For me personally, two very exciting cards were released today that I think will specifically impact Sealed in a positive way. We'll start off with the common:
Don't get me wrong, this card "kinda sucks". No one is going to open a few of these in their Sealed pool and get excited. You're not even really happy to play any of them at all.
The most common way a Sealed deck fails is a general lack of cheap cards. When your opponent casts a two drop on the play and you look at your hand of 3 mana cards and up, you get a bit sad, as you know you're going to be playing an uphill battle from then on. Jousting Dummy is the two drop you can begrudgingly put in any sealed deck to shore up a lack of cheap cards. Unlike Prismite, Jousting Dummy's ability allows for a bit of late game scaling, as well as the ability to attack as an effective 3 power creature on turn 3. Knight typing also looks to be quite relevant in Throne of Eldraine, so it can help put some tribal synergies together as well. While Jousting Dummy is never going to shine, or even be good, it's going to reduce the worst case for Sealed decks in Throne of Eldraine. With access to a colorless, playable 2 drop, expect pools to be workable more often than usual.
Jousting Dummy reminds me an awful lot of its larger Sealed deck oriented cousins, Pardic Wanderer, Hexplate Golem, and Ruin Processor. I could certainly be making this up as I lack a reference, but I recall an article about Sealed design on the Wizards main website around 10 years ago that called out cards like these as "designed for Sealed". The point of all of the expensive colorless doofuses is to provide any Sealed deck with a reasonable top end, for the sake of getting games to end. Jousting Dummy is similar, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, and looks to signal a bit of a design shift toward designing specific cards for Sealed. There hasn't been a set since Hour of Devastation that I've felt was designed at all with Sealed in mind, so I really hope this to be true.
Next up we have a card that reminds me of my favorite Sealed deck card of all time, Bomat Bazaar Barge. First though, let's sail down memory lane:
For those not well versed in Kaladesh sealed deck, Bomat Bazaar Barge would make your deck 100% of the time if you opened it. This isn't hyperbole, you would never, ever build your Sealed deck without the first copy of Bomat Bazaar Barge included at a minimum. It's the perfect Sealed card for a few reasons; as it's colorless, you can always afford to play it no matter what your build dictates, and it offers card advantage stapled to a large body for a reasonable cost. Enter its spiritual, spooky successor, Enchanted Carriage:
While I can't imagine this card is going to see quite the registration rate of its predecessor, I'm in love with this card for Sealed. Just like Bomat Bazaar Barge, it's a colorless big body that generates an advantage, although here we're paying an extra mana for a cheaper crew cost, -1/-1 in stats, and two 1/1 Mouse tokens instead of a card. As 1/1s are unlikely to be very relevant in Sealed, except in the case of a certain Knightly Scarecrow, I'd value two 1/1s as a slight downgrade to getting a random card. However, the ability to crew Enchanted Carriage with the tokens means that you get a 5 mana 4/4 that leaves behind two 1/1s, and presented like that I think the deal is a lot sweeter.
One curve ball for both of the aforementioned cards is the prevalence of Shatters and Disenchants in Throne of Eldraine. Controlling an Artifact, Enchantment, or both is one of the lower level set themes, and with Food tokens as prevalent Artifacts it might be reasonable to maindeck these cards once in a while. I think both Jousting Dummy and Enchanted Carriage are relatively resilient to Artifact destruction; Jousting Dummy is cheap and Enchanted Carriage leaves two 1/1s behind. If there were more cards like Embereth Shieldbreaker, which has an R to Shatter Adventure spell attached to a 2 mana 2/1, I'd be a lot more concerened.
Until next time? More like until tomorrow.
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter.
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