I'm neither a terrible player nor inexperienced. I finished 4th of 44. A lot of the other Abzan players in the top brackets were also neither terrible nor inexperienced, and many of them also had to grind their way through the end of the alotted time to come away with their wins and draws to get there. The Abzan cardpool is designed to grind the creature combat to a halt and then eventually turn the tide.


Appreciate the broad brush though. "I won fast, so everyone who won slow must suck!"

I wasn't 'bragging', I was debunking your broad-stroke accusation that all people who go to time are bad and inexperienced. I'm not saying I'm great or better than you, but 4th of 44 indicates I wasn't a bottom-table player and neither were my late tournament opponents - it was providing the context that I wasn't speaking of trends among the bottom table set, but that what I witnessed was true at the top tables at my event.

Didn't pull a Hateblade. Didn't pull a Ripper. It's sealed, you have to make do with what you pull. Aggro wasn't there in my pack. High-toughness grind and high-cost removal was. The only under-4-drop I had with a competent power to cost ratio was Chief of the Edge. I couldn't play cards I didn't have. The only creature card in my cardpool that I could play on T1 in WB was Disowned Ancestor. (and as it turns out, I didn't draw it to an opening hand once!)

Mardu beats Jeskai directly but which of them is better at beating down the Abzan players who have a ton of blockers?


I think at a prerelease there are a lot of people who don't play Magic as often, so they have to spend more time thinking about their moves. In a PTQ sealed the players would probably make decisions a lot faster.

Mardu is by far the most aggro. I know this, because I absoloutely stomped Jeskai players with Mardu. I also did the same after picking Abzhan (surprise, I went Mardu instead, but I felt like implying I was primarily WBG and aggro, even though with the right pool you easily can)

Also, the only people I saw going to time were the people I know are terrible players who take forever. My matches rarely took more than 20-30 minutes.

Format isn't super slow like you guys are implying. I think the problem is that inexperienced players don't know how to attack with morphs. Knowing how to use morphs is probably the biggest skill testing factor of the format. I was beating with all sorta morphs as my opponents simply let them through, then never swung back unless they could unmorph, which was an obvious tell as to what morphs they had.

Sorry to say, but your analysis is wrong.

Being terrible at the game doesn't cause people to get more draws. It causes them to lose. Why weren't terrible players getting draws in Ravnica or innistrad?

Your statment is illogical.