Scavenging the Prerelease

Hello everyone!

So like the whole world, I was waiting anxiously for Saturday to finally come out! Why? For the Return to Ravnica! A bunch of guys from my floor and I headed out to Larry's in Lowell for the midnight pre-release, and wow! That was easily my favorite pre-release of all time!

It's tricky to figure out exactly what made the pre-release so much fun.... Was it the anticipation for the new set? No, because every pre-release has new cards, but this was easily the best.

Was it the specific mechanics of RTR? Probably not, there's nothing particularly groundbreaking from this set, and other set have had equally if not more exciting mechanics.

I think the thing that made this pre-release the best of all time was the guild boxes. Over the past few sets, WotC has made a conscious effort to make pre-releases go from the meh of yesteryear to a once in a lifetime experience. For the grand majority of the lifetime of magic the prerelease was just any old sealed deck tournament. The only thing that would make you want to go to it (because sealed is a fairly boring format) is the fact that it's your first opportunity to get new cards. However I believe it was Mirrodin Besieged that was the first to change that mold. If you remember back then it was announced you had to either designate yourself as either a Phyrexian or a Mirran and you would get only faction packs from the side you chose to align yourself with (So I went Phrexian and I got 3 Phyrexian MBS packs and 3 packs of Scars of Mirrodin). The jig was that supposedly whichever faction won more pre-releases would determine the outcome of the third set of the block. There was a whole schtick on whether the set would be Mirrodin Pure or New Phyrexia with pics of booster art and packaging released for both sides. In fact, we knew the name of the fall set, Innistrad, before we had official confirmation on the name of the third set of the current block. In the end obviously Phyrexia "won". While the pre-release was very well received, the aftermath and all the drama left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth.

New Phyrexia, M12 and Innistrad were all normal. Flashing forward to Dark Ascension, there was the monsters vs humans thing. My store didn't do it because it was deemed dumb, but basically there were supposed to be a few people selected as the 4 monster tribes of Innistrad (Spirit, Zombie, Vampire, Werewolf) and every time they beat a human, that human would convert to the horror tribe. At the end.... nothing really mattered and you got bragging rights. This one seemed like a good idea, but never really materialized into much awe or good memories in the days and weeks to come.

Then came Avacyn Restored. The flavor of AVR was that Avacyn and the demons had broken out of the Helvault. So naturally a Helvault was given out to each store running pre-releases. After a certain number of goals were accomplished, all the stickers had been removed from the Helvault and the hidden treasures inside were unleashed for the world to enjoy. Almost all of them sucked - dice and tokens. However, there were some that had Judge Promos and foil tokens. These ones were worth several hundreds more than what the normal Helvaults were worth. To say that people lost their shit over this would be an understatement. People were livid that some stores would get special treatment and the insanely high value stuff while all the other smaller stores that may be struggling to retain customers got nothing and no incentive for players to stay. If it weren't for those premium Helvaults though, the Helvault thing would have been a lot cooler. Unfortunately, the overwhelming overbearing shadow of the premium Helvaults crushed any support for the 'vaults to oblivion and irrelevancy.

I didn't go to the M13 prerelease, but I don't think anything special happened there. And so now we move to yesterday - Return to Ravnica. What made this one so special? Relating back to Mirrodin Besieged, you had to make a choice as to what deck you wanted to play. In a normal sealed deck you have to open your packs and see what is good, but by choosing a guild pack you significantly increase the likelihood that you can play those guild's colors and therefor you can pick what deck you want to play before you arrive. This by itself gives players lots of choices! Instead of A vs B (with blue being left out and in neither guild), we had 5 choices that all have good and back matchups. It made its own metagame! Also, by only having one pack designated to each guild, you weren't locked into that guild like you were locked in at MBS. Also, in Mirrodin Besieged the two factions had a very clear good vs evil dynamic. In RTR there is no clear bad guy but instead 5 tribes at war with no obvious evil character. And one final touch to make a god thing especially sweet: the box. Having your pre-release come in a packed box just for you makes the whole thing feel special. Instead of getting in line to get your mystery meat and a scoop of slop, you have a special package just for you! It's individualistic as opposed to mass produced. While it may not mean something to most people, it simply adds to the allure in my opinion.

So the pre-release as a whole was awesome, but for me it was a good tournament. I wound up going 4-2 with Golgari, but my wins were complete blowouts and my losses were by inches. I already took apart my deck and so can't remember the exact contents, but the rares I opened were:

Lotleth Troll
Abrupt Decay
Jarad's Orders
Mecurial Chamister
Search the City

I finished in 11th place out of 44, which was good for a Staff of Nin... WOO! But regardless, the event was really fun, the trades were good, and I absolutely look forward to playing with these cards for real!

That's all I have for today! Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack