Just before the Dark Ascension prerelease, I wrote about my attempts to get a prerelease event for my players. The store that sponsored the events at our local community library had shut down at the worst time, and we were unable to get a new store to the needed Core Level before the deadline, so my players lost out on the chance at a prerelease.

This is the happy ending to that story.

The new store sponsor is better than the last one. The lines of communication are clear, and when there is a problem, I can reach the store owner (and he can reach me) immediately. As expected, the store reached Core Level soon after the deadline had passed (not too surprising with a solid player base already intact). I signed us up for a prerelease as soon as we could sign up, and we were ready to run a Helvault event!

Our player community is, I believe, rather unique. The community was started a few years ago by two of the local boys . My son Spencer is friends with both of them, and he was soon playing Magic with their group every week, twice a week. The group started out as just five of them, but had grown to about eight or ten due to word of mouth among their friends and a posting at the library where they played. Soon after, one of the friends stopped playing, but Spencer and Griffin continued to run the event.

I saw the opportunity to get them some free foil cards for their events by setting them up in the WPN. It required someone over eighteen to run the events, so I became the official Tournament Organizer, and things progressed from there. The group now has at least ten to fifteen boys every week and a player base of over thirty. The prereleases sell out with all the players preregistering and prepaying more than a month in advance. Prereleases are an event.

This prerelease was a little different since some of the players had to drop at the last minute, leaving us with only sixteen players. I said capacity was twenty, but realistically, I only have enough table space for ten, so sixteen players is still a packed event. Thankfully, when your players are between the ages of seven and sixteen, they don’t mind (and some actually prefer) playing on the carpeted floor.

That’s right: Everyone at the prerelease was between seven and sixteen years of age. Like I said, our player community—and our prerelease—is pretty unique.

This was our oldest player (Conrad) playing our youngest player (Spencer). I am reminded of how old I am, since there is no way that I could sit on the floor to play an entire game of Magic, and I certainly couldn’t do it in the position Spencer is in! I faintly recall having bones made of rubber when I was young . . .

These siblings were paired up in the first round. I believe Josephine and Spencer from the previous picture are both seven years old, so Spencer may not be the youngest player after all. Josephine is the only girl in the group, and she only plays sporadically. She is still learning the basics of the game, but she has a good time nonetheless. I’m pretty sure her brother Simon helped her build her deck, so she was in trouble in this match, since he probably knew her deck better than she did.

These are the players who prefer the tables. While the small space limits the attendance, it keeps the tournament intimate. I can call out the pairings as soon as the final players are finished with the previous round, and know that they heard me since I’m looking at each person as I call his or her name. Judge calls never involve walking more than a few feet, and theft is practically non-existent. The kids regularly leave their cards piled on a table or bookshelf for the entire tournament, coming back to the cards only at the end of the tournament when they are gathering up their things.

The prerelease has been set up with the expectation that we will have mostly very young competitors. Our prize structure is very flat. While most prereleases offer packs only to those who win at least three or four matches or more, our prerelease offers a single pack per match win. This means that our youngest players who are new to the game are still playing for a chance at a prize when they are 0–3. Everyone also receives a pack at the end of the second round simply for attending.

I also provide a deck box for each of the players. The joy of not running a prerelease out of a store is that I don’t need to make a profit. Any profits I receive from one prerelease I funnel into the next one. I have managed to offer dice, sleeves, deck boxes, and one time, play mats, for the players. I have found that deck boxes are the most practical since they encourage the players to keep their cards in a box as opposed to just lying around everywhere, making cleanup far easier.

This time around, I thought I would add a wrinkle to the prize structure. At the end of the tournament, the prizes are given out. I had two players without a win, so I gave each of them a pack of Innistrad instead of Avacyn Restored. I also included something I called Consolation Boosters. My personal collection has been becoming bigger and bigger. I only include four copies of any one card, so all the extra cards go into a separate box. I went through those cards and created booster packs with ten commons, three uncommons, and a rare. The fifteen card was a foil promo from all of the promo cards Wizards has sent through the WPN. While most of the promos added to the boosters were Flings and Sylvan Rangers, there were some Ludevic's Test Subjects and Mayor of Avabrucks as well. It turns out that a penny sleeve is actually a perfect fit sleeve for fifteen cards! For every loss anyone had, that player received a Consolation Booster. These were a hit since everyone walked away with eleven packs of cards irrelevant of their records.

This time around, the players also benefitted from a distributor’s deal. The distributor added a number of free items as an award for ordering through them. Half the players in the tournament walked away with some sort of door prize. Magic binders, play mats, and posters were all part of the giveaway.

Something else I do to cater to a younger player base is a lunch break. Stores can bring pizza in or just expect the older players to bring sandwiches or go get a bite when they finish a round quickly. Our library has a no-food policy, so bringing in food just isn’t an option. We have started to have a half-hour lunch break immediately at the end of the second round. This gives most players at least forty-five minutes to walk to the local sandwich/pizza place and pick up food. Some parents come back and take their kids out, while other times, the younger kids just tag alone with the older ones. I have yet to have anyone be late for the start of the third round.

The Helvault

The Helvault was absolutely tailor-made for our prerelease crowd (and looked like a slab of onyx when reflected in the sunlight!). No one knew what was in the Helvault, so there was plenty of excitement. When I explained the achievement cards and what needed to be done, everyone was on board. Before the deck building had even started, everyone had already introduced themselves to one of the two players who were there who had never played in a prerelease before! Throughout the first round, random players would call out asking if anyone had a legend on the battlefield. When Jack finally managed to cast Avacyn in the second round, most of the games stopped as everyone ran over to high five him. Bennett managed to complete nine achievements by the end of the first round.

At the end of each round, I would mark every card with five achievements, and the players would pick and remove one of the tabs on the Helvault themselves. By the end of the second round, Spencer (there were three Spencers in the tournament!) pulled off the last tab.

This picture doesn’t do justice to the crowd of players squeezing around to see what was inside when it opened. Every player crowded in tight to see what was inside. The image of Avacyn at the top of the Helvault was cool, and the kids were thrilled with the oversize cards, token cards, and dice. I think we may have created a couple of Commander players, as I tried to explain what you could do with the oversize legendary cards.

Card Interactions

While I didn’t get to see as many games as I have in the past, there were three games that did stick in my head. The first game involved Evan. He was already down a game when I walked past his game and saw that he was down 20 to 1. He had just cleared the board, so there were no creatures on the table. Evan started putting creatures on the board while Jack had used up his gas getting Evan to 1. Every turn, they would both hold their breath to see what Jack would draw. A burn spell or some way to push a creature through would be enough to win. Evan continued to press, even when Jack managed to get some defense on the board, playing careful and never leaving himself open for the final point of damage. He came back and won the game.

Game 3 started with only ten minutes left in the round. The guys were gathering a crowd since most players had finished their rounds. Jack managed to boost his life total to almost 30 before Evan started to come back. I called time, and in Evan’s two extra turns, he managed to do more than the 12 damage he needed to win the game and the match—easily the best comeback of the tournament.

The second moment was walking past my son Spencer’s game and seeing Revenge of the Hunted in his graveyard with only three lands on his side of the board and a single creature in play. His Wandering Wolf had just attacked for 8 that turn, taking out a single blocker, and doing 6 damage. I was not surprised to find that Spencer won that game.

The final interaction was between Griffin and Jack. Jack’s deck was the consensus best deck at the tournament before we started. He had managed to put a R/W deck together that just seemed to curve out beautifully, and everyone expected it to be insanely fast. Griffin had a more controlling deck that held the table until Tamiyo could stabilize it and Griffin could start attacking for the win.

It was in the first game, and they were a fair way into the game. Jack had managed to get some hits in, but Griffin’s deck came out faster than expected, and Jack’s deck was a little slow, so Jack had a 20-to-16 lead. With seven lands untapped, he drew Entreat the Angels . . . and put it in his hand. Jack’s hand at that point was a single land. He realized within a second that he needed to play it with the miracle cost, so he dropped it and went to pay the miracle cost. Griffin could see that this was going to give Jack 4 Angels and probably the win, so there was no way that he was going to let this happen.

Both players agreed on what happened. Both players agreed that Jack had drawn Entreat the Angels that turn, since they both knew that Jack had the land in hand. Given all that, I let him cast the Entreat with the miracle cost.

At a tournament other than the prerelease, I would have said “no,” but there is no way I’m going to lose a moment as cool as four 4/4 Angels entering the battlefield for 7 mana because the first time a player drew a miracle card, he momentarily put it in his hand. He hadn’t shuffled the cards together or done anything else. I warned him to take more care and look at his cards as he drew them, and they played on.

Jack swung with the Angels the next turn, and Griffin blocked with his lone flyer, going to 4. On his last draw, Griffin pulled Terminus and was very careful to never let it touch his hand, gleefully playing it to save his bacon. Tamiyo came out the next turn and Griffin locked the board to win that game and the next.

Wrap-Up

I always try to find a way to make the tournament a little better the next time. Something I need to do more consistently is to help the younger players with their deck building. I was busy setting up the event while the players were deck building, so I didn’t have a chance to go around and see what everyone had pulled and how they were building their decks.

Too many of the younger players want to run too few lands and pack their decks with cards in too many colors. Some players put their decks together without realizing they have far too few creatures. All of these players would have far more fun with better decks. Whether this involves some tips before deck building starts or getting others to help with deck building, I’m not sure.

Any other suggestions are appreciated.

Bruce Richard