I saw on my FB newsfeed last time that a friend’s online store was selling MTG Grab Bags with three cards that guarantee one Rare and one foil in it. Each grab bag would cost you for only P50 and there is a chance that you can open a Khans of Tarkir fetchland or a shockland or some random Rare with a value in the Commander format.

I then ordered eight of those product and had them shipped here. This is as part of my product review if these would be worth it for its price. You had to be very lucky to pick out the right bag that has the value rares in it.

Check out my opening video below.

The most valued card here in the lot probably is the showcase foil Merfolk Secretkeeper which I sold for P100 (2 USD). The rest may or may not be useful for older formats, and those are just regular versions so they might find a slot in budget Commander decks.

Overall, I will recommend it if you are looking for some short of cheap thrills in opening mystery packs or grab bags. You might feel lucky so you just grab one at random and open it.

Card Shark’s physical store is located at the 2nd floor of Farmers Plaza, Cubao. Inside central gallery, near the MRT exit in between 711 and Teletech. Their Facebook page is Card Shark Trading.

Arriving early morning in Hong Kong on Friday, we are planning to rest in the airport until around 8am and then go directly to the GP venue at KITEC. The reason because the check-in at the apartment will still be around 3 in the afternoon so we can burn time by joining the events on the first day.

For early registrants, the organizer CL events have provided 50% discount vouchers for ODE (on-demand events) which we availed three as we registered before the end of August. JayR opted for a sealed Trial event as practice for the main event while my choice would be to play a Standard Trial or maybe join him in the Sealed event.

My priority would be to choose which format is easier for me to get byes so I am considering Standard but then again the main event’s format is Sealed so I needed that additional as well. If time permit then maybe I can join both, we shall see on Friday.

I will secure my Standard deck this afternoon after office and I think I will be piloting Temur or Sultai Energy as it is one of the best decks in the current Standard metagame.

Until the next post.

The third session of our playtest on Magic Origins Sealed happened last Sunday afternoon at Lanai Sports Bar and Grill. Tonton lends us the booster packs. Oliver joined us this time and he used the boosters he got from his Origins fatpack.

We took almost an hour to sort the best colors to use in the deck. I have noticed that we all chose White as one of the deck colors. This proved again that it is the best color in the set. We ended up playing with the same colors, White and Red. My build was on the fast aggro route with lots of two drops powered by Consul’s Lieutenant and cheap removals in Lightning Javelin and Suppression Bonds. I also have a late game Gideon’s Phalanx to finish the opponent.

Here is the screenshot of the deck:

The first-round pairings were me vs Fiona and Oliver vs Herbert. I won all of my games against Fiona as her draws were too slow to cope with my aggressive start. A second-turn lieutenant is essential in finishing the game early as it can get Renowned right away and can buff up your creatures for a large attack. I then just use my removals to deal with her late creatures.

We then exchanged partners and I paired with Herbert. He is also on the aggro Red White and he has cheaper removals to deal with my early assault. The overall matchups were still in my favor as he could not stop the attacks from my ideal start.

To conclude, White-based decks are one of the best routes in building your Magic Origins Sealed card pool. I have also observed this from the recent MtG Grand Prix in Dallas. I will have to check again on the featured match coverage on the mothership site on how their decks were built.

I’d like to know your insights in building sealed decks in Magic Origins so just comment them on the box below this blog post.

Since Grand Prix Hong Kong is drawing near (barely three weeks to go), I browsed for websites that generates Sealed cards for Magic Origins. I found one, which was quite different from the one I used to practice with way back in 2013. The site is MTG Mirror and is a Draft and Sealed simulator site.

It was quite easy to use their simulator as I just chose Magic Origins on the drop-down box and also select the “Don’t use seeded box” as the seeded ones are for Prerelease use.

Next is you just clicked on the Open Boosters button and the cards are then revealed in images and is sorted by Rarity (Rare, Uncommon, Common). You can now clicked on which card to add to the deck, which are then graphed on the right column for selected cards (by color, card type, etc). After you’re done, you just save it in a .txt file.

You can then copy it to clipboard and paste it in Magic Workstation so that you can add the basic lands and save it as a MWS deck.

Here is a deck I have made from the generated Sealed boosters last night. White seems to be the dominant & powerful color in the set.

Sealed Deck 1

Lands
8 Swamp
9 Plains

Creatures
1 Hixus, Prison Warden
1 Consul’s Lieutenant
1 Graveblade Marauder
1 Hangarback Walker
1 Cleric of the Forward Order
1 Blessed Spirits
1 Ampryn Tactician
2 Auramancer
1 Guardian Automaton
1 Blood-Cursed Knight
1 Malakir Cullblade
1 Rabid Bloodsucker

Spells
2 Knightly Valor
1 Consecrated by Blood
2 Reave Soul
1 Unholy Hunger
1 Weight of the Underworld
1 Suppression Bonds
1 Dark Dabbling
1 Read the Bones

Here is a screenshot on MWS Play in Solitaire Mode as I test the draws of the deck.

Here is another of the deck building session I did late this afternoon. The Theros boosters were somewhat favorable this time, giving me two Mythic rare bombs to boot. I initially wanted it Red and Green (yes, I am now a fan) but the Green compo lacks good critters. Black, on the other hand, provided Gorgons to dominate the late game.

Here is the deck I will play from the generated Theros card pool.

Lands
9 Swamp
9 Mountain

Creatures
1 Borderland Minotaur
2 Keepsake Gorgon
1 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Spearpoint Oread
1 Wild Celebrants
1 Cavern Lampad
1 Hythonia the Cruel
2 Deathbellow Raider
1 Returned Centaur
1 Burnished Hart
1 Felhide Minotaur
1 Insatiable Harpy
1 Ember Swallower

Spells
1 Portent of Betrayal
1 Coordinated Assault
2 Boon of Erebos
1 Flamecast Wheel
1 Titan’s Strength
1 Pharika’s Cure

Sideboard
SB: 3 Fleetfeather Sandals
SB: 2 Guardians of Meletis
SB: 1 Prowler’s Helm
SB: 1 Traveler’s Amulet
SB: 2 Unknown Shores
SB: 1 Fleshmad Steed
SB: 1 Loathsome Catoblepas
SB: 3 Scourgemark
SB: 2 Defend the Hearth
SB: 1 Hunt the Hunter
SB: 3 Pheres-Band Centaurs
SB: 1 Warriors’ Lesson
SB: 1 Centaur Battlemaster
SB: 1 Fade into Antiquity
SB: 1 Karametra’s Acolyte
SB: 1 Nemesis of Mortals
SB: 1 Nessian Asp
SB: 2 Satyr Hedonist
SB: 1 Vulpine Goliath
SB: 2 Dragon Mantle
SB: 1 Messenger’s Speed
SB: 2 Two-Headed Cerberus
SB: 2 Mnemonic Wall
SB: 2 Triton Shorethief
SB: 3 Voyage’s End
SB: 2 Wavecrash Triton
SB: 1 Curse of the Swine
SB: 1 Horizon Scholar
SB: 1 Lost in a Labyrinth
SB: 1 Shipbreaker Kraken
SB: 2 Chosen by Heliod
SB: 2 Scholar of Athreos
SB: 1 Pharika’s Mender
SB: 1 Destructive Revelry
SB: 1 Sentry of the Underworld
SB: 1 Shipwreck Singer
SB: 1 Decorated Griffin
SB: 1 Hopeful Eidolon
SB: 1 Last Breath
SB: 2 Silent Artisan
SB: 1 Soldier of the Pantheon
SB: 1 Yoked Ox