Heading to the Oath of the Gatewatch Prerelease this weekend? If it’s your first time coming to a Magic event, or if you just need a refresher of what to expect, check out the information after the jump!
Saturday 1/16
Saturday there are 4 events:
Midnight Sealed
10:30am Sealed
4:30pm Sealed
4:30pm Two-Headed Giant Sealed
Sunday 1/17
Sunday there are 2 events:
11:45am Sealed
11:45am Two-Headed Giant Sealed
All event registrations begin 1 hour prior to posted start times.
Most Magic players agree that Prereleases are the most fun of all organized tournaments. This is your chance to be among the first world-wide to play Magic with a brand new set of Oath of Gatewatch cards!
What do you need to play?
When you arrive at Dream Wizards you will pay a tournament entry fee, $30 and fill out an entry slip. Many people bring a deck to play for fun before the tournament begins or in-between rounds, a trade binder, pen and paper to keep track of life totals, and dice to keep track of stuff like +1/+1 counters and to see who goes first. You can expect a Prerelease event to take about four to five hours. Most will stay for the entire tournament; but if you decide to leave early please tell the scorekeeper!
When its time to begin, the Judges will ask everyone to be seated and hand out the cards to everyone at the same time. You’ll build your deck to play in the tournament with the cards you are given (6 booster packs) and Dream Wizards will have plenty of land on hand. This is the most exciting part of the event (except maybe playing Magic!). Excitement spreads through the room as everyone opens their new booster packs for the first time.
What do you do once you’ve open all your awesome packs? Well, you build a deck to play with! Here’s how:
– The minimum deck size is 40 cards. The closer you can keep to the minimum size the more likely you will be to draw the best and most exciting cards in your deck.
– You want to play around 17 lands in that 40-card deck. If you play more cards you will need to play more land.
– Try to play two colors if you can. It is perfectly reasonable to “splash” a third color as long as the mana requirements are not too intense.
– Don’t forget to check out the cool new Colorless mana symbol! Be aware that you’ll have to have lands like “Wastes” to pay their colorless mana costs, but a lot of those cards are very powerful.
– Anything that you don’t decide to use becomes your sideboard. Between games, you can switch out any of those cards with cards in your main deck. You can even completely change your deck if you want.
Now that you have built your deck, it’s time to start playing. In a Prerelease tournament there will be a set number of rounds, and you can play in every round no matter if you win or lose. Each round lasts 50 minutes. Experienced judges are on hand to help out and answer rules questions. Once you’ve finished playing your last round you may be eligible for a prize. Prizes are awarded based on win-loss records. All Prizes are additional Oath of Gatewatch booster packs.
We hope to see you at Dream Wizards having some fun exploring the new Oath of Gatewatch cards in a prerelease tournament Saturday – Sunday, January 16 – 17. If you have any questions please feel free to call the store (301)881-3530, or email laurel@dreamwizards.com
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