This is my pool from the 12/18 5PM EST RTR Sealed daily event on Magic Online. I found it pretty challenging to navigate so I decided I'd write about it.
The only thing that is immediately obvious is that I probably won't play blue in any fashion. There just aren't enough cards to form a foundation, and I'll probably have better things to do than splash Voidwielder and a couple of Inspirations. Beyond that, everything is playable and requires some serious investigation.
My first idea was to play a straight B/R deck. I have some great removal (Auger Spree and Ultimate Price, and two copies of Street Spasm), a consistent creature base with all the Chainwalkers and Sewer Shamblers, and a megabomb in Pack Rat. I even have a lot of good ways to configure the deck after sideboarding with things like Electrickery and 2 copies of Mind Rot. I think this deck would be consistent but I'm not sure if it's powerful enough to go undefeated.
My second idea was to use an aggressive G/W foundation and splash a few good black cards, namely Pack Rat and Ultimate Price. I could even afford to bring in Golgari Charm and Rites of Reaping if I really needed it. I liked this deck better than the R/B deck because I got to use 2 bombs instead of 1 (the Angel of Serenity), but I was mostly concerned about the white cards not being strong enough to carry me into the late game.
My third idea was based on the GW/b deck and just add red for the two Street Spasms. I feel like I wouldn't have any trouble finding the colors I need between all the Gatecreeper Vines and the Axebane Guardian, and having such a nice variety of cards (assuming I could cast what I want when I wanted to) would help me survive to the late game and win with the Angel. Additionally I could always just pack rat people out of the game.
I'm not very good at being greedy in sealed, so I had a lot of trouble pulling the trigger on being this greedy, and wasn't super confident in all of my fine tuning. I submitted this deck with under a minute to go:
I decided that the Arresters wouldn't be too useful since I'm not exactly trying to aggro people out, and that another power feature of the deck would be to make an 8/8 with Grove and try to populate a bunch of times. While building I thought 17 lands might be too many for a deck with an Axebane Guardian, a Keyrune, and three Gatecreeper Vines, but Grove of the Guardian is more like a spell than a land, so I ended up feeling OK with 17.
This deck ended up being very very good and I went 4-0 with ease. I never had any trouble casting my spells and they always felt more powerful than my opponents'. I frequently boarded out the other Common Bond for other useful situational cards like Golgari Charm. I also neglected to start Auger Spree, and found that I mostly didn't need it but still boarded it in once or twice.
I'm happy with how this deck performed, but I'm sure that I didn't build the deck perfectly. There are probably a few directions I could have gone in deckbuilding that I didn't even consider. As always, I'm very interested in your feedback and your opinions.
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