Last time I wrote I was confessing to missing top 8 of a sealed ptq with an absolutely insane pool.  At that tournament, as often happens for a seat-all-players, I was sitting near Chris Calcano for the sealed build.  Before we opened our pools to get started, I had offered him the blind-trades, and he had turned me down, poor fellow.

Well, fate had his back this weekend.  Chris opened up a sealed pool which allowed him to play 1 Mountain and all plains and forests for basics, splashing 1 red card, 1 blue card (off 2 obelisks) and still playing 6 rares.  Yes, 6.  Included in those six were 2 battlegrace angels, a stoic angel, and a sigil of distinction.  Unlike myself, Calcano was able to parlay his insane pool into a top 8.  I draft-capped him, and here’s approximately what happened.  Relevant cards are listed, bold is what he picked, and discussion follows in italics with me (GCB), Matt Ferrando (MF) (who also watched Chris’s draft as it progressed) and Chris Calcano (CC).

–Pack 1–
1: Arcane Sanctum, Sharding Sphynx, Soul’s Fire, Kathari Screecher
GCB: I guess I can see it as a forceful choice, but at this table I would take the bomb.  True, you pass 3 blue cards which is better signaling, but Sharding Sphynx can win games by itself and I like to draft a little more passively.
MF: Sharding Sphinx is definitely my pick, its not easy to deal with and unlike “dragons” it starts to take effect immediately if you have other artifact men in play.
CC: I think Soul’s Fire is one of the top red commons in shards draft, i figured with it being the lone red card in the pack my neighbor would pick up on that and make my draft go smoother. I later discussed the pick with GCB and Matt F and we all came to the conclusion that I was dumb and should’ve taken the Sphinx lol.

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