Today I went to the prerelease for the new Magic set called Innistrad.
It was the most popular I’ve been to, with 43 entrants, but I was alone and felt sick so I have to say it wasn’t anywhere near as much fun as previous events.
I opened my six boosters and assembled a green/white deck based around humans. In fact I had so many humans (especially in white) the deck almost built itself. In particular I had high hopes for this guy:
My first round was against another white/green deck that was very similar to my own. Although the games were close, he beat me 0-2. He was one of those OCD players, and used a pencil and paper to calculate combat damage every battle (no joke) since he was using an artifact that doubled damage dealt and received. In neither game was I able to summon the Patriarch, but this guy served me well (and I flipped him both games):
What is flipped you ask? Innistrad introduced double-faced cards to MTG, which can be flipped over when certain conditions are fulfilled. Virtually everyone at pre releases use card sleeves, so hiding the backs was not an issue. But if you don’t have sleeves, a checklist proxy cars with a normal MTG back is included in almost every booster.
My second opponent used a red/green werewolf deck. It was stressful to play against because the onus is on the opponent to keep the werewolf cards from flipping to their more powerful sides. He ended up winning 1-2, and the last game was a walkover because he got this monster out:
I left after two rounds for the reasons listed above. From what I saw Innistrad looks like a lot of fun, although I seem to be looking at the cards more now for inclusion into Commander decks than for ‘normal’ decks. I’m looking forward to opening my box of boosters next weekend 🙂
Fun fact learned today: tokens have rarity! Although they all have the common rarity symbol, creature token cards share the rarity of the card that creates them. Or so a few guys were claiming…
TIL – ‘onus’ is a word.
so jealous you got to go… the stores here are inferior and poorly supplied :<
i'm going to miss stopping by Z.P. to buy boosters… there's nothing like it here. also, that guy in the hat is so nice! and his g.f…. y'know, with the sausage? did he judge today?
RE: Moldgraf Monstrosity. Is there a standard method for dealing with the random effect? I mean, do you remove all creatures from your graveyard, shuffle them face down, then have your opponent draw two, or what?
I’d guess something like that. Since I was unable to kill it when he played it, it never came to that.
Innistrad seems to have a few cards that randomly return things from the graveyard.