So I finally played the first prerelease event at my LGS today with eight other players. My rares were Ajani, Haunted Plate Mail, Trading Post, Quicken, Chandra's Phoenix and Oath of the Ancient Wood, and I ended up playing the following UGw deck:
Lands (16)
3 Plains
6 Island
7 Forest
Creatures(11)
1 Elvish Mystic
1 Kalonian Tusker
1 Seacoast Drake
1 Phantom Warrior
1 Advocate of the Beast
1 Griffin Centinel
1 Rootwalla
2 Giant Spider
1 Nephalia Seakite
1 Briarpack Alpha
Other spells(14)
1 Ranger's Guile
2 Lay of the Land
2 Essence Scatter
1 Pacifism
1 Time Ebb
1 Claustrophobia
1 Ajani, Caller of the Pride
1 Glimpse the Future
1 Haunted Plate Armor
1 Trading Post
1 Illusionary Armor
1 Opportunity
I had overall weak creatures, but so did most of my opponents. Anything with more than three toughness slowed down attacks to a crawl, and fliers were really important. I was really happy with how nearly all my cards managed to pull their weight throughout the tournament, with Advocate of the Beast being the only card that didn't do that much at all. The cards that helped me the most besides the obvious removal cards or fliers were Trading Post (repeatable life gain saved me from losing a really tough game, and the tokens were great to chump block large stuff or give them Ajani's blessings when no other creatures were around), Opportunity (it set up ridiculous late-game turns and got me out of really tight spots every single time I played it) and Ajani, which had a huge impact on the board every time I played him (that was all games I drew him in, due to the slow game speed).
The format seemed really slow, and the two aggro-ish decks I played against couldn't get their act together at all, which gave me enough time to draw into answers for their puny creatures while I built a modest board position and tried to keep the advantage. My 1/3 fliers were unconstested most of the time, and Giant Spider always put a full stop to my opponents' airborne offense (almost like a Pillarfield Ox impersonator!).
I ended up going 4-0 (8-1-0), which got me four packs plus the entry prize pack; everyone got a pack for playing, and only the remaining one was added to the pot. With this mode, you're guaranteed to get a prize even if you don't do that well, at the cost of cutting prizes for the best players, a move everyone at the store is fine with, luckily.
In the prize packs I got there was a Mutavault, Planar Cleansing, Dark Prophecy, Garruk's Horde and Door of Destinies. Dark Prophecy was interesting, and Mutavault made me really happy, even if the other rares I pulled weren't that good. My pool's rares were all cards I like, even if the better ones were reprints, so I feel it was a good prerelease overall.
I only wish I could've gotten my hands on some Young Pyromancer, though, which nobody opened except for a kid who got two and wanted to keep them. A really interesting fact is that all five planeswalkers were opened (with a foil Garruk, even!), and there were three or four mythics other than PWs among our pools (a dragon, the angel-creating sorcery, a demon and some other card I can't remember).
