I'm sure at least a few other people on this site took part in the Magic The Gathering Pre-release event this weekend. For those who aren't familiar, Wizards is about to bring out a new set and a pre-release is a way to preview the set and win prizes in a semi-competitive tournament environment. What I'm looking for here is stories, horror stories, stories of triumph or silly mistakes. What did you play, what did you end up playing against and so on.
Anyway, here was my experience: Very positive. The spot I played at was hosting a 1v1 tournament, everyone played 4 rounds. I opened my Simic box, I had pre-ordered a few weeks earlier and was preparing myself for a Boros dominated scene. It didn't look good as a Simic comrade to my left was pushed into playing Boros due to the contents of his boosters(In each box was 6 booster-packs and a guild pack which contained cards specific to the guild you chose.) My own packs luckily favored Simic heavily with too many good green creatures and spells. I couldn't pick them all so I had to go through the difficult process of making cuts to bring the deck down to 40 Cards (I decided to air on the greedy side and go with 26 cards with 17 lands, as opposed to just 23.)
My matches were broken up like so. First round, the person I played against was playing Dimir with green splashed in for some Simic fun. My deck ended up being pure Simic with a few mono-Green creatures from Gruul and some mono-blue Dimir control. Dimir looked like it played pretty well, sending out lots of creatures that had ways of getting around my defenses and of course a lot of mill. Unfortunately for the Dimir player, in both matches the mill worked to my advantage, getting rid of excess land so that I could draw more creatures for my Evolve engine. I ended up winning in two through sheer force, my line-up of creatures evolving on pretty much every turn to unmanageable levels. The sets lack of board wipes worked to my advantage, letting my 5-6 3/3+ creatures run over an opponent without opposition.
My Evolve themed deck worked pretty amazingly, the all star of which seemed to be the lowly Crocanura [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=366319], which I ended up with 4 of. The frog usually topped out at as a 3/6, reach of course being my answer to other player's flying shenanigans; in the end he worked out as a pretty decent wall that could attack when needed and would evolve my more power oriented creatures if I played him later in teh game. A pair of shamble sharks could be flashed in to evolve my creatures while blocking or killing other threats and my single Elusive Krasis ended one game as a 6/10. Zamek Guildmage worked as a great Card draw engine when my creatures were no long evolving and I had nothing else to play. The single Unexpected Results I had made for another fun play when I had nothing else in my hand. The worst outcome in that case was filling my board with land. The most effective piece of control I had was a single copy of Aetherize which was extremely effective at stalling the Boros Battalions.*
Overall I went 2 wins/1 draw/1 loss. I played 2 Dimir and two Boros, losing to one Boros player and drawing with the other. The four games I played each had a feature pack, of which I won 3/4. Pretty good haul. One of the Prize packs I won contained the Boros Guild Leader. I considered releasing her to a proper Boros player but the Simic Combine believes it advantageous to detain the Guild Leader for future experiments.
What was your pre-release like?
Deck-list:
1x Cloudfin Raptor
1x spire tracer
1x experiment one
1x gyre Sage
2x Shambleshark
1x Zameck Guilmage
1x Nimbus swimmer
1x Slaughterhorn
2x Crocanura
1x Elusive Krasis
1x Drakewing Krasis
1x Crowned Ceratok
1x Rust Scarab
1x Adaptive Snapjaw
---
1x Bioshift
1x Burst of strength
1x hands of binding
1x simic keyrune
1x verdant haven
1x miming slime
1x Aetherize
1x Unexpected results
---
1x Simic Guildgate
7x Islands
9x forest
Anyway, here was my experience: Very positive. The spot I played at was hosting a 1v1 tournament, everyone played 4 rounds. I opened my Simic box, I had pre-ordered a few weeks earlier and was preparing myself for a Boros dominated scene. It didn't look good as a Simic comrade to my left was pushed into playing Boros due to the contents of his boosters(In each box was 6 booster-packs and a guild pack which contained cards specific to the guild you chose.) My own packs luckily favored Simic heavily with too many good green creatures and spells. I couldn't pick them all so I had to go through the difficult process of making cuts to bring the deck down to 40 Cards (I decided to air on the greedy side and go with 26 cards with 17 lands, as opposed to just 23.)
My matches were broken up like so. First round, the person I played against was playing Dimir with green splashed in for some Simic fun. My deck ended up being pure Simic with a few mono-Green creatures from Gruul and some mono-blue Dimir control. Dimir looked like it played pretty well, sending out lots of creatures that had ways of getting around my defenses and of course a lot of mill. Unfortunately for the Dimir player, in both matches the mill worked to my advantage, getting rid of excess land so that I could draw more creatures for my Evolve engine. I ended up winning in two through sheer force, my line-up of creatures evolving on pretty much every turn to unmanageable levels. The sets lack of board wipes worked to my advantage, letting my 5-6 3/3+ creatures run over an opponent without opposition.
My Evolve themed deck worked pretty amazingly, the all star of which seemed to be the lowly Crocanura [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=366319], which I ended up with 4 of. The frog usually topped out at as a 3/6, reach of course being my answer to other player's flying shenanigans; in the end he worked out as a pretty decent wall that could attack when needed and would evolve my more power oriented creatures if I played him later in teh game. A pair of shamble sharks could be flashed in to evolve my creatures while blocking or killing other threats and my single Elusive Krasis ended one game as a 6/10. Zamek Guildmage worked as a great Card draw engine when my creatures were no long evolving and I had nothing else to play. The single Unexpected Results I had made for another fun play when I had nothing else in my hand. The worst outcome in that case was filling my board with land. The most effective piece of control I had was a single copy of Aetherize which was extremely effective at stalling the Boros Battalions.*
Overall I went 2 wins/1 draw/1 loss. I played 2 Dimir and two Boros, losing to one Boros player and drawing with the other. The four games I played each had a feature pack, of which I won 3/4. Pretty good haul. One of the Prize packs I won contained the Boros Guild Leader. I considered releasing her to a proper Boros player but the Simic Combine believes it advantageous to detain the Guild Leader for future experiments.
What was your pre-release like?
Deck-list:
1x Cloudfin Raptor
1x spire tracer
1x experiment one
1x gyre Sage
2x Shambleshark
1x Zameck Guilmage
1x Nimbus swimmer
1x Slaughterhorn
2x Crocanura
1x Elusive Krasis
1x Drakewing Krasis
1x Crowned Ceratok
1x Rust Scarab
1x Adaptive Snapjaw
---
1x Bioshift
1x Burst of strength
1x hands of binding
1x simic keyrune
1x verdant haven
1x miming slime
1x Aetherize
1x Unexpected results
---
1x Simic Guildgate
7x Islands
9x forest