Adrian, the youngest of the eight year olds

The average age of the players at my Prerelease was just over twelve years.

Twelve years old.

Three players were tied for the youngest at eight years old, while the oldest was an outlier at seventeen years. The next-oldest player had just turned fifteen. My Prerelease was filled with young players!

Most of the participants play regularly at our local community library in a Magic club that meets weekly to just play Magic of any sort. When I run a Prerelease, almost everyone (and a few of their friends who aren’t regulars) preregisters, often a month in advance. All of these preregisters, combined with our tiny library, leaves me sold out weeks before the Prerelease! Actually, with the twenty-two kids in attendance for this Prerelease, we were probably over capacity since there was seating for only twelve (one of my tables had disappeared)!

Minimal table space was not an issue. Apparently players under twelve prefer to play on the floor! More space to spread out!

Our tournament filled over half of the library. The floor was soon covered with Magic cards as players built decks, and later, the floor was covered with play mats as players battled through the four-round Prerelease.

Daniel and Conrad find a corner to play their first round.

Knowing that my entire player base is very young, I intentionally have an extremely flat prize structure¹, so even the players sitting at 0–3 still have a chance to win prizes. I give out consolation boosters (fifteen cards squeezed into a penny sleeve made up of a foil promo card, a junk rare, three random uncommons, and eleven commons) and door prizes every round.

So, what guild do you think was the most popular among the young players?

Selesnya was the big winner by far, with six of the first sixteen players picking Selesnya. Five players picked Azorius, and five picked Golgari. I only had three Rakdos players and three Izzet players. It wasn’t too surprising to find that younger players tended to gravitate toward the guild with green and white, the two strongest creature colors.

Griffin (the young man in the black SCG t-shirt), building his Azorius deck, while the TO preps to start the first round

Griffin knew before he arrived at the Prerelease that he wanted Azorius. Griffin loves playing control and decided that Azorius would be the best guild for him. He had read the spoiler and was excited to try out the detain mechanic. Griffin is the unabashed Spike in the group. I fully expect him to Top 8 a Pro Tour Qualifier in the next two years and make a solid push for the Pro Tour. During the Prerelease, whenever he had the chance to detain another creature, one of these cards made an appearance:

These cards made it very clear which creatures were detained! Okay, so maybe he is a Vorthos Spike!

The rapidly balding author looks on while Willie explained how his deck was going to crush all comers!

Willie, like most young players, was very excited about his deck. He told me how good the deck was and that he doubted he would lose a game all day. I nodded a lot and encouraged his enthusiasm, but I chuckled inwardly at his claims of dominance.

Two round later, Willie and Griffin were both at 2–0 and seemed to both be running powerhouse decks. It turned out Willie was the one running the real powerhouse deck. He had two copies of Call of the Conclave to make Centaur tokens, and he then managed to populate three times to have five Centaur tokens in play. Griffin managed to detain two of the Centaurs, but Willie was coming in with the remaining three. Griffin was casting flash creatures and blocking where he could, but things were not going well.

On the next attack, after Griffin had chosen his blockers, Willie cast Druid's Deliverance just to populate another Centaur. I wasn’t sure why he would populate there since he could just wait until the end of Griffin’s turn. After it resolved, he cast Chorus of Might on one of the Centaurs that was unblocked, taking Griffin out that game.

Willie ended 4–0, having dropped one game the entire day. I’ll pay more attention to his claims next time!

Simon (l) fought a valiant fight, but Jacob (r) populating 8/8 tokens every turn eventually broke through.

I was walking past this game and came to a stop when I looked at the board. Jacob had two 8/8 Elemental tokens with vigilance, a Growing Ranks, and a Martial Law in play. Simon had put up a valiant fight, killing off a token every turn for several turns, but he had nothing left in hand and only a single creature on the board. The game ended when Jacob managed to have four 8/8 tokens on the battlefield.

Noah (r) pulled out the win over Ben here and ended up 2–2 with a non-Isperia Golgari build.

Noah arrived late, chose Golgari, and started to build. He put together a solid Golgari deck in about ten minutes without any real help from his rares. Don’t feel too badly for him. Two of the off-color rares were Isperia, Supreme Judge and Isperia, Supreme Judge. Yes, he pulled two of them in the same Golgari pack! And no, there just weren’t enough cards in the pool to try for an Azorius build.

Spencer, playing his Selesnya deck in the first round

Spencer switched his Selesnya deck after the first round into the opposite three colors. He was the only player who didn’t play his guild colors. While he was happy with the new build, he ended up going 1–2 with the changes. When you are ignoring a pack of cards loaded with a particular guild, you are going to need five amazing packs to make up for it. Spencer had five good packs, but they weren’t good enough.

Nate: Izzet Golgari he’s playing!?

Nate is an Izzet mage through and through. He likes to experiment with wild deck ideas. He enjoys Commander because of the variety and craziness of the various decks. Nate is the first to try a new game just to see how it plays out. But he picked Golgari!? Don’t be fooled! He may be playing Swamps and Forests. He may have Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord on the battlefield. He may have green sleeves and a green jacket. But don’t let his cover fool you. Nate is an Izzet mage experimenting with Golgari cards.

Andy: Magic Player and Most Sportsmanlike Player

I want to end the article with Andy. Andy built a solid deck, but he just never seemed to have much luck, ending the tournament at 1–3. Andy played with focus every game and did all he could to win every game. When the match ended, he congratulated his opponents and was happy to tell me who had won. He never griped about how lucky his opponents were or how crappy his card pool was. At the end of the tournament, when he received his booster pack, consolation boosters, and a choice of poster as a door prize, he thanked me and headed off to see what he got.

When I started to clean up after the tournament, he came up to me and thanked me for running the tournament, and he told me he had a great time. There was no father around the corner who had reminded him to say thank you; it was just something he did on his own. This is the best thing any tournament organizer can hear. Take a lesson from eleven-year-old Andy, and thank your TO at the next tournament you attend.

Bruce Richard

P.S. Thank you to my friend Aaron for the great pics of everyone at the tournament. Aaron spent a couple hours out of his day—when he could have been at a Prerelease for himself—to take pictures of our Prerelease. I wish I could have fit more of his work into the article.

¹ Everyone gets a booster pack during the second round, and every match win earns a booster pack.