So someone went and compiled all the California PPTQs and I plucked out the sealed ones, because hey, I like sealed.
I got a very weird pool. It was better than the one I registered, but much worse than the one I checked. It had good cards but odd synergies and not a whole lot of creatures.
Creature count: 8 green, 5-6 Blue, 4 white, 7 red, 5 black, 1 Blue-Black uncommon Dragon, 1 Ugin's Construct
The good spells were distributed in White/Red/Blue with 1 each in Black and Green (unless you count expensive plummets)
I think I honestly could have built OK decks in RG, UG, BR, and UW. Three color was going to be tough, but maybe I could have played map the wastes.
Also, the Blue was not splashable with the 2 best cards being
.This is one of those times where I would have liked to have another 30-40 minutes to build, but I did go ahead and sleeve two decks.
Registered Deck
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Aggro Deck if you lose game 1 and are on the play (or otherwise have a bad matchup)
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Rest of pools
//lands and colorless
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//Rest of Red Pool
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//Rest of Black Pool
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// Rest of White Pool
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// Rest of Blue Pool
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//Green Pool
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So here was my thinking after looking at the pool. The best card is Icefall Regent, really the only true bomb in the set. Next best cards are probably heelcutter and surveyor. The best removal is in white, and Ojutai's command is pretty sweet, plus I had a UR land. When I looked at UW I saw a HUGE number of spells I liked, a few useful bodies, 2 win cons.... and Narset Transcendant.
For some reason I rejected my Green pool early. Other than the fight spell, Yasova (who really only good in GU or GR) and Quartermasters, it just didn't impress me. Possibly this was a bad mistake, and UG or RG was the most competitive balanced deck. But GU has 1 removal spell and my Red i thought didn't pair well with the green.
After I built the UW control deck, I figured if I was going to transform it was going to be maximally sideways, and built the RB deck. I kind of liked RB deck, but it seems REALLY inconsistent, needing to draw at least a couple of the good dash cards
So, how did it do?
The UW deck was fun to play, and not terrible. Narset, however, was terrible. Even when I won game 1, I always boarded like this:
-Narset, +Negate, -Island, +1 mountain, +2 Lightbringer The mana is very shakey in this deck, but hey, sealed.
With only 8 creatures, I had to mulligan agressively, but the deck was really good at 6 mana. I utterly destroyed someone with main phase 2 Seismic Rupture (M1G1, even managing to kill his 2/5 defender after I hit with a 3/4). Turn 1 no exploit faithful was very good.
Match 1 I played UW the whole 3 games, winning game 1. G2 I was outplayed when my crafty opp left a morph face down forever... eventually I used my removal and he flipped up a marsh hulk which I had to 2-for-1 myself to kill. But I did die with 3 red spells in hand and no red source. Game 3, I was in great shape with 2 guys on the board and him having nothing, me with 5 mana and both Command and negate in hand (maybe contradict too!). But first two games were long and we only had 10 minutes for game 3. I tapped out for Icefall Regent on an empty board to try to end the game quickly, and he goes Pacifism, Dromoka, Eternal and I just lose. Note that he cheated by failing to pay 2 extra for pacifism. My bad. That was actually pretty huge. I also missed several student of ojutai triggers (I play bad when time is low)
Match 2 I played a guy with a pool so bad he was maindecking Battlefront Krushok. I kept a bad hand game 1 and lost, then easily won the next two. Match 3 I lost game 1, switched in the RB and won. Match 4 I played the spellless RG pool I opened and stomped him with UW, winning even the 3rd "fun" game. I thought this would be a terrible match up but he had no low drops so I just countered or removed all his good cards, and flew over him.
Match 5 I lost to fast BR deck 0-2. Got my first warning when I dropped a swamp of his while shuffling. There was a little gamesmanship here by a good playing trying to squeeze into the top 8. The game 1 match showed the true "power" of narset, basically just revealing land to me I was about to draw. I also screwed up trying to get a rebound on a whisk away (which is not Griptide). Actually I had stabilized here but couldn't draw anything that did anything. Game 2 I went into BR but I lose when he played Okud Cobra and I didn't draw Rage or Heel Cutter. The game turned for good when he killed my Ruthless Deathfang.
Match 6, I think we are just playing for pride or DQs above us. Opponent had a very odd BW deck with a bunch of low drops, the best qarsi sadist ever, and corpseweft. I stabilized at 4, prayed to draw seismic rupture to kill his infinite manifests (I had a bunch of drakes but couldn't attack). Corpseweft made 2 8/8s and I was done. Game 2 I went into BR again - although I made a pretty bad mistake not putting Seismic Rupture in (for battle rage I guess), but I got a mediocre draw and go behind. I actually drew my 6th land for Mob rule when his ENTIRE BOARD was <= 3 power... but he was at 18 and I could only do 14-15 damage and would have lost on the crackback.