Battle for Zendikar sealed, the Sequel

A second round of sealed! The biggest difference is that we got to set up our decks before arrival, so we could spend our time playing instead of building.

Six packs and my rares are:

Prism Array
Shambling Vent
Smoldering Marsh
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Ruinous Path
Ugin's Insight

Sigh.

The white also includes three goddamn copies of Tandem Tactics.

Interestingly enough, my blue is pretty solid, with some Roilmage Tricks and Benthic Infiltrators. The rares might suck but the middle stuff is solid. The black has some removal and Swarm Surge, which isn't awful (although I got two copies of that and three Grave Birthing. Yeesh.)

My green was...weird. There were two copies of Eyeless Watcher and I considered a ramp-into-Eldrazi deck. Ruin Processor, two Eldrazi Devastator, Bane of Bala Ged, and Breaker of Armies is a pretty strong argument for ramping into crazy stuff! But there wasn't enough to do on turns 1-3 and that's where you win or lose the game.

Still, that's what the other colors are for, right?

The question is: What to cut? If I ditch white, I lose the most powerful card I opened. If I cut black, I lose the removal I have. I'm uncomfortable with both of those options and would rather have a decent curve leading into late game bombs than try and rush bombs onto the board. So U/B/W it is.

It didn't work out.

Exhibit A:

What we have here is a grip full of cards that require white (or 8 mana) and a table of two Swamps and an Island. Granted, I had to mulligan down to five in this game, so I kept a hand with an Island, Swamp and a smattering of other stuff, figuring I could draw into a third land (I did) play Benthic Inflitrator (yup) and stall for time (NOPE).

I lost to a R/G/W landfall deck and a B/R/G ramp deck.

Sigh.

Maybe I should've gone green? Maybe I should've cut white? It's hard to say beyond: what I did, did not work.

Decklist for posterity:

Sandstone Bridge
Skyline Cascade
Spawning Bed
Shambling Vent
5 Swamp
6 Island
3 Plains

Incubator Drone
2 Benthic Infiltrator
Spell Shrivel
2 Roilmage's Trick
 Salvage Drone
Rush of Ice

Roil Spout

Serene Steward
Encircling Fissure
Stone Haven Medic
Tandem Tactics
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

Complete Disregard
Grip of Isolation (which I played twice as a sorcery. Read the card!)
Ruinous Path
Nirkana Assassin
Culling Drone

Hedron Archive
Bane of Bala Ged
Breaker of Armies
Eldrazi Devastator