LR 660 Uncut!

LR 660 - Arena Open Prep (BG Sealed) + Q&A

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This Sealed Format is Surprisingly Fast

Aggro decks exist, people will play cheap creatures, and you need to adjust. As such, here are the updates rules for this sealed format:

1. Make Sure You Have a Good Curve

You don’t have to make an aggressive deck, and some pools just won’t be able to. What you do need to do is have plenty of cards in the 2-3 mana range, so you can defend yourself and interact early. Ideally, they aren’t just aggro 2-drops in your midrange/control deck, but cards like that have value at any point in the game - cards like Shambling Ghast, Guildsworn Prowler, and Genasi Rabble-Rouser.

1. Play Your Bombs

This one is still true - you should try and get your best cards in as much as possible. There’s more pressure here than normal, since you do need a good curve, but the good cards in Baldur’s Gate are very good. There are plenty of ways to splash, which makes this easier as well. I’ll provide a list of bombs you should aim to play later in the article.

1. Try to Minimize Splashes

This sounds like it contradicts the previous point, but what I mean is that while you should splash for sick rares, try not to splash more than a couple cards, and make sure they are high-power ones. In most sealed formats, you frequently end up with nearly 3-color decks, but given the speed of BG, I wouldn’t recommend that here.

1. Read the Cards Carefully

This is another BG-specific tip, and mostly pertains to specialize cards. These cards have a lot of text, even if many abilities are repeated on every version of the card, and you should make sure you know what they do. If you’re new to the format, it’s easy to lose because you didn’t know what every version of a specialize card does, and I know I paid that price a few times when the format started.