Our store had a sealed tourney today, so I thought I'd share my card pool and build and see how you guys would do it different. Then I'll share the results of my build.

Here's the pool:

Hero
Dizdemona
Ta’zo
Gorebelly
Moonshadow
Graccus
Radak Doombringer

Horde
Voss Treebender
Orgrimmar Grunts
Kanga of the Crossroads
Jin’tak Nightfang
Wormwood
Mias the Putrid
Confessor Mildred
Taz’dingo
Vesh’ral
Benethor Draigo
Hal-nar Stands Alone
Kulan Earth Guard
Vexra Darkfall
Wazzuli Wildmender
Moko hunts-at-dawn
2 Fa’tafi
Besh’iah
Into the Fray

Allied
Dorric the Martyr
Kallis Truearc
Ironforge Guards
Parvink
2 Grint Sundershot
Seva Shadowdancer
Sha’lin Nightwind
Maxum Ironbrew
Treesong
Medoc Spiritwarden
Hannah the Unstoppable
Sneak
Face Smash

Generic abilities
Exhaustion
On your feet
Caught off guard
Call the spirit
Withdraw
Rally the troops
Sudden Reversal
2 Vanquish

Quests
The princess trapped
A donation of wool
2 Chasing A-me
It’s a secret to everybody
Into the maw of madness
In dreams
Zapped giants
The love potion
Big game hunter
Sunken Treasure

Equipment
Hypnotic Blade
Hand of Edward the Odd
Masons Fraternity Ring
Brain Hacker

Warrior abilities
2 Demoralizing shout
Heroic strike

Paladin abilities
Cleanse

Rogue abilities
Gouge

Mage abilities
Polymorph
Fire blast

Shaman abilities
Lightning blast
Frost Shock
Healing Wave

Druid abilities
Starfire
Bear form
Natural selection
Entangling roots

Hunter abilities
2 bloodclaw
Ravenous bite

Priest abilities
2 Flash heal
Prayer of healing
Power word:fortitude

Warlock abilities
Grimdron
2 Corruption
Life Tap
Shadow bolt


So, there were a few classes that I figured I couldn't play. Priest, Warlock, Druid and Warrior were possibilites. I had 12 Allied allies and 18 Horde allies, so I figured Horde would be the best way to go. My deck went 4-0 and won the tourney. Make yours, then I'll come back and let you know what I built.

Sounds like fun. Lets see if I had the following above cards, my deck would of looked something like:

HEROES: 1
1x Radak Doombringer

ALLIES: 14
1x Voss Treebender
1x Kagra of the Crossroads
1x Jin’tak Nightfang
1x Mias the Putrid
1x Confessor Mildred
1x Taz’dingo
1x Vesh’ral
1x Benethor Draigo
1x Kulan Earthguard
1x Vexra Darkfall
1x Moko hunts-at-dawn
2x Fa’tafi
1x Grimdron

ABILITIES: 7
1x Sudden Reversal
2x Vanquish
2x Corruption
1x Life Tap
1x Shadow Bolt

QUESTS: 9
1x The Princess Trapped
1x A Donation of Wool
2x Chasing A-Me 01
1x It’s a Secret to Everybody
1x Into the Maws of Madness
1x In Dreams
1x Zapped Giants
1x The Love Potion

Was it close to your deck? o_oa

To build this sealed first I would need to look at my allies first, compare which faction has the most to offer.

Horde vs. Alliance

I am a little biased towards horde but I won’t let that influence my decision, much ;P. Anyways let’s take a look at what each offers. On the Horde side we have such platinum hits as taz’dingo, kulan earthguard, and moko hunts-at-dawn. Each of these allies offer some form of tempo or card advantage, plus are really efficient at their cost making the best at their cost respectively. For support you get a little bit more in voss treebender who is really good against protectors, confessor mildred to helps against pesky abilities, vesh’ral who after taz’dingo is a very solid beatstick and can usually deal 3 damage and then your opponent might have to use an ally to be rid of him. Mias the putrid is really good against an opponent who is slow to start, but she is probably on the bench at the start of the game, same goes with wormwood. Jin’tak will probably make the starting line up but is nothing to impressive. The last 5 of allies in this pool that I would play are most defiantely late game, and when size matters they gots it. I wouldn’t add all five considering I have the really good late game cards from earlier I might add maybe one more. But I would have to see how my deck progresses before I make the decision on which is the best. On the alliance side we have less platinums with parvink and treesong. Actually treesong only kinda counts with just his size to cost ratio efficienty. Pretty much the rest is just support nothing really noticeable. The faction abilities really only have one good card and that is face smash, which is solid and actually combos with on your feet. It isn’t a good combo but one you can look at. So the winner of this round goes to horde. And I am not saying alliance doesn’t have good allies, just there aren’t any in this sealed deck, sucks to be a good guy I guess.

Class Abilites

The next thing to compare is which abilities are good and will positively help your deck. First up is druid, entangling roots and natural selection are both solid abilities will make you deck. Starfire isn’t the nuts but can be game-breaking so it would make it in. The mage’s abilities are also solid with fire blast and polymorph. However the druid has similar cards plus starfire so it would probably be better to play druid. Next is priest which has nothing fancy except some heal cards. However you can get the combo of wormwood and power word: fortitude with the double dose of flash heals making the opponent’s board of allies vanish like smoke and stay that way for a while. The rouge has gouge which is a nice stall card and combos nice with Timmo, yep pretty much lame sorry rouge. The hunter gets to add two really good 1-drops and a nice combat trick. Paladin has perhaps the most useless card in cleanse, sure it is nice to answer the polymorphs, entangling roots, and interest you in a pints or things attached to your hero, but really come on, yawn. On the warrior side you have two really nice tempo cards in demoralizing shouts and a really bad heroic strike. Getting one or both shouts on the board pretty much breaks backs of most of the aggressive strategies and with the warriors higher health helps you setup the long game with a least a weapon. The Shaman just adds two ally removal with a heal spell, solid but similar to the mage and druid. Last but not least we have warlock, which actually has the deepest pool of cards, 3 of them which are platinums and the other two mearly average to solid status. Grimdron, Life Tap, and Shadow Bolt all bring card advantage with them and especially Grimdron lasting a while on the board can dominate the game. Corruption is similar to Shadowbolt and over time will kill any ally, but really wants low health allies. The problem is of course that unlike shadowbolt, corruption isn’t a sure thing. And if worse comes to worse you can just attach them to the opposing hero, just watch out for cleanses ;P

Now before I explain my choice of class let me also go over with you the ranking of the heroes. Now why would I rank the heroes, simply some of them are like built in cards. Where as heroes like Gorebelly and elendril are just a your life points, heroes like Ta’zo and Dizdemona are built in card advantage which helps when games. I put them in to two groups the first group are the ones that have the built in card advantage I was talking about and the second group is pretty much blank except for life points.

Group 1

Grennen Stormspeaker
Ta’zo
Timmo Shadestep
Dizdemona
Graccus

Group 2

The rest, obv.

Now this doesn’t mean that the heroes in group 2 are unplayable and will never get flipped, just the likelihood of it is low. Why is the likelihood low well you really need another card for group 2’s effects to be not so blank. For example: If you opponent plays elendril beware of Aimed shot or a ranged weapon. Or if you really need to get a certain ally and your opponent is Warrax play around his protector. And with Kayleitha remember there is an instant rare that makes her stealthed. Just some points to consider.

To me the abilities provided by the Warlock seems the strongest so that would probably be my first choice.

Equipment

I always want to play equipment, it is a recurring damage source/damage prevention and will remain as long you are alive. Unless you opponent plays equipment destruction of course. Brain Hacker and Masons fraternity ring both are solid. And hypnotic blade could see some minor play. The hand is just junk.

Quests

Now this is the fun part, there are multitudes of opinions on this and really the best thing I can say is if anyone says they know the right number of quests and gives a number or a range of numbers is just wrong. You could use statistics to explain you point of view and examples of other games but really this is a very unique quality of the game, that in my mind noone has gotten it right. My best guess on the number of quests to play is always going to be X. Where X equals your preference and what you opened. You might end up with only 5 playable quests and in which the rest of you deck is solid and if you win then the correct number of quest played or X is 5. Or on the flipside you might open another sealed pool play with 9 quests and win, this example X is 9. So really don’t listen to any one on the number just play good quests in your deck. What are good guests, simple ones that actually replace themselves are the best. Others are dependent on what you opened. A donation of Wool might not seem to solid however if you happen to play 9 quests it can easily turn into 1 discard a quest draw a card. Not bad. Blueleaf Tubers helps against slower decks, but is pretty dead against aggressive decks. Each one has applications and when you build your deck you need to justify each ones inclusion, if a quest is in there just to fill a card slot, think to yourself if you might be better off with a card that actually does something. So depending on how I end up building this deck will determine what quests I will end up using.

Well I know it seem pointless considering this was gator7870’s exercise but I like to ramble and explain how I do things. Why so people can agree/disagree discuss. I like discussions. So here is the deck I made which is similar to AlphaEtOmega (i.e. okay really with the exception of a few card selections they are the same, but don't tell anyone). However you pretty much could replace the class stamped abilities with pretty much any other class just need to alter some numbers, such as quests, equipment and maybe even add some allies.

Radak Doombringer

Allies

Voss Treebender
Grimdron
Kanga of the Crossroads
Jin’tak Nightfang
Wormwood
Confessor Mildred
Mias the putrid
Taz’dingo
Vesh’ral
Benethor Draigo
Hal-nar Stands Alone
Kulan Earth Gurad
Wazzuli Wildmender
Moko hunts-at-dawn
Besh’iah

Abilities

Shadowbolt
Lifetap
2 Corruption
2 Vanquish
Withdraw

Equipment

Hypnotic Blade

Quests

Zapped Giants
Into the maw of madness
It’s a secret to everbody
2 chasing a-me 01
a donation of wool
the princess trapped
the love potion

Enjoy.

It's funny... I was going to try and do an article series about this exact sort of thing. I even did the first one featuring a sealed pool and deck of my own from a tournament I participated in the Sunday before... I didn't get any replies to it though oddly enough...

Weird...

Anyways, if you're interested in checking that out and submitting this for an article then check out the first article at http://www.wowrealms.com/forum/showthread.php?t=886

Thats a very strong horde card pool, about the only thing I really would have been hoping to see with that card list would be a karkas deathhowl. There isnt much to be said that hasnt been said already regarding the allies, there are a few personal perference choices thrown in there but its pretty straightforward. As far as classes go your top 3 choices are Lock, Druid, and Shammy, in that order. Its pretty close between lock and druid . Starfire is a complete house in limited and it would be really hard not to play it for me but with grim life tap shadow bolt and 2 corruptions, its gotta be lock. Both of these lists would make a strong sealed.

In order to make this more interesting, and to try to make sealed deck more playable for this game in general, let's do the following:

*You can play any Hero
*You are allowed to play abilities NOT stamped to your hero, but these abilities cost an additional (1) to play. For instance, a non-warlock could play Lifetap, but it would cost 3.
*You can play allies from the opposing faction, but these also cost an additional (1) to play. For instance, if you wanted to splash Pavrik, you could; but it would cost you 4 to play her instead of 3 (probably still a fine deal).
*Weapons and armor are still restricted by class
*You may add any common quests you would like to the sealed deck. You are limited to 2 copies of a given quest, even if you somehow open more. Quests are still limited by faction, and of course you can play any uncommon quests you open.

Now with your options opened up, how would you build the deck?

No offense but that doesn't take any skill to build a competitive deck with all those options opened. It's like playing poker and having 2's, Jacks, and Suicide kings as wildcards. Limited deckbuilding is about choices, playing one card when that means you can't play another.

You play every ability that destroys, damages, exausts, or sheeps an ally. You play every ally with a converted cost of 4 or less, possibly one or two larger allies if they're significant. And you pick a hero that can destroy an ally with their flip ability.

Just trying to open things up a bit. Feeding from the games where sealed deck works well

*In Magic, you can play any color, with the caveat that if you play multiple colors, you make the deck less consistant

*In VS, you can play multiple teams, and even splash from other teams; with the caveat being you lose a few nifty abilities (team-stamped cards, team attacking, etc).

In games that don't work, you have a ton of factions (clans, troop leaders, etc) that each need team stamped cards, and aren't allowed to work with others. See L5R, DoomTroopers, etc (and yes, WOW).

Look at the sealed deck in front of you. Every single person who opens this will build a similar Warlock Hoarde deck. Why? There aren't a lot of options to work with; your alliance allies are far worse, and your abilities are only truly good for warlock (or, at least, far superior).

I am trying to open up the field a little bit, and make it such that you can play cross-faction, but at a cost (in this case, 1 resource point). I am also making quest opening less of a contreversy, though you can debate this (since it does involve adding cards outside of the sealed).

Barring doing something like this, decks will build themselves, and those who get card pools like the ones above will just win. I am just trying to add a little bit of skill/discussion possibilities to the sealed deck format, even if it does mean you have to upset the balance a little.

So maybe 1 isn't expensive enough. Would 2 be a proper modifier for costs? Would you play Pavrik if she cost 5, Polymorph at 4, etc? Something just needs to be done... draft isn't a practical option for tournies, and if we want limited tournies we need to find a way to add some skill into the deck-building portion of the game. I already have a thread where I'm arguing this somewhat... I just wanted to pose a hypothetical to see if we got more discussion if you had a little more leeway with your card pool.

I think that it takes the thought out of sealed. it doesn't put more in. In a sealed deck you have to decide what's stronger. It's a matter of judgement moreso than pulls.

I understand the argument. You feel that there's only one right answer to the puzzle and anyone who drafts this will make this exact deck. Not true. I feel that the more restricted the cardpool is, the more the players have influence over their deck. If they can play both of these really good allies then they'll play both of them. But if playing one means you can't play another, then that's a choice the player has to make. The more choices that the player has to make, the better the environment is.

That's just my opinion of course.

Totally agree with Dave on this one. Opening options doesn't "take the thought out of sealed" because right now, there is no thought. At most only 3 classes can reasonably be played in your Sealed pool, more likely 1. And if the quality of your red and blue allies are actually the same, you should count yourself ridiculously lucky.

I think the solution has to come from more gold allies that can be played on either team, plus heroes that have dual-classes. But I have no idea if this is the way it works in WoW MMORPG, since I've never played it.

Either way, this is a case where flavor is seriously hampering function.