The above is the first Sealed deck I registered for Throne of Eldraine, to a resounding 3-2 success. This deck felt busted, and I definitely punted both rounds I lost off of fatigue. Although I don't think R/B is a good place for the Draw Two synergies, I had a huge amount of cards that contributed toward the archetype, with a bunch of very strong pay-offs. My cards were strong individually as well, and with their flexibility gave me plenty of different options to win games.
Reaper of Night
I was motivated to try this out off of some decklists/speculation I got from Twitter. While I still expect this card is far too slow for Draft, in Sealed it felt incredible, as both halves of the card are particularly well postioned. There's a lot of incentive to hold onto cards in this format, with cards like Forever Young often sitting in player's hands for a while. I was on the receiving end of a "Harvest Fear" while holding onto a Forever Young, and it completely obliterated me.
Color Heavy Mana Base
In an attempt to maximize Witch's Cottage, I played 12 Swamps total. I tried to rely on Golden Egg + some selection to help me consistently cast Red spells, and I felt like jumping through the hoops was worth it. Witch's Cottage felt powerful for me as it gave my relatively flood prone deck with lots of cyclers and cheap cards a viable late game to play towards. Once I drew one of my few big creatures I could often rebuy it, generating a pretty large cascading advantage over a couple turns. In the absence of my powerful rares like Clackenbridge Troll and Irencrag Pyromancer, I'm not sure how worthwhile playing the Witch's Cottages would be. Nearly every game Witch's Cottage was awkward, and it often forced me to either hope like hell that I drew my 3rd Swamp or to miss an important spot on the curve with it coming into play tapped.
Curving Out
No deck I played against had nearly as high a density of cheap spells as mine. I often played games where my opponent played their first spells on turn 3-4, and those games were very easy to win when I was consistently curving 2-3 and a few times 1-2-3 and beyond. I had to play some pretty weak Sealed cards to enable this, as I'd rather not include 2/1s with Lifelink in my deck, although with all of my other Knights and other ways to deal direct damage they were a game plan all on their own. While I expect a deck like this to have a very atypical curve, where I get to play a pile of value creatures that also enable aggression, if I had a similar strategy again I'd be stoked.
Takeaways
I definitely didn't do this deck justice, this deck was easily capable of 4-1/5-0 and I punted enough to earn the classic 3-2. The Draw Two synergies felt powerful, and I felt like my cards had enough play that I could adapt to everything. My lowest point of confidence was in the mana, as it might have been better to play a deck heavier on Red, likely cutting a Witch's Cottage in the process. Normally I try to build a few decks before I settle on a final build, which often comes in handy during sideboarding to pivot in strategy. As I neglected to build other decks once I started experimenting with R/B, I lost a lot of equity especially after sideboarding.
Until next time,
Kevin
@Sealedawaymtg on Twitter
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