Nevermind...

I don't want to talk about it.

...

Okay, I will, just a little bit.

Friday
I played Izzet Friday night - big mistake. I didn't open any bombs whatsoever, save the stupid foil dragon. Which was good, but... my sealed pool was just terrible. Blustersquall and the dragon were basically the only two good cards I opened.

My deck was just atrocious and after two rounds, even though I was 1-1 I knew my deck was going to underperform once I got into the higher brackets - I had trouble beating weak players with shitty decks, so there was zero hope for me once I had a real opponent.

I don't think I'm just bitching, either, because one of the best Limited players in my state was at the event, also playing Izzet, and he along with about 8 other Izzet players I talked, universally said that their pools sucked ass and that Izzet was terrible, unless you got super lucky.

Saving grace: I did open an Abrupt Decay, which I promptly unloaded in an awesome trade. It was trading at about $25.00 at my LGS, but I fully expect it to drop to $15.00 for a while, and by the time Gatecrash comes out it'll probably be $10.00. So I was thrilled to dump it while it's value was overinflated.

Saturday

On Saturday, I played Azorious, which gave me a far, far better pool to build from. I had Isperia, the promo Archon guy, Sphinx's Revelation and two of the White double-Detain guys. It was a fantastic build, but the stupid deck proceeded to choke on me game after game after game. After three rounds, I had gotten either mana-flooded or mana-screwed in all but exactly ONE game, which of course I absolutely dominated that game.

My deck was so awesome, all it needed was to draw anything resembling a balance of mana and spells and it would have been unstoppable. I kept playing pickup games with it between rounds and I don't think I lost a single one of them, yet every time it was an actual tourney game, I basically drew 90% lands or 10% lands. Every. Fucking. Time.

Saving Grace: Sphinx's Revelation and Dreadbore were useful pulls for me to open - both are going into my 250-card highlander right away. I continued to trade like a madman, and made several really profitable trades, netting some high-quality EDH stuff like Liliana of the Veil, Tamiyo, Sword of Feast and Famine, and I don't remember what all else.

Overall

I have to say, I took it pretty hard. It almost felt like a personal betrayal that this, the single most anticipated pre-release I've ever been to, turned out so poorly for me when it's literally been YEARS since I walked out of a prerelease event without a couple handfuls of free packs.

I just had a really hard time with Shadowmoor/Eventide's Limited environment, and I'm not 100% sure, but I think I whiffed at both pre-releases and though I was a juggernaut in Lorwyn/Morningtide draft, I wound up being absolutely horrible at Drafting the darker half of the block.

Since then, I've managed to score at least SOME prize and damn near every limited event I've been to, so for me to be so pumped and so excited about this one, only to completely scrub out, was just soul-crushing.

Like, I was seriously considering never playing a Sealed event ever again, and maybe giving up Drafting too. That's how bad my confidence was shaken. Then I realized that if one little loss - okay, two losses - was enough to rattle me that badly, then what I had was not so much confidence, but overconfidence. Everyone loses once in a while, even the greatest players the game has ever known.

Having such a long-standing winning streak, though, makes it really hard to see that, and I just got complacent. Getting knocked on my ass like that was a long time coming, and it was 100% guaranteed to happen at some point - I just wish it could have been some other event besides Return to frickin' Ravnica.

Simply put, I was getting arrogant, and the universe picked an especially effective time to remind me that I ain't no Jon Finkel, etc...

The New Set

Having gotten to play with the new set finally, it did not disappoint (aside from the losing part, obv). However, I don't actually like RtR's Limited play so far - I will have to try drafting it, as Sealed is a totally different animal, but even the few games I won during these two tournaments just weren't really all that fun.

The sad fact is - and it breaks my heart to admit this - aside from being the first prerelease in years for me to scrub out, it was also the first prerelease that I can even remember, where I just flat out wished I was somewhere else. It wasn't the losing, thought that didn't help, because even when I was winning and still thought I might win some packs, I just was not having that much fun. I really just would rather have been playing EDH the whole time.

I'll try drafting RtR, but it needs to be a hell of a lot more fun than RtR sealed or I probably won't do it more than once.

That said, despite my tentative feelings toward Limited play, I find a lot of cards indiviudally cool or fun in themselves, and hope to test a lot of them out in other formats. I've already slotted a number of new cards into various EDH decks, and have more changes to make still. I also really like the idea of building guild-themed decks for all the guilds, using cards from the original Ravnica and the new set.

Miscellaneous Other Stuff

Work is being a bit of a downer right now. I do most of my blogging at work, so when I get swamped and can't get caught up, I tend let the blogs fall by the wayside. I still need to finish my RtR EDH set review, I know, and I have a lot of other things to write up and talk about... it's just hard to find the damned time!
For now the Set Review will be my main focus.