Sunstrike Pre-Release and what you need to know!

Hello LGS partners,

Now that the new Play Network is up and running, we wanted to reach out and provide some guidance on setting up your prerelease events during the May 15th-May 24th window. As a reminder, we can prioritize your product shipments for these events as long as your orders are in by March 31st. This email will walk you through the process of creating+submitting your event as well as providing guidance for possible formats.

For event creation, please use the Partner Portal the way you would for any other event by going to https://partner.elestrals.com. Click “Events”, then “New Event”, then choose any date that works for you between May 15th and May 24th. Fill it out as usual and title the event to indicate it’s a Prerelease. As a refresher on the general process for setting up an event on the Partner Portal, you can refer to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThgPxyUHQ74 

Once your event is configured, please email us the link at lgs@elestrals.com or post it in the thread in the official Elestrals Store discord. From there, we’ll mark the event as a prerelease and players will be able to find it from the play network event listings. (As a note, this manual submission process is temporary and you’ll be able to schedule your own events as a prerelease in the future.)

Please submit your event to us no later than April 24th in order to get your prerelease promos to you in a timely fashion.

Now that we’ve gotten the logistics out of the way, let’s talk formats! We expect most stores to run starter deck sealed events the way that they have in the past, but with the return to double starters for Sunstrike, this gets a little trickier. Generally, we recommend charging the player for either of the double starter products and letting them use all of the cards in it - even if they combine the two decks. Most players will simply pick one of the decks and roll with it, but allowing the option for experimentation will create more novelty and minimize player concerns. 

There are other options too:
-The store can crack the double starters and sell “half a starter” at a reduced price. This will allow easier entry but may turn off players that already wanted to buy the full product.

-Full sealed deck is possible with only booster packs. We’ve seen success in the past with giving players 6 booster packs and allowing them to build 30 card decks with 15 card Spirit decks.

-Some stores have experimented with an augmented booster sealed format - in addition to 6 booster packs, the store provided some additional runes! Here’s a quote from Dana at Genesis Gaming & Hobby: “There were 2 prereleases for Lifestream the day before me, so I shook it up and found some runes for my casters.  They all got 1 Gorgon's, 2 Ambrosia, 2 PTA, 1 Shield, 1 Rise from the ashes, 1 altar of Stars, 1 Tsunami, 1 Dense fog.  They weren't required to play all of them, but it made building something playable out of 6 packs much smoother and they seemed to like it! I charged $35 for that event with 1 pack per round win, and keep the runes if you're new or give them back for other newer players”

Ultimately, this is up to you and your community! There’s no specific required format, so please fit whatever works best for your store. 

If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this email, ping us in the store discord, or find us any other way that works for you. Thanks for your continued support of Elestrals!

–The Organized Play team