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Why I Win at Limited: Preparing for New Phyrexia

I haven’t been this excited for a limited format in a long time. In SOM/MBS limited, there are, even now, new emerging archetypes that people are toying with. [card]Tine Shrike[/card] and WG infect have become a new favorite among pros, whereas at the beginning, the white infect cards were largely disregarded. This is going to be a format defined by mistakes, sick reads and difficult cuts in deck building. Make no mistake, over half of the rares and mythics in this set are disgusting bombs, but 90% of those bombs are laughably easy to kill.

The main thing to realize about this set is that Phyrexian mana makes it very difficult to make decisions.

Take these six cards, for example. These are combat tricks that anyone can play, in any deck, with nothing but colorless mana open (and in some cases, even when they’re tapped out). It’s going to be nearly impossible to play around all these spells, but you’re going to need to have some sort of plan to deal with them. These are the kinds of cards you want to be taking note of if you see your opponent playing one in game 1, because you don’t want to walk into these kinds of tricks twice.

Luckily, many of these are uncommons, plus [card]Act of Aggression[/card] and [card]Dismember[/card] require a heftier life contribution to be devastating. The others are going to make an appearance in a lot of other decks, so be aware of their existence! I would say [card]Gut Shot[/card] is a pretty mediocre spell, but in a format still dominated by Myrs, [card]Plague Stinger[/card]s and other various x/1s, it might not be a bad inclusion especially if you’re short on removal. [card]Virulent Wound[/card] and [card]Fume Spitter[/card] are still very good, after all. With [card]Gut Shot[/card] you also have a sweet opportunity to tap out to play a big creature. When your opponent does something you can ask “What are you at?” and if he replies “1” then you say “pay 2 life Gut Shot you.”

The main mistake people are going to make in this format is misrepresenting life as a resource. People who play a lot of aggro mirrors have an advantage in this regard, as life total is something incredibly important to consider in a mirror match of mono-red or Jund. When you’re playing control or combo (except [card]Ad Nauseam[/card]), you effectively have 19 life to spend in an effort to kill your opponent. Limited is very different. In a Caw Blade mirror, life total isn’t that important until Gideons and Colonnades start swinging. New Phyrexia is going to give people an opportunity to play cards earlier at the cost of life, which sounds really sweet but will, at the same time, make players be more prone to make mistakes. When designing your sealed deck, you cannot put a card that costs 4(r/p)(r/p) in your 4-drop pile. I’m using [card]Moltensteel Dragon[/card] as an example, because it’s the kind of card that you will definitely play if you’re red, but need to be careful with if you’re not.

Fortunately, infect makes an appearance in this set as well, and if your opponent is playing exclusively infect cards, feel free to go hog wild and pay all your life! So if your opponent leads with swamp, then forest, and you can play something a turn earlier by paying 2 life, it may be worth it (depending on how the curve looks in the rest of your hand). One important thing to keep in mind for the pre-release is that there will not be any Mirrodin Besieged. This will make it easier to not have to play around certain spells, but will likely cause many more infect decks than you would normally expect. In Scars sealed deck, R/W metalcraft was the most common archetype, and in Besieged we saw much more infect than we did in scars. Now, the infect count will be even higher since the Mirrans are pretty much wiped out.

In closing, I think the most important thing to remember is to play around a lot of tricks and try to keep a solid theme to your deck. With Phyrexian mana, you’re going to need to plan ahead many turns, including playing around different situations. If you’re going to go infect, try to keep that as the main theme unless you’re really short on playables. In that case it may be okay to put a few dinosaurs in your deck as a different finisher. See you at the pre-release, and when I get some drafts in I’ll throw in my two cents about that too!

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