This is for people who've never been to a prerelease before or haven't been to an event in a long time.
Before I start, I should tell you what the prerelease is going to be like. I'll try to keep it concise.
When you get to the site, you will sign up for a Flight. You will need to register a DCI number -- it's just filling out a form. The DCI number will be your Magic ID for life, as it were. That way they can track what events you play in and keep track of your rating. The Flight will probably cost $30. Each Flight consists of the following:
1) You get 3 Worldwake, 3 Zendikar packs
2) You build a deck of 40 cards with those -- this takes around 40 minutes
3) You get paired for rounds and matched up randomly against other players in your Flight
4) You play, I'm guessing, 4 rounds, each decided best of 3.
5) Win fabulous prizes!
EDIT: I forgot to mention, you get A FREE PROMO CARD for each Flight you participate in. It looks like this:
WHAT TO BRING: I highly suggest packing the following
1) Lunch or food of some sort? I think at the LA Radisson there's a Subway nearby, but it will have quite a long line
2) Paper and pen/pencil -- for keeping track of life total! This is very important
3) Dice for counters
4) Sleeves, if you want to protect your cards since they'll get bent out of shape if you don't (the most expensive card in the set is $30 right now lol. And foils are more valuable than normal ones.)
5) I always bring my trade binder also, to trade cards; I'll also bring another deck to play in between rounds in case there's time, but these things aren't necessary
HOW TO PREPARE:
1) Look at the full list of spoiled cards -- Skip the rares and mythics to save time (they're ones with gold or bronze colored symbols on the side) -- read all the commons and uncommons (which have black/silver symbols)
The reason for this, if not obvious, is because these will make the bulk of your deck. You will get 18 uncommons and 60 commons to build with; and most likely you will only get 6 rares or mythics. It'll really help if you aren't reading through all the commons and uncommons while deckbuilding, figuring out what they do; you only have 40 minutes to build a deck! This part is hard as it is!
2) If you don't know what's in Zendikar, you should look through the spoiler on Gatherer. Again, you can skip rares and mythics.
STEPS TO BUILDING A SEALED DECK:
1) Sort all your cards by color.
2) Put all the junky unplayable cards in another pile and and put them in a separate place. A zone of shame.
3) Put all your best bomby cards up front as well as your removal spells and focus on those
4) If there are any colors you don't think you'll be able to play due to a lack of quality/quantity -- put them aside and ignore them
5) Narrow down 23 cards you want in your deck.
6) Add 17 land.
7) Shuffle it up. (I like to sleeve all the cards first.)
PROCEDURE TO STARTING GAMES OF MAGIC:
1) Find your table number and sit down
2) Make sure your deck is thoroughly shuffled -- I like to shuffle by pile shuffling first -- this means distributing the deck into 7 piles and then stacking the 7 piles on top of one another. I try to distribute randomly, and I try to stack randomly. This is probably the best way to shuffle. And then afterwards, I quickly do a few "side" shuffles, where I take one half of the deck and just slide it into the other half. This works with sleeves but not without sleeves. Without sleeves, I riffle shuffle, like a pack of playing cards, but it bends the cards horribly.
3) Your opponent should SEE you shuffle, at least a little, so that they know you're not totally cheating.
4) Decide who goes first! Don't forget to do this before drawing your 7. You can use rock, paper, scissors, a die roll, a coin flip, whatever you want! Normally I just use a die, but since it's a prerelease I suspect people will do funnier things.
5) After all that's taken care of, you can finally draw 7 cards.
6) The person who goes first can decide whether he or she wants to mulligan the hand. Once that person decides yes or no, THEN IMMEDIATELY the other person decides as well. Don't wait for the first person to draw a new 6 or whatever. These are new mulligan rules to save time. If both of you mulligan, the person going first can decide to mulligan again if he or she so chooses - and then you repeat the process.
7) Once you are both satisfied with your hands, start the gaaame!
8) After the games end, report to the judge that is supervising your table. I think winners are responsible for reporting the results of games.
9) If you want to drop, tell a judge.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
1) Remember it's best out of 3, so you have to play at least 2 games of Magic with the same opponent.
2) You can use ANY of your other cards as the "sideboard" so in between games, you can switch out cards from your "maindeck" with cards in your sideboard. If it pleases you!
3) Don't forget to replace those cards when the games are over! You want to start with the same maindeck for the next round. Not with your sideboarded cards.
4) However, I don't think it's illegal if you forget. I think Prereleases use a relaxed set of rules. So if you wanted to, you can change your entire deck in between rounds. This is to help you if you think you didn't build correctly the first time. You can change your red-green deck to a white-blue deck or something.
5) If you have a rules question, RAISE YOUR HAND and CALL FOR A JUDGE! Judges are these super-helpful friendly people that will answer all your Magic questions. If you don't want to ask your opponent because it reveals too much information, you can have a third party answer the question. Or if you and your opponent both don't know the answer, a judge should be called. Or if you just think your opponent is wrong/lying, you should definitely call a judge. Basically, just call the damn judge!
COMBAT RULES. These have changed in the past year or so, so if you don't know:
1) Combat damage doesn't stack. This means, when you block, you can't "put combat damage on the stack" and then sacrifice your creature to do something else. You either block and have it deal combat damage, or you can block, and then have it be sacrificed to some other effect. Don't worry; it won't come up that often.
2) When double-blocking, the ATTACKING person decides in what way to order the blockers. Let's say a 4/4 is getting blocked by a 2/3 and a 2/3. The person attacking with the 4/4 will say which of these blockers is first and which is second in line. The FIRST 2/3 will have to be dealt lethal damage before going to the next one. So 3 damage will be dealt to the first 2/3. Then 1 damage will be dealt to the second one.
3) In othe rwords, you can't deal 2 damage to one, and 2 to the other one. You can't "split" damage in this way.
4) If it's more complicated than that, ask a judge. :3
Ok, I think that's most of it. Don't forget to have fun!
NEXT POST: Worldwake Sealed Strategy and how to build your deck. In more detail. Cheers.
