M12 PreRelease Prep

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

To use BDM's witty analogy, this is the weekend to get your mits on freshly baked M12 cards. Magic 2012 core set pre-release events are starting Friday after midnight and running through until Sunday afternoon just about every large city around the globe. In today's article we hope to impart some basic tips on sealed deck building which we hope will make your events enjoyable.

We will be heading out to attend the Magic 2012 Pre-release weekend at OMG Games in Barrie, Ontario on Sunday. The folks there are running events all weekend long from July 9th - 10th
Saturday 12:30 AM (after Friday Night Magic) / Saturday 10:00 AM / Saturday 3:00 PM / Sunday 11:00 AM
The event costs only $40 for your first tournament (flight) and $35 for each after. You will get six packs of M12 to which to build your forty card deck. As for prizes, you will of course score the pre-release foil promo Bloodlord of Vaasgoth and if you place, you can walk away with product :
4-0 record receives 14 packs of M12
3-1 record receives 6 packs of M12


~Now - for M12 prerelease tips :

We encourage you to review the Magic 2012 Frequently Asked Questions document posted on the mothership HERE. We also suggest that you familiarise yourself with the M12 cards itself or if you have already, review them again to look for solid choices for inclusion into a sealed deck. Wizards has now posted the entire set on the Gatherer database HERE.

Next - Wow - you just opened up six packs - where to go from there ? Some players will sort by colour and then mana cost to determine how deep each colour may go towards your final build. Other players we've seen divide the card pool into two piles - playable and unplayable. Whichever way you go ensure that your final goal is a total of 40 cards which includes approximately 17 lands.

We will often just jump the gun and reciew the six rares and eighteen uncommons we've just pulled (not including any random foils we may have received). From here as well as the rest of the pool we just look for bombs. The bomb cards are stand-alones which could easily enable a win. In this set, we will be looking for any of the Planeswalkers, the Titans, Aegis Angel, Mind Control, Overrun, Archon of Justice, etc. Try to avoid Phantasmal Dragon unless you can protect it.

Having set these aside, we now start pulling out any and all removal spells whether they are sorceries, instants, artifacts or creatures. Cards such as Doomblade, Plummet, Royal Assassin, and Acidic Slime could be considered. From here, we try to work in any creatures with evasion and decent power / toughness, solid chump blockers, aggressive attackers, as well as creatures with solid abilities. We suggest that you play two colours unless you are very certain you have a winning build with just one. Splashing a third colour could also pay dividends if you can now include a bomby card in another colour.

Don't forget to sideboard in cards between games and if you are not happy with your build, one may even re-construct another deck in between matches if time allows. If you are heading out to battle this weekend, have a blast - we will get a post up latter recounting our (hopefully) epic games and awesome plays.

Lastly, if you pull a new Planeswalker (Chandra, Jace, Garruk) or a Titan, and want to trade, ensure you know the local values - there may predatory traders out there so you may wish to confirm with the organiser or trusted friend what may be a good deal
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