Prerelease weekend
This weekend was the prerelease weekend for Ravnica: City of Guilds. I had been planning for months to attend, but I had forgotten the date and found out on Monday that I was supposed to work on Saturday. The bank is doing a rollout of some software to our new branches in Texas and I was needed to support the rollout. But then Rita appeared and threatened the Gulf Coast. Since some of our branches are on the Gulf Coast, we had to cancel the rollout, and I was able to attend the prerelease. We were installing a new interface, but there shouldn't be any problems with that. My wife decided to spend Saturday at her mother's place since I would either be missing or useless as a parent. So with work and family accounted for I headed off to the midnight flight of the prerelease Friday night at 11:00pm.
I did some trading when I got there, trading away some older Prerelease foils for cards that I'll actually use. I probably got slightly ripped off, but since I wasn't going to ever play with them anyway, I didn't feel the loss. I played in a multiplayer game with a goblin deck which ended on turn five when the Tooth player cast Tooth... and the seatings for deck registration were posted. Either way the game was over.
Although the event is advertised as a midnight flight, we didn't crack packs until about 1:30. They leave an hour for flight registration and then there is a gap between then and the time the post the seatings for deck registration. Deck registration is a strictly administrative procedure where you open a set of cards, record the set, put it back in the bag, and turn it in. And no matter how many times you tell people, they take forever to do it. It's worse at a first set of the block prerelease where everyone is looking cards they've never seen before. At second and third set of the block prereleases they have at least seen some of the cards from the first set before. During the deck registration I got a call on my cell phone from work so I dealt with the call while I was doing the deck registration and didn't mind the extra time. The pool that I registered was pretty poor and I hoped not to get it back.
The card pool that I got back was pretty good. I got two dual lands and some other goodies. I built a WGB deck with pretty decent removal. I went 2-1-2 with the two draws coming on slow draws from my opponent. At this point it was 7:30 and another flight was starting soon. I entered a draft and rare drafted my way to a first round loss. I decided to enter another main flight. I was given a card pool with lots of red and decided to build an almost mono-red deck. It didn't work. At all. I ended up going 0-2 Drop. With that indignity beehind me I decided to join one more flight. This time I got a good deck with a RWG deck that practically built itself. I went 5-1-0 agreeing to a prize split in the last round. If I had won I would have gotten 54 packs or 27 packs if I lost. My opponent would have gotten 36 packs on a win or 9 packs if he lost. We agreed to a prize split where regardless of the result of the match I got 36 packs and he got 27. And then he crushed me. But I took the box and smiled and went home. I finally got home about 9:30 and collapsed next to the bed after being awake for 24 hours straight with a 1-hour nap.
It wasn't easy to be on a diet, give up caffiene, and be at a prerelease. Before I left, I packed a "lunch" of veggies and hummus and cheese sticks. On the way to the tournament, I stopped by Schnucks and picked up a bag of peanuts, a small bag of almonds, a six pack of flavored water, and a six pack of V-8 cans. About noon I had a salad from a hallway kiosk, which I proceeded to dump some of the contents on myself. Thankfully I don't like dressing on my salad or that could have been really bad. About 4:00 I stopped in at the Cracker Barrel next door to the venue and had a breakfast of eggs and turkey sausage. And that was all that I had over the 24 hours I was up. I was amazed at how well I was functioning throughout the day. I guess I had already been broken in by Oliver to cope on little to no sleep.
In terms of observations on the set, it is pretty obvious that everyone will be playing some combination of green, white, and black. Red seemed to be well-represented at the top of the tables. Blue was virtually unplayed, unless you got all of the cards that would make it ridiculous. Dredge is a really strong mechanic, Convoke is not as strong, and Radiance and Transmute didn't see a lot of play. There didn't seem to be a lot of Limited bomb/Constructed chaff type cards. We'll see when everyone gets a look at it.
I did some trading when I got there, trading away some older Prerelease foils for cards that I'll actually use. I probably got slightly ripped off, but since I wasn't going to ever play with them anyway, I didn't feel the loss. I played in a multiplayer game with a goblin deck which ended on turn five when the Tooth player cast Tooth... and the seatings for deck registration were posted. Either way the game was over.
Although the event is advertised as a midnight flight, we didn't crack packs until about 1:30. They leave an hour for flight registration and then there is a gap between then and the time the post the seatings for deck registration. Deck registration is a strictly administrative procedure where you open a set of cards, record the set, put it back in the bag, and turn it in. And no matter how many times you tell people, they take forever to do it. It's worse at a first set of the block prerelease where everyone is looking cards they've never seen before. At second and third set of the block prereleases they have at least seen some of the cards from the first set before. During the deck registration I got a call on my cell phone from work so I dealt with the call while I was doing the deck registration and didn't mind the extra time. The pool that I registered was pretty poor and I hoped not to get it back.
The card pool that I got back was pretty good. I got two dual lands and some other goodies. I built a WGB deck with pretty decent removal. I went 2-1-2 with the two draws coming on slow draws from my opponent. At this point it was 7:30 and another flight was starting soon. I entered a draft and rare drafted my way to a first round loss. I decided to enter another main flight. I was given a card pool with lots of red and decided to build an almost mono-red deck. It didn't work. At all. I ended up going 0-2 Drop. With that indignity beehind me I decided to join one more flight. This time I got a good deck with a RWG deck that practically built itself. I went 5-1-0 agreeing to a prize split in the last round. If I had won I would have gotten 54 packs or 27 packs if I lost. My opponent would have gotten 36 packs on a win or 9 packs if he lost. We agreed to a prize split where regardless of the result of the match I got 36 packs and he got 27. And then he crushed me. But I took the box and smiled and went home. I finally got home about 9:30 and collapsed next to the bed after being awake for 24 hours straight with a 1-hour nap.
It wasn't easy to be on a diet, give up caffiene, and be at a prerelease. Before I left, I packed a "lunch" of veggies and hummus and cheese sticks. On the way to the tournament, I stopped by Schnucks and picked up a bag of peanuts, a small bag of almonds, a six pack of flavored water, and a six pack of V-8 cans. About noon I had a salad from a hallway kiosk, which I proceeded to dump some of the contents on myself. Thankfully I don't like dressing on my salad or that could have been really bad. About 4:00 I stopped in at the Cracker Barrel next door to the venue and had a breakfast of eggs and turkey sausage. And that was all that I had over the 24 hours I was up. I was amazed at how well I was functioning throughout the day. I guess I had already been broken in by Oliver to cope on little to no sleep.
In terms of observations on the set, it is pretty obvious that everyone will be playing some combination of green, white, and black. Red seemed to be well-represented at the top of the tables. Blue was virtually unplayed, unless you got all of the cards that would make it ridiculous. Dredge is a really strong mechanic, Convoke is not as strong, and Radiance and Transmute didn't see a lot of play. There didn't seem to be a lot of Limited bomb/Constructed chaff type cards. We'll see when everyone gets a look at it.
posted by mypetrock at 10:36 AM
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