The New Player’s Guide To Building a Sealed Constructed / Prerelease Magic: The Gathering Deck

There are many different ways to play Magic: The Gathering. Sealed Constructed is the way used by prerelease events, some competitive tournaments, and a lot of casual play. If you want to go down to your local store and play in a prerelease, the format you will be playing is Sealed Constructed.

So what is Sealed?

In Sealed Constructed, players open 6 sealed booster packs of Magic: The Gathering and build a deck from those cards, that is, the six booster packs provide you with a pool of cards to choose from, and you will ultimately make a 40 card minimum deck from the options you have available after opening your booster packs.

Since sealed constructed is the format of Magic prerelease, and also a great way to have casual games with friends, it is a good format for new players to learn and understand how best to build a deck for.

Sometimes even experienced players may need help in the basics of sealed deck construction. This video will guide you through the process of building a sealed constructed deck for prerelease, launch, and other sealed events.

This video is intended for beginners, if you are looking for more intermediate lessons, my own Tolarian Tutor series covers everything from Building Better Limited Mana Bases to Mana Curve and Card Advantage, and I will link both resources in this video’s description.

Music Courtesy Of:
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

[jacfac]

Sorry all I heard was take every shock and gate and force 5 colors. Have a fun time beating me at the prerelease this weekend

[thomaskawel]

Prof, your videos are a great resource for the students in my high school MTG club. As the faculty advisor, I can’t thank you enough! We have an outing planned for GRN this weekend, and your work has helped a great deal to increase student confidence. Keep up the good work!

[jamesgilbreath]

"No Class Before 10 AM" - My personal policy that gets thwarted every semester

[TolarianCommunityCollege]

Hey folks, just a heads up that a lot of the classic TCC merch is very close to being sold out (most of the classic t-shirt sizes are already gone) and I don't as of now know if a new line of merch will look similar or dramatically different. If you've ever wanted to pick up a TCC shirt, playmat, dice bag, pin, or other TCC swag, now would be the time to head over to

[Gandhiji]

Good info for beginners.
To be clear: There is no extra promo rare in guilds of Ravnica, the rare in your "seeded" booster pack IS your stamped rare.
Like prof said, not all sets have that extra rare.

[captainstash]

Can't wait to go to the Guilds of Ravnica pre release at my LGS, amazon!

[pops]

Friendly advice from someone that always ends up top 8, while bread is a good guide line I prefer to prioritize removal over bombs. Unless the bomb is overwhelmingly good removal would normally triumph. What I do is I choose 2 colors. One with most removal and a other with best aggro. Then if I have a really good bomb if possible I would splash for that color if feasible. All in all removal is KEY. Chose the color with most removal and you will get far.

[NeuroticLobster]

Professor, thanks so much for making videos like this! I started playing Magic last weekend because YouTube recommended your videos to me for some reason, so I found a local game store hosting a Return to Ravnica draft event and I went and did it! Now I'm hooked and going to prerelease next weekend. Thanks a bunch.

[arabicforitsownsake]

Thanks man. I’m just getting back into Magic after around twenty years (I remember buying Ice Age booster packs as a kid…), and I want to go to a pre-release event without being a total drag on the other players.

[NGHTHWK]

I need that mug. Also, I see that shade at Wizards announcement regarding Walmart, Target, and Amazon. And I 10000% agree with you.

[tannerastle]

Thank you for this. I have been stressing about the prerelease event (my first ever magic event) all week and I feel much more confident now.

[slickestflick]

Going into my first ever pre release event tomorrow. This was super helpful!!!!

[Slash_ld]

going to my fist pre release this friday, thanks for teaching what sealed looks like! - hey, 2024!

[Teifling]

Nice zing at Amazon, GOT 'EM!

I recall previous videos on the subject but I am never upset to have reminders and updated guides. Thank you Professor!

[adampilarski]

I’d never heard of BREAD before! That’s a great acronym for new players! I’ll have to use it when teaching friends from now on.

[lilith]

As a player that is about to do his first pre-release, I must thank you! This is amazing!

[IzzGoobyTime]

Oh boy just in time! this is my first time attending a pre release!

[davidschlichting]

I'm going to my local store for the first time to play today. Prerelease M20 and I'm pretty hyped up, so thanks for the vid it helped a lot.

[ryanbowen]

just did my first prerelease after 20 years of playing, thanks for the tips! it was a BLAST

[nicowindows]

Preparing for my first pre-release tomorrow! LOTR 2023 Argentina