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Inside the Betrayers Prerelease
1.19.05
Prereleases are a very unique experience in Magic.
You get to see and play with the cards from the new
set for the first time. For many people, the event
coming up on Saturday (and Sunday in some places) is
one of only 3 sanctioned tournaments they will
attend all year. (The other two, of course, being
the other prereleases.)
My column today will
take 4 parts. First, I will review some articles
already written on the subject. Second, some links
to rules and rules explanations that will help you
with the Betrayers prerelease. Third, a first person
view of a judge in a prerelease in San Diego,
interspersed with some comments more applicable in
general. Finally, some notes on special tournaments
that are held at the prerelease, in addition to the
typical individual sealed deck events.
---
First - a couple of
articles already written on prereleases.
Betraying the Secrets of the Prerelease by Brian
David-Marshall: Every set, Brian David-Marshall
writes a primer for the magicthegathering.com
website, detailing what you can expect from the
prerelease. (Note that he mentions a deck swap in
his column - some locations do that, some don't ...
we in San Diego do not, preferring to let you play
with your cards faster. You still have to play with
only the cards you open, however - you are NOT
allowed to trade or bring in other cards you have
acquired.)
The Casual Player's Guide to Surviving the Legions
Prerelease by The Ferrett: Yes, I know it's for
an old set. But the first half of his article is a
group of tips that can apply to any prerelease.
List of Prereleases - OK, so this technically
isn't an article about prereleases. But if you need
to find out where the closest prerelease is to you,
visit this page.
---
Next, some links for
Betrayers rules:
Betrayers FAQ: should be self-explanatory. I
know some of you are "anti-spoiler," but I would
strongly suggest reading this anyway. It helps with
most of the common questions that will come up.
MTG Salvation Spoiler: By the time you read
this, this spoiler should be getting close to
complete. Not required reading if you are the
Anti-spoiler type .. I know the excitement of seeing
a card for the first time can be greater than the
strategic value of being able to evaluate the whole
set. But I personally find that knowing the cards
that are out there helps me to be able to build my
deck faster.
---
My Day (and a half) on
the Day of a Prerelease:
The story of a typical
day for me on a Prerelease day actually starts the
night before. One thing I insist on is getting to
bed by 8:00pm the night before a prerelease.
(Yes, I hear the murmurs
of "he's crazy" in the crowd. Let me try to
explain...)
My Prerelease day
usually starts with me waking up around 4:00am. I
also insist on getting a full 8 hours of sleep the
night before, especially if I'm judging. So that
makes me go to bed by 8:00pm.
(Which also means I skip
Friday Night Magic the night before the prerelease.
It doesn't matter this time, though, as I haven't
played FNM in months, since before the Champions
prerelease. But that's another story altogether.)
I also have to make a
trip to Wal-Mart the night before for snacks. One
thing that I find, playing or judging, is that I'm a
much better player if I'm not on an empty stomach.
Since there's no food within about 15 minutes of the
tournament site in San Diego, I bring snacks to keep
me "not empty."
Here's how I plan my day
will go Saturday:
4:15am: Wake Up.
5:15: Leave my house. 6:15: midpoint stop at Denny's for breakfast.
Another part of my
ritual involves stopping for breakfast about halfway
there. The trip usually takes me about 2 hours from
my house to the tournament site, and there's a
Denny's conveniently about at the midway point. It
also breaks up the monotonous car trip.
While I'm eating
breakfast, I take time to review the FAQ, so I know
the questions I'll get as a judge. If I were
playing, I'd still review the FAQ, but I'd also have
another look at the spoiler list.
7:00: Leave Denny's.
8:00: Arrive San Diego.
TWO special notes about
the San Diego Betrayers prerelease:
1) We are in a different
location this time -
Sheraton San Diego Hotel
and Marina
1590 Harbor Island Drive - West Tower San Diego, CA, 92101
It is right near the
airport.
Click here for a map of the location, and you
can then get directions to the event on this page by
inputting your address.
2) For our flights this
time - we are only running FOUR ROUNDS in our
individual flights, not five as we have in the past.
Our Organizer (and my fellow columnist, Ray Powers)
has gotten a lot of feedback from people who want to
play multiple flights or just get home earlier, and
they seem to strongly favor this change. Please let
us know what you think about this change (good or
bad) ... it helps us when planning future events.
Flight tips ...
1) Read the spoilers. It
helps, especially in San Diego when they only give
20 minutes of deck building time.
2) Play 17+ land. This isn't Mirrodin, folks ... time to go back to the tried and true land count. (And even a little higher, maybe, based on my Champions prerelease experience.) 3) Play a maximum of 3 colors. More, and you're just asking for mana problems. 4) Don't be afraid to call a judge if you have a problem.
This is the number one
judge tip I can give in this. Call the judge right
away, and don't wait until the end of the round.
They can fix a problem if it's happening right now.
They can't fix a problem if it happened any amount
of time ago. Related to this judge tip, we have ..
5) Your opponent is not
the rules expert - the judge is.
I don't care if you're
playing against me. I don't care if you're playing
against Collin Jackson (a Level 5 judge). When we're
playing in an event, we're not in charge of the
rules of the event. We're playing, not judging,
after all.
You can ask us, and
we'll likely give you the right answers. But who's
to say "Random Level 1 Judge" will? And that person
can even give you wrong information ON PURPOSE. He's
trying to beat you, after all, and if he can make
you believe something that's not true (and not have
a judge hear it), then it might just work out for
him.
This relates back to the
tip previous... if you're at all unsure about what's
going on, call a judge. It's their job to get it
right.
6) If you think (or
know, if an answer the judge gives you goes against
something printed in the FAQ) the judge got the call
wrong, you have the right to appeal to the head
judge.
99% of the time you will
get an answer from the judge, it will be the correct
answer. They have been put on the staff to oversee
the event because they have shown they know their
stuff.
But in the random case
where a judge might have his mind wander and get
something wrong, you can ask for the head judge to
review his ruling - kind of like an appeals court.
You have to let the judge who answered your call
finish his ruling first, though.
(I have an experience to
relate to this here. Back for the Stronghold
prerelease, the Utah players had to travel to
Colorado, because Utah had no prerelease due to a
recent change in organizers. The FAQ didn't come out
until the day before, so no one in our car had
access to it, since we had to leave very early
Friday morning. [I was a judge back then too - it
just hadn't been posted yet.]
So during round 2, I ask
the judge what would happen if I cast Cannibalize,
targeting my Acidic Sliver and another random
creature, and then sacrificed the Acidic Sliver
before Cannibalize resolved? He tells me the
creature still left would be removed from the game,
because the spell did things in the order written on
the card, and the remove from game effect was first.
So I thank the judge,
and continue play.
Later, in round 6 or 7
[it was one big event back then, and we had 9
rounds], I play Cannibalize on my opponent
creatures, and he sacs one and puts the counters on
the one still left! I call over the head judge on an
appeal, and he informs me that that was the way it
worked ... and gave ME a warning for
Misrepresentation!
I got the warning
removed by writing the DCI after the event ... but
better to ask if you're not sure when it first
happens anyway.)
7) Have fun!
This is the most
important one ... that's why you're here, after all,
isn't it?
Post Flight Tips (some
of these will work between rounds too):
1) Bring some decks to
play with between rounds or afterwards.
It's not just about the
event, after all. There will likely be 300+ people
there you've never even met, or only meet at the
prereleases. They're there to have fun, and you can
get some pretty cool games going on the side.
2) Bring a trade binder.
All those rares you
can't trade to your friends? Bring them. You'll have
300+ new trading partners for a day.
3) If you need cash,
there will be a vendor on site to buy your cards.
(At least, that's what I've seen at every event I've
gone to.)
If you mostly play Magic
Online, and don't care for paper cards, this is a
great way to cut the cost of attending the event. If
you have older cards that you just don't want any
more, they'll be happy to buy those too.
And regarding the cards
you get Saturday and Sunday - The prices the vendors
pay may never be as high as they are that day. After
all, they have to get their stock started somewhere
too, right?
---
I promised I'd expand
this more when I wrote the Champions version of
this. Now I'll go on to talk about the team event ..
One special event that
happens around midday (we have a goal time of 1pm
for this to start in San Diego, or after the first
flight has ended, whichever comes last) is an event
where you form a team with 2 other people. This is
nice because it allows a group of friends, a family,
or any other set of 3 people that know each other
(and sometimes some that don't!) to not just rely on
their own skill, but the skills of two other people.
Before the event starts,
you will decide what "slots" each person on your
team will play in. There are three slots, indicated
by the letters A, B, and C. The person who is
assigned the letter A will only play people on other
teams who are assigned the letter A - they will
never play someone assigned a B or C. (Likewise, Bs
will play Bs, and Cs will play Cs.)
When you sit down to
receive your product, you will receive product for
the whole team. Whereas you would receive one
tournament pack of Champions and three boosters of
Betrayers to build one deck with, in the team event
you receive two tournament packs and four boosters
to build THREE decks with.
(If your site does deck
registration and swapping you will go through the
same process of registering the cards and swapping
them before you get your cards to build your decks
with.)
You must assign each
card you open to one of the three people on your
team. Once the card is assigned, you can't give it
to someone else. (For those who do deck
registration, you will receive three decklists to
record your individual cards on.)
Then, when it comes time
to play another team, you will sit down and play the
person indicated by the same letter on the other
team. (Remember, Player A plays Player A, Player B
plays Player B, and Player C plays Player C.) You
will each play a best two out of three match, just
like you would in an individual event.
When all three games are
finished, you will report the result to the judges
based upon how many MATCHES your team won. Game
scores of the individual matches are not reported.
(So, a couple examples:
a) Your player A beat
their player A, your player B beat their player B,
and your player C beat their player C. You would
report that you won 3-0.
b) Your player A beat
their player A, your player B lost to their player
B, and your player C lost to their player C. You
would report that you lost 1-2.)
The flow of the rounds
goes much like the individual flights. Prize
structure will differ, as it is based on the number
of teams playing. Ask the judge running the event if
you have a question about that.
---
Finally, I'll get to the
drafts. Once you are done with the main event (or
even if you don't play the main event in some
places), you can sign up for a booster draft.
To give you an idea of
how much a draft costs, I looked on Wizards' website
to find information about how much a few of the
organizers charged for drafts, and this is what I
came up with:
(The following price
information has been taken off of the individual
organizer's website, and the accuracy of said
information is the responsibility of that organizer.
I take no responsibility as to the accuracy of this
information.)
Los Angeles, CA - $30 if you haven't played a
flight or draft yet that day, $16 if you have.
Gray Matter (NY/PA/NJ) - $18 Richmond, VA - $15 Chicago, IL - $18 Salt Lake City, UT - $15
(If I have not listed
your area, you can got to
Wizards' website and find out more information
about the event in your area. I just took a small
sampling to show the average price for a draft.)
A booster draft at a
prerelease is an 8 man, single elimination
tournament. You sit down in a circle around a table,
and each person is handed three Betrayers packs. At
the signal from the judge in charge of the draft,
each player opens their booster, picks one card out
of it to keep, and passes the other 14 cards to
their left. That person then takes the 14 cards that
were passed to them, picks one to keep, and passes
the other 13 on. This process continues until each
person has 15 cards that they have picked.
The next booster is then
opened, and the process is repeated, only you pass
to the person on your right instead of your left.
You do the same thing
one more time for your final booster, passing left.
At the end of the third booster, you should have 45
cards. You then build a deck out of those 45 cards.
Minimum deck size is 40, and you can add as many
basic land as you want to make your deck.
After everyone has built
their decks, you play another player that you
drafted with. The winner stays in the tournament,
the loser is dropped. The remaining 4 repeat the
process, with the winning 2 from those matches
playing to see who wins the whole tournament.
Additional packs are
given to the two people who play in the last round
as prizes. (Some places may even give packs to the
two people who lost in the round previous - please
check with the judge or organizer at your event if
you have any questions about the quantity of prizes
or how many people get prizes.)
---
Well, that about sums up
what goes on at prereleases. If you have any
suggestions for when I revise this for the Saviors
prerelease so that I can make this better, please
pass them along.
Have fun at your events
this weekend, and see you Friday.
Bill Guerin
DCI Level 2 Judge |
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