Scars of Mirrodin Premier Week

Published: September 2nd, 2010
Posted in: Magic
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By Richard Early

Do you realize what’s happened the last few years? Magic: The Gathering has completely changed. It’s got twice as many players, twice as many stores, an xBox game, and record sales. It’s got Planeswalkers, Mythic Rares, and annual core sets. At the heart of all this are the pre-releases, which have gone from exclusive big market events to every city in the world. Wizards of the Coast has changed everything about Magic and every change has been golden. They know what they’re doing. So when they want to tweak pre-releases, who are we to argue?

The entire industry is redefining what a pre-release is and by extension what a release is. We’ve been in such a headlong rush to get everyone to the pre-releases that we’ve lost sight of the set actually hitting the shelf. A pre-release should be a sneak peek, a snapshot of what’s in the set, not the place that you get your entire collection. It’s supposed to be a preview of what sealed deck tournaments will be like, not a burn-out of 48-hour play. That’s going to change with Scars of Mirrodin.

We’re kicking off what we call ‘Premier Week’ with our usual midnight pre-release. The 100+ player craziness is now the lead to 8 days of action. There’s still a sealed deck at noon and a 2-Headed Giant at 7PM. Gone are booster drafts, Sunday tourneys, and the Iron Man Challenge. We are sad to see these things go, but these events aren’t what a pre-release should be all about. The simple fact is that this redefinition we’re talking about means we just don’t have the same amount of product to work with. That’s why all these extra events that focus on repeat play have to go. What we want to do is expose as many unique players to Scars of Mirrodin as we can. This doesn’t mean we’re going to turn down repeat players, it’s just that our emphasis is a little different.

The pre-release is now just the beginning. We’re pushing up the release time for Scars to midnight Thursday / Friday morning and we’re running 8-man drafts all morning. In fact, we’ll have sign up for queues all weekend. Friday Night Magic is joined by our first of several Scars sealed deck tournaments. Saturday has another sealed deck, plus a 2HG sealed deck. Sunday wraps it all up with a special 4-pack sealed deck. The event calendar has all the details as does the Scars of Mirrodin page on the website.

The launch party weekend has a whole bunch of new prizes. Anyone who wins a tournament, from FNM to draft to sealed to 2HG sealed, gets a FREE ENTRY to the Sunday 4-pack sealed. That’s an $18 value. All our sealed decks will have top 8 booster drafts. Our 2HG will have top 4 team draft and a pair of Fat Packs to the winning duo. It’s as jam-packed an event as we can make it.

This is change. Everything you’ve read or heard before this is wrong. We apologize for the confusion but sometimes change happens. This is going to be a great week of Magic. Tell your friends. Make them aware of what’s happening. This could be the biggest week of Magic we’ve ever hosted.

Don’t forget to pre-order Scars of Mirrodin sealed product and singles on our web store.