MLP Merch Attended CCG High Magic Pre-Release Event

Once in a while we write about events or shops that we attend ourselves, and yesterday we finally had the chance to join a pre-release event for a new My Little Pony CCG expansion: High Magic!
While we say pre-release, it was hardly 'pre' as the set was release two days ago, but this didn't make the event any less awesome.

The pre-release was hosted by Subcultres, a gaming store from The Netherlands and took place at one of our local MLP/brony meetings. It was an official pre-release party with a box from Enterplay, filled with booster packs and goodies. The first part of this event was a workshop to get the hang of the game, and the second part was a draft tournament with the boosters from the pre-release kit.

While I, already had a deck and knew most of the game's rules, Ilona never played the game before. Luckily the workshop made the game understandable and we, and the 6 other players, were ready to go and draft a deck for the tournament.

Drafting started with handing out 8 booster packs to everyone, which we opened one by one. For each booster we removed the problem cards, kept 1 regular card and passed the remaining cards to the player next to us, and (s)he kept another card, passed the others around, etc, etc. We did this for all cards and all boosters until all of us had a pile of cards for creating a deck. I went for a Fluttershy/Applejack deck and Ilona chose for Rarity/Rainbow Dash. It was pretty hard to pick the right cards, as most of the cards in this set have play requirements, we did manage to build something workable. After a while we all drafted a deck, and were ready for the championship!

Me and Ilona started with a win, after which we were paired against each other. Ilona's deck was too strong for me, and she got another win. In the last round we both lost and Ilona got 4th place, and I got 5th.

In order of place we all got to choose a prize from the prize pool, together with some more booster packs from High Magic. Ilona got an adorable Equestrian Mailmare (Derpy) pin, and I got a Premiere booster pack, which turned out to be filled with rares!
Besides that we of course had to keep all the cards we drafted and got a special Nightmare Moon token, event badge and special foil card.

We had a lot of fun that day and learned much about the card game, especially by competing against some more skilled players. We'll definitely join the next pre-release event and hope to score some more card for our collection! :)