The most important difference is, you can play with a 40 card deck in Sealed Play. It means you will have a thin deck and you are more likely to be able to execute your strategies.

The second difference is, you are going to build your own unique deck and you are going to face opponents who did the same thing. You won't expect what your opponent is going to cast and he won't expect what you might just cast as well.

There is another minor difference I have noticed. You can actually have more than four of the same card in your Sealed Play deck.

And the final difference is, unfortunately you can't play a game including more than 2 players with your Sealed Play deck. So you're stuck with 2P FFA.

The short answer is no. You can't add more cards to your pool after getting your last, 9th booster pack in the Sealed Play campaign.

I read the complains of players about how some people will get lucky, grab cool mythic rares from boosters and dominate the Sealed Play or people who get all the Sealed Play deck slots will be much more likely to get a great pool to play with. This is partially true. However don't forget that you are unable to transfer cards between your decks in Sealed Play and currently there is no way of resetting your pool, no matter what you do. I even deleted my save files to see if I could get different boosters. If you refuse to buy slots for new decks, I can understand that. You paid the full price for the game and don't want to pay for additional slots. But don't just throw away the new Sealed Play feature right away. Build a deck according to this guide and play a few games and after winning a few games, you will like the fact that you can beat people using the cards you put together. Best of all, some of them are people who bought all of the slots, unlike you. If you don't find this satisfying, keep boycotting the Sealed Play feature, however I've been playing DotP for a long time and I don't think Stainless is going to change the Sealed Play at all.

What makes Sealed Play special is that you are stuck with what you've got just like everybody else and what makes you good in Sealed Play is how good you are at getting the most out of your pool. Yes, it would be so awesome if you could just get another Murder instead of the stupid Assassinate or if you could just transfer your Day of Judgement to your Door to Nothingness deck and it would be perfect. Believe me even the folks who bought all of the slots are thinking the same. You will be alright, fellow planeswalker!

First of all, you shouldn't try to build a final deck until you unwrap the three additional booster packs that can be earned by playing the campaign. It will be a waste of time as you can grab really decent cards from those three booster packs which can make you decide building a deck with different colors. Just build a temporary deck manually or by using the auto build feature and beat the campaign.

When you finally unwrapped all of your booster packs, remove all the cards from your deck by resetting your deck and sort the cards in your pool by rarity. Check your rarest cards, decide which ones you could use. Rarest cards are not always the best cards. There are horrible rare cards out there. Try to avoid expensive cards in Sealed Play. You only play with 40 cards in sealed play. You don't want half of them to be land cards so you can play your mana hungry cards. You will end up being mana screwed all the time if you do that. Sealed play seemed to me too creature-centric at first but that's untrue. There are many instant and sorcery spells you can use to change the tide of the game if you use them at the right time. After you've noted down all your rare cards, try to find cards that would go well with that rare card. Let me give you an example: Might of Oaks (Green instant with 4 mana cost, "Target creature gets +7/+7 until end of turn.") I would want a deck with a potential of spawning lots of creatures with this card in my hand. So when I attack, I could turn one of my little saprolings that my opponent didn't care to block to a powerhouse dealing great damage which can make you win the game.

Put together some creatures and instants, note down the mana costs of the cards. Think of the following black cards now: Murder, Distress, Sign in Blood, Vampire Nighthawk. They all require 2-3 mana but they need two of them to be black. If you are building a red black deck and using many black cards such as these, you should have more black mana than red mana. You don't want to have 1 black and 5 mana on the battlefield with your Vampire Nighthawk waiting to be cast in your hand. If you adjust your lands properly, you won't have to use Terramorphic Expanse lands. Also I would like to add that if you got many fetch lands such as Cultivate and Rampant Growth and you want to have a deck with green color, make sure you have more green lands in the deck so you will be more likely to have a green land in your starting hand and you can use your fetch land cards to pick the other lands you need. Fetch lands will also thin your deck so you will have more chance to draw needed cards.

Avoid using the artifact staves in your decks. They will slow you down and you won't be playing a single colored deck to be able to benefit from them constantly. You can build a three colored deck if you really want, I have seen some successful three colored Sliver decks in Sealed Play but I personally don't recommend them. You can build a mono colored deck too but it is very unlikely that you will get great cards for a single color. Don't worry about the in-game Deck Strength meter, it doesn't matter at all. If you don't have creatures that require 5+ mana to cast, you are good even with 15 lands in your deck.



If you really wanted a Green & Blue deck and you are mad that you didn't get good cards for those colors, don't force yourself to build your Green & Blue deck anyway. Try to discover a potentially better deck lying in your pool of 126 cards.

No, it won't be the perfect deck with that last card you just added. That card won't make you win all the games you play. If you're dying to add that card in your deck, just find another card to remove from your deck first. It really matters that you have the minimum amount of cards in your deck.

I don't suggest going below 12 creatures however it is okay if you use cards like Awaken the Ancient which enchants your red land to a 7/7 creature with haste or instants or sorceries that can copy another creature. Don't forget that you need many creatures in Sealed Play. Synergy is very important however don't depend on it. You don't want your Slivers to get butchered when you are attacking by your opponent simply dropping that Murder instant to kill the Sliver that gives the other Slivers a +3/+3 bonus.

If two of them ends up at your opening hand and you don't draw enough lands to cast them in time, you are doomed. Most players prefer fast decks in Sealed Play with cheap creatures. So should you!

Your Tormented Soul becomes really cool with your Oakenform and Mark of the Vampire enchantmens. What? Did your opponent just murder it? Too bad. You just lost three cards. Having 3-4 enchantments is fine, however don't build a deck around the enchantments unless you will rely on your Hexproof creatures.



I'm tired of beating players trying to win using Door to Nothingness. Destroying an artifact is not really a big deal. There are many cards that influences players to build a deck for it such as this one. Try to build a deck that is flexible. Things won't always go your way.

I'm hoping to expand this guide with the help of the community. Please post your opinions and thoughts and I will happily update the guide with new advices and information.

This is my second guide for Magic: The Gathering. I hope you like it.

Griffith