Teaming Up Is Fun
Exercising Different Muscles in Magic's Coolest Limited Format

by Jeff Zandi


Playing in a three man Sealed Deck Team is an exciting and challenging way
to approach Magic: the Gathering, its also a lot of fun. Last Saturday, I
played in a Team Sealed pro tour qualifier with a couple of my closer Magic
friends. The members of this team don't have all that much in common except
that we really like to play Magic. On Saturday, this good old fashioned love
of gaming almost qualified the three of us for the Seattle Teams Pro Tour.

The teams pro tour qualifier season is almost over and I want to take
another look at the Team Sealed format and the different skills that this
format requires. Team Sealed is also a special feature of the Fifth Dawn
pre-release events scheduled tomorrow in cities all over the United States.

Team Sealed is a big deal. For one thing, there are fewer qualifying
tournament for the annual Team Pro Tour than for any other. The reason is
simple: each team pro tour qualifier delivers $750 worth of travel award
money and essentially three pro tour seats, three times the normal prize for
a domestic pro tour qualifier any other time of the year. For this reason,
competitive teams work hard to get the dates for the few Team Sealed
qualifiers that will be in their area as soon as possible each year. In
Texas, my neck of the woods, there were only two Team Sealed PTQs in 2004.
The first was last month, when I played in Houston with Angie Riley and
Tiffany Reid, that's right, TWO GIRLS! I sat in the middle to keep the
slapping to a minimum. We were called the Texas Girlmages. Last week, Texas'
second and last PTQ of the Pro Tour Seattle season took place in Dallas (an
outpost slightly to the North of Dallas called McKinney, to be precise).
This year, both Texas team events had various factors working against them
that may have contributed to low turnouts. In 2003, however, the two Team
Sealed events were Texas' two best attended pro tour qualifiers for the
year.

In a previous article, I talked a bit about the difficulties of choosing a
team. Last week, my team didn't have that problem. Our team was more or less
thrown together at almost the last minute, although all three of us had
definitely been thinking about it. What I want to talk about today is the
different Magic skills that you have to employ when you play Team Sealed.
Each format in Magic requires different skills from players. Constructed
Formats require large amounts of preparation, deck study and design, and
lots and lots of practice. Sealed Deck and Booster Draft, while requiring
good deck construction skills and practice as well, primarily require
players to be flexible, able to build the best possible deck out of the
small number of cards made available to them. Team Sealed requires both
constructed and limited skills along with the added dimension of social
interaction among team members. This social interaction is the main reason
Team Sealed requires different "muscles" than any other Magic format.

Just for fun, lets introduce everyone to the other members of my team last
week, Guildmage Slumber Party. David Mitchell is a longtime teammate of mine
on the Texas Guildmages. (in fact, he's been on the team for six years!)
Moreover, David was once one of the best Magic players in West Texas and New
Mexico. Back in the day, when David was winning Black Lotus and Moxen at
tournament after tournament, the Pro Tour was not yet underway. Eric Knipp
is a sturdy Magic player with a good deal of PTQ experience who has a good
mind for the game of Magic. Eric is a regular member of our extended team
that practices together every Tuesday night. While neither guy is pushing
FORTY like the Old Zanman, both are mature, very reasonable adults with
regular day jobs and car payments. It was the first time that we had played
together in a team sealed tournament, in fact, it was the first Team Sealed
event ever for Mr. Knipp.

In Team Sealed you receive two starter decks (tournament packs) and four
booster packs with which to build three different decks. Here are the cards
we were given to build decks with:
(but don't get lost, the discussion of how we arrived at the three finished
decks continues right after these card lists)

MIRRODIN CARDS
Ancient Den
Blinkmoth Well
Cloudpost x2
Great Furnace
Seat of the Synod
Tree of Tales
Arrest
Auriok Bladewarden
Auriok Transfixer
Awe Strike x2 not the kind of card you want to receive multiples of *frown*
Loxodon Mender
Raise the Alarm
Razor Barrier
Skyhunter Patrol
Tempest of Light
Broodstar not as giant a BOMB card as you might think in sealed deck
Disarm x2
Inertia Bubble
Neurok Spy
Override
Somber Hoverguard
Wanderguard Sentry
Barter in Blood
Consume Spirit
Contaminated Bond
Disciple of the Vault
Dross Prowler x2
Irradiate
Relic Bane
Slith Bloodletter
Terror
Woebearer
Arc-Slogger
Electrostatic Bolt
Fists of the Anvil
Forge Armor
Krark-Clan Shaman x2
Molten Rain x2
Rustmouth Ogre
Shatter
Spikeshot Goblin
Vulshok Berserker
Creeping Mold
One Dozen Eyes
Tel-Jilad Chosen
Tel-Jilad Exile
Turn to Dust
Wurmskin Forger
Alpha Myr
Bonesplitter
Chromatic Sphere
Clockwork Condor x2
Clockwork Vorrac
Copper Myr
Damping Matrix FOILIZED for extra collectibilityness
Dead-Iron Sledge
Dross Scorpion
Elf Replica
Extraplanar Lens
Goblin War Wagon
Gold Myr
Granite Shard
Grid Monitor
Iron Myr
Lifespark Spellbomb
Lightning Greaves
Malachite Golem
Myr Adapter
Omega Myr x2
Ornithopter
Pewter Golem x2
Silver Myr
Soldier Replica
Solemn Simulacrum
Sun Droplet
Talisman of Dominance
Talisman of Unity
Thought Prison
Viridian Longbow
Vulshok Gauntlets
Welding Jar

DARKSTEEL CARDS
Echoing Calm
Emissary of Hope
Hallow
Loxodon Mystic
Metal Fatique
Ritual of Restoration x2
Turn the Tables
Echoing Truth
Magnetic Flux
Neurok Prodigy
Quicksilver Behemoth
Burden of Greed
Echoing Decay
Grimclaw Bats
Hunger of the Nim
Scavenging Scarab x2
Shriveling Rot
Barbed Lightning x2
Drooling Ogre
Echoing Ruin x2
Tears of Rage
Echoing Courage x2
Karstoderm
Oxidize
Reap and Sow
Tangle Spider
Tanglewalker x2
Tel-Jilad Outrider
Tel-Jilad Wolf
Arcbound Bruiser
Arcbound Hybrid
Arcbound Reclaimer
Arcbound Slith
Arcbound Worker
Darksteel Brute
Darksteel Ingot
Drill-Skimmer
Dross Golem x3
Leonin Bola x2
Myr Landshaper
Myr Moonvessel
Razor Golem
Spawning Pit
Sundering Titan
Surestrike Trident
Talon of Pain
Tangle Golem x2
Ur-Golem's Eye x2
Wurm's Tooth

Here are the three decks that we built, and who ended up playing each deck.

David Mitchell
Player A
Swamp x17
Barter in Blood
Consume Spirit
Irradiate
Relic Bane
Slith Bloodletter
Terror
Woebearer
Alpha Myr
Clockwork Condor x2 thought this deck needed evasion
Goblin War Wagon
Pewter Golem x2
Sun Droplet
Echoing Decay
Grimclaw Bats
Scavenging Scarab x2
Darksteel Brute
Dross Golem x3
Spawning Pit

Jeff Zandi
Player B
Forest x10
Mountain x6
Arc-Slogger
Rustmouth Ogre
Spikeshot Goblin
Vulshok Berserker
Creeping Mold
One Dozen Eyes
Tel-Jilad Chosen
Tel-Jilad Exile
Bonesplitter
Copper Myr
Lightning Greaves
Solemn Simulacrum
Talisman of Unity
Barbed Lightning
Echoing Courage x2
Oxidize
Tangle Spider
Tanglewalker x2
Darksteel Ingot
Leonin Bola
Tangle Golem x2

Eric Knipp
Player C
Island x6
Mountain x6
Broodstar
Neurok Spy
Somber Hoverguard
Electrostatic Bolt
Shatter
Clockwork Vorrac
Gold Myr
Granite Shard
Iron Myr
Silver Myr
Talisman of Dominance
Viridian Longbow
Neurok Prodigy
Quicksilver Behemoth
Barbed Lightning
Echoing Ruin x2
Arcbound Bruiser
Arcbound Hybrid
Arcbound Reclaimer
Arcbound Slith
Arcbound Worker
Leonin Bola
Talon of Pain

Our team, like most, contained three players with three completely different
philosophies for constructing the decks. Eric Knipp wanted to separate all
the playable cards by color (when I do this, I separate the creatures from
the non-creature cards), Dave Mitchell thought we should pull out the most
powerful cards in our pile and start from there. This season, I tended to
start by looking at the three most popular deck types in the
Mirrodin/Darksteel Team Sealed format, those being blue/black Affinity,
white/red equipment-based and a red/green deck with lots of big creatures.

After a little discussion, we decided it was easier to see all the cards if
we laid them out on the table using Eric Knipp's technique. It was
surprising how much the three of us differed on the playability of many of
the items in our card pool. In general, Eric was the guy who was interested
in trying to find good, creative reasons to use some of the less popular
cards for their greatest possible good. I was much more conventional in my
assessment of the card pool. Basically, if Bob Maher, Dave Williams and Neil
Reeves don't like it, then I don't like it either. Of course, since I'm not
as good as these three perennial pro studs, I don't always know WHY I'm
agreeing with their card assessments. Sometimes, Eric pointed out, its good
to use your own brain. In this event, however, there are three different
brains. On some teams, I'm told, the EXPERT DECKBUILDER of the team builds
all three decks with minimal input from his two teammates. I have not yet
been a part of one of these kinds of three man teams. Maybe next year Bob
will get sick of autographing his Invitational card and Dave and Neil will
pick me up for their team!

When assessing the playability of individual cards, be careful not to tell
one of your teammates that they are "retarded" or "stupid". Working together
as a team means respecting each player's opinion. On our team, there were a
few moments when one or another of us threw up our hands and said something
like "screw me, I guess I don't know ANYTHING about Magic!" All you can do
is to try to keep it all together as best you can.

We agreed to build three decks insisting that each deck be good enough to
play with. Some teams try to build three decks with one or more of the decks
clearly better than the one or two others. Teams that build a single deck
clearly stronger than the other two decks often give this better deck to the
worst player on their team. The hope here is that the weakest player on that
team, no matter what his play skills are, will do the best when he has the
best deck. This train of thought includes the idea that the stronger players
on the team will be able to "make the best" of the remaining two weaker
decks. I disagree strongly with this plan.

We built three decks that were each good in our collective opinions. I told
Eric and David that unless our card pool suggested differently, we should
strongly consider the deck archetypes most popular in this format. The black
looked very strong, and a blue/black Affinity deck looked like it might be
very powerful. While we had more good red cards than normal, we had
comparatively few good white cards. Right from the start, we saw that white
had the least to offer. After initially grouping the blue and black cards
together, we turned to the green deck. The green deck looked like it COULD
have been primarily green with the few good white cards, which included one
good flyer (although this was the double white costed Skyhunter Patrol) and
the greatness of Arrest. On the other hand, since we knew the red was deep
enough to split into two different decks, we quickly moved the fatter red
cards into the green deck, along with Spikeshot Goblin, the Bonesplitter and
a bit of the red removal. Now with a general idea of a blue/black deck and a
red/green deck, we were at a real loss for what should go into a third deck.
At this point, we more or less decided that the white was just not good
enough to play, meaning that some other color would need to join the
remaining good red cards for deck number three. At this time, we could see
the biggest pile of cards was the blue/black pile, which had forty or so
cards in it (not including land) We realized that if we played all the good
blue and black cards that work well with Affinity in one deck, there would
not be enough room for the large number of artifacts that you want to play
with in a strong Affinity deck. At this time, we decided to separate the
blue and black cards, building a red/blue Affinity deck and leaving the
black cards to fight it out on their own as a mono colored deck. Separating
out the cards into three different decks on the table really helps the team
see the division of their resources. We were able to see that the Spikeshot
Goblin really wanted to live in the green deck because there were more ways
to pump up its power. Looking at all the cards on the table separated into
three different decks showed us that we didn't want to break up the two
Echoing Ruin cards, since the blue/red Affinity deck would desperately need
artifact removal, while the green/red deck already had Oxidize and Creeping
Mold. One problematic point was what to do with the various mana producing
artifacts. Of course, you want to put as many Myr and Talisman cards into
the Affinity deck as possible. On the other hand, mana acceleration is very
important in the green/red deck because of the double mana intensity spells
in both colors and because of the higher priced spells in the deck. We ended
up deciding Iron Myr was better in the blue/red Affinity, while the three
casting cost Darksteel Ingot was a better choice for the green/red deck.
Every deck would have been happy to welcome Jens Thoren (the 2002
Invitational winner pictured on Solemn Simulacrum), but his ability to get
an important second Mountain or second Forest into play moved this MVP into
the red/green deck.

Once the three decks were basically finished, we had the giant task of
determining who would play each deck. There is a tendency for each player to
work a little harder on the construction of one of the decks more than the
others, and when that happens, the player constructing a deck will
immediately bond to that deck and start to think that is the deck they
should play. I really try to avoid that tendency, but it has happened to
some degree in all six Team Sealed pro tour qualifiers that I have played
in. David Mitchell, having bonded a little bit already with the red/blue
Affinity deck, fired the first shot, "I don't care which deck I play as long
as it's not the one with Forests in it." Eric looked over at me and quickly
pointed out that Dave would have to play either the Affinity deck or the
mono black deck. After Eric and I each asserted that we could play the
red/green deck confidently enough, we began to each share our opinions about
the relative power levels of each deck. My assessment was that even though
we had attempted to build three very balanced decks, I felt the blue/red
Affinity deck was probably the best deck, followed by the red/green deck,
followed by the black deck. Eric and David's comparative deck assessments
were similar. David said he would be happy to play the black deck. I
thought, at that moment, that David was "falling on his sword" by choosing
what we had all just agreed might be the weakest deck of the trio.
Nevertheless, David assured us he really felt good with the black deck. I
knew that Eric had played a lot of Affinity decks in booster drafts, so I
felt good about him playing the red/blue Affinity deck, although it made me
and David nervous that Eric immediately started second-guessing a lot of the
card selections in the deck as it stood at that time.

Once each player has the deck that they are actually playing in the
tournament, I think it is completely acceptable for each player to make
minor changes to the deck to suit their individual strategic tastes. Each of
us did a little of that. For David, that meant the Goblin War Wagon and
Vulshok Gauntlets originally a part of the black deck were FIRED in place of
Sun Droplet and Darksteel Brute. Eric wavered on any number of cards, but
most importantly, wanted to lower the deck to fifteen land. Eventually, Eric
settled on sixteen land. My plan was to run the two Tanglewalker cards in
the main deck and to move them to the sideboard for games two and three
against players not playing any non-basic lands. The two biggest mistakes in
my deck construction, I feel, was the omission of Karstoderm and Wurmskin
Forger. These were the two cards most often sideboarded in to replace the
Tanglewalkers, which were NEVER good. Obviously, the Tanglewalkers should
have been a surprise addition to my deck in games two and three against
Affinity opponents. As it turns out, every deck I played ALL DAY was either
mostly red, mostly green, or just plain red/green.

The best part about the competitive part of a Team Sealed tournament is the
fact that you ARE part of a team. Each round, the three members of your team
are matched up against the three members of an opposing team. You play
against the member of the opposing team that has the same A,B or C letter
designation that you have. This designation was determined when you
registered your team at the beginning of the tournament. If two of the
people on your team win their matches while the third member of your team
loses his match, your team wins the team match 2-1. If all three of your
team members win their individual matches, the team match is scored as a 3-0
win for your team. The good news is that if you lose your match, your two
teammates can still win their matches, therefore winning the TEAM MATCH. The
bad news is that even if you win your match, your teammates can lose their
matches losing the team match.

Team Sealed tournaments play a number of Swiss rounds one greater than the
number normally used in individual pro tour qualifiers. The reason is that
Team Sealed PTQs advance only four teams to a two round single elimination
bracket, where individual PTQs advance eight players to a three round single
elimination playoff bracket. On this day, the Guildmage Slumber Party was
able to advance to the final four. In the first single elimination round,
each team continues playing with the decks they used in the Swiss rounds.
The two teams that advance to the finals from the final four bracket engage
in a three on three Rochester draft to create the decks that they use in the
finals. We lost in a VERY close semi-finals match last Saturday against the
eventual tournament winners, a team called Blunt Force Trauma. This team was
led by Kevin Benefield, a long-time Magic player and multiple pro tour
veteran from Little Rock, Arkansas, along with old-school Magic champion Tim
Danziger from Tulsa, Oklahoma and Paul Pakis from Parts Unknown. The only
thing we DO KNOW about the mysterious PAUL PAKIS is that he is NOT being
looked for by the POLICE in any of the contiguous forty-eight states.

In the end, the three members of Guildmage Slumber Party all agreed that
they worked well together. All three players agreed that if things worked
out next year, they would once again don their shiny silk pajamas and do it
all over again with next year's cards.

As always, I'd love to hear what YOU think!

Jeff Zandi
Texas Guildmages
Level II DCI Judge
jeffzandi@thoughtcastle.com
Zanman on Magic Online