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!