Journey Into Nyx Pre-Release

[WickedBoy6]

True. I predict Iroas will probably dominate out of all of them, especially because RTR is still relevant to Standard for 4 more months.

Also, interesting story I remembered from last night: In one of the boxes, I cracked open the only Born of the Gods pack - you get 2 THS, 1 BNG, 2 JOU, and a special pack tailored to your color - and not only did I pull a Forgestoker Dragon, but a foil one right behind it. I never thought that it was possible to pull the same card like that. The only thing that would've been better was pulling 2 Godsend from a JOU.

[Cobblepotter]

I had my pre-release yesterday, and I went for a Blue pre-release pack, going Blue/Black.

It was getting late into the evening, so we only had four rounds. I placed 5th going 2-2. Apparently I scraped fifth because the two people I beat ended up doing really well.

I had my hand at constellation, but there wasn't that much going for me. My deck was built around discard and life drain. I lucked out getting the big black trio: Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Disciple of Phenax and Rescue from the Underworld in my two Theros packs. I also scored Spiteful Blow and Extinguish All Hope. It felt weird having my only black removal being six-drops. My big game winners were Thoughtrender Lamia and Hypnotic Siren.

[WickedBoy6]

Not bad. My Blue/Black also did nice, going 3-1. It was more counter/deathtouch, but I think that there's some promise in the set for U/B.

Also, here's my Green/splash-of-Red That took me 1-2 in the beginners' tourney.



Akroan Crusader
Golden Hind
2 Heroes' Bane
Humbler of Mortals
Nessian Asp
Nyxborn Rollicker
Pheres-Band Thunderhoof
3 Ravenous Leucrocota
Satyr Grovedancer
Satyr Piper
Swarmborn Giant
Swordwise Centaur

Desecration Plague
Destructive Revelry
2 Dictate of Karametra
2 Font of Fertility
Rouse The Mob
Time to Feed

14 Forest
3 Mountain

Honestly, it didn't do well because the two losses were against better G/? decks that dropped Heroes' Bane quicker than I did. Nothing about that pool really stood out, except for the Bane/Dictate combo, but against the people that also had Banes, it helped hem a bit more, since they had a head start.

Looking back, U/G probably would've been the better setup, since I had Archetype of Imagination, Aqueous Form, Cloaked Siren, Countermand, Sea God's Revenge, Voyage's End, a few other nice draw spells, and Fleetfeather Cockatrice in my Blue pool.

[Lord Hosk]

The God pack does sound like something wizards would do, they have a tendency to come up with these really great ideas, and then fail to capitalize on them.

Lets have a MTGO event that we hype as much as a pro tour with a invitation to the pro tour, Mtgo crashes and there is a very public shaming of the stability issues they already knew they had.

Lets produce these things called "Helvaults" which tie into a part of the game and have special promotional things in them and send them to every store. THEN lets produce 20 super special ones that have foil versions of those products, not tell anyone about them and send them to select distributors who dont know they have them so they pass them out the same as any other helvault and they end up only going to 11 stores and those stores wont even get to promote them. Cause if we tell people then they would tell their friends that there was a chance they could get these super special foil things and we would get more people to sign up for events.

Lets produce special packs of cards where one pack is worth over $100 and slip them into random boxes, then not tell anyone about it because if we told them people would buy extra boxes to try to get that special pack and we dont want to move product.

Wizards does a lot of things in a ALMOST good way but they have some boneheads who dont quite understand the whole process enough to capitalize.

[VectorZero]

My favourite match of the weekend was against a black red tempo deck. I won match one in a somewhat drawn out exchange of blows, but game two I curved out beautifully with a two - three - four - five drop. Unfortunately my opponent was killing my dudes as fast as I could put them on the board and by the time he'd suited up an agent of the fates with two bestows he was swinging for 8 with no defence. Game three I had a one land seven, six land six and a playable 5. Swiftclaw into grove dancer into cranes, counters going on the attacking creature each time, losing my ground guys to blocks and removal but still getting in for decent damage. Swing with my cranes and savage surge for exactly lethal, no cards left in hand, opponent would have removed the crane next turn and I had no gas in my library for at least another five turns. No margin for error.

[Phosphatide]

I think in this instance having a secret God Pack was fun for the sake of cool stories to tell friends afterward, and Wizards didn't really feel the need to do anything further. Plus it was kind of funny to hear the reaction of players when our store added a casual message to the usual prerelease preambles with "please report any unusual pack openings, maybe such as a pack with all 15 gods or something, I dunno."

Speaking of which, no one at our store opened one. A shame. Our TO did mention that if a god pack did actually make an appearance, we would let them keep it but replace it with a normal pack for the sake of the Sealed event as per tournament rules on abnormal product. That seemed to be the general consensus at other stores as well.

[Kapol]

*snip*

Trouble is, I don't think making more money is necessarily the idea. I'd say that the first thing you mentioned was completely distant from the other two. That's a huge issue with MTGO and really shows Wizards needs to put more work into the program. But the idea behind it was just your average evolution of MTGO as a method of playing Magic more than a promotional thing.

The Helavault and god packs, on the other hand, are meant more to drum up hype, excitement, and create this awesome feeling of awe when it does happen. If they just came out and said "Hey, we put black lotuses and other old stuff in the first print run of Zendikar" or "We threw a number of packs with all 15 gods in some of the early print run/prerelease packs for Journey," it frankly wouldn't be as special. There wouldn't be such a buzz of 'man, that's a hoax... but it could be real...' and such to get more people pumped for the set as a whole. It's also just a fun idea. And frankly, that's enough.

Will they see a huge spike in sales from these? Likely not, but it's created a lot of press in the Magic community. Which is enough. You mentioned the special Helavaults. But, frankly, the overall attendance to the prereleases wouldn't have increased that much I think. Why? Because people would just go to the 20 stores that know they have this special version, which will get bought up by the bigger, more 'powerful' stores. This means smaller stores would get punished if there's a bigger store who could buy one of the special vaults why they get rewarded for having a bigger wallet. Instead, they chose to make it random. Any store could have had one. Again, doesn't make Wizards more money, but it helps build hype.

[Kapol]

Also, as for my own... let's call it a pre-release, I ended up doing a draft with some people during the con. First JBT draft using a bunch of packs from intro decks I bought (and ended up losing about $15 on from the whole thing from buying 4 $15 intro packs, but it was worth it for the chance to play as we did).

P1P1 was Keranos. So I just went 'yup' and did it, despite accidentally seeing the person to my right pick Kruphix. Ended up going 2-1 overall with a deck that... frankly, shouldn't have worked as well as it did.

One thing I learned is that Sigiled Starfish (AKA Patrick, Scryfish, or my new favorite, Thassa-lite) is busted. A common that's a kind of worse (though that's arguable) version of Thassa? To give you an idea of it's power, it was Pack 1 Pick 1 for a player who ended up going 2-1 as well off of it. It's NUTS.

That also lead to the best blowout I've seen honestly. Turn... 5 I think for my opponent. I'm off land, but scryfished into a third, two islands and a mountain, and a grip of cards. At the same time, he went turn 2 Spirit of the Labyrinth, turn 3 Hero is Iroas, turn 4 Bestow Ediolon of Countless Battles on Iroas and hitting me, dropping me down to 8. He swings. I block the Spirit with my mini-thassa. He passes priority. I Aerial Formation it to make it a 1/4. With it on the stack, he Falls of the Hammer, targeting his Hero and my scryfish.

With his heroic trigger on the stack, I Retraction Helix, then bounce his Hero.

So I bounced his biggest creature that was getting through (removing the bestow and counter), got rid of one of the best removal in the format (in my opinion), killed his 3/1, and left him with a 1/1 creature for two blue mana. He might have been able to recover if he didn't keep top-decking lands. I was too... but by choice. Because I had my 'win-con' in the hand. A Colossus of Akros. Colossus ended up getting there once I got to ten mana, having been able to stall the board so that he didn't have good attacks.

In fact, Colossus put in a surprising amount of work in the format. It won me a couple of games for a 5th pick. On the other hand, there were a couple games it just sat in my hand since it was in my opening hand. So that doesn't make it a good card.

[Firbozz]

I know it's not a competition, but I think I can beat your blowout story Kapol...
During one of my games, I bestowed Noble Quarry and a Reaper of the Wilds that already had a +1/+1 counter on it, and then proceeded to swing and wipe all 6 of his creatures off the board, getting six scry 1 triggers in the process.

The prerelease went pretty well for me, I went 3-2 with a very solid G/B deck (featuring two (foil) Heroe's Banes). I think I could've gone 4-1 if I had played a little bit better. I cracked a Keranos for my collection in my pool, and a Worst Fears (for my EDH deck) and a Temple of Epiphany (for trading) in my prize packs.

[Kapol]

I know it's not a competition, but I think I can beat your blowout story Kapol...
During one of my games, I bestowed Noble Quarry and a Reaper of the Wilds that already had a +1/+1 counter on it, and then proceeded to swing and wipe all 6 of his creatures off the board, getting six scry 1 triggers in the process.

I almost had someone do that to me too. Though he did it on a Nessian Asp. He forgot to monsterous before playing the Quarry and attacking though, so it didn't work out. Turns out Quarry is just really, really good when your opponent doesn't see it coming/have removal.

I was just amazed by my play because it turned a game I was going to lose into a win, all via commons, with only 3 mana available. Like my opponent even admitted he had a great hand that he figured would make for a quick game 2.

[WickedBoy6]

Man, I wish I had pulled Noble Quarry. I had a lot of deathtouch in my pool, and I think B/G is a decent pairing together in JOU.

[Dominic Appleguard]

The Helavault and god packs, on the other hand, are meant more to drum up hype, excitement, and create this awesome feeling of awe when it does happen. If they just came out and said "Hey, we put black lotuses and other old stuff in the first print run of Zendikar" or "We threw a number of packs with all 15 gods in some of the early print run/prerelease packs for Journey," it frankly wouldn't be as special. There wouldn't be such a buzz of 'man, that's a hoax... but it could be real...' and such to get more people pumped for the set as a whole. It's also just a fun idea. And frankly, that's enough.

Also, if they work to promote this cool rare thing that might happen, lots of people who don't understand probability might get butthurt that it didn't happen to them. This way, it almost feels like...

An act of god.

[WickedBoy6]

Well, in the General MTG Thread, we just found out that God Packs are legit, and Wizards finally acknowledged it. Maybe they were just waiting for Pre-Release Weekend to end to drum up underground hype, but they're total legit now.

[Dominic Appleguard]

Waitaminute...In Friday Nights - The Return, James refers to Graham's unbeatable pack wars "deck" as a god pack.

Less than two weeks before "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" was revealed to be Theros block at PAX.



I know that was stupid, don't correct me.

[Lord Hosk]

*snip*

The Helavault and god packs, on the other hand, are meant more to drum up hype, excitement, and create this awesome feeling of awe when it does happen...Again, doesn't make Wizards more money, but it helps build hype.

The trouble is there is no promotion on this, some rumor on some site isnt promotion. It doesnt create excitement or drum up hype if NO ONE KNOWS ITS HAPPENING, and people on a redit subredit talking about a rumor is still no one. its less than 1% of the population talking in a insulated community most of whom are are the side of "its fake"

I asked around and no one in our area had heard of god packs other than a couple people who said "nah thats just a redit hokes. like someone people at the theros prerelease who said they got all the gods in regular and mythic but then people who were there say "no they opened A heliod and A foil thassa and went 1-4."

It cant create hype if no one but a very narrow group of people even hear about the rumor.

If Wizards had made an announcement that they were seeding the prerelease with special "god packs" that had all the gods in them. It most defiantly would have sold more packs which would have only helped the stores out.

As for people getting butt hurt, if someone buys into a $25 prerelease and is butt hurt that they didnt get $150 in cards is probably also butt hurt that they dont win the lottery every time they play and every time the light turns red when they are late for work. These are people who rage that they got F*ed by the shuffler.


Also I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how these "special packs" get sent out if you think that the big stores would just get them all and hurt the little stores. They didnt say "this is the special pack" so the "big stores" couldn't have just bought up the special ones. Two of the "all foil" helvaults went to a store in Texas that had two events, one with 16 players and one with 17 players. Yes, those players feel great because they got hundreds of dollars in rare products but the good will is incredibly narrow. One of the stores in Wisconsin that opened a foil helvault closed 6 months later, so it didnt even help that store stay afloat.

[SydeKick]

[quote="AdmiralMemo"][quote="Lord Hosk"]How could you open all 15 gods?

You could do what I did and open all 15 gods in one pack - a second person in the same city got one the same day

It's pretty sweet, but made for a horrendous deck, so I tried running all my fixing and all 15 gods - had a lot of fun. Timed out in my last game (0-0 draw), but was 4 cards for milling for 23 with Phenax

[susu.exp]

If Wizards had made an announcement that they were seeding the prerelease with special "god packs" that had all the gods in them. It most defiantly would have sold more packs which would have only helped the stores out.

They gave an official announcement - it's not just prerelease packs, it's JOU boosters. So you could open a god pack whenever you buy one of these boosters. It actually makes sense to spoiler these by having them show up during prerelease rather than announcing it ahead of time. There's already a lot of hype at the prerelease and only a limited amount of product. You want people psyched about them at release...

[Kapol]

The trouble is there is no promotion on this, some rumor on some site isnt promotion. It doesnt create excitement or drum up hype if NO ONE KNOWS ITS HAPPENING, and people on a redit subredit talking about a rumor is still no one. its less than 1% of the population talking in a insulated community most of whom are are the side of "its fake"

I asked around and no one in our area had heard of god packs other than a couple people who said "nah thats just a redit hokes. like someone people at the theros prerelease who said they got all the gods in regular and mythic but then people who were there say "no they opened A heliod and A foil thassa and went 1-4."

It cant create hype if no one but a very narrow group of people even hear about the rumor.

If Wizards had made an announcement that they were seeding the prerelease with special "god packs" that had all the gods in them. It most defiantly would have sold more packs which would have only helped the stores out.

It might not create hype for you or people you know, but people who play fairly casually are likely to be excited about it. There were a LOT of people who knew about the rumor. I had it posted to pretty much every Facebook Magic group I'm part of, which is how a lot of more casual Magic players keep up to date on the game and ask questions. So I don't believe it was information contained to only people who totally keep up on the game.

It's also the case that, after multiple people saying it happened after the first one (which was posted long before a lot of prereleases even began), a lot more people began to believe it. What I described is pretty much exactly what happened. People thought it was a hoax originally, then they started to believe it when more people came forward saying it happened. Of course there was still doubt. But again, I feel that's more what Wizards was going for to make it more interesting.

As for helping sell packs, I don't know how many more people would have shown up to the prerelease just because they MIGHT get one of the rare packs that has all 15 gods. Stores might have gotten a few more people (relative to size of the area), but not enough to make a big splash I feel.

And guess what? After pre-release where it did it's job of drumming up hype and getting some interest, they announced it was real and would still be possible in packs, as well as what to do if it happens to you in a limited event again. So now that they can actually sell packs (since stores weren't even allowed to do so during prerelease), people know for sure that they ARE out there.

As for people getting butt hurt, if someone buys into a $25 prerelease and is butt hurt that they didnt get $150 in cards is probably also butt hurt that they dont win the lottery every time they play and every time the light turns red when they are late for work. These are people who rage that they got F*ed by the shuffler.

I don't remember saying anything about players getting angry that they didn't open a god-pack. Or even saying that about the helavault thing. So... not sure where you're getting that from honestly.

Also I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how these "special packs" get sent out if you think that the big stores would just get them all and hurt the little stores. They didnt say "this is the special pack" so the "big stores" couldn't have just bought up the special ones. Two of the "all foil" helvaults went to a store in Texas that had two events, one with 16 players and one with 17 players. Yes, those players feel great because they got hundreds of dollars in rare products but the good will is incredibly narrow. One of the stores in Wisconsin that opened a foil helvault closed 6 months later, so it didnt even help that store stay afloat.

I wasn't talking about the special packs. I was specifically talking about the helavaults. As for them, if they told the distributer that these were special products with super-special prizes, do you not think the bigger-name stores that spend more with them wouldn't be the first to be told? And even if they told all the stores, and the distributer had to be fair with it, it just means it'd be a first-come first serve thing for the 20 helavaults spread over many, many stores.

If they did it randomly, THEN told the stores they had the special helavaults, then great for those stores. They'll likely see a decent increase for this one event (depending on size, let's be very generous generous and say they get 3x as many people for bigger stores, or even 10x as many for small stores, at least in terms of interest). Then they aren't equipped to handle that many more people, and they're limited to the pre-release product they have. So it's not like they have infinite supply or space to work with.

And for the store that closed down 6 months later... do you honestly think that having one bigger event would have saved it? It seems unlikely to me that telling everyone that they had this one super-special item would have brought enough people in, let alone made enough people regular customers, to help them stay afloat. That was a situation where it only mattered for the prerelease, not in the long run.

[Duckay]

This is the deck that I thought was awful, and ended up going 4-1 with after kind of learning its quirks.

The picture is sort of awful, but the decklist consisted of:

Temple of Enlightenment
Temple of Mystery
Font of Fertility
Aqueous Form
Nature's Panoply
Leafcrown Dryad
Mortal's Resolve
Satyr Grovedancer
Sigiled Starfish
Omenspeaker
Pin to the Earth
Banishing Light
Spirespine x 2
Oakheart Dryads
Kruphix's Insight
Reap What Is Sown
Crystalline Nautilus
Eidolon of Blossoms
Kruphix, God of Horizons
Heroes' Bane
Whitewater Naiads
Humbler of Mortals
Rise of Eagles

There's also a Godhunter Octopus in the picture, but that's because I miscounted. I didn't actually run that card. Actually, I'm not sure if that card was even in my original pool.

[WickedBoy6]

That seems like the B/G deck I would've liked to have build in the first Prerelease on Satuday. Yeah, I went 2-1, but since there was an odd number of people, the odd-one-out faced off against the store owner, and I was the odd-one-out in the second round. He had me dead on board four different ways in game one, and then let me take a VERY easy win in game two, and then I'm sure he was pulling punches in game three, so I'm assuming it was supposed to be a Bye slot, but you got to play anyway. It was a beginners' tourney, though, so he was really helpful, and it did help me win match three.

Well, that, and using Satyr Piper to have my opponent block my chumps while I smashed face with my Swarmborn Giant and Ravenous Leucrocota.

[DelphiSantano]

I'd gone 3-2 with a half-decent UW deck after choosing the White Prerelease pack. The highlight was using bounce spells 3 turns in a row, to my opponent's frustration, to remove most of their board while I had an Eidolon of Rhetoric on the field.

Although the best occurrence that I saw on the day was a friend doubling his Heroes' Bane (enchanted with a Hopeful Eidolon) enough times to make it a ~3000/~3000 lifelinker. His opponent scooped when he hit >10000 life. Very funny game to watch, too.

[Pluvi0]

Went to a very small event for both days. 2-2 on Saturday with nothing too special, green-white cracked a Nylea which never even made it to creaturedom.
Sunday was slightly better, blue-red mess but with only ten people, 3-1 was enough for third place. Woo!
Not too shabby for my first ever (real) Magic event. MTGO doesn't count.

[Sky_rider19]

Went White, and pulled nothing exciting (as usual with my crappy luck with pulls). Went UW heroic that was surprisingly good with controling the board. Double pin to the earth's and Oppressive ray did a lot of work. My favorite play probably has to be putting oppressive ray on my opponent's mana dork. "oh you want to ramp? It's gonna cost you 3 just to get one mana."

Another good play was after I bounced my opponent's creature, he sighed in relief thinking it was safe to play master of the feast down. Next turn I pinned it to the ground effectively keeping him from swinging in.

overall, finished 10th with 3-1-1 although I probably could have topped 8 if I payed attention to my math on the final turn during the match I tied.

[WickedBoy6]

Although the best occurrence that I saw on the day was a friend doubling his Heroes' Bane (enchanted with a Hopeful Eidolon) enough times to make it a ~3000/~3000 lifelinker. His opponent scooped when he hit >10000 life. Very funny game to watch, too.

I can beat that.

Third game of my Beginner's Tourney using R/G against W/G, I ended up dropping Heroes' Bane, then next turn dropped Satyr Grovedancer on the field, followed by flashing in Dictate of Karametra. Doubled it twice to 20 for lethal, but then my opponent dropped his own, and quickly rose his to 32. I really had nothing to take out something that high, so I just hoped to race with my Bane against his.

...until he dropped Oppressive Rays on it, dropping a trigger off of my chain. All I could do was watch as, through a strange chain of events - including dropping his own Grovedancer to make it 33, then doubling four times a turn - got it to 540,672/540,672. I really couldn't be mad when he killed me with it. How could I? Ever lost to somethin that had half-a-million attack? Not one of those "infinite" engines either where they just SAY it's a certain number. We calculated it all, that is legit how big it was when it killed me.

[MichaelD]

I opened some pretty good rares but had no fixing and kind of poor support.... I ditched the fleecemane lion, prophet of kruphix, and the king midas guy and made a RWB aggro deck with Athreos and Iroas. If you're going to open 2 gods to might as well run them I guess? XD.

I ran two drops and the removal for every colour, using magma spray and cast into darkness to clear the way for my beats and ill tempered cyclops, bladetusk boar and the new constellation lamia to try to close up the game if things stalled.

The deck was agressive and either got there or got manascrewed and didn't. It ended up going 3w:3L but I think it probably could have done better with a bit more luck on the draw.

Here's a pick of the deck (I ran 9 mountains, 5 plains, 3 swamps)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BmQVp05CQAAIFPQ.jpg