Thank you to everyone who attended our Magic the Gathering: Reality Fracture prerelease weekend from September 25 to 27th!Â
We sold out every ticketed event (Friday night, both time slots Saturday, and our Sunday Two-Headed Giant), and saw plenty of you for Sunday night's walk-in event despite the overlapping Broncos game.
We even had a player pull off the Splinter Twin combo with Divining Duelist during our Two-Headed giant tournament, creating infinite tokens and winning the round.
What is a Prerelease?
If you've never been to a prerelease or aren't familiar, here's the basic idea: a week before a new Magic the Gathering set comes out, we host a weekend of preview events.
These events are all sealed, meaning you don't need to bring any of your own cards. Everything is provided to you through the Prerelease Packs, which include a foil rare or mythic rare card, six booster packs of the upcoming set, and a fancy spindown D20 dice.
Before the event begins, we check everyone in and get everyone seated. Then our tournament organizer (one of our staff or owners) makes a few announcements. Then our judge (a highly-skilled and knowledgeable Magic player) explains any weird, set-specific rules, gives an introduction to how prerelease is played, and starts a short informative video on the set.
You then get 50 minutes to open your six packs and put together a small deck. We're not talking a full 60-card or commander deck, mind you, but usually a 40-card deck that's a mix of 2/3 colors, composed of 23-25 of the best cards you opened and 15-17 land cards. We provide the basic lands in-store so you only need to worry about adding fancy lands you opened out of your packs and balancing how many of each you want to include.
Once you have your deck together, the rounds start!
Tournament Rounds
In a typical prerelease, we play 4 rounds of Swiss (best-of-3). You win prizes if you win more than half your matches (winning 2 matches, losing 1, and tying 1 is the lowest score you can get to qualify).Â
In each round, we post the pairings directly to your MTG Companion App and display them on our in-store TVs, complete with your opponent's name and table number--all our tables are numbered, so you can find your seat easily by following their order.
Then, you sit down with your opponent, introduce yourself, and make a little small talk (or stare in silence as you focus your mind on the upcoming battle) and shuffle your deck. You two will decide who goes first, usually by rolling a dice, and then present your decks for the opponent to cut (taking the top half of the deck and putting it on the bottom to make sure they aren't up to any funny business).
From there, you're playing Magic! The person who loses game one gets to decide who goes first in game two and, assuming they come out victorious, the series goes to a third game to break the tie. If one player wins the first two games in a row, the round ends, and that player is the winner.
Players report their results through the MTG Companion App or by asking our judge, and once everyone's reported, the round ends and we create pairings for the next round.
Round pairings after the first are decided first by standing (winners pair with winners, and so on) so you're playing on an even field against people with a similar record.
Two-Headed Giant
Every Sunday morning of prerelease, we host a special type of prerelease called two-headed giant. Most of the rules above apply, except for a few particular changes:
- instead of playing alone, you play as a team of 2 and face an opposing team of 2 (the two-headed giant, if you will)
- you and your partner share life (30 instead of 20) and take your turns at the same time. Your decks and battlefields are still separate, but you play as a unit.Â
- during deckbuilding, you share your two prerelease kits (12 packs total) to build your decks. This means you can share cards to make two decks that each end up feeling more consistent and stronger on average than during a regular single-player prerelease.
- we play five best-of-1 rounds instead of the usual four Swiss rounds. Two-headed giant games take longer, so there's only time for 1 game per round. The winner takes all. But, because we all love playing Magic, we add a fifth round so you get a little more gameplay than a typical event.
- prizes are awarded, in even numbers, by team so you and your partner share the spoils.
Attending Prerelease
We always put up preregistration for 4/5 of our prerelease events, with the exception being Sunday night which we always reserve for walk-in customers in case the weekend sells out and someone hasn't gotten to play.
Our usual schedule is:
- Friday at 6p - sealed
- Saturday at 11a - sealed
- Saturday at 5:30p - sealed
- Sunday at 11a - two-headed giant sealed (play as a team of 2 and take your turns at the same time)
- Sunday at 6:30p - sealed
Preregistration is always found here on our website, nested in our online store under Event Tickets. The two-headed giant ticket is a single ticket for both players--you figure out who you're bringing on your own.
To check out our upcoming prerelease (and other) events, you can visit our Event Calendar. That's the best place to find out what's coming up. You're also encouraged to join our Discord community, where we post about upcoming events, answer questions, and share exclusive behind-the-scenes peeks and pre-orders to our most loyal customers.
Star Trek Prerelease
Our next prerelease is for the Universes Beyond set: Star Trek. Tickets are already up on our website, in fact!Â
Prerelease is a great time for new players to get into the game, for people who used to play to get back into the game after years away, and for existing players to preview the new set and get the cards early.
It's one of our most beginner-friendly Magic the Gathering events, and it's also just a great time all around. The people are friendly, the cards are new and exciting, and the vibes are excellent.Â
We'd be so happy to see you at our next event, or any upcoming sets if Star Trek isn't quite your thing!
*All image credit goes to Ryan Taylor.
