If you're nothing like me, you're excited for Vintage Masters on Magic Online. Boasting a mixture of the most powerful cards ever to grace this game and cards like Mistmoon Griffin, Vintage Masters promises to bring the power to the people.

If you're following Quiet Speculation on twitter (@QuietSpec) you're A) doing it right and, B) probably aware of this guy. Boom. Sealed deck generator.

Things like this have a tendency to disappear, but while you still can, have a ball. I banged out a few sealed pools and I have some initial impressions.

Tribal Isn't Happening In Sealed

I wanted to live the dream and build a sweet Goblins deck. My first booster contained a Goblin General AND a Goblin Matron. "Hot damn" I thought. "This is going to get there."

Pack 2 yielded no gobbos but did get me a Giant Strength and a Chain Lightning. This was really shaping up.

Pack 3 yielded another Goblin General and a Falter. No other goblins, but I wasn't worried.

Pack 4 I started to worry. The only red card was Flowstone Hellion.

Pack 5 gave me my first Kindle, another card you love to see by itself.

Pack 6 gave me another Hellion and a Rites of Initiation which was a bummer.

Well, maybe I just whiffed on gobbos. I went back through trying to build elves. Same deal, only without the benefit of any lords unless we decide to be charitable and consider Edric, Spymaster of Trest an elf lord. Birds, same story. I generated more sealed pools. This time I got a Skirk Drill Sergeant and a Beetleback Chief but no lords. Another yielded me the same sack of sad. There are enough goblin cards that you're likely going to have a very good draft deck. But if you're playing sealed, you're likely not getting there and to a greater extent than most sealed formats where tribal is iffy at best. If you like jamming tribal as much as I do, stay away from sealed unless you're feeling lucky.

Sealed Is An Actual Lottery

With such a high buy-in price for sealed events and the prizes so heavy toward having to win the whole thing to be worth it, that you're likely just jamming sealed for the experience, not the EV. However, in my generating of sealed pools for the lulz, I packed a foil Tropical Island which was so exciting I literally forgot for a second that this wasn't real. Not only do I not get a foil Trop for real, I don't even have a tangible digital reproduction of a real foil Trop; I had a fake digital facsimile of a tangible yet still digital recreation of a foil Trop. And I still pooped my pants when I saw that in the pack. Foil duals are going to be worth quite a few tix (that's what the cool kids call Magic Online tickets; we call them 'tix') and a good pull like that can mitigate the misery of having to say "I could have pulled that off if I had topdecked one of my three copies of Paralyze" for an entire afternoon. I still think draft is the play because you can build one of the many archetypes much easier. Good luck making storm in sealed. Hello storm draft deck! Still, Sealed will have random gifts like foil gas, and those can end up being more valuable than the event prizes. Go in apprised of that.

I'll jame a few more of these sealed decks and see if any of them yield a deck I'd be happy to play with. Until then, play around with the deck generator. Let me know if you get a deep enough pool to try a tribal deck.