One of the things we learned from last weekend's weather disaster is that we must always be prepared for anything. Just like in Magic, where your best-laid plans are often "Negated" or your fatty given a "Path to Exile" by opponent, moving you further back from your goal of winning the game, typhoon Ondoy came nearly without warning and caused so much havoc and catastrophe to most of our unwary citizenry.

It also proved that storm isn’t just a broken mechanic from Magic's past, it is an actual threat to our lives (talking about the weather, obviously) and living in a tropical country where we get visited annually by anywhere from 20 to 40 such typhoons, you would think we would be more ready to cope when a whopper of a truly grand scale arrives.

Yet, hindsight is always 20/20. I’m just glad no one I know within our own small community seemed to have been seriously affected by it. (Worst I heard was that the home of Eduds Prangan and Cesyl Azarias were severely flooded and that nine of the latter's expensive dalmatian puppies died. So what Cesyl did the following day was just play in a prerelease to avoid the inevitable house clean-up phase.)

I came from a recent meeting of the national basketball federation in which plans for a charity doubleheader were hatched which would involve the basketball leagues. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Magic players also did their part? Last time we tried something like this was way back in 2000 I think when Bantay Bata went to the Nationals in Festival Mall I think but we didn’t really raise all that much then. We hope we could do better now but with a player-base initiated move.

Maybe a rares-only entry fee tournament and auction of the cards to raise funds, or something would work. Or maybe charging just an extra 50 pesos per person for this weekend's launch parties would do for this purpose. Or any other ideas would be welcome.

Now on to my prerelease notes. Memo to self – leave the midnight flights to those who could actually stay up and play in the damn things. After the first round of a midnight pod early Saturday morning (which I narrowly lost in three games), I packed it in as I barely made it past deck construction and I just simply refused to use any card with more than five lines in the text box.

My rule of thumb in any prerelease had been when in doubt, play the green creatures and mana fixing and then splash for red and black removal plus any decent-sized creatures in those colors as you see fit. It isn’t the time to get tricky just yet. However, white has several great and undercosted creatures with solid 187 abilities and blue has some nice tricks too (but not too much evasion at the common spots) but I stand by my first rule of the prerelease.

But for my first impressions during the prerelease weekend (I only actually completed just one flight), it seems the real quick aggro creatures are in white, black and red while green and blue only get real interesting from the uncommon spot onwards.  Anything with three toughness seems hard to get rid off, specially if it’s in black unless you use a lot of traps.

Vic Lim played five prerelease pods and opened Day of Judgment in each of his first four card pools. Must be nice. Morris Tan had four Burst Lightning in his last sealed pool. Jason Ascalon got a Plateau last Sunday so the hidden treasures (Wizard’s fantastic unannounced promo which in effect makes the buying of any pack a lottery as well) is really true. Search this forum for other prerelease stories or share your own.

I only have the equivalent of 14 packs in my possession but already I have two solid mythics (Mindbreak Trap and Warren Instigator), two fetchlands, and some rare goodies (Luminarch Ascension, Bloodchief Ascension) so that isn’t so bad a haul so far.

One other random thought struck me as I briefly contemplated staying on early Saturday morning but finally deciding my body really couldn’t take that late an evening out when I’m usually asleep before midnight being an early riser – I’m not in my twenties anymore, haven’t been so in more that a while actually, and that I’m closer to senior citizen age than every other player I know.

So if I’m still playing in 2022, will Freddie and Des give me a 15% discount for booster packs and tournament entry fees? I just want to know.

Enjoy life, you never know what traps are out to get you!