MTG - Is Prerelease Still Worth It? A Critical Magic: The Gathering Review

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The elimination of seeded boosters is probably the biggest change to prerelease. Since Return to Ravnica 3 years ago, prerelease would have one of 5 options of kit for the player to choose from.

These kits would sometimes be in a two color option, such as one of the Ravnican Guilds, a mono color option, such as one of the gods of Theros, or even a tri color option, such as the clans of Tarkir.

In sealed constructed, the format of prerelease, players build a 40 card deck from 6 booster packs. However, at prerelease, a seeded booster would replace one of those booster packs, and that seeded booster would contain a semi-random assortment of cards within the kits color or colors.

This was meant above all as an aide for new and returning players to make construction easier, especially for multi color builds. Unfortunately, seeded boosters actually had a lot of negative effects.

The biggest problem with seeded boosters was that it tried to force you into a color combination that may not be supported by your remaining 5 booster packs. So if you selected Red for prerelease, you would receive a seeded booster pack of red cards, but your other five packs not contain any good red components.

This would put players in an awkward position, either going for the color or colors that was best from their five actual booster packs, or trying to force the seeded color without proper support. This would lead to a very sub-optimal experience for that player.

Additionally, the seeded booster packs were far from an entirely random assortment. As a result, some colors would be superior to others, meaning that someone selecting red, say, would have an automatically better starting point than say, someone selecting blue. And I haven’t even gotten to the effect of the promos yet.

In addition to this, by simply determining which color you are likely building a deck of prior to prerelease, you are eliminating one of the key aspects of Magic: The Gathering BUILDING A DECK!

There’s a big difference between “Open these six pacts, choose a color or color, and construct a deck from them” and “Open these five packs and this seeded pack…then build a red deck.”

Again, the idea was making things easier for new players, but I would argue that new players can handle prerelease just fine. Don’t underestimate new players, something we all were at one time. We are smart, we can handle it, and mistakes are how we learn and grow.

Finally, on a very casual experience level, the seeded booster meant you were always getting one less booster pack per prerelease.

To only get 5 actual booster packs to crack and open at prerelease is bad enough, but when we would get to the second or third set and only be getting 2 actual booster packs of the new set? That was always a major disappointment. I want to open some packs of Magic at prerelease, not trade one of those booster packs for a collection of cards in the same color.

So in regards to the elimination of seeded boosters and not having a choice of colors, my assessment is that : Having an extra booster pack instead of a seeded booster is a far superior experience.