Team Sealed

Players grouped into teams of 3. Each team is given a pool of 180 cards (a bit less than the size of 3 standard size pools). Teams build three separate decks with sideboards from the collective pool, then choose a player to pilot each. The team with the most match wins is the winner.

Teams build decks collaboratively and players can get help from and discuss games with their teammates during games.

Like traditional Sealed, the number of players and teams can be any size you like. The only limit is the size of the Cube. For most Cubes and playgroups, six players split into two teams works well. With a larger cube, you can create more teams and potentially a larger tournament structure. For larger tournaments, each team plays one round of three parallel matches against another. The first team that wins two of those matches advances as the winner.

Pool size is flexible. 180 cards is taken as a baseline from how limited team sealed is usually played, with 12 packs for each team of 3. Because Cubes are most often designed with the idea that all cards are similarly playable, smaller pools may work well too.

If you’re less interested in the experience of drafting, and love the team experience, Team Sealed is a great alternative. It can be a great option for newer players, and especially groups with different levels of experience. Newer players get the benefit of help from their team throughout the entire experience including deckbuilding and playing.

Typical Cube Sealed has a few challenges. Compared to Limited with sealed booster packs, Cubes are often much more synergistic and have a more consistent level between cards. The result is that building a Cube Sealed deck can be extremely challenging. It’s difficult to evaluate where the most powerful cards are, and synergistic pieces often don’t make sense together. Team Sealed largely mitigates this by giving players a much larger pool with better chances of having support for particular themes.