Every time a new Modern Horizons set comes around, it's full of wild old references, wacky returning mechanics, cool legends—and a memorable Limited format. It's no holds barred as unusual combinations of abilities frolic around and make for something truly novel … and a blast to play!
And what's the best way for you to come check it out for yourself? Well, it all kicks off at your local Prerelease!
What's a Prerelease, you ask?
Well, Prereleases are some of my favorite Magic events anywhere, perfect for newcomers and seasoned veterans alike. They're the celebration of a new set, and Modern Horizons 3 has its Prerelease starting on June 7. It's going to be a wild and fun time!
Every time a new Modern Horizons set comes around, it's full of wild old references, wacky returning mechanics, cool legends—and a memorable Limited format. It's no holds barred as unusual combinations of abilities frolic around and make for something truly novel … and a blast to play!
And what's the best way for you to come check it out for yourself? Well, it all kicks off at KD Games with Prerelease!
What's a Prerelease, you ask?
Well, Prereleases are some of my favorite Magic events anywhere, perfect for newcomers and seasoned veterans alike. They're the celebration of a new set, and Modern Horizons 3 has its Prerelease starting on June 7 at 7pm and will cost £55. Tickets can be purchased online now at kdgames.co.uk
It's going to be a wild and fun time!
How exactly does this work out? Let me walk you through it.
BUILDING ON THE HORIZON
When you sit down on Prerelease day, you're going to get handed a Modern Horizons 3 Prerelease Pack.
While there are many things in here, like a spindown life counter for tracking your life total and a fun little insert with some information and tips, the most important are these six Play Boosters:
Open them all and check out your new stack of cards. There will also be a foil-stamped rare or mythic rare card inside that you can play—make sure to pull that one out.
Okay, boosters open? Well, you're ready to build a deck!
But where do you even start?
Well, first thing's first, you should know what you're trying to do! In Sealed Deck, you only need 40 cards, not 60 or 100. You can get as many additional basic lands as you want from the store.
A good rule of thumb is to play 17 lands. So, all things said and done, you're only looking to play about 23 nonland cards from the cards you open. That's your goal: identify the 23 cards to play.
Okay, sounds a bit easier. How do you go about picking those cards?
Try sorting your cards by color first. Make eight piles: one for each color, one for any multicolor cards, one for colorless cards, and one for lands. As you're going through, you'll have a chance to read the cards and see what interests you.
You'll want to whittle your choices down to two colors. You can sometimes "splash" a third, playing two colors as your base and a couple powerful cards or additional costs of another color, but I'd really focus on the two colors you want here. You can select them in any ways you want—maybe you just like those colors—but three things to keep an eye out for are:
- Any strong rares in those colors that you're excited to play
- A lot of removal cards (Cards which destroy or otherwise deal with your opponent's creatures.)
- Evasion (Many games of Sealed Deck are won with flying creatures or hard-to-block cards.)
Once you've chosen your colors, it's important to think about your mana curve. This helps to ensure that you have creatures to cast at every turn of the game. If everything costs six mana, you're going to be way behind on playing creatures, and if everything costs two mana, you're going to get outclassed in the late game.
Here's how to check your mana curve. First, lay out your creatures in mana-value order from left to right. So, all creatures that cost one mana, then all creatures that cost two, and so on. Only lay out noncreatures here if they're cards you are planning to play as soon as you have that much mana—for example, you might play an Equipment on turn two, so that counts as a two-drop, but you're probably not playing a removal spell on turn two.
For Limited in general—and this is just a guideline—I'd look to play something like this:1 mana: 0–2
- 2 mana: 4–6
- 3 mana: 3–5
- 4 mana: 2–4
- 5 mana 1–3
- 6+ mana: 0–2
Once you have those figured out, go ahead and add in your noncreature spells. You will probably want to play all your removal spells to deal with your opponents' creatures. Beyond that, it's nice to have ways to pump up your creatures at instant speed and ways to draw cards. But you can season to taste depending on what you think might work well in your deck.
And there you have it! When you're finished, you should have a 40-card deck. You can play more than 40 cards, but I would strongly advise against it: every card you play beyond 40 just worsens the odds of drawing your best cards.
Tomorrow we will look at some of the mechanics from this exciting set.
Taken from Gavin Verhey article on the Magic the Gathering website.
