It was another Prerelease Saturday for the local MtG Iloilo community as it was scheduled for the Dragons of Tarkir set. It was an earlier date for the third set as the usual schedule was every April or May of the year. Anyhow, we started the reservation of the PR slots a month before as we expected a surge in the number of participants. By the time we were on the last week, around twenty people were listed.

Good thing is that the products arrived as scheduled (Thursday) unlike that of the Fate Reforged PR so TO Rei was able to sort out the number of PR kits to be used. As soon I confirmed with Rei that the products arrived, I immediately went to Lanai Sports Bar & Grill that night to ask permission to use the place on Saturday. Another good news is that they will be starting to serve lunch by Friday so it won’t be a task for their staff to accommodate us. That said, the Prerelease was good to go.

Come Saturday, I went to Rei’s place at around 11am to help him with the products to bring to Lanai. He brought around 30 PR kits just in case some players that weren’t preregistered will join. We started listing the names of the players present at the venue at 12 noon and had to wait for additional participants until 1pm.

The distribution of kits followed and I have chosen Atarka (Red Green) as my colors as suggested by PV’s Prerelease primer article at the CFB website. My seeded pack got me a foil Den Protector but the rest of them were just so-so. What was worse was that my other four DTK boosters didn’t provide me any Red or Green rare to utilize. My FRF also followed, giving me a Temporal Trespass which is very useless for my build. What was good though is that the RG commons can be sufficient enough to build a decent deck. Here was what I came up with:

Lands
8 Forest
9 Mountain

Creatures
1 Colossodon Yearling
1 Aerie Bowmasters
1 Stampeding Elk Herd
1 Salt Road Quartermasters
1 Dragon-Scarred Bear
1 Atarka Efreet
1 Ainok Artillerist
2 Hardened Berserker
2 Summit Prowler
1 Den Protector
1 Guardian Shield-Bearer
2 Sabertooth Outrider
1 Atarka Beastbreaker

Spells
2 Lose Calm
1 Dromoka’s Gift
1 Tail Slash
2 Press the Advantage
1 Temur Battle Rage
A quick recap of the matchups:

Round 1 versus Ericson (Green White) won 2-0

Round 2 versus Justin (Black Red) won 2-1

Round 3 versus John Paul (Blue Black w/ Red) won 2-1

Round 4 versus Speedy (Blue White) won 2-0

The highlight of the matches was Game 3 against JP wherein I was able to set up my creature into a 5/4 thanks to Salt Road Quartermasters and kill him with Double Strike. He was at ten life that time and he attacked with two big creatures. I was at five life and I chump-blocked the 5/5 and took 4 damage putting me down to 1 life. He didn’t have a follow up play and with one card in hand, I doubt that it was a removal since he should have already done that on his turn to kill off my 5/4. On my possible last turn of the game, I drew a land and attacked and as expected he took the damage. Before the damage step, I casted Temur Battle Rage for the Double Strike and got him from ten life to zero.

Overall, I had wished that my card pool cooperated more but I am happy with my 4-0 finish. Fellow player Eric Borromeo also went 4-0 with Atarka but his deck components were stronger and more decent. I think he had Yasova and the new Surrak.

I opened two Mythics (Deathmist Raptor and Dragonlord Dromoka) from my prize boosters and that somewhat gave me a little ROI for my registration fee.

That is a wrap for this Dragons of Tarkir Prerelease report, until the next post.

P.S. Here are the Prerelease event pics. Click here.