MTG Prerelease Guide: Tips and Tricks for Sealed

Every set is different, but there are a few important concepts to master like the Mana Curve, Mana Base and understanding what cards to look for that will give you the best chance to win. Let’s dive into it. 

Key dates for new MTG releases

If you are the type of player that likes to go to the prerelease knowing what the set is about, there are a few key dates to know. The full spoiler is usually up on Friday one week before the prereleases start. There is also a streamer event on MTG Arena on Wednesday before the prerelease, where you can watch your favorite content creators battle it out with new Standard brews and draft the new format. 

In the case of Edge of Eternities for example, these were the key dates:

• Spoiler Season Start: July 8, 2025.
• Spoiler Season End: July 18, 2025.
• MTG Arena Streamer Event: July 23-24, 2025 (24h event from 10am PST).
• Prerelease Events: July 25-31, 2025.
• MTG Arena Release Date: July 29, 2025.
• Paper Release Date: August 1, 2025.

Each new set follows the same pattern.

Spoilers: Where to look for new cards?

About half the cards get shared by Wizards themselves and half are spoiled to the world by the content creators. If you want to avoid any leaks, the safest bet is to keep an eye on the official Card Image Gallery. I like to use Scryfall as well, where you can easily search for something specific or easily differentiate between cards in Play Boosters and cards in Collector Boosters.

Before the prerelease: What do I need?

Now that you know when the prerelease is and how to study the spoiler, let’s talk about what you are going to need for the tournament.

For your entry fee, the organizer will provide you with

• 6 Play Boosters
• 1 foil Prerelease promo with a year stamp, which you can play in your deck
• 1 Spindown die
• Basic lands

I recommend bringing your own deck box, sleeves, a playmat, dice and pen and paper, though this is something you can also typically buy at most stores.

One more thing you can usually do before the tournament is to pre-register for the event. Oftentimes this will net you a small discount and some sets are so popular that the tournament might sell out.

Get all the essentials for your first Prerelease at the Ultimate Guard webshop!

Which color combination should I pick if I get a choice?

Some sets will give you the choice at the prerelease to choose one of the clans or color combinations. The 6 packs you will receive will then be seeded with more cards of this combination to make it more likely you can end up building a deck in those colors.

So which one should you pick? Just go with whatever you enjoy playing!

Color combinations like Dimir or Sultai are typically more grindy while Boros or Mardu are usually the aggressive archetypes. The play designers are usually pretty good about balancing the colors, and it is supposed to be a fun event, so go with whatever you feel like you will have the most fun with.

Sorting your prerelease pool

Now that you received your boosters, it is time to crack the packs and sort the cards.

I like to sort the cards out simply by color. While doing that, I keep an eye on the rares to see if there are some bombs that could pull me into certain colors.

Prereleases run at Regular REL (Rules Enforcement Level), which means that the focus is on fun, learning and enjoying the new cards. This means that there is no deck registration, you just need to build a Limited-legal deck (at least 40 cards) and start battling. You can also choose to change your deck between the rounds.

You will usually have 30-45 minutes to build your deck, but since all the cards are new, this limit isn’t usually strictly enforced and you can have a few extra minutes if you are struggling.

Now that you sorted everything, look for the colors with the most playables and most powerful cards. This includes the usual bomb rares and mythics, removal, good uncommons and mana sinks. Try to identify the two best colors.

Building your Sealed deck

Now that you have an idea of what the best cards in your pool are, build a 40-card deck with 17 lands and a mix of 23 creatures and spells. You can play more than 40 cards, but I recommend sticking to exactly 40 because every extra card means that you will be drawing your bombs less often.

There are a couple of very important concepts to master when building your Sealed deck. The first one is your Mana Base.  

The idea is that you want to balance consistency and power. If you add all the best cards from your pool into one 5-color deck and play 3-4 sources of each color, you will never be able to cast your spells. Similarly, if you build a Monored deck with a bunch of subpar cards just to be able to play 17 Mountains, you will never have mana issues, but the power level of your deck is going to be way bellow average because you are unlikely to even find 17 red cards in one pool, not to mention good ones. Your goal is to strike the right balance.

Ideally you want to stick to 2 colors as that will give you the most consistent mana base, which means having enough sources of each color to consistently cast all your cards without issues. The more colors you play, the harder it will be to assemble all the right colors of mana. This is a lot easier to do in constructed with dual lands, triple lands, fetchlands and other ways to fix your mana. In Limited you usually only have basic lands and maybe a dual or two like Dismal Backwater or Evolving Wilds.

Sealed is about trying to fit as many of your most powerful cards into your deck as possible while keeping the number of below average cards to a minimum. However, remember that it still needs to be a cohesive deck with a balanced mana curve and a functional mana base.

Splashing

Not being able to cast your spells is the easiest way to lose, so try to stick to 2 colors, or 2 colors with a light splash if you have the right fixing. That means mana rocks, mana dorks, Lander tokens and other ways to find your sources like Expedition Map. Some pools will offer so much fixing that you can go for 4 or even 5 colors.

In a two color deck, the most common mana base is 9-8 or 10-7. Look at the mana requirements of your cards and decide which one is more likely to work. I typically run 9-8 unless I have some triple or more pip cards like Cavalier of Flame, at which point you usually want at least 10 sources of that color.

If you are splashing, a good rule of thumb is that you want to have at least 3 sources of mana of the third color. With each extra card of the splashed color, you should usually have an extra source.

So let’s say your Blue/Green deck is splashing a late-game card like Fireball. I’d usually be happy with 3 sources of red to support it. Something along the lines of:

7 Forest
7 Island
1 Mountain
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Rugged Highlands

Now let’s say you are splashing two Doom Blades and Tasigur, the Golden Fang. I’d usually want at least 4-5 source of black to feel good about my mana base.

7 Forest
6 Island
1 Swamp
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Dismal Backwater
1 Jungle Hollow

This mana base and 1 Sultai Devotee among my non-land cards would give me 5 black sources, which should be enough to support the 3 black cards.

For a more detailed analysis on how many sources of each color your deck needs to consistently cast your spells, make sure to check out this amazing article from Frank Karsten.

Now which cards do you actually want to splash? Removal and bombs is going to be the most common answer. You need to have powerful cards in your deck to beat your opponent and you need removal to deal with their bombs. Especially these days, when each Play Booster can feature multiple rares and mythics, the Limited game play is a lot more about powerful cards and value instead of trading Grey Ogres and Hill Giants.

A few more tips on splashing

• Try to splash powerful late-game cards and removal, not two-drops or early game cards like Shock. The idea is that with only a few sources of the third color, it is usually going to take you a while to find it. By the time turn 6 rolls around when you finally find your red source, Shock will be a lot less effective than if you can play it on turn 2 to kill their two-drop. Similarly, splashing for an early game creature which you will be able to play on turn 5 or 6 doesn’t make a lot of sense because by that time it will be outclassed by bigger creatures.
• Splash cards that you can actually cast. Single pip cards like Doom Blade, Fireball or something like Sin, Spira’s Punishment in your blue/green deck makes a lot of sense. Splashing a triple-pip card like Overrun in your white/red deck does not, because trying to add enough green sources to your deck is going to make you way more likely to butcher your mana base and be unable to cast your spells in most games.
• Playing 3, 4 or even 5 colors is fine if your mana can support it. Sometimes you will get a pool with a bunch of multicolored bombs, along with enough dual lands, cards like Blitzball, Town Greeter, Prishe’s Wanderings and Reach the Horizon. If you feel like you can consistently cast all your cards, by all means use whatever cards you feel like will let you build the best deck. 

Mana Curve in a Sealed deck

Your mana curve is the distribution of mana costs in your deck. You want to have a good mix of cheap and expensive cards to be able to make a play every turn. If your deck has too many cheap cards, there is a good chance you will run out of gas too quickly and your small creatures will quickly get outstatted by your opponent’s. If you try to fit too many expensive cards into your build, chances are you will get overwhelmed before you can actually cast most of your spells. Try to find the right balance. I recommend something like this:

• 1 mana creatures: 0-2
• 2 mana creatures. 4-6
• 3 mana creatures: 3-5
• 4 mana creatures: 2-4
• 5 mana creatures: 1-3
• 6+ mana creatures: 0-2

The mana values of your spells should compliment your mana curve. I’m usually aiming for around 14-17 creatures and 6-9 spells.

Other Deck Building Tips

• Sealed is usually slower than Draft because it is much harder to find the right synergy pieces or enough aggressive elements to build a focused deck. This means that you should be building around your most powerful cards and prioritize raw power and removal spells. Look for card advantage, value, ways to break parity, cards with evasion and mana sinks. Cards like Negate, Cancel or Mind Rot which are typically too slow or too narrow for Draft usually perform much better in Sealed.
• On the other hand, cards that tend to underperform in Sealed compared to Draft are tempo cards like Act of Treason or Unsummon. In a slower environment, it is much harder to convert the short term tempo advantage into a win.
• Each color combination in Limited typically revolves around something different. There are usually ten different archetypes. Understanding what each color pair is trying to do will help you evaluate the cards better. In case of Edge of Eternities, the Limited archetypes look like this:

Starting the game: Play or draw? 

Sealed has changed quite a bit over the years. The average card today is a lot more powerful than 15 years ago when choosing to be on the draw was often correct because the extra card was incredibly valuable. 

The better the cards are and the more value they produce, the more you want to play first and take advantage of their immediate impact on the game.

There are exceptions like when your deck is full of cheap removal or when you feel like it is a slow and grindy matchup that is likely to go long regardless of who plays first. In that case the extra card could be worth letting your opponent play first. It is also going to make it more likely you will hit your land drops and let you keep a wider range of opening hands. 

I’d say you want to play first about 95% of the time these days. If you are not sure, your default should be to go first. 

Final thoughts

This should give you a good idea of what Prerelease is about and how to build your Sealed deck. There are a few more things you can do to help you prepare for the event. I always like to check the new mechanics, read a more detailed breakdown of the set from one of the top players like Frank Karsten, and look at full Limited set reviews on TCGPlayer from our TCGPlayer team sponsored by Ultimate Guard!

That’s it, you should be well prepared and ready to go!. Remember that the prerelease is about having fun and exploring the new cards, so the atmosphere is very casual and relaxed and the perfect way to get familiar with the new set. Good luck!