Some of you may have seen the BBC shows Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, where modern cops were shifted back in time to the seventies and eighties. My week has felt a bit like that. Last weekend, I was playing in Stronghold release events. This weekend, I’ll be attending Alara Reborn Prereleases. It’s like jumping backward and forward a decade at a time.
The contrast is interesting. Stronghold was a decent set. For its time, it was a very good set. Playing Tempest / Stronghold drafts and Alara /Conflux drafts backs to back, however, reminds me just how much better today’s Magical cards actually are.
To remind yourself of this fact, I have one simple suggestion.
Go to a Prerelease
The prereleases are happening around the world. They are everywhere — there are five within easy driving distance of my house. Here’s a link to Wizards lists of locations. The prereleases come in two flavors…
The local prereleases are coming to local stores everywhere. Your local store may handle things slightly differently, but most of the stores I’m familiar with will have three types of events. They will run a sealed event, with each player getting three boosters of Shards of Alara and three boosters of Alara Reborn. They will probably run drafts, with one pack of Shards and two of Alara Reborn. Finally, they will generally run open dueling (see below).
The Regional Prereleases are huge, with lots of players, multiple events, artists and special playmats — in addition to everything the small prereleases have, but in greater numbers. The larger stores and Regional Prereleases may also run Two-Headed Giant events, and other types of tournaments. Here’s a link with information on the whereabouts of these events.
Personally, I could drive the 300 miles — each way – to the big Regional Prerelease in the Twin Cities, but then we would have to kennel the dogs and so forth. Instead, I plan to play FNM, and possibly the Midnight Madness flight at one local store, then the Saturday prerelease… and then I will be running a prerelease at another store on Sunday. Seems like good times.
Play Open Dueling
One of the formats I am really looking forward to at the prerelease is open dueling. This is a semi-casual event that usually runs for a couple hours about mid-day or mid-afternoon. You get one of the five Alara Reborn intro packs, at random, which contains the new “Precon” deck, plus one sealed booster of Alara Reborn. You can either open the booster and add some of the cards, or just keep the booster and play the precon deck itself. You play single games against other precon players, and your opponent can play either an open dueling deck or their deck from the sealed event. If you play games against five different opponents, no matter the outcome, you get another booster pack.
The open dueling format is great for new players. It is very low pressure — there are no prizes on the line. You get a chance to play some of the new cards, and you get a foil rare and two boosters, all for a very low price. From my perspective, however, the best part is that you can play more Magic. I often finish matches early, then sit around waiting for the next round to start. When playing in the big sealed events, I have never had any trouble fitting in a half dozen open dueling games as well. I get my hands on more cards, play more games, and am guaranteed to come home with enough boosters for a couple of drafts later that week.
Besides, it’s fun.
Personally, I never add the booster pack, and I don’t even look at my cards. I bust the precon, shuffle it lightly, sleeve it up, and start playing. I don’t even know what colors I am playing until I draw my opening hand. It is a lot more fun. Sure, I could read the decklist before my first game, but why? Open dueling is all about fun, and playing blind recreates the fun of early prereleases, before the days of complete spoilers and articles on the format written beforehand.
Mana Fixing at the Prerelease
When I first heard that Alara Reborn was an all gold set, I had a number of reactions. The first reaction — well, after the “hey, cool!” reaction — was concern about sealed at the prerelease. With a regular sealed, we would be getting a mix of Shards, Conflux, and Reborn, so we would have a decent mix of Obelisks, Panoramas, tri-lands, land cycling, etc. However, at a prerelease, we will only have Shards and Alara Reborn. That means none of the Conflux land cyclers, no Armillary Sphere, no Exploding Borders, no Mana Cylix, and no Ruptured Spire. That made me worry a bit — no, a lot — that the prerelease could have a lot of matches decided by mana screw.
I’m less worried now.
Reborn has a cycle of multicolored artifacts (Borderposts) that have a generic alternative casting cost and that tap for two colors of mana. For example:
Firewild Borderpost
1GR
Artifact
You may pay 1 and return a basic lands you control to its owner’s hand, rather than pay Firewild Borderpost’s mana cost.
Firewild Borderpost comes into play tapped.
{tap}: add {R} or {G} to your mana pool.
The official spoilers have also shown us a common creature with forestcycling for {2} and plainscycling for {2}. Presumably that card is also part of a cycle.
Shards of Alara has 101 commons and 60 uncommons. Alara Reborn has 60 commons. If we open three boosters of Shards and three of Reborn, we will have 30 commons and 9 uncommons from each set. That means we have a roughly 50% chance of getting at least one Obelisk per pack (odds of an individual common being a given card is 1 in 101, 5 in 101 chance of the common being an Obelisk, times 10 cards.) The chance of opening a particular Obelisk in three packs of Shards is 30%. The chance of not opening any Obelisks at all in three packs is about 12%. The same is true for Panoramas.
The chances of getting a tri-land, like Jungle Shrine, in your pool are about 75%. You have a 15% chance of getting a particular tri-land.
The chance of getting at least one Borderpost per pack is over 80%. The odds of getting one that will tap for any given color of mana is about 30% per pack. The odds of getting a particular Borderpost in the three packs you will open is about 25%.
The MTGSalvation spoilers also show a common Fertile Ground variant. That is a 1 in 60 chance per card, or roughly 50% chance with three packs with 10 commons per pack.
I think.
Actually, I know that the math is not quite correct. The odds of a card being any given common are 1 in 101 for Shards and 1 in 60 for Alara Reborn, but the odds are not additive since the distribution with a pack follows print runs, and is not completely random. That changes the calculation, as does the existence of foils. Still, my estimates are pretty close.
It looks like nearly all the prerelease pools will have at least some mana fixing. However, the distribution will vary. I want to get a pool with a bunch of them — a couple Panoramas, a tri-land, a couple Borderposts, and an on-color land cycler for a start. I suspect that the decks with the better mana fixing will have a big advantage at the prerelease.
Just don’t open the pool with no Panoramas, no Obelisks, no land cyclers and no taplands. The odds of that are low (0.072%, if I did the math correctly), but they are not zero. Someone, somewhere is going to open that pool. I just hope it is not me.
Drafting Triple Alara Reborn
At some prereleases, people have wanted to draft triple new set. I suspect that, once Alara Reborn appears online, that will be an option. I’m not sure it will be a good one. At prereleases, Wizards is recommending Shards / Reborn / Reborn. As much as I would like to get my hands on more new cards, I think I like that option better.
For one thing, Shards provides more mana fixing, which will be critical. Shards also provides some utility cards, like Oblivion Ring and Disenchant effects, that will also be critical. Simple removal — especially mono-colored removal — is also non-existent in Reborn.
I have recently been drafting some triple Stronghold online. At first, I tried doing that for “fun.” Big mistake. Later, I made Top 8 in a couple Tempest / Stronghold sealed PEs, and had to draft triple Stronghold again. It isn’t pretty. Stronghold is actually a pretty balanced set, but adding a booster or two from Tempest does make it a lot more interesting.
Seven Things to Make your Prerelease Better
You really should go to the prerelease. It will be a blast, even if you don’t try open dueling. When you go, please remember a couple of things. They will make your day run smoother.
1) Listen to the Head Judge
At the beginning of your event, the head judge will spend some time talking. Please listen. He will try to keep his announcements short, but what he says is important. The HJ announcement generally breaks down to into three types of information: what you need to do to play, what will get you kicked out, and what you will probably want to know sometime — like when and where you can get food.
2) Read the Cards
Every prerelease, I see players get blown out because they didn’t read the cards. Sometimes they miss the “only use this once per turn.” Sometimes they don’t realize their removal is a sorcery. Sometimes they just get it completely wrong. Read the fine cards. Carefully.
3) Call a Judge whenever necessary
If you are uncertain about something, or unsure whether something is wrong, call a judge. It is not impolite or unsporting, and it is not an imposition on the judge. It’s what we judges are here for. Moreover, we want calls. At the last prerelease I judged, I was bored out of my mind half the time. I wanted to be doing something. Ideally, I would have liked to be playing, but barring that, I want to be a busy judge. Call me.
4) Don’t play your prerelease foil
You are allowed to play with the cards that are inside the six booster packs you are given for the sealed event you are in, and extra basic lands. You cannot play your prerelease foil, the cards that you opened in some other event, or the good mana fixers you brought from home. Doing so is cheating.
5) Arrange prize sharing if you like, but play it out
Most prerelease sealed events are Swiss only — they don’t have Top 8s. Technically, you can only split prizes in the finals of a single elimination event. Prereleases are not single elimination. Therefore, no draws. It is also illegal to concede a match in return for anything of value. In other words, saying things like “I can still win packs, at 2-1, but you are 1-1-1 so you cannot. Scoop to me and I’ll share” is bad. It’s bribery, and it will get you disqualified without prizes. So will randomly determining a winner by doing things like rolling dice to prevent a draw.
Just don’t.
What is okay is saying “Let play it out, but agree to even out the prizes.” Most good TOs create prize payouts that make this possible — at our events, a record of 4-0 gets 12 packs, and 3-1 gets 6. If players want to play it out, but have the winner give the loser three packs, that’s fine. The important thing is that the match is played out to a finish, and that the packs did not influence the outcome. No bribery — just making losing a bit less harsh. (I have also seen splits like winner gets 10, loser 8, etc.)
If you have any question about what you can and cannot do, ask a judge.
6) Keep track of your sideboard
This should be obvious, but don’t leave your sideboard lying around. Keep it in your pocket. When I play, I like to wear either cargo pants or an old bush jacket with large pockets, so I can keep my dice, notepad, play mat, sleeves, book or iPod, deck and sideboard cards in my pockets. I don’t want to carry everything in my hands, and I really don’t want to leave stuff on the tables.
Forgetting / losing a bunch of brand new cards, especially things like the prerelease foil, sucks big time.
7) Switch it up
I like to rebuild my deck often at a prerelease, and will sometimes sideboard into completely new builds. After all, this is an 8k event. I don’t have a lot of prizes or rating points at stake — the main purpose is to try out as many cards as possible. Prereleases are great opportunities to try those funky combos and strange interactions that probably won’t cut it once everyone knows the sets and how to draft efficiently. It’s a great time to take some chances.
Go for it.
Hopefully, I’ll see you at a prerelease this weekend.
PRJ
Not on MTGO this weekend.