So the supposedly Ikoria Prerelease event was way back in April but a lot of changes happened because of the pandemic thus, Wizards of the Coast needed to adjust the schedules again in both paper and MTGO & Arena platforms. Hence, the local Prerelease for Ikoria was also moved and turned into a take-home kind of approach.

However, in the improvement of the community quarantine which was later changed to a modified general type, gatherings were then allowed with precautions on social distancing. With this, our local game store decided to hold a mini Ikoria Prerelease event scheduled on a Saturday & that is good for ten persons only. I then decided to join as sort of a support.

I opened the prerelease pack and did the usual sorting of the booster contents according to color. After a quick reading of the cards, I decided that Green, White, and Black are the best colors of the pool to build the deck with. The colors represented Abzan and had a few Rares to back it up. There were also a few spot removals in those colors which were important to support the triggered ability of Chevill, Bane of Monsters.

Check out the video below of my deck build.

Just last night, Wizards of the Coast published an article regarding the planned changes to the release schedule of the upcoming Magic: the Gathering set Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths. This is in correlation to current COVID19 pandemic that has affected severely in Asian countries and the United States.

The article discussed two major points: Changes to the release schedule for Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths and relief initiatives for local game stores.

To quote, “For the safety of those working in our distribution and shipping centers as well as in acknowledgement that some places simply cannot open their doors, we will be rolling out the release of Ikoria as such:”

April 2 – Ikoria Debut, trailer launch, (7 a.m. PT/10 a.m. ET/2 p.m. UTC) and the start of previews
April 10 – Last day of previews
April 16 – Ikoria released on Magic: The Gathering Arena and Magic Online
April 17 – Prerelease/release in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong
May 15 – Prerelease/release in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Australia/New Zealand

For this release, we’ll be combining our Prerelease and Release weekends—stores can sell any products on those dates and can still let players play Prerelease at home. “

They did not mentioned on their list the other countries Southeast Asia region so I am skeptical if we will have our separate schedule or will it be covered under the April 17th date. They do mentioned though to make updates if needed so I guess we had to wait for those.

I will inquire with my local game store if the current PH retailer gave them any info on the Ikoria Prerelease and Release schedule in the country. I am thinking they will practice the same procedure of having the players take home the kits and play the event in their homes.

The link for the full article posted:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/changes-release-ikoria-lair-behemoths-2020-03-26