by Dredd77

If there’s one thing I’ve been looking forward to most since taking Ertai’s Lament out of mothballs, it’s been the Preconstructed Deck Championships. One of the site’s most popular features, the Championships follow a ‘March Madness’ style format, where all of the preconstructed decks of a given season are randomly seeded into one of four divisions, and battle their way to eternal glory.

The winner will take its place in the hall of heroes, alongside the previous Champions:

2005-07 Endless March (Planar Chaos Theme Deck)

2007-08 Duel Decks: Goblins (Duel Decks: Elves vs Goblins)

2008-09 Dead Ahead (Alara Reborn Intro Pack)

2009-10 Eldrazi Arisen (Rise of the Eldrazi Intro Pack)

2010-11 Duel Decks: Elspeth (Duel Decks: Elspeth vs Tezzeret)

2011-12 Hold the Line (Innistrad Event Deck)

Sharpen your Pencils

But we don’t get to have all the fun- there’s a giveaway, too. An Eldritch Moon Prerelease Kit plus ten packs of Eldritch Moon will be up for grabs for the winner of our prediction league! Each week, we’ll post the week’s matches ahead, and give everyone a few days to submit their picks.

The contest is simple- each correct pick gives you a point. The person with the most points at the conclusion of the Championship is the winner! Easy! The prediction posts go up on Mondays, and the matches post on Saturday. Plenty of time each week to get in your picks.

What is a Precon?

This question is not as simple as it seems. We define a precon deck as a set decklist that’s been determined by Wizards of the Coast, an “official” decklist. Most of the time, that means a product release like Theme Decks, Intro Packs, Event Decks, the now-annual Commander releases, and the like.

But there are a number of other precons that have flown quietly beneath the Ertai’s Lament radar. 30-card “Welcome decks” given out at hobby shops, decklists in the Player’s Guide, “virtual decks” from Duels of the Planeswalkers and Magic Duels.

This year, we’re opening up the competition eligibility to include any non-digital deck list. This means, yes, the Welcome decks are in, as are the five decks from the Magic 2015 Player’s Guide. It also means that the Clash Packs will be handled as three different decks. Although they had a short product life, the Clash Packs contained two different 60-card decks that could be combined to form an Event Deck-level 60-card deck. Magic 2015’s was titled Fate and Fury, which will field Fate, Fury, and Fate and Fury in this competition.

Preliminary Rounds and Seeding

This expanded eligibility means that we’ll have to have a preliminary round this season. Thas has happened in the past, so it’s nothing new, but we’ve never had this many!

To seed the brackets, we took all of the decks and added byes to round out the brackets. Everything’s been random, just as it always has. We will not be taking predictions on the preliminary round- like you, we enjoy these lasting for a convenient amount of time rather than an eternity. You’ll see the results of the preliminary round when we post for predictions, since you’ll know who made it through and who will be watching forlornly from the sidelines.

As always, if you have any questions about the Preconstructed Championships or the prediction league, please don’t hesitate to ask!