Alex Green, Retail Support Supervisor

Greetings!

I’m Alex Green and I lead Wizards’ Retail Support team. In North America, we’re the folks that pick up the phone when you call in with questions about WER, or about when your FNM promos will arrive, or about signing up for the Wizards Play Network.

Or when Prerelease allocations land—which will be happening again next week. Scheduling for Ravnica Allegiance opens up on Monday, so you’ll receive your allocation numbers soon.

When you do, my team and I are happy to answer any questions you may have. But if you want to save yourself some hold time, here are a few topics that came up a lot around Guilds of Ravnica—all of which are relevant for Ravnica Allegiance, too.

Prerelease Early Sale Promotion returns once again.

When you get your allocation numbers, you’ll also see how many advance boxes you can order for the Prerelease Early Sale promotion (20 for Core, 40 for Advanced, 60 for Advanced Plus.)

If you’ve never participated in the Early Sale Promotion before, make sure to get in on it this time. The short version is, you can sell a certain number of booster boxes at Prerelease now. Here’s Desert Sky Games’ Michael Bahr’s thoughts on the promotion, and here’s a breakdown of how to participate:*

1. When you sign up for Prerelease in WER, choose a distributor. We’ll make your advance boxes available through the same distributor as your Prerelease Packs.
2. Once orders are open, call that distributor for advance boxes of Ravnica Allegiance. Quantities are determined by store level.
3. Presell those boxes to your players. We typically recommend opening preorders no later than when previews of the new cards start, usually three or four weeks before launch.
4. At Prerelease, sell those boxes. Note: players can actually preorder at Prerelease. It’s before launch, after all.

*Details vary by region.

Pretty simple.

And, perhaps most important of all, with each box you sell, you can hand out the Buy-a-Box promo, a Standard-and-Commander-legal promo card not found in Ravnica Allegiance booster packs. We’ll start showing off the card around the third week of December, to help you get those preorders going.

Allocations are in quantities of 20, not 18.

Your Ravnica Allegiance allocation is going to be based on your highest attendance from the previous two sets—Guilds of Ravnica and Core Set 2019.

The numbers will work the same as Guilds of Ravnica allocations. They’ll come in case quantities of twenty, rather than the usual eighteen. This way there’s an even number of each guild in the set—Azorius, Gruul, Orzhov, Rakdos, and Simic—to help you give players the guild they want.

But even though Prerelease Packs come in quantities of twenty, prize packs are calculated as though they were in increments of eighteen (because there are thirty-six boosters in a box, not forty).

So, you can accommodate more players, but the trade-off is Wizards is providing 1.8 boosters per player, rather than the usual 2. Keep that in mind as you plan your prize structure.

Schedule and report Prerelease events correctly—it affects future allocations.

This is crucial—especially being mindful of the difference between a Prerelease Party and a Prerelease Tournament.

Prerelease Tournaments are the regular events you schedule in WER—at least eight players, at least three rounds, etc.

Prerelease Parties are casual events you can use to move more product, serve more players, and make the most of your allocation. They’re nice for when you have an awkward amount of kits left over (less than eight), and still have some folks looking to play.

But the numbers reported in a Prerelease Party don’t factor into future allocation.

Schedule as many Prerelease Tournaments as you can for your store level, and have a Prerelease Party available for any leftover product. If you don’t end up using all your events, that’s fine—just cancel any that weren’t used.

Those are the main topics that me and my team usually get calls about. If you have any other questions, reach out to us or your regional representative.