Competed in a PTQ Saturday, getting 52nd out of 200+ people. Here's the deck and pool and match-up reports:

2x Voyaging Satyr
1x Sylvan Caryatid
2x Nessian Courser
2x Agent of Horizon
2x Spearpoint Oread
2x Nylea's Disciple
1x Fanatic of Mogus
1x Staunch-Hearted Warrior
1x Pheres-Band Centaurs
2x Vulpine Goliath
1x Titan of Eternal Fire

2x Titan's Strength
1x Destructive Revelry
1c Coordinated Assault
1x Akroan Horse
1x Xenagos, the Reveler

1x Temple of Mystery
8x Forest
8x Mountain

Sideboard:

1x Firedrinker Satyr
1x Shredding Winds
1x Portent of Betrayal
1x Fade in Antiquity
1x Hunt the Hunter
1x Staunch-Hearted Warrior
1x Messenger's Speed

The rest of my pool:




I think there's a control build in here somewhere, maybe even four-color. But I didn't trust myself to build and test it in the crunch time I had, and I sort of got googly eyes for Xenagos. Dude just wins games.

Match 1: 2-0 Gruul

This was a mirror match, including Xenagos. But I was able to establish a stronger board presence a turn sooner and had a much better late game. He played: 2 Akroan Hoplites, 1 Satyr Piper, 1 Nylea's Disciple, 1 Two-Headed Cerberus, Xenagos, Defense of the Hearth, Peak Eruption after boarding, and a Nessian Asp.

Match 2: 2-0 Selesnya

Really nice guy got uber mana screwed game 1. I thought he was playing mono green at first. Game two he gets his mana and drops me down to five, but I'm able to stabilize with Xenagos and go over the top with my Vulpine Goliaths. He had: 1 Sedge Scorpion, 1 Reverent Hunter, 1 Ordeal of Nylead, 2 Leafcrown Dryads, 1 Sylvan Caryatid, 1 Staunch-Hearted Warrior, 1 Vanquish the Foul.

Match 3: 2-1 Gruul

Another mirror match, but this guy had all the tricks, including Hammer and the Bow. We both got mana screwed games, but I ended up coming from behind game 3 for the win. He played Leafcrown, Opaline Unicorn, Savage Surge, Hammer, Bow, Nylea's Emissary, Borderland Minotaur, Nemesis of Mortals (hooboy this guy is good), Wandering Satyr, the Boros Scryland.

Match 4: 0-2 Orzhov

This guy's deck was sick. On-curve removal, tons of deathtouch, Heroes' Fall for Xenagos, Keepsake Gorgon, Sentry of the Underworld, double Gray Merchants, Disciple of Phenax... and oh, yeah, Elspeth. He went on to go undefeated the entire tournament. But. Damn. Every game I had him near lethal he would just gray merchant and get back into the game.

Match 5: 2-1 Selesnya

My best match of the day. This kid starts off by calling a judge on me because I tap my Nylea's Disciple for the trigger instead of announcing it bc I'd been up since 6:30am and had only had 28 almonds to eat thus far and was crashing pretty hard. He rolls me with a Monstrous Fleecemane Lion game one after I manage to bring him down to seven. Game two I get Xenagos out and he's just not ready to deal with the creature card advantage. Game three.... just a doozy. He has a massive board presence, but can't get through because of my Akroan horse and Vulpine Goliaths. He has one evasive dude that's just slamming into me--the Horizon Chimera--and I can't attack in with my Agents of the Horizon without weakening my board presence enough to he can take over the game. Finally though, I get Xenagos and the Horse going, and kill the Chimera after it brings me down to five and he's up to 32 from the Chimera card draw and his own Nylea's Discples. So we sit and wait, and my horse poops out a bunch of tokens, and Xenagos does as well, until I finally realize I'm being a total nutjob and missing that I can use my Titan and my Agents to pick off his weakest defenders. So I gain a bunch of 1/1 soldiers from the horse and 2/2 Satyrs from Xenagos, and wing in with enough to deal 14 damage to him one turn and 14 the next turn, with final guaranteed damage coming from the Titan and Agents. 4 cards left in my deck, 31-turn game. Epic. Unfortunately, getting to 4-1 was the highlight of my day, because it all goes downhill from here.

Match 6: GW 1-2

Close game 1, with him down to 8. Game two I'm sittin' happy at 21 when I roll him. Game three is such a long back-and-forth, but I flood out and just get crushed in the end. He played a game-winning God's Willing, had 2 of those Phalanx Leaders, and was just able to voltron any threat with his Nylea's Emissaries and Heliod Emissaries and Hopeful Eliods, Leafcrown Dryads, and give the ultimate play was boarding in fleetfeather sandals against me. I hadn't anticipated him playing any evasion, and thought I was in a better position to clog up the board and swing in with my agents. I think I have a 5-3 deck though, so I decide to press on for some points and some top 32 action.

Match 7: GW 1-2

I have no idea how this deck got to the 4-2s. Gray Merchants, those little Deathtouch dudes, Akroan Horse, 100 Handed One all were enough to clog the board until he played one of his flying threats, either Setessan Griffin or the 3/3 regen dude. I only won game 2 bc of his mana screw. Great, now I'm 4-3.

Match 8: 0-2 Izzet

What can I say? At least 3 lightning strikes, some voyages end, portent of betrayal, that horrible chimera, thassa's emissary, and the nimbus naiad were all enough to create evasive flyers and go over the top of me while I flooded out both games. I talked to someone else that beat her and he said it sounded like she got the nut draw, bc he and I had the same deck and he was able to just roll her.

So, 4-4 for the day. I'm not there yet.

Suck that you had to go to Hartford since Hartford blows.

I think Theros is abysmal for limited but it's good that you're still sticking it out fighting for it. Sealed PTQs have a lot of luck involved for getting a good pool and then you need the same amount of luck during the day as usual to win a Magic tournament. Today wasn't your day obviously but it's good that you played all of the rounds. I probably would have dropped pretty quickly.

Yeah, just a little bummed about the whole thing. I think I have how to win an FNM down, but am still working on getting a 6-2 PTQ deck. I'm wondering if I should have gone GUr, or took out the Heroic stuff in GR and splashed for those three Divine Verdicts. Sometimes I wish I didn't have to wake up at the butt crack of dawn and drive for hours to places like Hartford to play in PTQs.

Main deck boulderfall, this seems the kind of deck that can reach it(maybe it also need opaline unicorn for that).

You seem to have no interaction with fliers G1.

You didn't plan to spash for vanquish the foul?

Maybe GB or GU splash red? your humans were all pretty aggressive,I'm not sure if the titan is that great here and sic of something, the gorgon, thassa bounty, horizon scholar,the multicolor chimera and maybe the common one all seem better things to ramp in.

That is true about the Boulderfall. The issue there is that it's a dead draw in the mid-game and the early-game, so its Best Case Scenario is the late-game, at which point I'm either already dead or overwhelming the board. Something to consider though. Same for Vanquish.

And yes, I have no interactions with flyers, which is basically what killed me. I could board into Shredding Winds, and used Destructive Revelry on Naiads and Raptors and the like.

I universally never "splash" for anything with off-color, double-mana symbols in the casting cost. I could've added an island and easily played Horizon Chimera; I didn't even think of that which is probably one of the many things that ruined my end-game.

GU and GB especially have huge curve problems. Like, insanely awful for GB, and GU is thick in the bottom and thick at the top, which means I would've had to rely heavily on my rampers, which is generally a bad strategy in a sealed tournament bc you're just going to drop games to drawing all rampers and no high-curve beaters or drawing high-curve beaters and no rampers. GUr is a viable deck that I could've played, and I touched on that in the post.

But this isn't really a "this is what I would've done" thread. I post these so people can see what strategies do and don't work. I think playing blue because the creatures would be able to block flyers is backwards thinking in a set that is dominated by combat tricks. Blocking is just awful here.

I'm not a big fan of your red frankly. Obviously, you play xenagos, but you had 2 amulets, a unicorn and a caryatid to fix yourself, so the splash could have been pretty easy. With a mountain, that would have been 5 red sources. More than enough IMO.

I would have played either blue for the two voyage's end and all the amazing flyers, or black for the crap load of removal you had. Right now, I'm thinking blue would have been better.

So:

- 2x Spearpoint Oread, - Titan of Eternal Fire, - 2x Titan's Strength, - Destructive Revelry, - Coordinated Assault, - Fanatic, - 7 mountains.

+ 7 islands, + 2 amulets, + 2 voyage's end, +2 prescient chimera, +1 horizon chimera, + 1 unicorn, + 1 Horizon Scholar, +1 annul

That's two cards over. You can remove one of the voyaging satyr since it's more or less replaced by the unicorn and you can remove Staunch-Hearted Warrior because we pretty much removed anything that can trigger it. Alternatively, instead of removing 1 satyr, you can drop a land.

Also, you could make space for Crackling Triton.

-=edit=- just to address what you posted while I was writing, I'm not suggesting you play flyers to block flyers, I suggest playing flyers because they're pretty damn good. Also, blue for voyage's end more than anything.

That's 42. Removing the Staunch-Hearted Warrior and a Vulpine would be alright.

2x Voyaging Satyr
1x Sylvan Caryatid
2x Nessian Courser
2x Agent of Horizon
1x Opaline Unicorn
2x Nylea's Disciple
1x Horizon Chimera
1x Horizon Scholar
1x Pheres-Band Centaurs
2x Prescient Chimera
1x Vulpine Goliath

2x Voyage's End
1x Annul
2x Traveler's Amulet
1x Akroan Horse
1x Xenagos, the Reveler

1x Temple of Mystery
8x Forest
7x Island
1x Mountain

So I feel like this deck was a lot of the "I'm not doing things until turn 4 or 5" kind of deck, which is why I didn't look into it as actively as I should've during deck building.

actually I think I would prefer a guardians of meletis over the second amulet.

Maybe add the red nymph, but it seem like a bad idea...

I used to think the Guardians were good, and they do an effective job of clogging the board up... until someone bestows a creature onto a threat, has evasion, a combat trick, or any of the artifact/enchantment hate in the set. It's a "good on paper bad in practice" control card. I'd rather play wavecrash titan and lost in the labyrinth him to lock down their bomb.

I love wavecrash triton, but didn't suggest it because once you move to blue, you basically have nothing to trigger it in your pool. Lost in the labyrinth is a valid option though.

Also, I understand your concern on the guardian, but the point here is to slow them down a few turns. If they have to wait until they can bestow the creature (and it has to be either a big bestow, or a big creature), then you're probably in a situation where the guardian did its job. Similarly, if it can eat up a combat trick, it's a fair trade in your book.

As for your curve, I agree it's a little high with the blue deck, but it's not exactly lower in the red version. I removed tricks, a 6 drop and a 4 drop. You do lose both your oread's which were 3 drops, but they're better as bestowed auras anyway. Crackling Triton might help lower your curve a bit.

You could cut a land since you have 2 amulets and 3 mana dorks, or you could cut one of your mana dorks/amulets.

rstnme, next time I'm home from Jersey I'll have to go into the city for an FNM.

Although, I hate Theros so I'm probably not going to draft.

Womp womp. The FNM meta is mostly netdecking, but some competent and more-than-competent pilots.

that's fine. I like playing against real decks more often than not.

I have one question:
What did you learn?

Green-based decks aren't well-positioned in Sealed PTQs without those 2/2 reach bears or Nessian Asps, and that I should bring extra sleeves and have a second deck ready in control-like match ups.

Also, younger players can be total dicks.

Damn youngin's. Get of mah lawn!