Building an Outlaws of Thunder Junction Prerelease Pack Sealed Deck, Start to Finish! | Magic MTG 

As a new player, watching you struggle with making your deck is reassuring. When i struggle hard making a deck, I can realize it's not just because I'm a noob. The pros struggle too.

‘I like this beaver a lot’ - Gavin

Take note... Even Gavin almost sorted the prosperity post cards into white even when they're not technically "white".

Something I found really useful in this video is knowing when to go off-archetype. Knowing the archetypes can be helpful, but in prerelease you may not have the cards. You built WB with no sacrifice, and you made a really good looking deck.

I've started using the Gavin Method™ of Pre-Release building and it's helped a ton, it's made assembling a deck so much faster and gives me time to help newer players at a pre-release! :D

"I'll try building both and see which I like better' This is one of my favorite things to do in sealed because really you have 2 or 3 decks

Great video. The fact that u missed eletrodominance because the card frame doesn't strongly suggest that is a red card is a wake-up call for me.

I attended my first ever prerelease and wanted to come back to say this video was incredibly helpful. Especially the creature curve suggestion.

I would try building double bruse tarl for a few reasons First is that while Jace is a really neat card, you can’t win the game off of it specifically. It’s a good accelerant card that can enable a strategy but they’re not really top ends. Red and White seem to have the best removal from what you pulled. You also have the desert that fixes your mana pretty well. Your mount that gives you additional attackers synergizes very well with outlaw medics that die and draw a card, especially when you can mount using bruce to get additional ETBs from him and possibly more Oxen.

one problem I keep seeing in every pre release: packs and the pre release kits doesnt give the tokens I need. I know we can use basically anything to represent the tokens, but having the actual thing is better

Gavin is out here taking all the good cards before the set releases 😂

A good compromise between opening packs by themselves and opening all at once for me is opening each pack and place them face down, then I take each stack and go through them as if I just pulled them out of the pack.

the respect for the store owner +++ going to do the same thing tonight for the prerelease

This has been such a helpful learning lesson! I love going to pre-releases but always struggle with time / forcing stuff. I probably would have forced mindslaver and stoneforge mystic here 😂

Your left thumb has evolved for card sorting. That is awesome!

This was GREAT. Awesome to see that it's not easy for you Gavin! I'm ready for prerelease now!

Seeing how you construct your kit is actually really helpful. Thanks for the insight!

Going tonight. Thanks for the tips!

Gavin, you can level up your method of sorting cards in a couple ways: 1) start with the easiest. Lands and either colorless or mutlicolor (depending on the set) are usually easiest to id and will have the fewest cards, making them the quickest to make their own pile. 2) if you hold the deck between your first finger and your second and third, you can actually double up your process: tuck one color between your thumb and pointer finger, and one between your ring and pinky. Do it twice as fast!

I would love to see some gameplay with these sealed decks you build. I understand that it's not conducive to your tabletop aesthetic but maybe either goldfishing the deck or doing it on Arena could be cool!

These are great, hope we see more of these in the future

Hey, Gavin thanks for the tips. I have always seperared my drafts by color then CMC, but never separeted creature and non-creature to consider when the card will actually be played unless it was obvious. So thanks. Will give it a try tomorrow. P.S. thanks for the stories and insights.

New gavin catch phrase: "you can play it if you want" 😂

Fully going for this method of opening at prerelease tonight!!

Tough pool! It was helpful to watch you build- I think you made the right deck.

I just came back for my second prerelease (MKM was the first one). Highlights of the deck were Roxanne, Starfall Savant and Stingerback Terror. It was a great time. Thanks for the video, it helped a great deal

Amazing deck building tips, thanks you 🎉

You are a monster for cracking all the packs at once. I just toss my pack wrappers once the deck is made and sleeved up.

Thank for showing so many options

What a great Pe release open for you! Some amazing cards in there

I also sort my cards this way. Also great pulls!

Gavin!! I too have a smaller thumb on my left hand! We’re out here 👍🏽

I separate by color, then look for "removal" in each stack and build based on the colors with the most removal with late game big creatures.

Oooh mindslaver! I'm smh and then you get the Mystic. 🤯

This really helped me in my first event last night. I managed to come in 2nd using the deck design advise from this video. Thanks Gavin!

This was really eye opening to me, I could really use these methods next time another prerelease rolls around.

Thanks for the guide! Have to leave it here since maybe you will see it. Please please please consider bringing back the deck box insert in the bundle. It was a great useful addition to the bundle and really feels cheap that it was removed from the bundles.

Thanks for the guide! I wasn't super happy with my pool, but still managed to go 3-2 and finish 6th with a Naya deck. Annie Flash was excellent (why is there an "if you cast it" condition!?!). I have to say there are definitely pros and cons with play boosters. Love the feeling of opening a splashy card (Mana Drain in my prize pack!) but found building a deck quite difficult, all the styles were distracting and there were so many directions with none feeling particularly strong.

I’d build both and sideboard them in depending on the match up. Never let them know your next move.

Nice!

In this situation o would have built two decks, a green blue midrange deck with the jaces and some of those good 4 drops, and a red white agro deck with calamity and Bruse as your finishers. If they are playing a fast deck I can sideboard in the UG, if they play slow, sideboard for WR

love these videos thank you

Ox Deck for me.. and see if I could splash the double blue for Jace from dual lands haha

If Gavin had some issues mixing the white cards with the alt art I cant imagine how much I'll struggle lmao Thanks for the tips, cant wait to play sealed tomorrow!!!

i have not sorted by color with that technique and i will be trying it tomorrow

the fastest way to sort is to slap the cards down in piles of each color as you open them. has the same effect as pulling out 1 color at a time but more efficient.

I would have made a Blue-Red deck, splashing white for Bruce. He has one dual land (r/w) so I think if he threw like 2-3 extra white sources he could have those two powerhouses of Oxen. Plus, if he wanted more removal, he could add an extra plains to also run some of the white removal.

Gavin I picked Bruse and the calamity horse in my pre release and went 2-1! Came 9th. Mardu is such a sick archtype in this. Really loved this pre release and thanks heaps for the guide leading up to it :) Helped me out a lot

Nice pulls!

Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel you were undervaluing Dance of the Tumbleweeds. In the GWr deck it gets your desert to enable your splash and it give you a big body late game. Feels weird to leave it out. It also does crimes by getting your desert.

Noticing the Bucolic Ranch I would have taken a look at GWr and seriously consider Calamity in such a build. Eventually I would have realized the high potential of BWr, though before actually having gotten to play with the cards I could see myself making several choices differently for the initial 40.

I'm all about that Boros life but, my aggro decks have been stopped at PR on multiple occasions. Playing aggro in Sealed is often a nail-biting experience.

"You got this!"

That casual god pool though. 😅

“That’s a nice beaver”

I swear, I've been attending PR events for over a decade and I dread this deck building challenge everytime, given how difficult it can be under a time limit, and how indecisive I am given my past mistakes. 😬

I’d go GWRU no regrets, play all the good stuff; GAMBLLLLEEEE!

I called Mardu even before seeing the golden cards :) they're also the best colors of the set so it's not that surprising

That glare on all the cards was rough

Make a circle of WUBRG with gold in the middle and artifacts/land off to the sides - it is much quicker and predictable every time. If you are playing with sleeves, consider pre-sleeving 10 lands of each color.

PRERELEASE CARD LOOKS LIKE A PRINGLE

lol black being ignored until the end

Yo! Is that a Coral Sword playmat I spy? Nice.

I feel like I would have gone blue white control with this pool

Jeskai seems viable honestly probably more fun but not as good as the Mardu option. You have the two deserts to color fix, but WB is the way I would go if 3 colors didn’t look viable

I miss good old draft boosters.

Excellent video with an explanation. Much better than normal pre-release videos that just goes through which cards are good and not.

Why does it feel like I’ve lost more than one card per pack in a prerelease with these play boosters? I feel like I’m forcing it if I go two colors now. I never had that problem with draft packs. That being said I always had 6ish cards from those colors I didn’t use with draft packs. So why does it feel like we lost more than those 6 cards with the pack design?

is that a coral sword play mat?

This pack im probably biting the bullet and going 3 color, preferably in complimentary color pairs

2:26 Seing Gavin Verhey, a designer at Wizards of the Coast, playing and thinking about Magic even more than I can in a single day, systematically mistake the BREAKING NEWS border for white cards validates me and my concerns with modern framing treatment.

I don't hate the idea of opening all the packs at once, or the quick sorting of the cards, but I usually do packs one-at-a-time for two reasons: 1. I don't have a lot of money for packs, so I only really get pack opening fun at Prerelease. Savoring it is nice. 2. I find individual pack contents and collation interesting, so I like to see what was in each pack by itself.

I like beaver

I'm only using cards that have cows or hats!

Gavin there seems to be a mistake. That kit was supposed to be mine 😂

How did you manage to open two planeswalkers in a set that only has two possible, and then almost no two-drops in a set that has like a million really good two-drops? What an odd sealed pool...

Your promo card is already a Pringle.

I’d play the two jaces me able plot anything later

16:30 Bouncelands ARE great... which is why the surveil text on this card is so bizarre; you obsolete Guildless Commons for an effect that won't come up in most cases. :( Frankly, I'd like to see you print more bouncelands (2x a given color, or 1 color and one colorless are both viable options) and to print them at (C). Ravnica was one of the best draft sets ever, and one of the most popular, which current design's unwillingness to... you know... use it as a template so bizarre.

Dear Gavin, Please reprint- Mayel the Anima - in a fancy art. Much appreciated

Gavin I love you but you are a monster for going through one color at a time in the big pile like that...XD 💚

oh so yore allowed to play the promocard?

I still can't move past the fact that foils bend so much in 2024 and that it's not addressed

Just search your pile for 23 playables. Greatest pre release advice ever. Along with open all at once. Very time efficient

Watching you struggle with color identity during the initial sort is amusing. Is that not considered a problem with designing cards if their important features are not immediately discernable?

And here’s the problem with play boosters. If a card designer and MTG genius like Gavin struggles this much to build a deck, what chance do us plebes have?

Did bro chop off his thumb?

How the fuck does this guy pull 2 Jace reawakened

... My local game store doesn't really clean up the trash from when we open packs! The trash just sort of sits there for really long time.

lol even gavin things the "prosperity" showcase cards are white cards

not a fan of some cards not being allowed in standard in this standard legal booster pack. I'd rather have all cards be from the latest, legal set, than included wasted space in old cards I cannot play with... :/

Bro like what lol

wr was more than good 3 bombs aceptable curve

Good video! Going to my first pre release tomorrow! But goodness, could you turn down the lip smacking? You do it a lot and it's not very pleasant >.< like listen to 23:20

I would pay good money for Gavin to submit to a controlled experiment to see once and for all how much slower his card sorting method is than the standard. I need him to know he is factually incorrect about this.

Anyone else think that Wizards employees get better sealed boxed than the rest of us??

dang this sealed pool was ass

Why do people still buy boxes and products when they will be REPRINTED TO OBLIVION