To start things off, I played a 3 round phantom BFZ sealed online. Here was my pool:
Wow, 3 touch of the void? FOUR Gideon's Reproach? Two great R/W rares and pretty shallow blue, black and green? Guess this won't be very instructive huh?
Not so fast...
This was my first pass at the deck:
I took all my favorite spells and creatures and called it a day. Then, I showed it to Tommy Ashton, who yelled at me for not including Munda. I didn't include it because my Ally package was kind of sorry, and I honestly thought all my existing 4 drops were better, but Tommy convinced me that that was incorrect.
The first thing I realized when studying this pool was that, with four (!!!) Gideon's Reproach, the 2 drops were no longer absolutely critical - I could probably cut one. I decided to cut Serene Steward, since I only had two Courier Griffin to use it with and that's pretty clunky.
The second thing I realized (after Tommy pointed it out) is that Nettle Drone is kinda lame in this deck - I'm already kind of weak to scions and Drone only exacerbates that, all while not getting a whole lot of free activations.
I ended up cutting Steward and Drone for Munda and Deathless Behemoth, since Tommy convinced me that with so much removal and a creature base that isn't exactly hyper aggressive, I'd probably be going late game more often than I thought.
I played against 3 green decks. I'm writing this the day after so the synopses won't be super detailed, but here they are.
Round 1, my opponent was playing a 3 color allies deck (GWR). I got to play a 2 drop and a 3 drop and attack them into 2 drops every turn with Reproach in hand, which was awesome because my opponent could never block without getting destroyed. When my opponent finally did muster up the courage to block, it was a triple block, so I was able to just trade my doofus for the opposing most valuable doofus.
I won pretty easily.
Round 2, my opponent was playing RG. I lost in three close games because my opponent's creatures were just soooo much bigger than mine on average. In particular, I had a lot of trouble beating Plated Crusher. In game 3, I died because my opponent got on the board with Valakut Predator and Territorial Baloth, and had Blighted Woodland in play, so I could never make any kind of block OR use my Gideon's Reproach. When my opponent finally activated the Woodland, I was able to get the Baloth, but I still took 8 from the Predator and I was too low to be able to defend against the Crusher that the Woodland ramped into.
Round 3, my opponent was GW, with another color. They got on the board quick with flyers (Shadow Glider, Courier Griffin) and a couple scions, and never seemed very interested in trading tokens for my Valakut Invoker, which I thought was suspicious until I found the reason: Tajuru Warcaller. After one big Warcaller turn, I was at 1 with no way to survive or win. I won game 2, and then for game 3 I played a racing game anticipating the Warcaller, which I thought I was going to win until my opponent played a second Warcaller.
The takeaways:
-People seem to like green in Sealed
-If your opponent makes a play that you don't expect them to make, don't assume they are bad and try very hard to figure out why they are doing it
-This format can be kind of slow - it's OK not to have a 2 drop, especially if you have 2 mana removal that is versatile for both turn 2 and later (Reproach, Tightening Coils are great examples)
-I think synergy trumps power in general, although you still need some hard hitting plays
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