Prerelease – Magic: The Gathering® | The Hobbit™

Scheduling: August 7–13; use the Prerelease template
Format: Sealed Deck
Rules Enforcement Level: Casual
Pairing method: Swiss or Player List Only
Promotional material support:

Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit Play Booster prize support

Promotional prize support Play Boosters are provided via your preferred distributor. You can confirm your store's quantity of promotional prize support by checking the Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit allocation email or reaching out to Retail Support.

Schedule Events

What Is Prerelease?

Prerelease celebrates the launch of a new set and is your players' first opportunity to explore what the set has to offer. Players open a Prerelease Pack, build a 40-card Sealed deck, and play with the set for the first time in a casual and fun environment.

Prerelease events can be scheduled starting at 12 p.m. local time on Friday, August 7, and throughout the week until August 13.

Early Access at WPN Stores

As a WPN member store, Prerelease gives you the opportunity to sell new set products a week ahead of wider release. This early access builds excitement, drives foot traffic, and rewards your community for supporting their local game store.

Draft Events

You are welcome to run Draft events that use Play Boosters from the new set plus your free-of-charge Prerelease prizing Play Boosters. Prerelease events run using the Draft format will not have special scheduling templates, nor will they count towards future Prerelease Pack and prize support allocations. You can use the "Create Custom" tool to schedule these in Wizards EventLink.

At-Home Prerelease*

At-Home Prerelease is available during the Prerelease week. Players are provided a Prerelease Pack to play with outside your store. Like in-store Prerelease, enrolling players in an At-Home event will contribute to your play metrics and future Prerelease allocations*.

At-Home Prerelease Packs may be provisioned, and Prerelease early sales may begin, as soon as your store is open for the day, but structured events must wait until 12 p.m. local time on the first day of Prerelease.

*Note: In EMEA, Australia, and New Zealand, At-Home Prerelease is no longer available. For more information, please visit the Prerelease changes announcement.

Schedule and Promote Your Prerelease Events

Tournament Prerelease events (with rounds) and player-list-only events (without rounds) are both available to be scheduled from the Prerelease event template on Wizards EventLink.

Select "Swiss" as the pairing method when scheduling a structured tournament-style Prerelease.
Select "Player List Only" to schedule a casual Prerelease where players find their own matches.

Schedule Events

Grab attention for your events and products using available marketing resources, including Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit digital marketing assets.