My First Prerelease
Limited forum
Posted on April 2, 2016, 9:08 p.m. by ducttapedeckbox
I've been playing on an off for over a decade, and seriously for the past three or four. It was about time I attended a prerelease.
As a whole, I had a great time. I met some interesting people (in all interpretations) and had some thoughtful games, but I was somewhat disappointed with my card pool. Note that this is not a thread of my complaints - I am just sharing my experience.
I start opening my pack to find that my Date-Stamped Promo is Invocation of Saint Traft. Awesome, UW fliers is supposed to be a decent archetype, so maybe I'll find the support for that. I proceed to open my packs to find a Drownyard Temple. Meh, useless rare, but 5 more packs to go. Next pack: another Drownyard Temple. Oh no... I proceeded to open Markov Dreadknight, Second Harvest, Silverfur Partisan, and Goldnight Castigator, so my luck did turn around a bit.
Shuffling through the rest of my card pool, I notice a severe lack of removal. In the six packs, I had four removal spells. Total. My strongest options were more aggressive decks, and I had decent support for R/G Werewolves and the option to somewhat force UW Spirits. My black selection was nearly nonexistent.
My blue and white options were very limited to low-costing cards, and I figured I would lose momentum very fast, so I opted for a RG Werewolves build. It ran pretty well, except well over a quarter of the players were playing the same deck, except with stronger end-game options. A few splashed black for Olivia, Mobilized for War, and one or two were lucky enough to pull Arlinn Kord Flip. I went 1-2-2 - not the best record, with my two losses in the mirrors. The two ties were winnable, but time was obviously the issue.
Ember-Eye Wolf was the best card I saw all day. Great art, great flavor, and one hell of a 2-mana beast. He's great for Werewolves because you have a mana sink without casting spells, and hits like a truck late game. I lost one of the mirrors to a Ember Wolf with trample and pumped eight times. This card does work.
Despite my "meh" pool and mediocre performance, I had a great time. I am exclusively a control player, so I enjoy broadening my experiences with drafting and now with a prerelease. I recognize that there was a recent thread about overall prerelease experiences, so I want to focus this discussion on something more specific:
Have you ever been to a prerelease and opened a mediocre card pool? There's obviously nothing to do about it, so how did you make sure that you had the best experience possible? Did you play something you wouldn't normally touch? What about going complete jank with something like Triskaidophobia?
Oh and talk about Triskaidekaphobia...me and my opponents kept rolling 13s in my games and I kept getting unlucky and I kept ending up with 13 life and getting my opponents to exactly to 13...someone came up to me later and wanted to trade me their Triskaidekaphobia...I told them no. Loudly. I think I've actually acquired a phobia of the number 13...
April 2, 2016 10:03 p.m.
ToolmasterOfBrainerd says... #4
So I did 2 prereleases today. The first one I opened an Olivia, Mobilized for War and Relentless Dead in my pool along with some strong green fixing, so I played Jund. My decklist was as follows:
Some ratio of basic lands that I don't remember.
This deck was easily the most fun I've ever had playing magic. It was silly, powerful, interactive, synergistic and by god was it fun.
It started off 3-0, then in round 4 I was paired own, so my opponent conceded to me and we split the prizes. So my finish was 4-0. Part of my prize was that I got free entry into another prerelease, so I did another. Oh yeah, I also got Thing in the Ice Flip in my prize packs in the first prerelease.
So then I went to the second prerelease. This one was miserable. My pool had Archangel Avacyn Flip, and wow was she a disappointment. My pool had terrible support, and good creatures except for Avacyn. I felt that white, as a whole, was terrible in this set for sealed. I tried playing mardu, but I literally didn't win a game with my deck until round 4, where I lost in 3, for an 0-4 finish. Not only did I lose, but my deck was some of the most painful, tedious, and unfun magic I have ever played.
So I have seen both ends of the spectrum from this set - the absolute best to the absolute worst. The latter experience more closely relates to your question, and, to be honest, I couldn't find a way to make it the best experience possible. However, I've had friends go for complete jank in their prerelease and have a blast without doing very well. Sadly, in my pool, there wasn't much potential for jank that could work.
April 2, 2016 10:06 p.m.
My first Prerelease was 'Dark Ascension.' I got a bummer pool of cards I don't even remember, so I dropped after two rounds of losing. I joined an EDH game with a few people that lasted a few hours, and after the game, I traded a Wasteland and an Ancient Tomb for a Jace, the Mind Sculptor. So, even though I didn't have a great Prerelease perse, I did have a great time playing during the side event, and got a card I really wanted, even if it wasn't from Innistrad.
April 2, 2016 10:09 p.m.
im going to my first prerelease tomorrow. Ill tell you what I get!
April 2, 2016 11:34 p.m.
Me and a bunch of friends had our first prerelease for Born of the Gods. None of us did particularly well, but we had just started playing shortly after Theros released. Best moment of that was when my friend bestowed Chromanticore on Yoked Ox.
Mediocre pools can perform really well in sealed tournaments, as they are so skill based. I remember the Fate Reforged prerelease my pool was not great except for Whisperwood Elemental. I played some sort of Jund midrange deck with a bunch of bad morph creatures just to have things to play. Somehow I ended up going 5-0 with the deck and finished first.
April 3, 2016 midnight
Just attended my first prerelease yesterday, although I went to the BFZ release. I ran this meh deck and went 2-2-0, which I guess is better than nothing. The guy next to me opened Arlinn Kord
Flip, which was the one card that I felt was really missing in my deck.
I played against a lot of similar decks, which seems to have happened to a lot of people. Anyway, I had fun, which I makes up for it. Plus, you get all those cards before (almost) everybody else!
April 3, 2016 6:32 p.m.
Went 2-2 with a W/B Tokens/Weenies List in 2HG. partner was using OK U/R deck. Slayer's Plate and Call the Bloodline really do work. Oh yeah, and Morkrut Necropod is insane!
April 3, 2016 9:51 p.m.
Had a brilliant time myself at the weekend. Opened mostly rubbish and the guy across from me picked a foil Jace. Another on our table played Relentless Dead and Arlinn.
Due to opening TWO Harness the Storm (oh dear) I was not at all optimistic. Like you I ended up with 4 removal spells total (Reduce to Ashes, Murderous Compulsion, 2xDual Shot) I had to splash Black into R/G in order to make any kind of sense of my pile. Though the R/G had a decent looking base and Flameblade Angel which was my saving grace!
I went surprisingly well going 2-1 / 1-2 / 2-0 / 2-1 / 1-2 in the 5 rounds.
My Westvale Abbey Flip went off a couple of times, destroyed one dude and got stonewalled by flashed-in Avacyn in another round. I am enthused by this card - fun as hell.Surprise performers for the weekend in our little group were Byway Courier(surprisingly solid and gives value), Pale Rider of Trostad(even without any madness this guy is nasty early on) and Voldaren Duelist (which won me a couple of games). The most unpleasant card to come up against in my experience was Sage of Ancient Lore Flip without a doubt. Only my kick ass Angel got me out of that game barely alive!
... most frustrating thing all day was a Harness the Storm
in my prize pool- gah!
Spootyone says... #2
So during the Born of the Gods prerelease I ended up opening a Stormbreath Dragon but the rest of my pool was absolutely horrible. I ended up playing UR bad stuff and hope to win with stormbreath. I didn't win a single match.
Then my luck turned around. For sticking around and not getting salty, the Store owner gave me a last place prize of a Dragon's Maze Fat pack. I was really happy!
Then my luck turned back around. None of my packs had value with two of them containing Emmara Tandris. We burned them. Still though, a great story.
April 2, 2016 10 p.m.