Rook's Comics and Games

 Rook’s held a Worldwake Pre-Release on Saturday and Sunday.  We had three events planned for the weekend.  On Saturday was a Worldwake sealed deck tournament.  Then after that we held a Worldwake draft.  Finally on Sunday we held another Worldwake sealed deck event.  This is the same format that we had for our very successful Zendikar Pre-Release event.

Our turnout Saturday was great.  We had 47 people attend which is only two less than for Zendikar.  Considering that Worldwake is a small set and Zendikar had incredible hype; our turnout on Saturday was great.  The reconfiguration of our play space was incredibly helpful.  We did not have to move any displays around and we were able to fit everybody six to a table. This is far more comfortable than trying to scrunch eight people on one table.  If we keep growing our magic community, we will swiftly find ourselves out of room again.

Our draft on Saturday was a little under attended but seemed okay.  The draft on Saturday is largely a factor of how cool people think the cards are and how many of them they still want after the sealed.  Worldwake is a small set and the supply at the release on Friday is practically infinite. This means that people were not so worried about getting the cards that they want this first weekend because they know we will have enough available.  Zendikar was sold out to pre-orders before we even had any in our store, making the pre-release a little more desirable.

The Sunday sealed is where our numbers were a little disappointing.  We only had 13 people enter that tournament.  I was expecting somewhere in the 25 to 30 person range.  This is a significant decrease from the Saturday sealed the day before and is also large decrease from our Zendikar Pre-Release.  The important thing to determine is if our Zendikar number were a fluke.  We did have some out of town people come so perhaps that is something we can’t count on every time.  Hopefully, Worldwake is still a really fun set and that was not the cause of the low Sunday turnout.   I personally don’t think this is the case but it is hard to tell.  Most people interested in Magic will come to the first Pre-Release but if the set is a stinker, there won’t be much follow-up. 

For the next Pre-release we might try to have all the events on one day.  Traditionally pre-releases are broken up into “flights” of 32 people each.  If more people showed up, then more flights were created.  Eight person drafts were also popular during previous Pre-Releases.   We might try and do something like this for our next Pre-Release.  There are a couple of benefits of this.  It puts all the events into the first day which is when people are most excited about the set.  Also, by having multiple events going on at one time, people who are doing poorly can drop their current event and play in a new event.  This increases our revenue but it also helps by not forcing people to play with a sealed or draft they don’t like. 

 Regardless of what we choose to do with the next Pre-Release; this one was a success.  Our magic community is going strong and that makes everyone happy