Oath of the Gatewatch Sealed

The success of the Battle for Zendikar events made the choice to do a Oath sealed event easy. Once again, my card pool rep'd two lands as rares: Ruins of Oran-Reif and Prairie Stream. What can I say, I seem to have a knack for getting rares that are useless in limited formats!

Sigh.

The sealed pool was pretty meh; solid enough blue, maybe black, white was out for sure. Green provided lots of mana fixing if I wanted it but not a lot else. Red was weak and I should-

uh oh

So there's that.

If there's one thing I've learned in Sealed, it's that you HAVE to play your bombs. I know Chandra can turn games around without any other help and maybe with the Green mana fixing, I can get a three color deck to work...

The only other rare I had to work with was Guardian of Tazeem and I started off with that card, but cut it because I didn't have enough Islands to make it worthwhile. I probably should've considered Black a bit more at that point but I felt good about what I had, which was this:

Comparative Analysis
Clutch of Currents
Rush of Ice
Thought Harvester
Containment Membrane
Jwar Isle Avenger

Embodiment of Insight
Natural State
2 Stalking Drone
Eyeless Watcher
Broodmonitor
Ruin in Their Wake
Stalking Drone
Retreat to Kazandu

Chandra, Flamecaller
Kazuul's Toll Collector
Eldrazi Aggressor
Goblin Freerunner
Valakut Predator
Kozilek's Sentinel
Reality Hemorrhage

Pilgrim's Eye
Warping Wail
Ruin Processor
Kozilek's Pathfinder
Hedron Crawler

Ruins of Oran-Reif
Wastes
6 Forest
4 Island
6 Mountain

Upon reflection, Black should've replaced Blue:
Tar Snare
Unnatural Endurance
Oblivion Strike
Slaughter Drone
Silent Skimmer
Visions of Brutality

Removal, more colorless themed stuff and a solid flyer. Probably would've been a little better off.

My games were often close though and I was 1-1-1 for the evening. In the loss, I made one mistake and had one run of bad luck. In the latter case, I had to mulligan down to five and keep a one land, Hedron Crawler hand in game one. But just in case I thought I was getting good at the game, game three, I failed to use Natural State to take out Matt's Hedron Crawler, which he was using to activate his own Kozilek's Pathfinder multiple times to keep me from blocking.

So I feel mostly OK about this. My opponents also seemed to be fairly happy with their ability to construct a deck and that's a good sign too. Whatever mistakes Wizards may have made with Battle for Zendikar and Oath, their ability to put together a compelling sealed environment is definitely buttressed by my experience.

Oath of the Gatewatch thoughts

The new set is spoiled here!

I have to say; the goal of setting up an Allies vs Eldrazi format is coming along nicely.

Small joke aside, the set is...a little troubling to me. The focus on Planeswalkers is understandable, given the story that this set is trying to tell, but I'm concerned about what the costs will be once this set hits the market. Planeswalkers are already the most expensive cards out of the gate from any set and Oath is about making Planeswalkers even more profitable than they already are. I suspect many of those rares will become quite valuable very soon and it's hard to get excited about spending more money when the current Standard format is one of the most expensive ever.

That said, the attempt to give colorless mana an identity of its own is a solid one: it seems to be clearly attempting the standalone thing, instead of supportive of other colors, especially blue and white.

One thing that's a big of a drag is how there is only one White Eldrazi and it took until Oath to get there. It'sindicative (for me) of how difficult it is for WotC to really understand the color pie philosophies and how they can be twisted. The Eldrazi eat all the other colors except the "good" one? Really? 

The Surge mechanic should get a strong evaluation in Modern and Legacy, because those formats allow for spells that can be cast without mana payments. Crush of Tentacles for five mana is incredibly good and with a card like Gitaxian Probe to ensure you won't hit countermagic, I think there's something pretty cool there.

So it's a real shame that they kept it to just red and blue: I feel like they should've expanded this to the other colors because the concept is just so interesting. Not just because of the applications in eternal formats, but also because of the possibilities for team formats.

In comparison, Cohort is really just Outlast with a terrible twist.

Support is the way that they're attempting to get Oathwatch and themes from Khans block to mesh, and that's fine. Nothing special yet but worth keeping in mind when looking at interactions in Standard or with other counters. (I want my -1 counters to come back, damnit! Let's gooooo, Shadowmoor!)

Other things I'm noting:

Small equipment subtheme: Weapons Trainer, Bone Saw, Stone Haven Outfitter, Kazuul's Toll Collector (as examples) suggest to me that there might be an equipment theme in the next block, which would make sense as the first Innistrad block had an equipment subtheme too.

Really solid uncommons: Warping Wail is the standout but believe me, there are some really good cards in this slot that I think will be workhorses for deckbuilders.

Colorless matters: reinforced in this set, naturally but suggesting that color matters might be relevant in the next block. I haven't seen that as a strong theme in a little while (there was an undercurrent in Khans) so it's certainly due.

Story truncation: I can tell that they were still planning on a third block because the storyline just feels shortened. Also, the story boring because it doesn't appear to have a consequence. The planeswalkers all seem to be alive and the biggest bad, Emrakul, makes no appearance. Well la-dee-da, man. Jace has been searching for help to fight the Eldrazi since Zendikar came out in 2009. What was all the buildup for, unless something is going to legitimately change?

That's it. I look forward to more Sealed matches with this block but I'm not seeing a lot of awesome Constructed possibilities here, just extensions, really. That's OK, I suppose but if Oath finally shook up the Standard format so it became a bit cheaper, that would really be good.