The event was held in a massive hall with hundreds of people in attendance. They ran one huge sealed deck event to kick things off (I went 1-1 drop) with a lot of side events over the course of the day. I remember getting into a triple Legacy draft where I ended up with _five_ rancors. I was mono-green with random dudes, treetop villages, and a lot of +2/+0 and trample going on. I can recall activating treetop village, casting 2 rancors on it, and getting in for 7 on multiple occasions. Apparently I played Gab Tsang, Byung Chun, and Allen Pengelly beating all three of them. It was glorious. I then played in two other drafts before we left. I remember it being a great time - a little packed in the hall maybe - but a lot of fun.
Prereleases evolved over time. They stopped running one monolithic tournament with everyone in it and started running many smaller tournaments over the course of the day. Once 32 or 64 people signed up they started a sealed tournament for them. They innovated the 'team sealed' format which became my favourite format of all time. The first time I played it was at the very next prerelease, for Urza's Destiny. I teamed up with Jer and Tom P to form a very silly team. Tom wore a crazy orange BOO! hat and I was wearing a rubber camel puppet (his name was Camel and he loved Jer). Jer was just made fun of by all passersby for associating with such lunatics. The format didn't allow sideboards so I played, I think, 6 different runes of protection. I had an academy rector but I think we left him on the bench. At any rate, a ton of fun.
Today was the M12 prerelease. I'm trying to get ready for Nationals next month so I wanted to get some practice in with the new set. Apparently we'll be drafting a core set at Nationals. I went to look for where the prerelease was going to be held only to find they don't hold big events anymore. I'm not sure why, but they're letting individual stores run events instead of just having a single big one. I guess this will help people in Waterloo, for example, since they won't have to drive for over an hour and crash at Jer's parent's place. I went to the Wizard's site and found a location for an event. The first one on the list was at 401 Games, and I know where that is, so that's where I went. Here's what they had on their website:
401 Games will be hosting 2 Magic 2012 Pre-Release Events, one on Saturday, July 9th and one on Sunday, July 10th.
Both events will start at 12 Noon.
We will be limiting the numbers of players for each event to 64.
We will not be doing prereg for this event so i you want to get one of the FOIL promo cards get here early. :)
I didn't exactly get there early, but I was there at 11:40. There was a big line-up to sign up, but when I got to the front and paid there was no indication we were over capacity. I went to look at their board games (I ended up buying Roll Through the Ages and the new Eurorails) as more and more people lined up to sign up. Eventually someone in charge said something about finding a place to sit, anywhere. So I went hunting only to find every seat in the place was filled. The normal game room was filled with people sitting at the tables and there were probably a dozen people standing in the aisle. (It didn't smell great.) I couldn't find a seat so I at least found a quiet corner to stand in. Then one of the guys in charge came upstairs and said they had more people sign up than they could fit in, so if anyone wanted to drop they're give them their product, along with some extra stuff if they'd just leave. (2 boosters from the previous block and a deck box, I think.) Some people got up to take advantage of that 'great offer' (the prize pool was 2 boosters of M12 per person so the store probably made out by pawning off 2 older packs instead of M12 packs) and I slipped into a vacated seat before other people standing around figured out what was going on.
Now every 5-10 minutes someone would come upstairs, look in the room, and mutter about how all the seats were filled. About 50 minutes after the scheduled start time they finally came up and posted seating assignments for deck building. I thought that's why were finding a seat in the first place. No, it turns out we were finding seats because they simply didn't know how many seats they had, or people they had, and decided the solution was to play musical chairs until everyone magically had a seat. I was assigned a seat in the same room for deck building. My card pool seemed really, really bad. A couple decent cards in each of red, white, blue, and black but no real substance. My green, however, had 21 cards. 20 of which were playable, including a guy who's power and toughness are equal to the number of forests you have in play. I did have a rampant growth and an 'any mana' artifact so I could splash if I wanted to. Turned out my best splash card was going to be either gravedigger or merfolk looter so I just played the green horn (gain a life when anyone casts a green spell) and went mono.
My first round pairing was also in the same room. By now, having cleared out all the people who were just standing around, the room was becoming reasonable to sit in. I was paired up with a pretty girl who was also just getting back into Magic after a break and was also disappointed that they'd changed prerelease formats. Her deck had 2 sengir vampires and a serra angel but she only drew 1 of them total over the match and I had a spider which kills a flyer when he comes into play to deal with it. I won one game with a 7/7 trampler and one game with a 9/9 untargetable. It was a fun game.
Round two I'm paired at a table that's not in the upstairs room. In fact, it's not even a table. I'm playing on the store counter, without a seat. And with a match going on less than a foot behind me, so I had no room at all. And if anyone wanted to leave? I had to actually walk away from my game to make room. My opponent was playing with a lot of unblockable creatures and played a planeswalker both games. Unsurprisingly, I lost.
Now, if I knew I'd be able to play in the 'nice' room upstairs I would have kept playing. But facing the prospect of having to cram into the ground floor (no AC) on makeshift tables (or even a non-table) I had to drop. I didn't think my sanity could handle being crammed into a pile of loud, sweaty men.
I believe they ended up taking money from like 90 people, with something like 78 actually playing. Now, when I read on the website that they're capping it at 64 so you should get there early I'd think they'd actually turn away person 65. Not take their money, try to bribe people to leave, and then make everyone have a bad experience dealing with the overflow. I guess it's good for them that they got extra business and maybe at a younger age I'd have been willing to put up with the heat, and the noise, and the smell, and the crampedness. But I just couldn't handle it today. I was going to go back tomorrow too, but now I'm not.
I want a big prerelease in a nice venue with actual drafts, team tournaments, and the like. I want it to feel like a big important event and not just a bunch of people cramming into a tiny store. I guess I'll have to put off experiencing M12 until it comes out online. At least there I can be sure that I won't have a large man sneeze on me because I'm forced to stand in his personal space in order to play a game.
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