8th Januar league

Saw someone else posting their top 10 deck and thought it would be interesting to do the same.

Obviously with sealed, you are far more dependent on the luck of the draw. You need to be playing the best cards you can and worry less about being streamlined. For example I think bolster is a trap. However, a 2/1 unblockable for 3 in Veli is clearly still solid without a single bolster card, and if you get even one activation from it? Similarly anything that gained me life was already solid by itself. Diligent Hivetender is the obvious worst lifegain card, and that's still a 2/2 for 2.

I am 31-9 and am not totally sure how I feel about it. Some games I lost due to misplaying, usually by being too cautious to not walk into some removal only to fall behind when they drop their bigger threat. A few games the shuffler beat me. On the wins side though, I consistently was delt opening hands with one of each sigil, and I frankly feel that had far more to do with my record than anything. The pool was obviously solid, and the deck overall is very powerful, but I think I needed to not stumble/have my opponents stumble on power and it felt like that's simply what happened in at least a third of the wins. For most of the month I didn't even have all of the Marks, but still felt like my power draws were optimal. In that context, it felt almost easy to win. In other months, I've felt like despite having more fixing, I've lost more games to the shuffler. I don't know, I intend to just keep doing the league each month, and I don't think I'm a bad player or anything, but a lot of my draws with regards to the power cards just left me feeling relief as I felt confident in the deck otherwise.

Hecaton wasn't that useful. Then again most games I drew it when the game was super grindy and we had both been trading units. Boar Riders felt more impactful, but again I drew it on a cluttered board far more often. I'm not sure if Hecaton would have been more effective than Boar Riders on a cluttered board, I definitely don't think you can afford to not play it in sealed if you are playing shadow.

Until week 4 New Order Watchwing was Empathic Stoat instead. I felt the evasion was more useful, but frankly can't really think of a situation where it would have mattered one way or the other in those 10 games.