Qualifying for the Arena Championship

Like many of you, I'm very busy this time of year. I celebrate Christmas, have a December wedding anniversary, and many close family and friends have birthdays near Christmas Day. Additionally, we gifted our daughters four guinea pigs from a shelter, which has been a change of pace.

Despite being busy, I recently made time to play in an Arena Championship Qualifier with the format being Avatar Sealed. Because I had spent a lot of time streaming the format, I opted to play in the event, thinking I had a good chance of making a run.

Sealed is a volatile format. Sometimes you open a pool, and it's almost impossible to convert a bad deck into a reasonable record. Fortunately, I opened two solid decks. With a 7-2 record, I managed to wiggle my way into day two and went undefeated to lock up an invite to the Arena Champs.

Let's review my decks, and I can walk you through my choices to highlight teachable moments about the process.

Day one ACQ

Unfortunately, I didn't keep the screenshot I took of the deck via the Arena client, but I have this nice one from 17lands.

Cards I didn't play

On day one, I played this Bant deck that had a light green splash for Aang, at the Crossorads and Katara, the Fearless. There wasn't anything I desperately wanted to include that didn't have a spot, and I wasn't struggling for playables. The only card I would have happily played from my sideboard was the two copies of It'll Quench Ya! I didn't play Quench because it was harder on my mana to cast early, as you need to have the land when you want to cast it. Additionally, I already had a pair of Octopus Forms to protect my strong creatures, and I didn't want too many dead draws in my deck after the first few turns of the game. On top of that, I'm playing almost exclusively at sorcery speed in this deck.

This deck was extremely powerful, and it almost felt like playing a Constructed deck when it gained momentum. The one problem with the deck, despite being filled with creatures, was that it wasn't that aggressive. My curve and the interaction work well, but the creatures were mostly underwhelming. Even though I won one or two games over nine rounds by playing nuts-and-bolts Magic, a majority of my games were won with my powerful engine of Aang, Katara, Hakoda, and Water Tribe Rallier, a combination that made my deck consistent. Hakoda, Rallier, and Aang could all find each other, and when combined with Katara, they could make things get out of hand quickly.

Aang was my MVP of the day, and Airbender Ascension was my runner-up. Airbender Ascension created a bunch of soft locks with Invasion Submersible, where I could bounce an opponent's permanent, waterbend the vehicle back into a creature on their end step, and bounce again on my end step. This happened semi-regularly, and if it wasn't the sub, it was Jet Freedom Fighter loops that usually forced my opponent to concede. The presence of Aang and Water Tribe Rallier made it easy to set up these loops.

During the event, I noticed how powerful the engines I could set up were, but my deck had some glaring holes, as well. First, my deck relied on maintaining a battlefield presence, so sweepers were a significant problem. I was fortunate enough to only play against a few decks with sweepers, and while I lost to one, I managed to do just enough to beat the others. My deck was good at setting up board stalls and grinding out the opponent, but this is successful only when you're doing something more powerful than your opponent. This was true for me in most cases; however, my powerful thing required a few pieces to be in play while setting up a board stall, which sweepers absolutely destroyed.

Incredibly powerful creatures were another weakness. While my deck had a reasonable amount of interaction, I played against Katara so often that it felt like it was a door prize, and I showed up late and didn't receive mine. I ended up putting in Rocky Rebuke as a mediocre piece of removal that could get the job done against Katara. While I beat it on a few occasions, I either got lucky that it only showed up in one game, or I had the removal at the right time.

I managed to squeak out my final round with under a minute on my clock against an opponent who played very well and had a strong Rakdos deck.

This brings us to day two, with my deck below.

Day two

I opened a great Naya deck that was full of allies, had a white base, and used a different game plan. I tried to do the exact opposite with this deck compared to my last. I wanted to out-tempo my opponent, curve out, and win more traditional Limited games with my Glider Staffs.

When I first built the deck, I included a Lightning Strike, Firebending Lesson, and A Rumbling Arena, which is not pictured. I realized this stretched my mana a lot for the Firebending Lesson and Lightning Strike only. Rather than destroy my mana for a slight upgrade in card quality, I decided on a lighter splash of just Bumi and Toph. This was easier to facilitate with Jasmine Dragon Tea Shop in my deck. Between this land and Seismic Sense, my deck ran as smoothly as butter. District Guide also did a lot of work fixing.

Seismic Sense is criminally underrated by most players I know, as it's able to fix mana and find bombs at an efficient rate.

This deck originally started with Yip Yip in the mainboard, but I ended up siding it out in every game two and three. Yip Yip is an efficient combat trick, especially in a deck with all allies, but Sealed often isn't about winning combats. Usually, it comes down to presenting threats and winning, or losing to, bombs. I ended up changing it to Origin of Metalbending for the last match. Origin played nicely in combat, but mostly I wanted a disenchant effect for a variety of enchantments, vehicles, and equipment. There are many strong enchantment cards that are important to kill, especially against winning records. I was vulnerable to Katara and other powerful creatures, so depending on the situation, I used this slot to board in either the Lightning Strike or Sandbender's Storm.

I ended up going 4-0 on day two. I had a lot of close matches, and my final was the least close. My opponent, who I know from Rivals League, played well to get to 3-0, as he had a low-power deck compared to my other opponents. It was nice to have an easy, stress-free fourth match.

As for the Arena Championship, I'm excited to have a high-level event to play in again. It's been a while since I've played an event with such high stakes and a possibility of qualifying for the World Championships. As of right now, I'll be testing for the event with newly crowned two-time World Champion Seth Manfield and my favorite Limited streamer, Kyle "TheHamTV" Rose, among others.

The event's format is Standard, so expect more Standard content out of me in the near future. Until then, I'm happy to be back in the saddle. Wish me luck, because I'm sure I'll need it.