I was looking forward to the first prerelease of 2023, especially after previews suggested that Phyrexia: All Will be One would be a pretty powerful set. As usual, Christian and Noah were up for the prerelease. This time, we were joined by three of their friends.
After cracking my six packs and opening my promo, I looked over my pool. I had pulled an Atraxa, Grand Unifier, but I have a hard enough time building around three colours that I knew that building for four was a challenge for another time. My promo was a foil Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler. Definitely a better option to build around so I kept it handy. Another interesting pull was Jor Kadeen, First Goldwarden. Looking over the rest of my pool, I ruled out White and Red as neither offered sufficient depth. That left Jor Kadeen behind as well. Blue and Green stood out as the two strongest colours with Black as potential alternate to Blue or as a splashing colour.
I set out to build a BG deck focused around flyers, Oil counters, and Proliferate. It would have been nice to have more cards with Toxic to throw in to take more advantage of Proliferate. I looked to add a splash of Black but worried that a three-colour (Sultai) approach would prove as luckless as my previous attempts. In retrospect, it might have been the right strategy but I’m getting ahead of myself now.
First round and first hand, I immediately mulligan after pulling a one-land hand. I kept my second hand but stalled at two lands and watched my opponent grow out his board. While the third land finally did show, it was too late. The second hand went better and I started strongly before running into a few too many lands. And I learned that Toxic and Proliferate do indeed play well together.
With time in hand, we played a game for fun. And lo and behold, my deck suddenly came alive and worked as I had wanted it to. While it was too little too late, it did give me hope for the next rounds.
0-1.
In the second round, an explosive start in the first game by my opponent had me turning my creatures into blockers to simply stay alive when I could. One card that made a difference for him was Skrelv, Defector Mite. Making another card unblockable by creatures of a colour of his choice proved to be a real threat. And then he told me he had three! The second game was much closer but when he landed Atraxa, I knew the writing was on the wall. Kudos to him for playing that card!
0-2.
Round three and at the bottom of the rankings! Once again, I was quickly defeated, this time by none other than Morgan, one of Noah’s friends. While it looked for a time that I might finally at least win a game, it was not meant to be.
0-3.
Despite this less than stellar record, I had fun at the event. I love that the boys and I continue to be able to do this regularly. I think that we can count on the fingers of one hand the number of prereleases one of us has missed since we started going to them back when Oath of Gatewatch came out!
The boys also struggled with this prelease. Whereas at least one ends with a winning record, both of them ended with a 1-2 record. Sadly, even their friends ended with losing records. Just not our day!
As for this story, it does not end quite here. Every round at our LGS comes with two packs that players can either simply split or play to win for. I’ve always split them with whoever in the spirit of a prerelease. So despite my 0-3 record, I still walked away with three additional packs to crack open. Three card into the first of these, I found this:
Nothing quite as exciting in the rest of the packs but I did pull an alternate art Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler and a Red Sun’s Twilight.
The boys and I also still have our traditional box to open so there is still a lot of Magic to be played this weekend.
Family Magic 
You must be logged in to post a comment.