Recently, the newest MTG set was released and I missed the prerelease because my local store messed up the reservations. But since you can buy prerelease packs, why not do my own “event” with a friend? Same outcome, less time pressure: You get to open the pack, test your skills, and have a good time with friends.
Main set mechanics
When building a deck, it boils down to keeping the main mechanics in mind to get extra value from synergies:
- Battles, the first new card type in 16 years. Essentially, they are non-creature permanents, which typically come into play with an effect. As they enter the board, you choose an opponent to “defend” them. When you manage to “defeat” them, they’re exiled and can be cast transformed. So, in other terms, by playing a battle, you’re setting up a “side quest” which has the transformed card as the prize.
- Incubate: Double-sided tokens.
- Backup is an ETB mechanic (enter-the-battlefield) which puts counters on your creatures - plus the card with backup gives the target creature its abilities until the end of turn.
- Convoke is a mechanic that allows your creatures to cast a card with “convoke” by tapping for one mana.
From these mechanics and their distribution in the 5 colors, you get the following archetypes:
- UW: Knights tribal, aggro / wide board
- UB: Mill (both graveyards)
- BR: Sacrifice, tokens
- RG: Battles and big creatures
- GW: +1/+1 counters
- WB: Phyrexian tribal, uncommons, incubate mechanic
- UR: Convoke mechanic, “spellslinger”
- BG: Midrange, incubate mechanic
- RW: Backup, aggro
- UG: Transform
Lessons learned
For my lessons learned, note that I ended up in RW - an aggressive deck with lots of backup cards.
- Battles: Though interesting as a new card type, they really shouldn’t be picked for an aggro deck. First, you’re spending resources which should be spent on building your board quickly. Second, once you start attacking a battle, you’re basically giving your opponent as many additional life points as there are defense counters on the battle (wasting time & rounds you don’t have).
- I played against UW (Knights, aggro), which exposed that I didn’t have enough flying creatures to counter attacks effectively in the first round. That reminded me of one of the first rules that I learned for limited duels: Prioritize creatures with evasion, removal spells, and finishers.
- It was the “removal spells and finishers”-part that won my next match - You might have noticed in the header image that I was lucky enough to pick Elesh Norn, which can win matches on its own.
Final words
From what I’ve seen so far, March of the Machine is a really nice set. I think there’s more variation in the cards and in the strategies than in the previous set (ONE). I also liked the additional Battle cards. Unfortunately, I didn’t see one of the Companion cards (10 cards from Ikoria with special rules) - I think my friend got one but wasn’t able to use it. So far, see you for the next event!