m15 Prerelease oddness

[gremcint]

Did anybody else at their events notice a lot of:
-people getting multiples of the prerelease promos (ie resolute archangel promo + a normal)
-cracking up to 3 or 4 different normal prerelease promos as their rares
-an overabundance of mirror matches
-having the majority of the rares in your pool be the colour you chose


Something about this prerelease feels odd to me in retrospect. I think they may have seeded the normal boosters a bit for this one. There were way to many people with 2 resolute archangels and my final game the time I chose black had an opponent that had like 5 of the same black rares I did.

[Duckay]

Two people got double of the black prerelease promo in one of the events I attended (me and a friend), but other than that I didn't notice a whole lot like what you described, except possibly the point on mirror-matches... however, that's going to happen a lot in sealed if a particular colour or strategy is notably powerful, as anyone who can is going to build their decks with that in mind. I'm not sure if that's a sign of anything.

[Kapol]

I don't think it's too rare to get the promo as a normal card too. They're just rares after all. For the second point, I didn't really see that happen at all at the one I went to. The third point seems pretty common for pre-releases that use seed packs, especially if certain colors are more popular than others. And the last point doesn't seem that rare either, considering you're guaranteed two on-color rares.

[Phosphatide]

I managed to actually get a rare of each color, including a rare artifact to complete the cycle of 6, so I only had one on-color rare to go with my promo. Awful, but funny.

As for mirror matches being a thing, I did not get that (I had Esper, though mostly UB). Instead all of my opponents basically had the same deck, running RG aggro. Probably because RG aggro was really really good. So they probably got their own mirror matches.

There's really no way for WotC to seed the normal boosters unless they intentionally set up sheets of cards to be cut and distributed in a way that grants bias towards colors, and I highly doubt they would go through such lengths just for some prerelease packs. It's the luck of the draw, and perhaps it just seemed like it worked out because your pool wasn't straight garbage or anything.

[Lord Hosk]

I got two packs that had the exact same common print run.

and a third that was two cards off.

[ForOhFor Error]

As for the multiple prerelease promos:

54 rares in m15.
1/8 chance of getting a mythic (so 7/8 of getting a rare)
5 unseeded packs to open

(7/8)*(1/54)*5 = 0.08101851851851851851851851851852

or about 8% of doing so. Plus a small chance of getting a foil one (1/4 * 1/269 I believe).

So it's not terribly unlikely to pull an extra copy of your promo.

[Duckay]

If those statistics are accurate, it seems about right that 2 people in a prerelease of 25 people should open an extra copy of their promo card (my prerelease experience).

[ForOhFor Error]

I do not guarantee the accuracy of my calculations .-.

[VectorZero]

I think this happened for me in BNG, getting a regular Nessian Wilds Ravager in my green pool. But I've also not uncommonly received multiples of other rares within booster pools. I got 2 storm tide leviathans this time round and received 2 mindreavers in BNG.

I also once lived the dream and pulled the rare+foil double of ... Pyromancer's Gauntlets. Yay.

tl;dr: it's probably just chance.

[JamesTheNecroMage]

I've noticed at my Prerelease that I've went to that people had multiple copies of certain cards at different points, I'm not sure if was a common thing for others, but it was for me.

[Lord Hosk]

It happens more frequently in core and first set in block.