Hello and welcome to the final day of our Prerelease Primer week! Tonight at Midnight, many of you will be sitting in your local stores (or maybe larger venues!) waiting to crack open your Fate Reforged packs and have a great weekend. There’ll be even more events going on tomorrow morning and afternoon, too! We’ve already covered the basics of the new and returning mechanics of Fate Reforged, so today we’re just going to give some general tips on how to make the most of your event weekend.

First, what to expect: you’ll be asked to choose a clan: Sultai, Mardu, Jeskai, Temur, or Abzan. You’ll get a neat box for your cards, and it’ll have most everything you’ll need inside! Four packs of Fate Reforged, a single pack of Khans of Tarkir, and a special ‘seeded’ pack, which is mostly going to be stuff from your Clan to make sure you’ve got playable cards of that Clan. The seeded pack will also have a special Prerelease Promo card, and you’re welcome to use that in your deck. From these six packs (as well as basic lands- the store should have plenty for you to borrow, but they always appreciate that you return them when you’re done!), you will build a minimum 40 card deck. You are more than welcome to brag about your awesome pulls, and since prereleases are a laid-back, casual event, it’s also okay for you to help and be helped when it comes to deckbuilding. If you want to give the player seated next to you a few friendly tips, you can! If you want to ask for advice after your first match, you can! You just can’t ask for help when you’re actually playing the matches. You’re also using a fully mutable pool- unlike with other events, you can completely change your deck between games AND matches. If you build an okay Jeskai deck, but your round 1 opponent beats you and helps you build a really neat Mardu deck out of your sealed pool, you can just keep on using that Mardu deck for the rest of the day. You don’t need to change over to the Jeskai list you ‘started’ with, so feel free to experiment.

Also inside that box is going to be an achievement card- keep track of it! When you accomplish the things listed on it, let the people running the event know. Once enough achievements are completed, Ugin will be saved, and everyone will get a special booster pack called Ugin’s Fate. Each one will have a special alternate art Common, an alternate art basic land, and an alternate art Uncommon OR Rare from Khans of Tarkir or Fate Reforged. You can’t use these cards in your sealed pool, though! Any further prizes are going to be up to your store- they’ll be putting a minimum of 2 packs of Fate Reforged per person into the prize pool, but it’s up to them how those prizes are handed out, so ask one of the event staff for more details.

So, you know what you’re gonna get, but what should you bring with you? A fresh pack of sleeves is a good choice, so your cards don’t get damaged and so they’ll be easier to shuffle. It might be tempting to just reuse old sleeves, but those might be marked from use, so it’s better to err on the side of safety and go with new ones. You should also bring something to keep track of life totals- we at the Rules Blog highly recommend a paper and pen, since dice can be knocked over. You should still bring some dice if you can- the Abzan are going to be putting +1/+1 counters on their creatures, so it’ll help keep track of that, as well as keeping track of Goblin tokens if you’re a Mardu raider. Finally, you should bring some water, if your store permits it- staying hydrated is always a good thing. You don’t want to end up dehydrated and nursing an awful headache instead of having fun. Be sure to bring a resealable bottle though, and keep it off the table- you don’t want your Silumgar, the Drifting Death to turn into Silumgar, the Dripping Death! Lastly, just bring what you need- it might be tempting to bring along your Commander deck for after the event, or your big trade binder, but the more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to keep track of. Pack light, and you’ll have less to worry about losing. With that said, have a great Friday, and I hope I’ll see some of you this weekend! For those many more of you who I won’t see this weekend, may your curves be tight and your foils shiny!

Today’s Tips were written by Trevor Nunez