The tables at Tramp’s Music & Books were full Friday night as Prince Albert players cracked open booster packs for the Spider-Man Magic: The Gathering prerelease, a one-week-early tournament that mixed superheroes, spells, and plenty of strategy.
Assistant manager Alice Read greeted players in a flowing, game-night outfit that looked straight out of a fantasy novel, setting the tone for an evening where Marvel’s Spider-Man shared the table with goblins, wizards, and planeswalkers.
“This crowd was different,” Read said. “Our regular players, there were a few of them here last Friday, but we actually had a lot of new players coming in because Spider-Man brought in a different audience. It’s a new IP, so we had a few Spider-Man people that came in and learned to play Magic for the first time.”
Friday’s prerelease was a sanctioned event under the Wizards Play Network, allowing the local store to run its tournament and sell product ahead of the worldwide release on Sept. 26. Players had 55 minutes to build a deck from six booster packs, followed by three timed rounds of play, with a possible fourth round if scores were close.
The entry fee was $65.98 and the stakes were high: the first-place prize was a full play booster box, 30 packs of cards worth nearly $300. The most coveted card of the night was the Soul Stone, one of several Infinity Stone cards in the set. Players can pull a Soul Stone from a regular pack, but the art-exclusive variant appears only in collector packs. Prices have been climbing fast, with the special variant now estimated around $18,000 USD on the resale market.
Read said the event’s focus wasn’t just competition, but community.
“It was pretty chill,” she said. “We are competitive in the sense that we have good sportsmanship and follow the rules, but nobody was up in arms if someone fumbled a move. We just explained how to do it right and kept playing.”
That welcoming environment, she added, is especially important for young players.
“We have some young players that don’t always have the means for having a large Magic collection,” Read said. “Everybody makes sure they’re included, buying them snacks, giving them cards, even donating a binder so they can store their decks. It helps them realize there is a community of healthy people out there. You just have to find it.”
Read said events like this not only grow the local Magic community but can also give youth a positive place to spend their Friday nights.
It’s such a good environment for people of all ages,” she said. “You can bring your kids, hang out and play, and they can meet other kids. It’s just a really healthy, fun environment.”
The Spider-Man set remains on sale at Tramp’s Music & Books while supplies last. The store’s next prerelease event, featuring the Avatar crossover set, is expected in late November, one week before its global release.
