Hey community!
I thought it might be fun to record my first attempt at sealed mode and share it with the community. It doesn't hurt that I won the game I recorded, but I would have posted either way. 馃槉
Gameplay below, but first some general thoughts.
The game below is game one, but I wound up going 4-3. I earned back half my GODS along with some packs. Those packs are currently worth next to nothing, so basically those 7 games cost me a few bucks. My wins felt like I dominated my opponent. My losses felt like I was dominated. Going first had a lot to do with it. Of course, the luck of what cards in your pool was another.
If you strip pay the prizes and the entry cost, it's a fun mode. No game is going to be the same. You'll never face annoying Anubians, school teacher combo, or $2k P2W decks. For all that, I am extremely grateful. On the flip side, the games felt like the starter deck tournaments (where you can only use starter decks). The starter decks are objectively bad, so it came down to who drew the best card at the right moment.
This mode feels very tilted towards player 1, and the sanctum would have made this much worse. I'm glad they removed it. Still, I went 3-1 going first and 1-2 going second. Small sample size, but going second felt quite terrible.
In this vid, I start by showing off my fairly terrible pool of cards and how I managed to put a deck together from it. Looking back at all 7 games, I should have taken Overproof Brew. Trading is so frequent that one side of the board very often winds up with several creatures at 1 HP. Additionally, being able to protect your creatures and trade will win games.
After the deck, I get into the game. I go first, but have nothing to play turn 1 and my open has a really nice open (and with more pips to back it up on following turns). I manage to beat him mainly because he didn't focus on trading. You'll see several occasions when he went face as if he was playing an highly-optimized aggro war deck. This let me get back in the game and win. In particular, using twin strike at 3 mana (and him not trading) won me the game.
I did sneak 3 wins in ranked. My thought was that fewer people would play today, so the wins would give more gods. I know we're talking about pennies, but it was three wins in a row with one of my favorite decks (budget control war + hortuk that I've posted about).
It's close to reset in the pic above, and the GODS are definitely higher than normal.
I'll definitely give this another go. I also really enjoy watching this streamed by friends in the community. The gameplay is super varied, and the streamers are paying the GODS for you to watch :).
I'm really excited for Sealed Mode to evolve over time. There were some bugs that got ironed out. There will almost definitely be some balance passes of the card pool to increase enjoyment. This also gives me hope for other permanent modes in the future like draft (like sealed, but you are shown 3 cards at a time and pick one each time).
