The Hobbit Prerelease Guide

Who’s ready to revisit Middle-earth?! Magic has been there once before with The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, and now we’re going back again. 

The Hobbit will launch in a little more than a week, bringing tons of powerful new cards that the Magic community has already been eyeing greedily during spoiler season. But why wait that long? Like the dwarves of Thorin’s band barging into Bag End, we can invite ourselves in and get the adventure started a little ahead of schedule – thanks to this weekend’s Prerelease events!

For the bulk of Magic players who don’t frequent tournaments, a prerelease is the best way to get out to a game store and engage with the community, all flush with the thrilling atmosphere of a global premiere. Read on for our CK guide on where to find a prerelease, how to join in, and what you get for signing up. Prerelease is all about having fun and trying out new cards – but we’ll also give you a few strategy tips to help you make the most of your games this weekend.

COMING TO A HOBBIT-HOLE NEAR YOU!

One of the nice things about prerelease events is their accessibility. You don’t need to qualify for a spot, decide on a deck to bring or even know the new cards before showing up. You could walk up empty-handed to any game store or tournament venue in the world between the 7th and 9th of August, and reasonably expect to be playing with cards from The Hobbit an hour or so later!

While that kind of accessibility is wonderful, doing a little preparation is definitely a good idea. It’s so much nicer to not be rushing around getting everything you need right before the event. You might even have time to fit in second breakfast before you play…

FIRST THING: Pre-register to lock in your plans

A prerelease is actually a schedule of smaller, self-contained events called “flights” which repeat across the weekend, like the schedule of bands at a music festival. When you ask a game store to sign you up for the Prerelease, you’re really registering to play in one or more specific flights. 

However, there’s a cap on how many people can participate in each flight, due to limited stock and store space – so if you walk up on the day and those seats are full, you’re out of luck. This is why pre-registering with your Prerelease venue matters, especially if you need a particular timeslot.

A true fanatic could sign up to every flight and spend their whole weekend in the store! But most players are perfectly satisfied playing a single flight each Prerelease, which is usually about a four-hour commitment.

You can choose a flight where the start time is convenient for you, or one you already know your friends have registered for. But be wary of flights labeled as “2HG” or “Two-Headed Giant”. These flights have special rules where players compete in teams of two. Accidentally entering a 2HG flight on your own (or a non-2HG flight with a partner) would be a real headache, so double check before handing over your entry fee. 

Exactly how much it costs to register for a flight varies by venue – and some stores offer discounts when you sign-up early or for multiple flights at once. What’s important is that you’re not just paying to sit on their furniture: that entry fee buys you a Prerelease Pack containing six Play Boosters, plus a foil rare promo card. These cards are the only ones you use to actually make your deck for the event, besides basic lands.

Preregistration is the sensible move, especially for a set like this which seems poised to be popular. Admittedly not every flight sells out, and after enough Prereleases at a venue you might get a feel for which timeslots are in demand. But why take any chance at all, when most venues let you sign up online or over the phone? If you know you want to be there, you might as well make it official!

 SECOND THING: Get your Companion app ready

Official Magic events, including Prereleases, are run using the official Magic Companion app. Having the app installed and an account registered is not a strict requirement for participation in most stores, but it does help smooth over the few sharp corners in the prerelease experience. For starters, you can use it to quickly map out all the venues in your area which are hosting Prerelease events and immediately look up the times and details of their flights!

You can use it to look up the opponents you’re paired against or to report the score of your games without the hassle of navigating a crowded store to do so in person. The app can track your life total during a match, and a few other small conveniences. Some stores even hand out bonus prizes to players who participate in multiple prerelease flights under the same Companion account.

Companion is a small, free download from the major phone app stores. You log into it using your Wizards account (if you’ve ever played MTG Arena, you can use the same login details here). Note that even if you don’t make an account or use the app, you’ll still be required to put down your email, name and DOB to register for a flight. So, you might as well go through the slight hassle of setting up Companion once and make all your future Magic events a lot easier.

THIRD THING: Pack your bags with necessary supplies!

Like I said earlier, you could theoretically show up to the Prerelease with nothing more than your registration details and a positive attitude. But as a veteran of many such weekends, I can tell you there’s a few key items you can pack that will subtly upgrade your overall experience of the event.

Card sleeves will protect your cool new Hobbit cards from damage while you play and also help you make a personal aesthetic statement to stand out from the crowd! But they’re also just convenient in a ton of small ways. It’s much easier to pick up cards and to shuffle them when sleeved, for instance (though brand-new sleeves may be slippery until you play a game and get some microscopic wear on them to increase friction).

Unique sleeves make it far harder to accidentally mix your cards up with an opponent at the end of a game, even if they’re attached to a stack of opposing permanents. Also, sleeving all the cards from your prerelease pack is the easiest way to track which cards are legal to include when editing your deck during the event – even if you’re carrying around other Hobbit cards you got from prizes or earlier flights.

You’ll need ~45 sleeves to play a typical Sealed prerelease flight (or 85, if you’re planning to sleeve your whole prelease pack). 

If you don’t have the right sleeves at home to bring, I would go so far as to recommend buying them. Just show up a few minutes early and ask the staff if they can recommend some opaque sleeves or buy them ahead of time!

Look for “Standard size” on the packaging to make sure you’re buying sleeves designed for Magic cards (as opposed to Yu-Gi-Oh! Sleeves, which are slightly smaller). Also double check you aren’t buying “inner sleeves”, as those aren’t really meant to be used on their own – they go inside normal sleeves to double-protect very expensive cards. But those are all you have, they’ll be OK for one prerelease.

Bringing at least a handful of dice is my other top recommendation. These are primarily useful for tracking different counters which might be placed on cards, so having different sizes/colors/designs is useful. But they’re also good for:

• deciding who gets first turn in game one of each match
• randomly choosing a creature card for Getaway Barrel
• tracking the amount and types of mana in your mana pool (if a card like Woodland Weavemaster or The Notary Hobbits makes a lot all at once)

• representing the numbers (and/or stats) of creature tokens you create when you don’t have enough physical tokens to represent them
• marking when you’ve used a “once each turn” effect like Rhadagast of Rhosgobel

• helping you remember important upkeep triggers like Chief Warg’s Company (place a die on top of your deck so you can’t draw to start each turn without stopping to remember why it’s there!)

…and plenty more. Magic is a game with lots of numbers in it; you can never have enough dice.

I personally always bring my own basic land cards to the prerelease, and if you own any I’m going to recommend you do too. Basic lands are the only cards you can bring that are legal to play with at the event, since the boosters in your Prerelease Pack won’t give you all 17 lands you need to build a viable Sealed deck.

If you don’t have a supply of each basic land type sitting around, don’t fret – every store hosting events will have a “public land station” where you can freely borrow the basic lands you need on an honor system.

But bringing your own from home means that you can show off with your favorite artworks and styles for each land type. You also avoid the chore of de-sleeving borrowed lands from your deck at the end of the event so you can return them to the land station.

Bringing a playmat to the prerelease isn’t as important as those first few recommendations, but it’s a great luxury if you have one to use. Playmats are great for marking out your table space even when you’re sandwiched between other games at the same table. They protect any unsleeved cards from being scratched up while opening packs, and they make it SO much easier to pick up individual cards instead of sliding them to the edge of the table.

My last recommendation (at least for helping with the Magic part of your day) is to bring some empty boxes or other containers to hold the new cards you’ll be opening! The box your prerelease kit comes in helps a bit, but in my experience, you always seem to need a little more space than it provides. You might get away with having cards loose in a bag or larger container if they’re all sleeved, but surely it’s better to keep them neat and organized.

WRITE YOUR OWN TALE

I know that for those newer to Magic it can be intimidating to think about playing against more experienced strangers using unfamiliar cards – even in an explicitly casual and low-stakes environment. But remember: stores put on these events specifically for players like you! 

Win or lose, the vibe in the room should be positive and low-intensity, and everyone will be learning and laughing about the new set together. Enjoy recreating (or weirdly altering!) famous moments from Tolkien’s story, and appreciate the ways the set designers manage to adapt the fine details of Middle-earth into Magic rules form.

Each flight only three or four rounds, so even if your deck is a disaster it shouldn’t overstay its welcome too long. Just crack a joke about it with your opponents – or ask them for some deckbuilding tips! Like Thorin’s mix of dwarven warriors, an eccentric wizard, and a hobbit burglar, sometimes it’s the unlikely alliance of strangers which proves most successful.