Seal of the Guildpact | Illustration by Franz Vohwinkel
Every once in a while, when I’ve had a rough week or I’ve accomplished a bunch of tasks, or I’m in whatever mood has me feel that I deserve a treat, I go to my local game store and pick up a Prerelease Kit from an “old” set. Sometimes I just want to open cards, and Prerelease Kits let me scratch that itch without breaking the bank.
Most of us are familiar with Prerelease Kits, whether we’re regulars at Sealed Prerelease events or we’ve just been around the game for a while. But for those that need to catch up, perhaps ahead of their first Prerelease for an upcoming Universes Beyond set, I’ve got your crash course on Prerelease Kits and how they can be useful outside of their Prerelease season.
What Are Prerelease Kits?
Prerelease Kits are a sealed product of Magic: The Gathering boosters that are distributed to players during Prerelease events for a new set. Players at a Prerelease build a 40-card Sealed deck out of the contents of their Prerelease Kit (plus basic lands supplied by the store or event holder) and battle it out, usually in Best-of-3, 1v1 matches.
If a store receives more Prerelease Kits than the number of spots that they can fill at their event, they may offer them for At-Home Prerelease, and any leftovers may continue to be available for purchase until the supply runs out.
What Comes in a Prerelease Kit?
Prerelease contents have changed over time, but these days they usually have:
- 6 Play boosters from one set
- A traditional foil rare/mythic rare from the set
- A spindown d20 life counter on which the set symbol replaces the 20
- A deck box
- Punchout counters and reminder tokens
For sets with faction-based Prereleases (ex: Secrets of Strixhaven, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Tarkir: Dragonstorm), kits contain 5 Play boosters and 1 seeded pack that contains cards related to the chosen faction. The spindown d20 will sometimes feature the faction symbol (ex: Mardu Horde, Quandrix College) instead of the set symbol.
How Many Packs Come in a Prerelease Kit? What Kinds of Packs?
Prerelease kits contain 6 boosters. For sets before Murders at Karlov Manor, these are 6 Draft boosters, while Prerelease kits for sets starting with MKM contain 6 Play boosters.
For sets with clan or faction-based Prereleases like Tarkir: Dragonstorm, Secrets of Strixhaven, or Avatar: The Last Airbender, one of the boosters is replaced with a seeded pack that contains cards from the chosen faction.
What Can You Use a Prerelease Kit For?
The primary function of a Prerelease Kit is to play Sealed Magic, whether it’s during a Prerelease event or a Sealed event you or your friends hold yourselves.
If you want to improve your Limited gameplay, you can use a Prerelease Kit to practice building Sealed decks (though Draftsim’s Sealed Pool Generator also has you covered).
You can buy Prerelease Kits if you just want six boosters from a particular set. A Prerelease Kit is often cheaper than buying the boosters individually, and you’re guaranteed an extra foil rare/mythic.
Lastly, you could buy a Prerelease Kit to speculate on its future value. Just buy it, hold onto it, and sell it later. But where’s the fun in that?
What Are the Punch-Outs in a Prerelease Kit For?
The punchouts are usually counters or token reminders that are relevant in the set. You’ll often find punch-outs for +1/+1 counters, finality counters, keyword counters, and others as needed (ex: charge counters for Edge of Eternities).
Prerelease Kits might also contain token punch-outs that you can use for reminders based on their mechanics. There include, but are not limited to:
- Prepared (Secrets of Strixhaven)
- Locked/Unlocked rooms (Duskmourn: House of Horror)
- Suspected (Murders at Karlov Manor)
- Solved/Unsolved cases (MKM)
If there isn’t a mechanic for which a reminder token like that would be useful, there’s usually a pair of rectangular punch-out game pieces that you can use as you need. They can serve as tokens, markers to indicate cards exiled by different abilities, etc.
Do Prerelease Packs Still Have Promo Cards?
No. They used to contain date-stamped foil promo cards, but they now just contain traditional foil cards in their place.
I imagine there’s a cost involved both in printing stamped promo cards and ensuring their quality, but that date stamp helped to identify the card you opened in your Prerelease Kit the first time you played [insert set]. It’s a loss, in my humble opinion.
Are the Spindown Dice from Prerelease Kits Worth Anything?
It depends, usually on the age of the set and the marketplace. Spindowns from older Prerelease Kits are usually worth more because so many have likely disappeared over time, and fewer would have been made 10 or 20 years ago than now.
The more valuable spindowns tend to be from specific events or oversized bundle or gift bundle spindowns.
It’s also important to consider the source; TCGplayer has listings for the spindown from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for $12, but I can find it for like $2 in my LGS’s bulk spindown bin.
What Are Seeded Prerelease Packs?
Seeded Prerelease packs replace one of the six boosters in the Prerelease Kits from sets that have faction or clan-based Prerelease events. We’ve seen them in sets like Tarkir: Dragonstorm and Secrets of Strixhaven. Seeded packs contain cards that are related to the faction that the Kit is supposed to represent, or at least cards in their colors.
Is Buying a Prerelease Kit Worth It?
Usually yes, depending on the price. You’ll usually find Prerelease Kits price around if not slightly lower than the price of six Play/Draft boosters from the relevant set, plus you get a foil rare or mythic (possibly date-stamped, depending on the set). The card quality comes down to chance, but you can make educated bets if you know which cards are in a set before you buy.
Where Can You Buy Prerelease Kits?
You can often find Prerelease Kits at Local Game Stores (LGS) affiliated with the Wizards Play Network (WPN).
For online listings, check marketplaces like TCGplayer, Amazon, Card Kingdom, and others. Your LGS or other game stores may also have websites that allow you to purchase Prerelease Kits.
Note that Prerelease Kits are often subject to shipping restrictions. Sometimes they’re only available for in-store pickup or in-store purchase, or they may be restricted to the country in which the store is located.
Recommended Prerelease Kits to Buy
For my recommendations, I want to balance the likelihood that you’ll find a Prerelease Kit from a certain set with the value you can expect from it. I’m basing my picks on the quality of the cards you could chase rather than the gameplay experience; my picks are also biased for a casual Commander palette rather than Standard or other formats.
Most sets have chase rares that make them good to buy in 6-pack quantities, but the best sets have a guaranteed bonus sheet slot, a valuable dual-color land cycle, and/or some highly sought commons or uncommons.
#5. Good UB Sets + Supplementary Sets
If you can find them at a good price, I’d absolutely hop on a Prerelease Kit from any of these sets:
“If” is the operative term here. For a number of reasons, these are more expensive than your usual Prerelease Kit. The card quality has high potential, though.
#4. Bloomburrow + Lorwyn Eclipsed
There’s advantages to each; I think that Bloomburrow is a better set overall, but Lorwyn Eclipsed has half of the shock lands, Bloom Tender, and new evoke elementals. Your desire for each set is going to depend mostly on how much you care about what’s going on with the typal stuff in each set.
Tarkir: Dragonstorm also has high potential if you can find its Prerelease Kits; I haven’t listed it just because I haven’t seen one in about a year.
#3. Secrets of Strixhaven
Anything with a guaranteed bonus sheet slot piques my interest, although it depends on the quality of the sheet itself. Secrets of Strixhaven has its SOS Mystical Archive and many good cards sprinkled in, like Flow State and Studious First-Year. I pulled an Emeritus of Truce in my Silverquill Prerelease Kit, so maybe I’m a little biased.
I haven’t seen Strixhaven: School of Mages or Wilds of Eldraine Prerelease Kits in a while, but you might still see them around. Outlaws of Thunder Junction is a pretty good pick for its Breaking News bonus sheet, plus it has Bristly Bill, Spine Sower and plenty of other good stuff to chase. This Town Ain't Big Enough has lost a chunk of its trade-in value since its ban in Standard, though.
#2. Edge of Eternities
It may have the bonus sheet that shows up the least among in-universe sets, but Edge of Eternities has some downright banger cards. Umbral Collar Zealot and Weftstalker Ardent are some of the better uncommons, and those full-art lands are just plain gorgeous. Six boosters is a decent shot at hitting at least one mythic rare, which could mean Ouroboroid, Tezzeret, Cruel Captain, Exalted Sunborn, or one of the planets. And don’t forget the half-cycle of shocks at rare, plus Icetill Explorer.
#1. Duskmourn: House of Horror
Duskmourn has great cards at all rarities, but the standouts are uncommons like Untimely Malfunction and Withering Torment. Some of the better hits among rares and mythics include half of the Verge lands, some of the impending Overlords (Overlord of the Hauntwoods) and Enduring glimmers (Enduring Curiosity), Unstoppable Slasher, Kaito, Bane of Nightmares, and more.
Wrap Up
Vexing Puzzlebox | Illustration by Volkan Baga
Prerelease Kits are a core part of how we experience new sets, but there’s nothing that says we can’t crack open the leftover supply once a set has been out for a while. I may not be a Christmas in July person, but I’d crack open a Prerelease Kit any day of the year.
But what about you? Do you buy Prerelease Kits after a set has released? What do you think of the changes, like the lack of date-stamped promos or the removal of Arena codes? Let me know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord.
Until next time, happy brewing!
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