Beacon of Creation

Hi All! We recently finished our 6th pack of You Make the Pack. IgnitedxSoul and I have been kicking some tires on doing a Duplicate Sealed for these six packs, so I wanted to share some highlights from the packs for anybody interested.

What is Duplicate Sealed?

Sealed is a format where players open booster packs, usually 6, and construct a 40 card deck using the cards in those packs. In Duplicate Sealed, each player opens the exact same sealed pool. This changes the dynamic of the event dramatically–All the cards are known quantities; you know what all the removal is, what all the bombs are, and what the fixing is like for each other player, because it’s the same for you.

As a result of this, players often deckbuild through various levels–

• Level 0 is “What deck is strongest in a vacuum?”
• Level 1 is “What deck beats the strongest deck?”
• Level 2 is ‘What deck beats the level 1 deck?”
• There might be a Level 3, but often this loops back to Level 0.

While these levels are true of metagames, duplicate sealed enhances the feeling of it, because you have perfect information before you even build your deck.

In the next sections, I’m going to highlight some cards in the classic camps of cards, and offer some thoughts on why I think they’re important in this duplicate sealed environment.

The Removal

Removal is important in many limited formats, and this is the cream of the crop. Hopelessly Lost, The Escape of Gorr, and Radiant Engine are the most important of these for cleanly answering “The Elephant in the Room,” which I’ll get into later.

The Card Draw

I love drawing cards, and the six You Make the Packs are chalk full of ways of gaining card advantage. Some of these trickle cards to you gradually throughout the game while others offer you a burst of cards.

The Bombs

Each of these cards are going to help bring the game to an end. Spectral Leviathan, Overcharged Golem, and Patron of Profit aren’t going to need many attacks to bring the game to a close, whereas The Escape of Gorr, Oracle of Safekeeping, and Good Boy are going to wear through resources eventually and win the game through inevitability.

The Fixing

Warbling Mockbeast and Drowsy Dourbark may both be a stretch for the definition of ‘fixing,’ but the rest of the cards in this category definitely count. Royal Domains is likely the strongest card for enabling the splash, whereas Bloody Lotus is the most explosive.

The Engines

These cards represent synergies greater than the sum of their parts, and are likely going to define some of the base archetypes available in the duplicate sealed. Red/Black Sacrifice looks especially potent between Patron of Profit, Bask in the Shimmers, and the handful of good removal spells in black. Notably, Starving Caterpillar shoulders the burden of making Food tokens for the cards that care about them in Pack 1, as it’s the only repeatable food producer in the environment.

The Elephant in the Room

Whoops! This card puts us in a place where we may deck ourselves…except we won’t lose to decking ourselves, given that we can indefinitely skip our draws at the end of the game. Meant as an aggressively costed Experimental Frenzy, I suspect that this rules error will define the YMTP Duplicate Sealed Metagame. (Unless someone implements an errata!) Hopelessly Lost, The Escape of Gorr, and Radiant Engine can answer this, though it can be picked back up with Ruin Recorder or Washed Ashore, so bear that in mind!

The One Who Watches the End

Can’t end a You Make the Pack article without mentioning TOWWtE– there are three copies of this card in this sealed pool, so the trigger is live for those willing to brew with the card.

I hope you found this little sampler of cards from our six You Make the Packs fun to read. We’re working on a compiled MSE and Cockatrice file for playing Duplicate Sealed with these six packs, so head over to the Beacon of Creation discord if you’re interested!