When it comes to bringing new players into your store, the Wizards Play Network team has lined up a powerful combo—Duskmourn: House of Horror Open House and Magic: The Gathering Foundations Prerelease. With these two events on back-to-back weekends, you can bring in new players, show them the ropes, and then have them return to see the best of what in-store play has to offer—Prerelease!

Open House events start November 1. Here's what you need to know to prepare.

Welcome Players with the Participation Promo

Open House is supported by a promo card and sticker sheets, both items you received in your promotional items kit. Give the promo card, Night’s Whisper, to each event participant while supplies last.

Hand Out the Sticker Sheet with Starter Kit Sales

Your sticker sheets are a gift-with-purchase for those who take the leap to the best next product: a Starter Kit! The Duskmourn stickers make great conversation starters and give players an easy way to express their love of Magic on their personal items, like journals, notebooks, or even phone cases and laptops.

Get Games Started with Welcome Decks

Welcome Decks are returning for Duskmourn: House of Horror to English-language WPN stores, and Open House is the perfect event to use them! There are two 30-card decks in each box; one in an indicated color, and the other a random one of the five mana colors in Magic.

These two decks are separately wrapped in the Welcome Deck box, and each player should start with the color they like most at the beginning of the event and play with that 30-card deck at first. Once they feel confident, they can shuffle in the second color for a full 60-card deck experience.

Welcome Decks come as a fixed order of cards, designed to best demonstrate a typical game of Magic for a new player's first game. This means that the new player should not shuffle their deck after opening it for the first time—all they have to do is unwrap their deck, find a partner, and play!

Welcome Decks are a great introductory tool for players; you may send players home with them to practice more at your discretion, but we encourage you to keep enough on hand to run demos on demand in your store as needed.

Outside of Open House, we encourage you to create a new player event and sign up any new players with a Wizards Account when you walk them through a demo using Welcome Decks. These events should use the “New Player” format when scheduling in EventLink and will count towards your WPN play metrics.

Encourage Experienced Players to Tutor

Open House isn't just for your newest players: experienced Magic players in your community may be interested in showing new players the ropes, jamming some games, and answering gameplay questions as they arise. Just like the newcomers, experienced players will receive a promo card for participating.

For those passionate about tutoring the community in your store, make sure they know about Magic Academy events, where they can earn a beautiful AR-enhanced Magic Community Tutor pin from our partners at Pinfinity for being an awesome community tutor.

Go All-Out with Decorating

Open House may be set to start the day after Halloween, but to us, it's still spooky season—and we encourage you to lean into the theme at your Open House event. Will you transform your event into an Open "Haunted" House or set up two skeletons with their very own demo? The choice is entirely yours!

If you and your staff set up your store in advance, take some photos ahead of time and share them in your store’s online channels: maybe you'll entice even more new players to come see what Duskmourn Open House is all about.

Drive Players to their Next Event: Prerelease

The next step for your Open House attendees is right around the corner: Magic: The Gathering Foundations Prerelease! With events starting November 8, players will have a clear next event that they can put on their calendars right away.

The best part? Foundations is a set focused on the quintessential Magic experience, providing new players with cards selected to give every player the advantage. Invite players new and experienced to share their sparks—schedule your events in Wizards EventLink today!