MTG’s 30th Anniversary celebration has been received by the community as a somewhat controversial event. Most will know of the insanely controversial $1000 box detailing four packs of randomized cards that can’t even be played officially, but a lot of smaller things are being done to try and make MTG’s 30th year memorable. One of these things is a series of cards detailed by date given out at Prerelease events. While a nice touch, MTG players seem to be pretty upset with the promotion. These prerelease promo aren’t being given out equally, and every MTG player wants the ones that no one seems to be able to get.
Phyrexia: All Will Be One Prerelease Promo Cards
This particular promotion was announced as a part of Dominaria United’s release. Alongside the Lost Legends promotion offering the occasional Legends card to lucky players who open it in a Dominaria Remastered Collector Booster pack, these cards outlining each of MTG’s years can be received alongside your Prerelease experience were spoiled.
While there are some cards considered interesting by the majority of the MTG community featured in this promotion, like a foil retro frame Tarmagoyf coming in the future, and some cards that are exclusively in other languages, players do not seem too enthused about this promotional offering for Phyrexia: All Will Be One.
Featured in this weekend’s upcoming prereleases are the two cards above. Exalted Angel is a neat card for players who are interested in running angel or life gain-themed EDH decks, but the card is rather unimpressive overall. Temple of the False God was an EDH staple once upon a time, but the card has dropped a fair bit in popularity.
While Exalted Angel and Temple of the False God are available for most prerelease attendees, two more promotional cards are coming with Phyrexia’s prerelease that will be much harder to obtain: the Italian Vindicate and the English Kor Haven.
Vindicate is a common removal piece, even seen in recent Commander preconstructed decks. The card is still viable in Commander, but you may not see it at competitive tables. This card has a ton of printings, so it’s relatively cheap on the secondary market.
Kor Haven is definitely the money card for this round of promotional items. This is the third printing of a land card with a rare and rather desirable ability to Fog an attacking creature. This sort of utility is quite challenging to find in lands, giving the cheaper versions of Kor Haven currently available a $17 price tag. Reports from Reddit state that these two cards are going to be offered in lower quantities than the aforementioned promotional cards, annoying players in the process. While there are no significant confirmations about the price of these rarer promotional cards, many players speculate that these will be valuable. According to one player’s commentary, an example of how these cards have been split up in terms of distribution can be seen as such:
“For reference, our WPN Premium store got –
170 Exalted Angel
90 Temple of the False God
3 Vindicate
3 Kor Haven
The previous set of promos we got something like –
120 Wall of Roots
90 Wood Elves
60 Windfall
3 Loyal Retainers
I’d rather have 0 than 3. Wizards doesn’t tell the public there’s such a low amount of certain promos so people assume stores keep them for themselves instead of giving them away. I’d be happier if the promo was ‘worse’ but at least I had enough to make everyone happy.”
OR4NG3
Player Opinion
As seen in much of the feedback on Reddit, many MTG players are unhappy with these prerelease promotional cards being made available in different quantities:
“I am honestly so bummed by WOTC doing this. Feels really crappy that celebrating the 30th anniversary means that 1, possibly 2 people, will get access to certain promos every pre-release. I feel like it would be a better and more real celebration if they gave equal amounts of them all.”
Deathavails
“Yea, this is disappointing. Especially that the previous promos were distributed in adequate amounts and you could any that you wanted during the prerelease in my lgs”
fibryss
What Redditor fibryss would quickly learn following this comment, and what was made clear by the featured comment earlier in the article, is that this actually isn’t the first time that this has been done for this promotion. The Brothers’ War prerelease featured the Loyal Retainers card showcased above as the rare selection of choice. According to this Reddit thread, many players speculate that the majority of LGS only got a couple copies of this card at most. Like Kor Haven for this series of prereleases, Loyal Retainers is unquestionably the most financially lucrative card of the series of cards released. The card is currently going for between $60 and $70 on TCGplayer, which is absolutely stunning for a prerelease promotional card. This comparison has been noted by many.
It’s Not All Bad
Alongside this negativity around all the scarcity to a promotion meant to celebrate MTG is a series of people who are very excited to get their hands on the promotional Temple of the False God in particular. While the card’s relevance has been lost to time a bit, foil copies of the Temple are surprisingly difficult to come by.
“Up until the Warhammer decks, the only foil of that card was the original printing, and was $30 foil at minimum. Now anyone wanting to foil up a deck has a reasonable place to access. Of the ~10 of these they’ve done so far it is possibly one of the most useful.”
HeyApples
While the Temple has been phased out of Commander largely, a large number of preconstructed decks still have them, making this particular promotional card a very applicable upgrade to many Commander MTG players who likely still play the card.
Even though the distribution of these promotional cards aren’t to many players’ likings, it is, at worst, a harmless add-on to an experience that many MTG players already look forward to. Should this feedback truly reflect a majority of prerelease customers, Wizards of the Coast will, hopefully, take it into account for future endeavours.
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