Hey guys. Just to keep back on track with updates, I decided to share with you my experience on our local Alara Reborn Prerelease last Saturday. You might be asking why it’s a prerelease since the scheduled date was April 25. It’s because the product shipment was held by the Bureau of Customs. I didn’t know the real reason (and was too pissed to find out) why they did that but that really forced the local retailers to change the schedule a week later. Of course, a lot of players were disappointed with that delay but government crap can’t stop Magic players who enjoyed last weekend. I’m sure most of you too as this was also the schedule for the Release events.

Returning to the local scene, we held the prerelease with 20 players. Three Alara Reborn boosters were given along with three Shards of Alara packs. It was a fun time for the players opening each of the packs and pulling out bomb rares and chase cards. You can imagine how noisy we were. It was also my lucky day as I pulled out Elspeth from one of my packs. Woot. It was tough at first to decide which shard to construct the deck (my other rares were in color conflict) but after surveying my card pool, I decided to build a Bant aggro deck (exalted guys, a few mana fixers, and creature removal) with Elspeth as the star player or rather the player/creature support.

Here’s a summary of my match-ups. I went 3-1.

Round 1 versus Jund. Win 2-0
Match highlight: I was able to crystallize his Dragon Overlord and overpower him with an exalted Cave Thoctar.

Round 2 versus 5cc. Win 2-0
Match highlight: I was lucky in this round because he was mana screwed on game 1 and got mana flood on game 2.

Round 3 versus Esper/Bant. Loss 0-2
Match highlight: He stopped my early assault with a Pulse on Elspeth. In game 2, I got crappy draws and his early Wall of Denial stopped my critters. Oh, and Elspeth was again Pulsed in this game.

Round 4 versus Naya. Win 2-1
Match highlight: Overpowered me with big guys in Game 1 and I punished his mana screw with a one-two-three punch in Games 2 and 3.

And here are some of the pics taken from Oliver’s camera.

Players waiting for the distribution of the packs.

This player got his basic lands ready to be slid into the deck.

The deck construction stage. It looks so messy but the good thing is the tables are large enough to handle the sorted cards.

Can you handle the Dragon beats of this card pool?

Me wearing Tonton’s lucky Goofy hat.

Magic Iloilo players posing after a successful and fun prerelease.