Dominaria Prerelease 2018-04-22 Orlando

Hey folks!  I was out of town for the prerelease, at a conference in Orlando, so I found a place to play here.  Big thanks to Cool Stuff Games of Maitland for holding a 6 PM Sunday prerelease.  It was quite well attended, too, with maybe 40 or 50 participants.

Dominaria is a set that a lot of people have been waiting for, with some returns to 1990s Magic both in flavor/story and in play style.  Going in, I knew the cards well enough that I figured I would probably build around whatever strong rares I could best support.

Cool Stuff was pretty serious about getting people started right!

Aside from announcing several times that opening the prerelease pack early would get you kicked out of the store, they were very friendly and well organized.  They even had some nice giveaways with the $30 cost of entry -- a playmat and a weird solid metal angel token.

One oddity of Dominaria is that it has a strong theme of legendary creatures.  They redesigned the border for legendary cards, and they modified the pack order so that you would get at least one legend appear per pack.  I'm sure someone has "cracked the code" all the way, but my impression was that instead of 3 uncommons and a rare at the back of the pack, you get 2 uncommons, a rare, then a legend.  The legend is usually uncommon but might be able to be rare also.  I was opening the packs fast and I noticed that trend in several, but the overall results don't bear it out, so I'm not entirely sure how it's set up.  Here are my legendary cards, and my one very unexciting saga:

There are enough legends that I could have gotten 1 per pack, but when I looked at my rares, I realized they couldn't all have replaced an uncommon because I didn't have enough rares.  So maybe they only put an uncommon legend in packs with no rare legend?  Anyway, it's not really important and is probably boring to you, so lets get on with it.  Here are my rares:

You might notice that my unopened promo is different -- I didn't notice until I had almost finished building my deck and flipped my promo over, but everyone got two promos, one a random rare/mythic and the other a legendary, which could be uncommon.  I just happened to get two rares (Zahid, Djinn of the Lamp and Jaya's Immolating Inferno, since there's no way you can read them through that frosted plastic).

Anyway, after examining all this stuff and my other support cards, I decided to go green-white, in part because Verdant Force and Evra are two cards that can completely take over the game if not killed right away.  Usually planeswalkers are super exciting, but Jaya Ballard is actually pretty mediocre unless you have a very specific spell-heavy deck.

Evra, Halcyon Witness is a re-imagining of the very bad Personal Incarnation, the first ever creature with the type "avatar."  Her ability is weird (and devastating) because it's a permanent switch.  The usual play pattern is, supposing you're at 20 life, you trade with her while attacking to go to 4 life and she becomes a 20/4, then you hope the opponent can't kill her with a spell, then she hits something and your life goes to 24.  If what she hits is the opponent, you probably win right then.  If not, you've gained 4 life this turn and you have a 20/4 lifelink that you can swap with again later!  This was clearly my most individually powerful card.  And green had my best support cards, so here's what I ended up playing:

Aside from Evra, there was a strong ramp-into-kicker component to my deck to cast my 7/7s ahead of schedule:

And my other legend, Shanna, was supported by a number of creatures that create extra creatures.

Last, my sideboard had a number of similar replacement cards, so my main plan was to either cut a Swamp for Llanowar Envoy or cut a Forest for Invoke the Divine when on the draw, depending whether I had seen a nasty artifact or enchantment.  I may have taken something else out on the play.

So how did it play?  I'll try to keep the descriptions short, but the games in general were very interactive and interesting.

Round 1 vs. F.
F. was playing black-green.  His first hand was bad and he was stuck on 2 lands for a while, so when I played Evra on maybe turn 5, he conceded.  Second game was a little better, as he had an Icy Manipulator as well as Karn.  But again, I had the better board when I played Evra, and he lost soon thereafter.  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. C.
C. was in white-black.  In the first game, he mulliganed down to 5 and then had bad draws.  Second game I missed a land drop and mentioned it on his turn, and he told me I could play it, but I declined.  I wasn't sure if it would matter at the time, but it did stop me from casting a 7-drop by one turn.  I don't think it mattered in the game outcome though, because he had a Serra Angel that I couldn't stop.  Gane 3 he played Serra Angel followed by Lyra Dawnbringer, who turns all your angels insane, and I was done pretty fast.  I also made a mistake two different times that game of assuming my Sanctum Spirit had flying because it is a spirit and looks like it can fly.  Loss, 1-2.

Round 3 vs. E.
This guy was playing Bant (white-blue-green), and he was the true wildcard personality of the night.  He was jumpy and amiable at the same time, and he kept losing focus and playing with his phone.  At one point he had to use the restroom so badly that he just got up in the middle of the game, and then he got distracted looking at a friend's game on the way back.  In game 1 I got a pretty good board advantage, but he had Tatyova and a bunch of lands.  After I was tapped out, he cast the spell that turns all his lands into 2/2 indestructible for a turn, then attacked assuming he had won.  I set up blocks and managed to survive at 2 life, then cast the Krosan Druid kicked the next turn to go back up to 12.  He had an Icy Manipulator, and I don't think he was actually dead, but he got into this weird pattern where it looked like he was going to concede but then he kept not conceding.  He would say "I think you win" like he expected me to say something that would help him decide, and I just sat there, and then he would start messing with his cards and I would ask if he was still playing.  Eventually he conceded without really saying it clearly and I still didn't touch any of my cards until he started to scoop his off the table.  So weird!  And that's just game 1.  Games 2 and 3, he had Lyra Dawnbringer and won.  Loss, 1-2.

Round 4. vs. J.
J. was white-green.  She didn't have any Lyra Dawnbringers or other big scary stuff, and I won in two not-lopsided-but-relatively-low-stress games.  Win, 2-0.

So my match record was 2-2 and my game record was 6-4 (and 6-1 in games that my opponent didn't play Lyra).  Cool Stuff has better prize support than my usual LGS, and I got 4 packs.  Unfortunately, they had already run out of Dominaria to give away, so they were giving out IOUs instead.  Since there are no Cool Stuff stores in Houston, I just took 4 Aether Revolt packs.  I think the total value of my cards plus 4 packs is roughly the same as the cost of entry, but most of these cards will go down in value.

Some of the other things I noticed:

• Playing a mana elf into a 4-drop on turn 3 and equipping Jousting Lance on turn 4 is pretty powerful.  Especially Juggernaut.
• Pegasus Courser is pretty good along with a big creature, but I don't think I would want more than 1 in a deck.
• A lot of people were playing Jousting Lance, but I didn't see the other common equipment.
• Observing other tables, almost everyone had some kind of bomb rare or crazy combo in this set.  One person had Whisper and Slimefoot and was able to repeatedly bring back dead creatures at instant speed.  Another had Traxos and Voltaic Servant.
• I wasn't impressed with Sanctum Spirit and probably should have played Daring Archaeologist instead despite the low number of cards that trigger him.
• Grow from the Ashes is a really good ramp/fixing spell, especially if you can play it kicked.

It was a ton of fun and I look forward to drafting Dominaria.