Table of Contents
Hey everyone! It is time to head on down to the local prerelease to jam some games of the newest Magic set, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. I’ll be your tour guide as we dive down deep into the caverns to discover what wonders remain hidden there. In more normal terms, I’ll be discussing how to build your sealed deck along with some tips and tricks to help you along the way.
Building Your Sealed Deck
The biggest effect you can have on your EV for the event is building your sealed correctly. You can’t change what you open, but you can change what you do with it. That can be the difference between taking home some of those sweet packs and walking out of there empty handed. I’ll be going step by step on how you should be building an LCI sealed.
Step one is to see if you won the rare/mythic lottery. Sometimes these things build themselves, but not nearly as often as people make it out to be. As soon as you’ve calmed down and are looking at your pool rationally, you should sort out your power cards. That means busted rares, mythic uncommons, and quality splashable removal. These are what you are going to be building your deck around.
Next go through each color to determine which cards you actually want to play, which ones you’ll play if you have enough synergy, which ones you’ll run to make playables, and which ones you really don’t want to play. This is a great way to evaluate which of your colors are actually deep and which ones just look good because they are top heavy. This usually lets you eliminate an entire color or determine which ones would be a good splash.
Next you want to look through your mana fixing. There isn’t a lot of common fixing to go around this set so you’re usually going to have to keep the splashing light instead of going full five color zaniness. There aren’t any Prophetic Prisms running around and you’re stuck with Promising Vein instead of Evolving Wilds. There are multiple treasure makers in red that could help enable some nuttiness. Outside of that, you might need to end up playing Compass Gnome if you want to splash.
Now that you have a better idea about your colors, start building different configurations to see which ones look best. This lets you see which one seems like the best build or spot a weakness that could be shored up by a splash.
A big thing here is to consider whether your deck can hang on power level with similar decks. If you don’t feel good about going to the late game, see if you can build a cheap aggressive deck to go under them. Even if you don’t follow that route, it is a good thing to have ready to go in case you need to sideboard into it.
Once you’ve settled on your deck, just build a functional mana base and you’re ready to smash.
Tips and Tricks
This is a synergy over power format. Yes, you can just play a pile of powerful cards and get there, but most of the time you want to be playing cards on the same plan. That doesn’t mean something insane like cut your Ojer Kaslem, Deepest Growth because the rest of your deck is based around descend. It means that in that deck you would want to play a card like In the Presence of Ages over a generic big creature.
The set isn’t really removal light, but it is light on quality removal. There aren’t a lot of great ways to deal with the big old dinosaurs running around.
Abrade has always been a great card, but it is super premium with all the artifacts running around it. Despite the lack of fixing, it is worth a consideration to splash it.
A copy of Captivating Cave can help enable splashes with a bit of upside later on. The extra mana to play your main colors is a big tempo hit so don’t run multiples.
Don’t go crazy on caves. There really aren’t enough good payoffs to do something nutty like playing off color caves. Build arounds are a lot harder to pull off in a sealed deck.
Counterspells tend to always perform better in sealed than draft. Confounding Riddle is great in either so you were going to be playing it no matter what. Out of Air becomes much more palatable in sealed though.
Since sealed is slower you are more likely to get to “do the thing”. Just don’t try to stuff too much top end in or you’ll still get ran over. You can get away with more card advantage and big things, but you can’t have a deck full of six and seven drops.
While there isn’t much of it to go around, incidental graveyard hate has the potential to be a lot better here than in most sets.
On that note, self-mill is very much a benefit here. It might not be as obviously value filled as dumping disturb creatures into the yard, but enabling a bunch of descend cards can be just as good.
There are enough artifacts and enchantments running around that I’m willing to play a copy of Over the Edge in my mainboard.
Speaking of artifacts, be very careful not to get wrecked by Dreadmaw's Ire. Sometimes there is nothing you can do about it, but missing out on a correct double block can be back breaking.
One thing that a lot of people have missed is that the landcyclers trigger descend since they are adding a permanent card to the graveyard. That means you can cycle at instant speed to surprise activate all of your descend 4 creatures. Another tricky way to do it is to sacrifice something to Fanatical Offering.
You know what doesn’t trigger descend? Tokens going to the graveyard. Yes, they temporarily go to the graveyard, but descend specifies “permanent card”.
I feel like Cogwork Wrestler is going to ”get” a lot of people early. Keep it in mind when they are holding up a single blue. It’s much more likely to be that than Relic's Roar.
The final piece of advice is to remember that this is prerelease. Win some packs, but most importantly have some fun while you’re doing it.
Wrap Up
Thanks for reading! Hopefully this guides you to victory this weekend at your LCI prerelease. I’ll be back tomorrow to continue my complete review of the Lost Caverns of Ixalan with Artifacts and Lands. Until then, stay classy people!
If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.
You can also find me at:
Premium >
Enjoy our content? Wish to support our work? Join our Premium community, get access to exclusive content, remove all advertisements, and more!
- No ads: Browse the entire website ad-free, both display and video.
- Exclusive Content: Instant access to all exclusive articles only for Premium members, at your fingertips.
- Support: All your contributions get directly reinvested into the website to increase your viewing experience!
- Discord: Join our Discord server, claim your Premium role and gain access to exclusive channels where you can learn in real time!
- Special offer: For a limited time, use coupon code L95WR9JOWV to get 50% off the Annual plan!
j2sjosh
Articles: 303More Articles
Alchemy: Ixalan Draft Guide and Limited Set Review
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Tier List
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Draft Guide
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Over and Underperformers Guide
Best Commons and Uncommons, Hidden Gems, and Trap Cards for The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Archetypes Guide and Example Decks
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Removal Guide
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Combos and Synergies Guide
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Set Review: Multicolored
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Set Review: Artifacts and Lands
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Set Review: Green
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Set Review: Red
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Set Review: Black
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Set Review: Blue
The Lost Caverns of Ixalan (LCI) Limited Set Review: White
