Pre-release Tips

I love pre-release tournaments! My first tournament ever was a pre-release, so a little bit of this is nostalgia but mostly it's just a format I love: Sealed deck! I have only missed one pre-release since I came back to the game, and I have no intention of missing another one. I'm not saying that you HAVE to attend this weekend, but I am highly recommending the experience if you can go.

If you've ever been concerned about going to a tournament because you think you're going to suck, (not that I'm saying you will, because you're awesome) then this is definitely the tournament to attend. The playing field is as equal as it could possibly be, because you are playing with a set of randomly determined cards from a set that no one other than the set designers and developers have ever played with. You can't buy a better deck than your opponents have, and no one has more experience with the set than anyone else. This lends to a much more relaxed and fun atmosphere than many other tournaments and is a great place to get started.

Not Magic's finest set, but that didn't matter to me.

This one, on the other hand, a fantastic set in nearly every regard.

My first pre-release was Dark Ascension. I showed up at 11:00 pm, (yeah, I go to the midnight releases, because I'm hardcore) and immediately became overwhelmed by the amount of people in the room. I'd only been to this particular card shop once before, and it had been much less full upon my first visit. I hadn't known it, but my card shop routinely has over 100 people at their midnight pre-releases. Once Midnight rolled around we all sat down and were handed six pack of cards. In this case it was 3 Innistrad packs and three from Dark Ascension. I wasn't very familiar with Innistrad, and I hadn't yet learned that you could look up the cards online in advance, so I had no idea what I was about to open. I didn't note down every card I opened, but this is the deck I played with:

// Deck: Dark Ascension Pre-release (40)

// Lands
4 Island
4 Mountain
1 Shimmering Grotto
8 Swamp

// Creatures
1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
1 Bloodline Keeper
1 Falkenrath Marauders
1 Falkenrath Torturer
1 Ghoulraiser
1 Havengul Runebinder
3 Headless Skaab
1 Highborn Ghoul
1 Markov Warlord
1 Stromkirk Captain
1 Vampire Interloper
1 Vengeful Vampire
1 Walking Corpse

// Instants
1 Geistflame
1 Tragic Slip

// Sorceries
1 Army of the Damned
1 Ghoulcaller's Chant

// Enchantments
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Curse of Misfortunes
1 Curse of the Pierced Heart

// Artifacts
1 Chalice of Life

For those keeping score, that's 17 land, 15 creatures and 8 non-creature spells, a pretty good balance for a limited deck. It's also three colors: blue, black and red, which was not a good idea. Sticking to two is usually the best plan, so chalk it up to learning experience. I also learned that double sided cards are awesome, Black fights dirty, and that Army of the Damned is just too expensive. I ended up going 3-3, so I won half of my matches. In the end, I had a great time, learned a lot, and haven't been able to stop going back.

Yes, it looks awesome. It really does.
But YOU"RE NEVER GOING TO CAST IT!

If you go to a pre-release this weekend, you'll probably have a similar experience, and I hope you do. If you've never been, my advice is to just go and relax, play with some cards you've never seen and have fun whether you suck or not. If you have been, my advice is exactly the same, with one added tip: Don't care about winning. At all. 

Yes, the shop gives away prizes if you win more games, and yes, that last draw was bogus and your cards hate you. Of course it's not fair, because they drew the card you wanted and hey, "MY packs didn't have a planeswalker in them", and "they just started playing, they shouldn't have been able to beat me." There is a time and a place for those kinds of out-loud comments, and the time is never and the place is "seriously, never." Of course you want to win but a pre-release is not a competitive environment. Don't try to make it one. You'll end up disappointed and so will everyone you played with that had to deal with your attitude. Seriously, don't care about winning.

I'll get into deck building tips and specific tips for M15 tomorrow, but basically what I'm saying today is that you should go if you can, and just have fun no matter how it turns out. Make some friends, tap some lands, and sling some spells. C'mon, you know you want to.