Go to Prereleases - They're Fun

There’s something about prereleases that make them really appealing tournaments to attend. All kinds of players show up—veteran and new, young and old, serious and casual—and everyone’s there just to see some new cards and have the fun of sharing something fresh and exciting. The new cards aspect is key, and I think I can say that I’ve never been compelled to play in a Core Set prerelease like I was for the M10 event this weekend.

It was a lot of fun.

Fellow Vintage Virginian Abe and I drove up to Dream Wizards in Maryland on Sunday to see how the new set looked and maybe get some practice in on the new rules (I’ll get to those in a little bit). On the way, we talked about how both of us were excited and intrigued by the new set, which had some cards that really harkened back to the early days of Magic and its “traditional” fantasy roots.

There’s also the lighthearted casualness of prereleases. It’s like the first day of school. Everyone is anticipating something, whether it’s opening that big splashy rare or being able to complain about how their favorite aspect of the game was ruined. (Seriously, I think some people really enjoy complaining about things and look forward to doing that. Then they play and have fun anyway). Plus, people get to think about how the coming year will look with the new cards in their favorite format. It’s a very forward-looking time.

When we arrived at Dream Wizards there was a line outside the door. Though this turned out to be because the store was still setting up the tournament area, there were still 78 gamers ready to get their cardboard on. That’s a lot of people! Especially for a four-round event run at a local store.

After the normal waiting for people to register and pay and find their places, they passed out our packs and we got cracking.

The packs I got were, I don’t know, lackluster at first glance. I got no mythic rares, few of my creatures were very big, and I didn’t get any of the awesome red burn like Lightning Bolt or Fireball. I opened a Mirror of Fate, which is unplayable, and two rares which must have been utterly forgettable as I can’t remember what they are right now. I did get a Twincast, which is kind of cool but isn’t exactly something that makes me want to play blue. So I decided to go with Kalonian Behemoth and Magma Phoenix as the basis for an RG deck, which as far as I can tell is normal for a core set.

I never had the opportunity to do any limited events with Alpha, Beta, or Unlimited cards. I’m willing to bet that most of you never had that opportunity either. However, I have done “sealed” events using those cards in the immensely powerful engine that is Shandalar. There, I usually end up playing red and green because they’re simply the best; red has Lightning Bolt and Fireball and green has big creatures like War Mammoth and Craw Wurm. There’s a good curve and cards like Llanowar Elves help make sure you stick to it.

In M10, red has Lightning Bolt and Fireball and green has big creatures like Cudgel Troll and Craw Wurm. There’s a good curve and cards like Llanowar Elves and Rampant Growth help make sure you hit it.

Plus, Abe said that at the big Star City Games prerelease on Saturday, most of the flights were being won by the green players. It seemed like a sound strategy.

Here’s what I played:

1x Kalonian Behemoth
1x Borderland Ranger
1x Llanowar Elves
1x Centaur Courser
1x Deadly Recluse
1x Cudgel Troll
1x Mist Leopard
1x Magma Phoenix
1x Inferno Elemental
1x Sparkmage Apprentice
1x Canyon Minotaur
1x Gravedigger

1x Rampant Growth
1x Entangling Vines
1x Fog
1x Nature’s Spiral
1x Pyroclasm
1x Lava Axe
1x Act of Treason
1x Weakness
1x Doom Blade
1x Assassinate
1x Gorgon Flail

Terramorphic Expanse
3x Swamp
6x Mountain
7x Forest

Looking at the list on paper, I feel like I have too few creatures, but things played out well for the most part, so it’s hard to say. I didn’t really feel like I had other options in my chosen colors, and none of my other colors had much to offer either.

Plus, I never really got swarmed. More often I just ran into bigger things and either died to them or was able to get rid of or neutralize them with my black removal. Opposing Cudgel Trolls and Emerald Oryxes were the things that gave me the most trouble. Other times there would be great stalls on the ground and we would stare at each other until one of us found something to break the stalemate. For me, that was usually Magma Phoenix, which I’m pretty sure won four of the five games I won all day.

I won’t go into the actual games here, because they were mostly of the attack, remove, dude, go variety, but here are some notable events from each match.

Against my first opponent, I lost game one very quickly, never seeing a second green source to cast the Behemoth or Cudgel Troll in my hand. Game two started out much the same and I was soon fighting frantically against his Wall of Frost and dual Cudgel Trolls. At one life I had finally stabilized by removing his creatures, enchanting his last troll with Entangling Vines, and casting my Behemoth. Then, with two turns to live, he topdecked Emerald Oryx. I could remove neither the antelope nor my Forests and lost the game.

That was also the game where we learned that Entangling Vines falls off a creature if that creature becomes untapped. This ruling was brought to our awareness by Abe, who used the new floor rules to pause our game while he got a judge.

In the first game of round two, I Doom Bladed my own Magma Phoenix to finish off my opponent. It was neat, but Doom Blade is still a dumb name for a card, especially one that’s not an artifact. Wizards, you guys need some better creative writers. I’ll send you my resume.

Round three, my opponent finished me off with Fireball in the second and third games. At the end of the third game, my opponent was at eight and I was attacking with Magma Phoenix into his Giant Spider. I needed to get him to take three damage either by not blocking or by killing the Phoenix, so I give him the ol’ Davy Crockett grin like to kill a b’ar. Unfortunately, he blocked as he should have and the Lava Axe I had in hand couldn’t finish the job.

Magma Phoenix won game one of round four and Kalonian Behemoth won game two. My opponent was a woman, probably in her late 30s or early 40s, and would certainly have won had I not topdecked answers like a champ all game both games.

“Gravedigger getting back Mist Leopard?” “Pyroclasm.”

“Enormous Baloth?” “Deadly Recluse.”

“Elvish Piper?” “Sparkmage Apprentice.”

In the end I finished at 2-2, which, though not spectacular or even “good,” was enough to earn me a free pack. I haven’t opened it yet in the hopes that I can get five more and do another draft with my fiancée.

All in all, like I said, it was a good event and M10 was surprisingly fun to play, for a Core Set. I wish I had seen a little bit more variation in colors since everyone seemed to be playing at least one of green, red, and white. I did play against each color at least once during the day, though, and there’s something to be said for that. It was also a little refreshing to not play against blue for four rounds in a row, as would be usual in Vintage.

Speaking of Vintage, Abe and I also did some testing of the BR Belcher list I posted previously. I had cut Yawgmoth’s Will, Spoils of the Vault, and Tendrils for three Empty the Warrens. I wanted more actual win conditions (rather than tutors to get to win conditions), and Yawgmoth’s Will and Tendrils have just not performed well in testing. They’re bad in the opening hand, which is Belcher’s bread and butter, so they got cut, plain and simple.

Anyway, after testing the Belcher vs. Workshops match for a while, I realized a fatal flaw in the new design: two-drop mana sources. All of RG Belcher’s mana producers cost zero or one mana, and there is a great deal of redundancy. Elvish Spirit Guide into Tinder Wall is functionally equivalent as Simian Spirit Guide into Rite of Flame, for example. Very few hands are mulliganed trying to get the mana to work.

With BR Belcher, though Dark Ritual is many times stronger than the acceleration in RG, transitioning between Simian Spirit Guide and Grim Monolith and Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual is surprisingly difficult. You have to get to two mana to play Monolith and Cabal Ritual, which would indicate playing all eight spirit guides to help. That also means playing Manamorphose or Wild Cantor to go from Spirit Guides to black rituals. You’re left with 4x Elvish Spirit Guide, 4x Simian Spirit Guide, 4x Manamorphose, an awkward way to start off your mostly black deck, but a great way to start off a red and green one!

My guess is that I’ll be back to RGu Belcher by next weekend, which is good because I’ll be in Chicago trying to blow the Windy City down and win some Power. http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37870.0

We’ll see what happens. You should go too.