Ixalan pre-release

I am not sure how to sum up my experience with Ixalan so far. Its been, weird.

My promo for the pre-release

First off- I went to a 3 round only event at 7am. Woot.
Shout out to Dan L who usually goes to these early events. Thanks for shooting the crap with me.  :)

I went 2-1, 3 packs for my troubles.

The first iteration of the deck was 3 colors- Blue, Red, and Black. Black was in there for some removal and a couple critters. Red had some damage and triggers for damage. Blue was in there for card draw, flyers, and card draw. I think I didn't get the mana curve right after going back over the cards. 

The first round, the guy is a kitchen table player... he did not seem to know how to craft a decent deck from sealed. I felt bad for him. My deck played well. It had answers for everything he threw out there. 2-0

Second round, my deck completely left me high and dry. Land hosed both ways... it also got run over by dinosaurs. CRAZY. I lost 0-2. Crushed really. 

In between rounds I decided I needed to add some more dinos for the heck of it, so in goes a fourth color! My dinos were white this time. It made a difference. 

I had some color fixing, so ok.

Third and final round, the guy gets me good the first game. He played Fleet Swallower, and caused half my deck to disappear. Thank god he stopped attacking after that first, I would have not survived another round or two of him kicking my butt. I was able to stabilize and came roaring back.

Second game, I got the Sky Terror down, and it just crushed. I even threw on a Pirate’s Cutlass on him to seal the game.

Search for Azcanta was pretty darn sweet. It was a GREAT filtering engine to find the cards I needed. I even had to point out the may ability to get flipped to another player. He was very excited after that. 

Treasure Map was DARN good. I can see that being used in Standard and maybe Modern. Scry via an artifact, then get 3 artifact mana tokens?! Yes please!

My true mvp was Angrath’s Marauders. Sure it was a 7 drop, but at 4/4 it was vastly over costed. HOWEVER, when any source deals damage, it deals double it is a huge thing. It usually sealed the deal when it dropped either by killing off their biggest creatures or causing havoc in the blocking world.