This weekend is Core 19 Prerelease weekend. That magical time for Magic players where they get to play with the cards from the newest set a week early. And thanks once more to the benevolence of our overlords WotC, store owners were also allowed to sell to eager players like myself a whole week early booster boxes (with while supplies lasted the second, more controversial buy-a-box promo).

I think WotC must had arranged this Prerelease weekend specifically for me. That, or it’s just pure coincidence that it coincides with The Rose Fair. An annual event in my home town, that sees lorries driving really slowly round the town with their trailers poorly decorated around a theme, and occupied with people that have even less of a life than myself. I think the technical term for these is floats. It’s such a massive inconvenience, but it brings in trade to the town I suppose.

Without the Prerelease I’d have been stuck at home, having to suffer The Rose Fair and hot weather. Instead I got to leave early so I wasn’t trapped in my idea of hell, and make my way to my FLGS ready to play some Magic.

Naturally I was early, so the FLGS wasn’t open. While waiting for it to open some of my ex-students turned up. They too were there for the Prerelease and hopefully get a game of Commander in.

While waiting for the Prerelease to start, I cracked open one of my booster boxes. As did one or two of my ex-students who had also bought a booster box. I won’t bore you here with what I pulled but there will be a short YouTube video up in the next couple of days with the highlights. But I will say this was super fun, cracking packs, seeing what others had got. I liked the social aspect of it.

It was time to open our Prerelease kits and start building a deck. I got a blue life countdown die, my promo wasn’t great. I did get a second crucible of worlds, but more importantly for this sort of event I got cards I could build a deck with. Or I thought I had. I went black/red with a little bit of graveyard shenanigans. Found out a bit later that there was a foil Nicol Bolas pulled. Sweet.

My first game was against a returning player to Magic Lauren. Her deck was good, which her final position of second, and zero losses proved. Losing 1-2 to her was not bad. I know one or two (which included an ex-student) got wiped out 2-0. So winning a game was an achievement. I was happy because I got to play crucible of worlds, played some lands from my graveyard, pulled some creatures back from the graveyard (well until Lauren kindly exiled my graveyard). It was doing its thing.

My next game was against Grant. I’d played against Grant at a previous Prerelease. I won that match up. History was not to repeat itself. This time Grant won 1-2.
I have to say I really enjoy playing against Grant. There is friendly banter, a laugh and joke. Actually it was the same with Lauren as well. Sometimes there are people you don’t like playing against because they are not fun. They take it way too serious, or lack that social interaction skill (who knew Magic players with poor social skills?) But Grant and Lauren I’d gladly play against any day.

Lauren even joined in the banter against an ex-student, and totally crushed him in their game.

My third match was against Charlie, who I beat 2-1. Our first game I won due to a massive misplay by Charlie that gave me the win. He then redeemed himself by taking the next game. I was able to take the tie breaker in a closely fought third game.

Throughout the day between rounds, it was “how’d you do?”, or checking out how others were doing if they were still playing. And being the supportive friends encouraging their opponent to smash them.

Before the final round an ex-student and I pitched our Prerelease decks against each other seeing as we hadn’t been drawn against each other. That ended in a win each.

I didn’t get a fourth round game because some players had left without saying anything to the organisers to go watch I’m assuming the England match. So the person I was matched up with was awol for possibly the reason I’d given. Which meant I had a buy. I’ll take a win anyway I can.

That meant I finished 12th out of 26. Which is respectable. But more importantly I finished above my ex-students.

After opening our 2 participation packs, we sat down for a game of Commander.

Charlie hadn’t played with us before, so wasn’t aware of our social contract. The social contract we came up with, and is one used also with the Fenland Gamers MtG group is in Commander, no mass land destruction, no going infinite. These two things are not fun. It’s why I have 2 versions of my mono red deck. The mass land destruction version doesn’t get played. Only time it has was when my ex-students allowed my to test playing the deck while I was building it. My mono red can do multiple combat phases, at most a couple, it can’t do them infinitely. I’ve deliberately not even looked into going infinite.

Charlie had a couple of cards that destroyed all permanents. He had to fire one of them off to stop another player. It was basically a game restart. It wasn’t fun, and basically handed the game to the player who Charlie was trying to stop. But up until that point my big green stompy had been doing its thing. Building up a threat, being annoying.

Game 2 was a rushed affair really. Which saw me lose the game in a game of rock, paper, scissors that we used to decide the winner between the final 2 of us left in the game.

Thanks to John the owner of my FLGS The Hobbit Hole you get the chance (some may even call it lucky) to see me in action as third Magic player at the back!

It really was a great Prerelease. Everyone was having fun, lots of smiles on people’s faces as they played. I played Magic with some fun people. It was really cool meeting up with my ex-students, and getting to the chance to play some Magic with some of them. Yeah this was probably my best Prerelease to-date. An amazing day.