5 Tips To Win At Sealed Deck In 2020

The Sealed Deck format is often thought of as “luck-based.” While it is true that there’s a lot of luck in Sealed, there’s also a lot of skill involved and there are some skills that are exclusive to Sealed alone. Opening the best rares certainly helps, but there’s a reason you always see the same people doing well in Sealed tournaments, and it’s not because they always open the best rares. Or at least it’s mostly not because of that – in some cases it actually is that (see: Ondrej Strasky).

In today’s article, I have for you five tips that I believe will be instrumental in leveling up your Sealed Deck game.

1. Know the Format You’re Playing

Most things I will talk about in this article apply to all Sealed formats, but each specific Sealed format has its particularities that are worth knowing about before you build your deck. These particularities can range from very generic to very specific, and for Sealed we’re usually trying to find the more generic ones because they’re the ones that will inform our deckbuilding and playing decisions.

For example, one peculiarity of Theros Beyond Death, in my opinion, is that Dreadful Apathy is better than Banishing Light (most people disagree, but I feel pretty strongly that it is). This is for a multitude of reasons – there are Aura synergies (such as Heliod’s Pilgrim and Siona, Captain of the Pyleas); cards that can bring it back from the graveyard (such as Rise to Glory and Archon of Falling Stars); and a lot of instant-speed enchantment removal that creates combat blowouts with Banishing Light. Another peculiarity of the format, for example, is that I believe black is the best color.

Knowing these things about the format is very helpful when you draft, because it impacts your choices, but it’s not helpful for Sealed Deck. I don’t need to think, “In the future I will get Heliod’s Pilgrim, therefore I will pick Dreadful Apathy over Banishing Light,” as I’m never choosing between these cards in my pool. If I have them, I will likely play both, and if I somehow have to choose between one of them, I will know exactly how many synergy cards I have – if I have zero Heliod’s Pilgrim or Rise to Glory, then perhaps Banishing Light is better in my pool. Similarly, knowing that black is good is not very useful, as either I have the right black cards, or I don’t. Decisions in Draft are always made thinking about the future, but with Sealed you have all the information at the starting point, so you don’t need to speculate.

Instead, you should try to figure out more generic things about the format. This means, for example, knowing how fast the format is, what removal exists, how big the creatures are, what power and toughness breakpoints matter, etc. When I write a Prerelease primer, these are the things I try to focus on – particularities for that specific set that will impact how you evaluate every card.

Some examples:

In Theros Beyond Death, it’s worth knowing that the set is overall not fast and that there are plenty of bombs that you would like answers for – this impacts both how you build and how you play.
In Core Set 2020, it was worth knowing that there were a lot of ways to punish one-toughness creatures, therefore 2/1s and 3/1s were worse than normal.
In Throne of Eldraine, it was useful to know that a lot of the blockers had four toughness, so a creature with four power was much more likely to get through.
In a format like Rivals of Ixalan, there were many cards that punished blocking, so that changed how you approached the early-game because racing was easier than simply defending.

Each set will have something for you to work with, and before you build your Sealed Deck you should learn the overarching characteristics of a format. The best way to learn these things is to just practice – build Sealed decks and play games and you will soon learn, for example, what toughness breakpoints are good. The good news is that a lot of this knowledge will actually overlap with drafting – if one-toughness creatures are bad in Draft, they will almost certainly turn out to be bad in Sealed too, so you need to play way fewer games of Sealed if you’ve also drafted. Some aspects, however, are not duplicated – the speed of the format, for example, is often going to be different between the two formats, so you still need to do some Sealeds.

2. Sideboard Way, Way, Way More

Everything else in this article is the difference between reasonable players and good players playing Sealed. This topic is the difference between good players and great players. One of the big differences between Sealed and Draft is that, in Draft, you usually have zero to three cards you can reasonably sideboard in; in Sealed, you have upwards of 30. You can have literally an entire deck that you’re not playing. It’s a big resource you have, and a major mistake to not utilize it.

There are several different types of sideboarding in Sealed:

Regular sideboarding. This is the same as Draft sideboarding, and similar to Constructed. Some cards just look like sideboard cards, and it will be obvious when you have to sideboard them in – for example, Plummet versus a deck with flyers, or Celestial Purge versus a Rakdos deck, or enchantment removal versus a deck full of enchantments.

Archetype sideboarding. This includes cards that are good against specific archetypes but that might be too narrow to maindeck. For example, it’s quite common to sideboard in Cancel or Mind Rot versus slower decks or decks with bombs. It’s also common to sideboard in good defensive creatures versus an aggressive deck. This is as far as most players will go.

Matchup sideboarding. This is where things start getting narrow, and where the good players can have a real advantage. This consists in changing your deck to specifically beat the player you’re playing against, including potentially bringing in cards that aren’t exactly good.

For example, if you play against a player who has a very slow deck and a lot of Walls, you could take out all your two-drops for expensive cards – they don’t have to be good cards, just cards that have a higher impact on the game (something like Enemy of Enlightenment will do). Alternatively, if you feel that their deck is much better than yours in the late-game, then you could cut all your expensive cards and make your deck more aggressive to try to go under them.

Here, you should throw preconceived notions of what’s good and what’s bad out the window, and realize that you’re not trying to build a generically good deck – you’re trying to build a deck to beat specifically this opponent.

It’s also important to see how the power and toughness of your creatures match up to what the opponent is presenting:

Sometimes your opponent will have, say, two Heart-Piercer Bows. In this case, you could sideboard out all your one-toughness creatures.
Sometimes they will have several Nyxborn Seaguards, and then you might want to swap your Rage-Scarred Berserker for a Dreamshaper Shaman – the Rage-Scarred Berserker is usually the stronger card, but against an opponent with 2/5s specifically, you’d rather have the Shaman.
Sometimes they will have several 3/3 creatures, so you will want to swap your two-mana 2/2s for two-mana 3/1s.
In some situations, your opponent will have such a slow deck that you’ll feel that you can splash an additional color for a bomb – or even for just a big creature.
Sometimes they will have such a fast deck that you will feel that you have to remove your current splash because you cannot afford to have a dead card early on.

The key here is that, once you know what you’re playing against, all bets are off and the standard for what is “playable” drops dramatically.

Deck sideboarding. One thing you can do in Sealed is change your entire deck. This can happen because you simply misbuilt your deck and realized after the deckbuilding process was over, but it can also be because you have several potential decks and one might match up better against your particular opponent.

For example, say you have two potential builds – a Dimir control deck that you would consider an 8, and a Boros aggro deck that you’d consider a 7.5. Naturally, you choose the Dimir deck – after all, it’s better. Then you play against an Azorius Control deck that you’d consider a 9.5. Your Dimir deck has no chance here – their deck is just better and they will draw their better cards, since you’re both playing for the longer game. In this spot, you probably just want to swap to the Boros deck that is slightly worse, because it has a better shot in this matchup. Or perhaps it’s Game 3 and you have ten minutes left on the clock, so the aggressive deck is better too.

Sometimes, a particular matchup causes you to reevaluate certain cards in your deck to a point where your first choice is no longer the best. For example, imagine said Dimir deck is a 7.5 partially on the strength of two copies of Doom Blade. You then play against an opponent who is nearly mono-black, which means you’re going to sideboard the Doom Blades out. At this point, you need to ask yourself if you should still even be playing black – these two Doom Blades are likely some of your best black cards, and they were huge draws towards the color during deckbuilding. If they aren’t there anymore, perhaps the entire color is not good enough.

Alternatively, you could be playing a Boros deck and have two copies of Noxious Grasp in your sideboard. You then get paired against a Selesnya deck. Noxious Grasp is likely going to be the best card in your deck against them, so you should strongly consider switching to a black deck if you can. Against the field, the Boros deck was the better choice, but against a Selesnya player the black deck might be superior.

Finally, regardless of what you do with your sideboard, adjust the manabase! Almost nobody does this. Imagine you’re playing a Simic deck with nine Forests and eight Islands. For sideboarding, you take out two green cards for two copies of Cancel. Your deck should almost certainly have an extra Island at this point. If you dramatically lower your curve, you can cut a land (or even two lands, potentially). If you increase your curve, you can add a land. Don’t forget to do this!

3. Choose Power Over Both Consistency and Having a Curve

Being consistent and having a curve are important attributes for a Sealed Deck, but they are not as important as simply being powerful. If you’re consistently mediocre, that’s usually not good enough to win. In Sealed, your top priority is having powerful cards. This means you will do as much as you can to play your best cards – you will try as much as possible to build your deck in their colors and you will splash for them if necessary. If this means you end up with a bad curve – such as no two-drops and a lot of three- and four-drops instead, or a big number of five-drops, that’s usually okay too.

To what extent you should go to play your best cards depends on a couple of things – how good they actually are, how many answers exist in the format, and what the rest of your deck looks like. If you have a deck that is a 9 and very consistent, then there’s no need to splash an extra bomb, as a 9 is already good enough. However, if your deck is a 6 without your bomb, then yeah, go ahead and splash it, because a 6 is not enough to win.

Sometimes, you will open a pool where the best cards are, for example, red and green, but you’ll also open a Dream Trawler. Unless your Gruul deck is actually great (or your Azorius deck is absolutely awful), you should very likely just be Azorius – Dream Trawler is good enough for that and your deck can usually be played in a way where you have enough defense, countermagic and card drawing, even if the cards themselves aren’t optimal. Dream Trawler is a unique card, however, in that it wins the game from almost any position and cannot be dealt with by normal means – there are bombs in other formats that are much easier to deal with and if that’s the case you have to use your judgment.

4. Make Sure You Can Beat Bombs

Since you’re going to great lengths to make sure you can play your rares, it follows logically that other people are doing this too. Add that to the fact that in Sealed a player will open twice as many rares as in Draft, and you will find yourself playing against bombs in many of your rounds. Therefore, it’s very important that you have a plan to deal with them. “I hope my opponent doesn’t have any bombs” is not a strategy that’s going to take you very far in the tournament.

In practice, this means you need to either have your own bombs or a way to deal with your opponent’s. Cards like Final Death are at a premium in Sealed, since they can deal with anything, but countermagic is also capable of filling this role – I would be okay with a deck with two copies of Deny the Divine and one Memory Drain, for example. In Draft having this many counterspells could be a problem against faster decks, but in Sealed there are very few decks that punish you.

If you don’t have your own bombs, or removal, or other ways of dealing with bombs (such as counterspells and discard), your only alternative is trying to be faster. I usually don’t like very aggressive decks in Sealed as a general rule (though it depends on the format), but it’s better than being just a worse slow deck than everyone else.

The fact that your opponent likely has bombs applies not only to deckbuilding but also to the game itself. In Sealed, I am much more conservative with my premium removal than I am in Draft, because I know there’s a high chance a bomb is coming. This is especially true for later in the tournament if you’re at the top tables, and it’s especially true if the rest of your opponent’s deck isn’t good.

One example of this is when a friend of mine played versus an Azorius deck in the late rounds of a tournament. His opponent was undefeated with an Azorius deck that they judged to not be very good; because of this, my friend surmised that there had to be something that was carrying this otherwise not very good deck to an undefeated record, and that something was probably Dream Trawler – after all, why would this person have played this Azorius deck if they didn’t have a card like that and how would they have gotten to an undefeated record this late in the tournament? So my friend held his counterspell for the entirety of Game 2, even though he hadn’t seen a Dream Trawler yet, and sure enough his opponent had it.

5. Consider Choosing to Draw First

In general, I believe people choose to draw more often than they should in Magic – in almost every matchup of almost every format, this is incorrect. Limited is the one format where the option to draw is underutilized, Sealed specifically. In Sealed, I would estimate that I choose to draw about half the time in Game 1s. This is because the games are usually slower and it’s more common to run out of cards than to run out of time, and the card advantage aspect of it can be compounded in the end (for example, you’re more likely to keep a hand on the draw than on the play in Sealed).

In general, the slowest the format is, the more likely it is that you want to draw. The more cheap answers you have, the more likely you are to want to draw as well. For example, if my deck contains two or three copies of a very cheap removal – such as Dead Weight or Shock – then I am almost always going to draw in the dark. The more card drawing you have, however, the more likely you are to want to be on the play, since your deck is already good at trading time for cards, so if you do it too much, you might die with seven cards in your hand. A deck with three copies of Thirst for Meaning, for example, should often choose to play.

In the end, yeah, a lot of Sealed is about opening the right cards, but sometimes we open the right cards and we don’t even realize it, because they don’t look like the right cards. Hopefully after this article you’ll be able to recognize the right card for your situation when you have it!