It’s prerelease weekend! My favorite weekend of the year. The month of buildup and the weeks of spoilers are over, and now we finally get to get our hands on the new cards. Prereleases are probably the most “casual” sanctioned event (outside of FNM, maybe) a player is going to run across. So if you’re going to the prerelease, what should you expect?
Don’t worry about about having to bring cards to play with, because all of the product is provided by the tournament organizer. There’s two formats you can expect to see at the prerelease: sealed deck, and two-headed giant.
Let’s talks about sealed deck first. Before you sign up, you’ll be asked to pick one of the ten Ravnica guilds (we’ll explain why in a moment). You’re going to receive a total of six booster to construct your deck from: four Dragon’s Maze booster, one Gatecrash guild booster, and one Return to Ravnica guild booster. Now here’s where the part where you picked a guild becomes important. The first pack will contain cards affiliated from the guild that you picked. The second pack will be that guild’s “secret ally”, which is one of the guilds from the other set that shares a color with the guild you chose.
What does that mean? For instance, let’s say you picked Azorius. The Return to Ravnica guild booster will be Azorius, while the Gatecrash guild booster will be one of the four guilds that share a color with Azorius (either Boros, Dimir, Orzhoz, or Simic). The “secret ally” of Azorius cannot be Izzet (since they’re both Return to Ravnica guilds) or Gruul (since they don’t share a color with Azorius). The pairing is completely random: you won’t know what the pairing will be until you sit down and start building your deck. You’re not forced to use both guilds if you don’t want to, but the option is there if you want it.
Otherwise, normal sealed deck building procedures apply here. You build a deck with a minimum of 40 cards, and then you play your opponent until one player has won two games. And if you do well enough, you’ll win prizes.
Two-Headed Giant is similar to the process above, except you do it with a partner. You’ll get a total of eight boosters (four Dragon’s Maze boosters, then two of each of the guild boosters), and then you’ll need to construct two decks for you and your partner to play.
You’ll also be getting the prerelease foil, which is Maze’s End. You can’t use it during the prerelease, but you can use it afterwards.
The prerelease is definitely one of my favorite events of the year. So drop down and play a bit this weekend. Hope you all have fun (and open your favorite Guild Champion)!
Today’s Tournament Tip written by Nathan Long