Last Friday night was the first Theros Beyond Death prerelease in Iloilo City wherein the host game store was Nth Dimension: Comics and Games. I reserved my slot beforehand to make sure I am one of the first players to experience playing the cards and building the deck from the newest Magic set. There were only 18 slots allotted for the Prerelease event and so to avoid extra participants, Part Lee, the shop owner, announced on their FB page the slot reservations days before.

I did make time to read some articles and watch Youtube videos on the prerelease guide and on what cards to consider in building our sealed pool. Knowledge-wise I think that was enough and I had to rely on my luck in opening good and powerful cards. I also posted in my DeathMarked Facebook on the things to prepare for your first Prerelease event.

I arrived at around 5:30 pm in the shop which was just a few blocks from the city hall where I work. There were already a few familiar faces who were also playing in the Prerelease. We then discussed what they would like to open in their PR kits and regarding that one, I made an instant and short video interview. Check it out below.

The rest of the players arrived later that night and we gathered at the designated conference room on the second floor to get ready for the kit distribution and deck building. It officially started at around 6:45 pm. I was not able to choose my PR kit as it was just plainly distributed by the shop owner and so when I opened it, the foil promo card was Dalakos, Crafter of Wonders. It was not impressive to be used in an Enchantment-heavy format so I decided to just open the rest of the booster packs and sort them by color.

The other Rares I got were Tectonic Giant, Nessian Boar, Shatter the Skies, Haktos the Unscarred, Storm’s Wrath, and a Protean Thaumaturge. I then checked the commons and uncommons and sort out the good cards from the bad and unplayable ones. It turned out that Red and White are the best options mainly because of the two mass removals in each color. Also, Haktos is Red White and there were also a few spells and creatures that can be decently used.

My problem here is that my creature is quite high. There were only four creatures with mana cost three or less and the rest were mostly on five costs. I would expect awkward draws where my Auras could not enchant early and had to wait for slow creatures to be played first. It certainly did happen in some of my matches. Here below is a recap of my matches that night.

Rd 1 versus Black-Blue-Green – Won 2-1

Rd 2 versus Blue-White – Lost 0-2

Rd 3 versus Black-White – Won 2-0

Rd 4 versus Blue-White – Won 2-0

It was in the Blue-White matchups that I was punished by a mana flood and awkward draws of no creatures. In Game 1, I was able to bring him down to 1 life and was also able to sweep his creatures with Shatter the Skies in the early turns. He, however, was able to stabilize with Thryx beating down in the air for a few turns while having a blocker on the ground for my creatures. I was not able to answer it immediately and had to rely on my top deck which was only lands. If only I had drawn Haktos at that time as surely he would not have any answer to that if I roll the right number.

It was a learning event overall, but somewhat tiring because it finished at around 11:00 pm. Emphasis on learning as I had gained knowledge on most card interactions within the set and that Black got the most removal spells. It is quite different if you got the experience playing the actual cards than just reading each of their rating in a strategy article. At that time, I knew what I would do on my next PR sealed deck which I will be applying on the Saturday Prerelease at Pro Reis place. That will be Part 2 of this tournament report.

That is a wrap, thanks for reading, and until the next blog post.

It seems that the local Standard metagame in the Iloilo community still revolves around Cat Oven, Gruul Adventures and Fires of Invention decks. I was able to drop by Pro Reis place yesterday in the Continue reading →