I thought i’d write a little article to look at the deck I played for the Theros pre-release. I started off by picking the Path of Ambition (black) and I ended up getting some really nice rares from my six packs. This is what I got: [card]Chained to the Rocks[/card] [card]Nykthos Shrine to Nyx[/card] [card]Reaper of the Wilds[/card] x2 (1 from seeded booster) [card]Bow of Nylea[/card] [card]Pyxis of Pandemonium[/card] So from this list of rares I decided to go with a B/G control-ish deck. I splashed blue to run one copy of [card]Aqueous Form[/card]. This is what I can remember of my deck list. [deck title=”B/G pre-release deck”] [Land] *8 Swamp *7 Forest *2 Island *1 Nykthos Shrine to Nyx [/Land] [Creatures] *4 Baleful Eidolon *2 Reaper of the Wilds *1 Nemesis of Mortals *1 Abhorrent Overlord *1 Returned Centaur *2 Voyaging Satyr *1 Leafcrown Dryad [/Creatures] [Instants] *1 Boon of Erebos *1 Pharikas Cure *1 Lash of the Whip [/Instants] [Sorceries] *1 Sip of Hemlock [/Sorceries] [Enchantments] *1 Bow of Nylea *1 Aqueous Form *1 Vipers Kiss [/Enchantments] [Artifacts] *1 Prowlers Helm *1 Travellers Amulet *1 Burnished Hart [/Artifacts] [/deck] There may be 1 or 2 cards wrong in this but this is basically what I was playing. I was pretty lucky to get 4 of the [card]Baleful Eidolon[/card] because he is great for stalling the board early game. My goal with this deck was to use my early deathtouch creatures and removal to keep me going to the late game where I could drop [card]Nemesis of Mortals[/card] or [card]Abhorrent Overlord[/card] and then take the victory. Alternatively I could make something unblockable and then swing with that to win. One thing that I was lacking was some card draw though. I got no copies of [card]Read the Bones[/card] at all which meant that I could run out of fuel at times. I did get a couple of [card]Scourgemark[/card] but I didn’t feel that the card was good enough to justify it even though it does let you draw a card. So in my first three games I went 3-0 and was pretty happy with how the deck was working. These three games all went long so I was able to drop my big creatures and deal lethal. My last two games however didn’t go so well for me. I lost both my last two matches. The first deck was mono black and this guy had got all of the removal in his packs. He was able to destroy everything I played and because I lacked card draw he quickly ran me out of steam. After losing this match I realised that I had pulled a [card]Dark Betrayal[/card] in one of my packs and I could’ve sideboarded it in. Hindsight is 20/20 🙂 My last match was against U/W and its goal was to hit hard and fast. This was a problem for me because I wanted the game to go long to drop my fatties. He also had a [card]Cavalry Pegasus[/card] in his deck which meant that my deathtouch wall was pretty irrelevant in the early game. I lost pretty badly to this deck. So out of 18 people taking part in this event I came away in 5th place. I wish that I could’ve got some more card draw so that I didn’t run out of steam so fast but life goes on and I got some valuable rares to take home 🙂