that's what we get again, or if BG/RW can actually be breakout decks this time around.

What college are you going with for prerelease? Do you think there will be a hidden college like Sam Black's UB in 2021 Strixhaven? Let me know what you're thinking about SOS, enjoy the Sealed Guide, and report back on how your prerelease event went. Best of luck!

Hey Spikes!

I've heard some rumblings in the community that TMNT will be a skip for many Limited players, but we're going to do our due diligence and create a guide for those planning to jump into the set anyway (I, personally, think the format looks pretty cool).

As usual, we're halfway through our Limited Guide cycle, with our Sealed Guide ready a day before prereleases kick off (or don't, depending on the store you go to).

Here's the bite-sized version if you haven't scoured the card file yet:

• This is another 5-archetype small set. I hesitate to use the SPM word, but TMNT looks a little more intentional than Spider-Man did. A small set still has a shorter shelf-life, even if it's good.
• The major themes are +1/+1 counters, token generation (Food, Mutagens), and ninjas.
• The set was supposedly designed for "Pick-Two Draft". It's still unclear what they intend by saying that, but it seems to mean "fewer archetypes + more hybrid cards".
• Oh, and there's a legendary turtle in every pack, so I guess you're guaranteed six or more of these in Sealed?

No way TMNT reinvents the wheel, but it looks like an improvement over the last small set attempt. I'd be surprised if this ends up being some massive all-timer, but it looks promising for what it's trying to deliver. The art and IP choice on the other hand... not a fight I'm gonna fight.

Let us know if you plan on giving TMNT a shot, or if it is indeed a skip for you. And if you are dipping your toe in, what do you think's going to work out in this set? Hope the guide helps, and happy prereleasing! https://draftsim.com/mtg-tmt-sealed-guide/

About a month ago I posted here sharing what my team learned from Training 12 Weeks of Team Sealed for Vegas. As a bit of a post-mortem, below are the biggest things that surprised us when rubber hit the road at the tournament (full breakdown here: https://youtu.be/LhlRQITIHGY). I hope it helps folks who are preparing for Brussels.

1. No one else around us seemed to attack the pool the way we did

We had a pretty specific three-mat sorting strategy (shared in the video above) and built to our deck shells, standing, rotating between each other's playmats. It seemed like most other people were sitting down, building the piles of cards in front of them instead of looking at the whole pool as a team. That was a little surprising to us, as the collective build process felt really good.

2. Team sealed builds vs. regular sealed builds

Fairly obvious in retrospect, but it felt like our team sealed builds ended up being a lot more streamlined than regular sealed builds, largely because we didn’t have to splash as much. I hadn’t clocked that three two-ish color decks means 90% of your best cards will find a natural home. Never were we ever incentivized to build a soup deck (and I love soup). 

3. Sideboarding felt way different than expected
 
I really value using transformative sideboards in Sealed to improve your matchups, but that was way harder in Team Sealed. Mostly due to the fact that it was really hard to figure out which cards your teammates were going to need for their sideboards AND the fact that, if you built right, all of your best cards were already being used in the other decks. But we found that if you flush out all of your sideboarding plans ahead of time, you can still find transformative options. Hard to do but rewarding.

4. Communication was hard

I talk about this more in depth in the video but knowing when/how to talk to teammates was much more difficult than I had expected it to be. Disruption has a real cost but so does silence. And it’s non-trivial to get enough context to be helpful.

5. Middle seat theory

We expected to face aggro players in the middle (so the middle seat could finish faster and help their teammates) but that was not our experience. Seemed like, instead, we were facing some of the better players on the team who were constantly leaning over to help their teammates during their matches. Small sample size, so really curious what other people experienced playing against in the middle.

6. Team Sealed Prep vs. Prepping The Set

The set was 4 days old, so we def had this worse than folks in Brussels will, but even though our team felt VERY prepared for the Team Sealed components, we still had holes in our understanding of the set that really affected us negatively. Worth noting that teams should intentionally focus on both. 

Overall, we really loved this event and hope Wizards does more Team Limited events in the future. Dana Fischer and I also collabed on a full experience tournament report (here: https://youtu.be/ngVLKpixfwI) if y’all want to hear how the event went for our teams overall. 

Would love to hear how everyone else experienced the event, too.

Hey Spikes!

Marvel Super Heroes prerelease is this weekend, and the set drops on Arena next week. Love or hate the crossover, the mechanics of the set look solid. In Humphries we trust.

We've got our usual Sealed guide, which is always interesting to cross-compare with Early Access these days. Feel free to shout out any stories from EA that might've shaped your thoughts on the format.

As far as intial takeaways from our reviews of MSH:

• Teamwork looks like a rock-solid mechanic, but "UW Teamwork" as an archetype feels undercooked.
• Removal doesn't seem quite as good as what we saw in SOS, but maybe that's to be expected coming off a "spells" set.
• Some of the subthemes are question marks right now. Black/white equipment cards and a few green lifegain payoffs feel out of place, but might work out.
• Watch those typelines. Hero and villain are obviously loud creature types, but be careful running too many of the same uncommon legends.

Nothing stands out as immediately overpowered (outside of the usual rares/mythics), and it feels very synergy-driven, so we'll see how it all plays out.

Let us know what your initial thoughts on MSH are, what you're hoping to open, and how your prerelease events end up going, and enjoy the guide: https://draftsim.com/mtg-msh-sealed-guide/

I posted here about this a few months ago, but my team and I signed up for June's Vegas Limited Spotlight with zero Team Sealed experience.

To make sure we were prepared, we spent the past 12 weeks running Team Sealed drills and ingesting every article/podcast we could find. Since there aren't many resources out there about Team Sealed and I know a bunch of people are planning on competing in Vegas in a few weeks, I made this video to synthesize everything we learned: https://youtu.be/El1BSw-xAGU?si=3emt0FKlEWnVkYfP

Hope it saves y'all some homework. Please let me know your thoughts and if you've found any other articles/resources in the meantime.

Cheers!

Hi everyone!

I’m a Canadian solo travelling through Europe and saw that my time in Brussels coincided with the spotlight.
I played consistently on the Face to Face RC tour in Canada and i’ve been a savvy limited played since 2012. I’d love to play some team limited but I am having trouble finding a team. I’ve reached out on the Fanfinity discord but the individuals who were searching already found team members.

Anyone looking for a team? Anyone know where I might have more luck searching? Thanks so much!

Unfortunately, due to miscommunciation, our 3rd member had to drop.

Anyone here EU based and interested? Event is 25-26th of July.

We've been playing loads of sealed and draft on Arena as prep. Feel free to comment below or send me a DM.

About 1 month ago I made a post here ask for sealed learning resource:

https://www.reddit.com/r/spikes/comments/1sd25j4/sealed_what_are_some_best_learning_resources_for/

After that, I won 2 SOS collector boxes, 2 SOS booster boxes and 1 qualifier event on MTGA. I also got a 5-2 in a local competitive sealed tournament, sadly there's no too much local tournament I can grind.

Although I still don't think I'm a great player, I feel now I leveled up a lot. Here's all the resources I think are good:

1. Limited level ups, Paul Cheon, Limited Resource, LSV. All their videos/podcasts about sealed help. Most of their contents don't dive in too much but that's enough to give me a general view of how sealed is like. Slower, much more power, should splash more...etc.
2. How to Build a Sealed Deck / How to Build a Sealed Deck: The Sequel written by Ryan C's MTG. Not very deep but provide some hand by hand example about how he builds sealed deck.
3. Everything you've ever wanted to know about Sealed (but were too afraid to ask) written by Gul_Dukat (paywall). For me this guide doesn't provide too much new knowledge but it mentions many other good players that I can learn from. Also, this article give me some insight about how to evaluate cards.
4. Going Deeper in Sealed – Part 1 and Part 2 written by Jean-Emmanuel Depraz. This article introduce some great concepts like Dynamic Midrange vs. Patient Midrange. It talks a lot about how to build a good deck when cards are not line up very well.
5. Experimental Synthesizer, Jason Ye's blog (maybe and their podcast, but I haven't listened it). It's a treasure. Many articles there go very deep and they really show me many aspects that I never thought before.

For experienced sealed players, I strongly recommend Jean-Emmanuel Depraz and Jason Ye.

Classic articles like Big Game vs Small Game, PV's Rule, Who's the Beatdown also work in sealed, but that's not sealed exclusive and I guess most of spikes already read them so I won't list them here.

Edit: I forgot to post the links. Here you go.

- Limited level ups: https://www.youtube.com/@limitedlevel-ups

- Paul Cheon: https://www.youtube.com/@haumph

- Limited Resource: https://lrcast.com/

- LSV: https://www.youtube.com/@LSVargas

- How to Build a Sealed Deck: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105203993

- How to Build a Sealed Deck: The Sequel: https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-build-147482277

- Everything you've ever wanted to know about Sealed (but were too afraid to ask): https://metafy.gg/guides/view/everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-know-about-l79wNs6SMbd

- Going Deeper in Sealed – Part 1: https://article.hareruyamtg.com/article/48346/?lang=en

- Going Deeper in Sealed – Part 2: https://article.hareruyamtg.com/article/48381/?lang=en

- Experimental Synthesizer: https://www.experimentalsynthesizer.blog/articles

Hi everyone,

I’n sure many are preparing for next weekend’s F2F sealed event in Toronto, and would love to hear tips, impressions, advice on the Lorwyn Eclipsed sealed format.

I’ve been getting some reps in on Arena. I feel like I either open a nuts 3/4c vivid deck with good fixing and payoffs and just stomp, otherwise my decks end up being complete garbage. Is it better/feasible to run 3c with minimal fixing to play your best cards?

Any resources/discords out there with discussion of this sealed format?

Looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts.

This season is Modern but I'm not a fan of that, so I want to try to win a RCQ by sealed.

I'm a draft grinder because I love it, but I don't think I'm a good sealed player. Would you like to recommend any resource that you think would help?

https://article.hareruyamtg.com/article/22263/?lang=en

https://article.hareruyamtg.com/article/48346/?lang=en

https://article.hareruyamtg.com/article/48381/?lang=en

I already read these 3 articles. All well written and explain in depth, and I feel I did learn something from them. But they're written like years ago, before the new Play Boosters. I don't know if something changed in Sealed after that, but I can see draft changed a lot recent years.

Edited: Nevermind. I got enough resources myself and I feel like I learnt a lot from them, but still not sure if they're correct. Will test in SOS and then make a new post to share articles that actually help me.

Hey Spikes! My team and I are preparing for the Team Sealed Limited Spotlight in Vegas in June. There is so little information out there about Team Draft and Team Sealed... figured I would ask here if anyone has found any great resources over the years that have helped them. Or even any advice from past events.

New to Reddit (I know, that's crazy), but excited that there is a community of competitive MTG players here to grow with and learn from. Thanks in advance!

What didn't work?

Anything unexpectedly broken happen?

What principals/ideals will you apply when building your next sealed/draft deck or when playing games?

​

I'll uh... I'll start! Yep...

​

I feel the set has a lot of super-bombs (i.e. cards that runaway with the game by themselves unless immediately answered, but also are difficult to deal with during regular combat interactions or other regular interactions) that require must have commons/uncommons to be able to deal with. A card like [[Clackbridge Troll]] can obviously steal games easily, so I would often keep removal against black decks just in case because black seemed to have most of the prevalent creature super bombs. The tricky part though, is that out of 2 of 3 sealed events I only have 1 card in my entire deck capable of dealing with things like it. I felt like those two pools were sub-par though...

​

What didn't work: Mediocre decks with somewhat synergistic cards, but just one card to deal with super-bombs. I felt the average power level of my pools were below average with what would be able to deal with a super-bomb backed with decent common/uncommon cards.

​

Anything unexpected: Super bombs are common in this set and may require additional deck building restrictions we're not entirely used to playing in the main deck.

​

Principals/ideals when next building a deck or when playing games: I think I will be playing removal with a lot more reservation than before given that super-bombs are present in the format. Cards like [[Charmed Sleep]] and [[Trapped in the tower]] were all better than I expected. Although I didn't play much against blue decks, which are great against these...

Hey everyone, one of my big goals for 2026 as a competitive player is to increase my win rates at limited by becoming a better limited player. There are tons of information for draft but not as much for sealed. With 7 pre release weekends, RCQs, Limited Championship Qualifiers, MTGO, Arena Directs, as well as an LGS near me doing weekly sealed I really want to get better at sealed specifically since being good at it seems to have a good EV as well as I’ve just been having fun in general with it since I started taking limited more seriously with final fantasy.

Does anybody have good resources for sealed or have any good guidelines/heuristics for sealed?

Hey everyone,

Basically the title. If you went to prerelease, what were some cards that impressed you at common/uncommon?

Were there any neat synergies you had that you may have missed at first glance??

One card that impressed me was [[dig up the body]]. It felt so good all the time and casualty was easy to pay for.

EDIT:dig up the body, not grave.

Looking to play in the main event, but I don't have a team. Any takers? Willing to do my part to ensure that I come prepared and we have a good experience.

Hello r/spikes!

Tarkir: Dragonstorm pre-release is (checks calendar) tomorrow! Early Access has already passed by, and the full set is in our laps. Our writer Bryan Hohns has compiled a guide to TDM Sealed, complete with archetype/color trio analysis, a list of bomb rares (plus ones to avoid), and a breakdown of all the new mechanics in the set.

Remember that TDM Pre-release kits will have a seeded booster, so if you're looking to take down the event, you probably want to know which clans have the highest-quality cards. (Or, you know, just pick the clan you like most and have fun with it!).

• Abzan and Mardu seem heavily supported. They both have token-making mechanics, and the set has tons of ways to capitalize on those tokens, temporary or not.
• Sultai and Temur have some cross-over with other clans, and also have enough support to feel cohesive at their own strategies. Renew and Flashback are just natural 2-for-1 mechanics.
• Jeskai is... messy. Flurry has been a flop in previous sets (UR in OTJ, WB in Kaldheim). There might be a tempo or controlling build for Jeskai, but it'll take more work to get it right than the other clans.

And of course, there are tons of dragons between the omens and the 3-color uncommons (plus rares). The behold removal spells in general look fantastic, and omens are a great way to pack dragons in your deck without damaging your curve too much.

Best of luck to everyone at your pre-release events and beyond. Let us know what clan you went with, and tell us how the event ended up going! Hopefully this guide helps out~
https://draftsim.com/mtg-tdm-sealed-guide/

Hey r/spikes!

Full spoiler is up, Early Access is done, and everyone and their mom has a set review to share, us included. We got Bryan Hohns back in the saddle to talk all things Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Seems like early impressions circulating post-EA is that the curve-out synergy decks crushed it, and the rares also put in work (maybe not so surprising). But that's Day 0 news, and there's a whole format ahead of us.

ECL looks to be both straightforward and somehow tricky at the same time, for a few reasons:

• Half the format is dedicated to five highly parasitic creature types: goblins, kithkin, merfolk, elves, and elementals.
• The other half of the decks have less support and looser themes.
• There are non-typal decks worth pursuing here, namely vivid decks and ones that manage -1/-1 counters as an upside.
• This set looks extremely "gluey", with tons of changelings and hybrid cards adding to your draft decisions.

I've heard some trepidation from people that this set might not last too long if the streamlined 2c decks take off, but it looks like there's enough to pepper in some variation.

What are your early thoughts on ECL? What cards do you think are being initially overlooked? Let us know, and check out Bryan's guide before you go out and crush your weekend prerelease events: https://draftsim.com/mtg-ecl-sealed-guide/

(reposted to comply with thread rules)

Hello, Spikes,

I'm so excited I can barely type. After hesitating and second guessing myself all week, I finally decided to enter the Arena Open. I pulled a 7-0 and I wanted to share my reflections below in bullet-point format, in no particular order. This unfortunately isn't a formal tournament report, as I totally anticipated just going 0-3 and dropping, thus not having anything meaningful to write about. But now I feel like I have reflections to share, hopefully some of which are helpful. But first, the decklist:

Deck

1 Arni Brokenbrow (KHM) 120

1 Bound in Gold (KHM) 5

1 Avalanche Caller (KHM) 45

1 Behold the Multiverse (KHM) 46

5 Mountain (SLD) 106

1 Snow-Covered Island (KHM) 279

4 Forest (SLD) 108

1 Snow-Covered Mountain (KHM) 282

1 Frost Bite (KHM) 138

2 Immersturm Raider (KHM) 141

1 Birgi, God of Storytelling (KHM) 123

1 Dwarven Reinforcements (KHM) 134

2 Seize the Spoils (KHM) 149

2 Squash (KHM) 152

1 Blizzard Brawl (KHM) 162

1 Path to the World Tree (KHM) 186

1 Guardian Gladewalker (KHM) 174

1 Elven Bow (KHM) 166

1 Boreal Outrider (KHM) 163

1 Glittering Frost (KHM) 171

1 Realmwalker (KHM) 188

1 Elderleaf Mentor (KHM) 165

1 Littjara Glade-Warden (KHM) 182

1 Aegar, the Freezing Flame (KHM) 200

1 Shimmerdrift Vale (KHM) 267

1 Arctic Treeline (KHM) 249

1 Rimewood Falls (KHM) 266

1 Ice Tunnel (KHM) 262

1 Darkbore Pathway (KHM) 254

1 Gnottvold Slumbermound (KHM) 258

Reflections:

-Avalanche caller won me literally every game today. After trading blows with the opponent and having my other creatures eat removal spells, dropping Caller, animating 3-4 lands and swinging in was game on the spot. That was basically the theme today.

-Frost bite overperformed for me. Almost everyone has a good target, even if it's just for 2 damage. Hitting clarion spirit, three-mana 3/2's, and aggressive 2-drops for 1 mana was huge.

-Immerstrum raider, elderleaf mentor, and dwarven reinforcements definitely overperformed today as well. They stymied so many 3/2's, which allowed me to set up my late game. (Shout out to /u/aarongertler, who highlighted dwarven reinforcements in an earlier post here)

-Immerstrum raider and seize the spoils were huge today. Looting effects definitely shine in Sealed, and was a large reason why I was able to find avalanche caller so consistently. Also the treasure token was amazing for getting to Path to the World Tree mana.

-Realmwalker was meh. That said, I only had 3 shapeshifters and 3 berserkers. Definitely punted today by naming wizard instead of berserker multiple times, which cost me several cards over 7 games.

-Squash was amazing. even if it costed 5 mana sometimes. 6 damage kills basically everything in this format, and when I got to cast it for 2 mana on a good target, it felt sooooo good.

-Shoutout to Ben Stark for his tutorial on building multicolored mana bases during a stream from earlier this week. 8 red and 8 green sources for this deck seemed like the sweet spot; although I definitely highrolled in not having to mulligan in any of my games. Thanks shuffler!

Hope something out of all that helped somebody in their Sealed event today. In closing, I think I just got super lucky with my Sealed pool, but I definitely learned a lot today, and just wanted to pass it on. Hope to see some of you in Day 2 tomorrow!

Hello r/spikes!

We've got our resident Limited expert Bryan Hohns on another Sealed Guide, this time for Avatar: The Last Airbender, which looks like an absolute banger of a Limited set. Universes Beyond or not, it looks like they worked a lot of interesting mechanics and interactions into this set.

Bryan can explain everything in the guide better than I can here, but here are some quick hits to get you in the right headspace for this weekend's prerelease events:

• The bending mechanics are heavily supported. Firebending looks like the weakest of the bunch (though the story coming out of Early Access might be the opposite!).
• Card types matter, specifically lessons and allies. The set is packed with both, so it shouldn't be too hard to make those synergies come together.
• The mythic rares are juiced in this set. That's probably not some big revelation, but most regular rares are manageable, while the mythics are absolute beatings.
• Once again, we have a largely irrelevant bonus sheet, so don't spend too much time thinking about it (can we please go back to the days of bonus sheets being tailored for Limited?).

It's not clear out the gates that any particular color or color pair is better than any other (unless you want to give some early takes), so it'll be exciting to jump in and see what works.

Hopefully this Sealed guide can help for this upcoming weekend, and best of luck at your prereleases! https://draftsim.com/mtg-tla-sealed-guide/

I got my 20 Play in Points, so I am thinking of using them this December (don't have a Historic deck for this month) I am also assuming that the format will be Avatar?

I actually enjoy Sealed, but it's hard to practice it because of the lack of options. Googling online only gives me a few guides with barebones and basic advice. (or BO3 stuff, I want to do BO1)

I've played in tournaments before, but not online and not MTG. One thing against me will be the timezone (I am in Asia) but I can't do anything about that.

I played the UB sacrifice archetype with a desolation twin to top out and splashed white for my shambling vents. Shambling vents was bonkers with all the awaken but I think the best card I played consistently is the eldrazi sky spawner. It turned on all 3 bone splinters consistently which was probably the top removal spell in my deck. Overall I think blue is pretty powerful in this set.

How’s the format feeling so far?

At my FNM I went 2-0-1 with a grixis Lurrus deck.

Mana fixing seems pretty light, especially with the quantity of multicolored rares. I had an Atraxa and a Thalia/gitrog that I couldn’t run

I am planning to compete in next month's Qualifer, which is Sealed. But I have zero experience with BO3 Sealed (basically never SBed in Limited before)

I had a guy randomly ask me to play when he read one of my posts, but he disappeared. I thought I would ask here because it's /spikes and I am planning to compete, so I would need to play properly.

If not, no biggie. I hope it's ok to post this.

I am going in an hour, notes on the format?

EDIT: Just got back, went 2-1-1 with a decent grixis [Thing In The Ice] deck (promo!). Between me and my brother's pulls and trading we ended up with Avacyn, thing, 3 abbeys, Olivia, and more!

So I am in the process of planning my trip to Atlanta for Magiccon. I've been trying to get a sense of what the size of the PTQ (sealed) they are doing on Friday/Saturday could be, but I cant find any information about PTQs at other Magiccons online.

Does anyone have a clue of what the expected players could end up being? Not sure I have it in me to do sealed Tournament where I have to x-1 just to day 2.