Sealed Pack Players Attention!!

[Universegames]

Hey everyone, I'd like to take a moment to share my winning strategy from the Spoils $2500 tournaments at Gencon regarding my resource distribution, it led me to top 8 twice and then my drafting skills led me the win 1st place both days.

The #1 mistake I saw people making, and you’ll see them make it too is to try to put a proportionate resource to card base ratio based on the Trades that you run in your deck….


With the size of the card pool you have you almost always have to run 3 Trades, I ran 1 larger one on day 1 with two smaller ones, on day 2 I ran three 10 card trades, either case I only ever put cards with higher threshold than 2 in extremely sparingly – maybe a total of 2-3 cards per deck everything else had 2 or less threshold and I almost never put anything higher than 2 thresh in more than 1 Trade.

I ran 30 Cards 3 Trades with 2-9-9 resources I would put 2 resources in for the Trade that I had the most double or less thresholds (with 0 higher than 2 thresh) I would start with those two in play. Then I’d put in 9 of the other two (18 more total) and one of those two trades would have cards with 1,2,3,4+ thresh then the final trade, which I really consider my “splash” trade would have only 2 threshold or less and would probably be the fewest in the deck.

This isn’t at first glance intuitive, you’d think you need a even resource/proportionate base but that isn’t the case, what you need it consistency of draw and this gives it to you. If you are playing 3 Trades but only ever need draw 2 different resources for the rest of the game since your 3rd already starts with doubles in you’re going to do much better. Granted you could run less resources and more cards and just play some cards as generics, but then you chance not drawing the resources you need for your thresholds early on, arguably one of the most tempo destructive things you could do.

Since you have the “God” mulligan in this game, you get to see 8~16 cards on the play and 9~18 cards on the draw before you even play turn 1, and you get to keep the ones you like along the way. It’s really darn smart and I want to hug the developers for this. I heart smart game designers who hate resource screw as a loss mechanic.

I don’t claim that this is the only way you can build from a sealed pack but I think it is probably one of the most efficient way, since you’re going to be in three trades likely.

As with everything your mileage may vary but this is arguably in my opinion one of the reasons I won both $2500’s at Gencon.

-Michael Angelo Tripp-Russo

[talon788]

I would like to be the first to agree with this man. His strategy helped me Top 8 in one of the $2500 tournaments (but i lost to him in the first draft round). It also helped me out immensely in my Ipod and pick up tournaments the rest of the weekend.

[jeff_null]

My record isn't nearly as good, but I tried a different sealed pack strategy that worked decently well. This strategy seems pretty close to optimal as far as consistency goes, but it lacks somewhat in power.

Pick two primary trades and two splash trades. Then sort cards into 6 groups:
- one group of threshhold 2 cards for each primary trade
- one group of threshhold 1 cards for each trade (aside from the one I didn't play)

Pick your best 5 or 6 cards for each group to get 32 cards. Add 5 staple resources for each primary trade (start the game with one of each) and 4 staples each for the other two trades. (It may also work pretty well to take 1 of each of your splash resources as starting resources, then 8 and 8 of each primary staple in the deck.)

This lets you get your threshhold immediately for 1/3 of your cards. After tossing duplicate staples in your hand and cards you can't make threshhold for immediately, you will usually get 3 different resources in your hand(I haven't worked out the statistics yet, but that seemed to be the case when I played). This allows you to make 5/6 of your threshholds from your opening hand

I went for this consistency-over-power strategy because I am inexperienced with the game, and it's quite difficult for me to evaluate the cards at this point. To shift a little in the power direction, one might want to fudge a little by going a tad higher on the threshholds. Moving more in that direction probably couldn't hurt, so long as you aren't reluctant to use high-threshhold bombs as generic resources in the early game.

[ma21lewi]

Universegames strategy is sound. One thing that I did when it worked out that I had two strong trades was to splash with a trade that had the number of cards i needed with one staple on them. This of course is not always possible.

This way only one resource is needed for the splash trade. This card gets placed down with your opening resource. The remainder of the resourses in the deck was split depending on staples required and card ratio.

Where this worked out I had the strongest board presence and could bring anything out of my hand. It is great there that there are alot of powerful cards that only require one staple. I won each tourney where this was a possibility.

[painted_klown]

Hello, I just wanted to say thank you to Universe games for all the great tips. I am sure I will be employing them in the beginning until I start creating some crazy deck idea that probably wont work.:p Thanks again for the tips! Peace!

[turning_of_the_tide]

This was alot of fun I also placed t8 resource distribution is a large part of my t8. 30-20 is almost a must. And unless u get an insane cardpool u are running 3 factions. One thing I found as a good rule of thumb ius to try and stifle one faction to only cards of 1 resource if you can. Start out with that in play then run 9-10 of the other two. It seemed to wor for me.

-Ryan

[LucienofShadow]

Does this strategy apply to constructed as well?

[turning_of_the_tide]

Constructed depends on the deck you choose to play. I don't think there is a ground rule for constructed. for the most part just sstay around 25 resources....but again it depends on the deck.

[Secran]

any suggestions for draft? ^_^