Sebastian Anthony



Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony

Sebastian Anthony



This coming weekend, on September 26 and 27, thousands of gaming shops around the world will host prerelease tournaments for the upcoming Magic: the Gathering expansion, Battle for Zendikar (BFZ). Today, partly for journalistic reasons and partly to satisfy my own deeply nerdy tendencies, I invited Wizards of the Coast to Ars Technica HQ to play a few rounds of BFZ. If you're uncertain about going to a prerelease event, or you just want a bit more information about what a prerelease event entails, read on for our experiences of playing prerelease Battle for Zendikar. (Spoiler: It's really, really good.)

I should preface this story by saying I'm a bit of a Magic newbie; I played quite a lot when I was a teenager, but only got back into it earlier this year after a 15-year hiatus. I'm still learning my way around many of the new Magic mechanics, and I have limited experience with non-kitchen-table formats, such as booster draft or sealed deck.

Fortunately, the Battle for Zendikar Prerelease Pack is quite newbie-friendly. In it, there are six booster packs, a spin-down life counter, and a handy little pamphlet that tells you how to build a decent deck. I've never played the sealed deck format before, so I simply followed the printed instructions. I was a little anxious about choosing the right colours, and building a deck with a somewhat sane mana curve, but apparently it was enough to just follow the instructions: after our little play session had concluded, the Wizards employee said my deck was pretty solid.

(In case you're wondering, the best card I pulled was Undergrowth Champion. No mega-rare Expeditions for me, alas.)

Playing Battle for Zendikar Prerelease

Once we'd built our decks, it was time to play BFZ. I stared across the table at Dan Barrett, the European community manager for Wizards of the Coast, who, much to my chagrin, has played a lot of booster-draft and sealed-deck Magic over the years. I won the dice roll and decided to play first. "You're going down," I said uncertainly, trying to psych Dan out.

I had a strong start: I had bravely opted for a three-colour deck, and drew one land of each type in my starting hand. Beyond that, I had a couple of cards that I could play in the first two turns, and a 7-mana Eldrazi, Bane of Bala Ged; a pretty strong hand, all in all. After the first few turns, I was in a strong position: I had played a flying creature that Dan couldn't block on turn three, and it had whittled him down to 11 life points. Through some clever use of Landfall, I'd also managed to get my life total up to 26. I won't lie: I was feeling pretty confident. I really might win against someone from Wizards of the Coast...

Eventually, around turn 7, I played Bane of Bala Ged. In most cases, the weird and tentacular Eldrazi—a mysterious elder race of Cthulu-like plane-hopping demigods—would have won me the game. Unfortunately, on the next turn, Dan had the perfect counter in his hand: Scour from Existence, which immediately exiled my creature from the battlefield. Darn.

The game then continued for about 10 more turns, with each of us building up larger and larger ground armies. Dan used one of the expansion's new mechanics—Processors—to build up a small army of scions, while I used another new mechanic—Awaken—to build up an army of killer islands. Eventually I got the Undergrowth Champion into play, too. But neither of us could quite find an opening. In Magic, combat strongly favours the defender, and neither one of us could amass a large enough force to break the bilateral siege. Dan hovered at just four life points for turn after turn, but I lacked the ability to deliver the killing blow.

And then, with about 10 cards left, Dan drew Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and the bottom fell out of my plane of existence. Ulamog is the most powerful card in BFZ, and so much more powerful than any of the creatures that were printed when I first started playing Magic. If Ulamog gets onto the battlefield—if you can't counterspell it, or kill it before its first attack—you've probably lost. And that's exactly what happened: I lost.

But hey, no hard feelings. I had a lot of fun building a deck, and the new Battle for Zendikar cards were very fun to play with, too. Mechanics like Landfall and Awaken made the late-game much more interesting, while the ubiquitous threat of huge, high-mana-cost creatures meant there was always an element of anxious foreboding; you knew a big, world-ending creature was coming, you just don't know when. I'm excited to tear open some more packs and build some constructed decks when the expansion is officially released on October 2.

Before then, though, there are the Battle for Zendikar prerelease events on September 26 and 27. If you're a lapsed Magic player like myself, and you've thought about getting back into it, you should consider going along to one of the events. The entry cost will vary from shop to shop (probably £15-20), but you get to keep the contents of the Prerelease Pack, and you'll get a few hours of fun out of it as well. To find your nearest gaming store, hit up the Wizards Store & Event Locator.

If you're a complete Magic newbie, then I'd suggest loading up the new (and free-to-play) Magic Duels computer game, which is available on Steam, and the iOS and Xbox One app stores. Wizards hasn't announced when the new BFZ cards will be added to Duels, but hopefully it'll be soon.

We will have a full review of the Battle for Zendikar expansion in the next few weeks.