Has anyone ever bragged to you about how much they saved on their latest purchase? “It was half off!” “The whole store was having a 20% clearance sale!” “They were giving them away like candy!”

For one, have you ever had free candy? Generally, it's hard candy, and it comes wrapped in a suspicious colored cellophane that your parents would never let you keep after they went through your plastic jack-o'-lantern. I'm not saying I'm scarred, but the prospect of free candy is a once-a-year event and I regret no longer being “of age” for such activities.

But a sale? A sale does not save you money when you randomly pass the storefront and discover that knit caps are all half-off. If you were sitting at home and said, “Gee, it's cold outside. I need a new knit cap,” then you would be overjoyed to find out that all the knit caps in Miami were marked down. An impulsive purchase is not saving money. It's spending money. Worse, if you didn't want the beanie in the first place, it's losing money.

Now, I've found a twenty dollar bill (ack, American, you got me…was it the name?) randomly in the middle of a grocery store aisle before. The exhilaration was heady. I can imagine what the person who lost the Andrew Jackson felt: the complete reciprocal of my emotion: utter dejection. Has anyone who just “saved” on his or her recent twenty-clam purchase ever appeared to be a wasteland of dejection? No.

How do marketers do it?

Guildpact is here, and the rabid Magic players are standing in line to pay rock bottom prices for their release product, finding all the great deals at all the great sites *coughstarcitycough*. And you know what? No matter how strongly I argue that it is madness, I'm always third in line, waving my paycheck eagerly. I'll then proceed to brag to all of my friends about how much I saved on my Guildpact purchase. I am the pot, and every last one of you is a black kettle.

Taking it for granted that all of you will be hot on the heels of the release, I want to help you learn how to open your first pack/box/case of a new set.

The first pack you rip open is the most important. For that reason, resist the impulse to tear wildly at the packaging. This is the only first pack of Guildpact that you will ever open, barring a serious lobotomy. Every card is a fresh, delicious, fragrant piece of the Ravnica world, complete with addictive ink. Carefully open the package from the top or bottom, separating the crimped seal. Breathe deeply. It's Magic. Slide the fifteen cards out delicately and stare at the first common. Read it. All of it. Look at the picture. Smile, even if it's chaff. Remember the artist. Slide the card up or down and slowly reveal the next. Amazing, there is more than one card, and the second is just as beautiful as the next.

Pacing through the first few commons makes the end ever so sweet. The uncommons, take them in three large gulps. Set the can of uncommon whipped cream aside and savor the maraschino cherry atop: the rare.

If you received a bad rare, now is an appropriate time for foul language.

To celebrate your first pack, here is a very quick thirty-second challenge.

Beginner Magic Trivia (MGC 101)

For each card, decide whether you like it or not. If you favor the card (in whatever your format of preference happens to be), think of a card that does practically the same thing with the same cost or less that is better than this card. Ah, isn't that sobering? Your card sucks.

If you decided you dislike the card, perform the opposite task. Find a card that costs the same or more with a similar ability that is worse than this card. Now, rather than curse the cardboard, its ink, and its designers, you can thank them.

A quick show of hands: how many of you are going to buy one and only one pack of Guildpact? One…two… Okay, two of you. Including the two liars in the room, how many of you will buy a box? Ack! Hands down, hands down, stop waving them in my face!

Advanced Magic Trivia: Artists (MGC 120)

While you are opening your box of cards, carelessly ripping packs open to get to the crème de la crème nougatty center that is the rare, take a look at the artwork and familiarize yourself with artists' styles, if not specific cards. Look for an easter egg or two in the artwork (Dwarven Shrine is a prime example) and celebrate the beautiful masterpieces by your creative heroes.

Before you open your last two packs of the box, it's time for the challenge. In the first pack, turn the stack of cards face up and look at the artist's name line. Slide the top card up enough for you to read who the next card's artist is (as well as the power and toughness if it's a creature). With that information, name the card. Good luck scoring a perfect fourteen on the pack, especially if this is your first box.

In the second pack, do the opposite, sliding the card down from the top exposing only the card's name and the artwork. Name the artist.

But opening your new shinies and preciouses isn't all about staring lovingly at the black-bordered beauties. No, the real test of merit is playing with the new set. Shame on you if you didn't attend the prerelease, but if you were negligent in your triennial duties, take a chance to play a few games with the new set.

Booster wars of any sort are certainly acceptable means of cracking new packs, but if you want something more complicated, there's the Master Draft.

Pack Engineering: Master Draft (MGC 250)

If you've gone to a Grand Prix, or played at any of the hoity-toity shops that we secretly all wish were around the corner from our homes, then you've had the opportunity to play in what is called a Master Sealed. I've seen a few barely-altered versions, but a Master Sealed primarily starts with each player receiving only a tournament pack of cards. Yep, that's it. One itty box of 75 cards. In the last one I played, you were allowed to play a minimum of sixty cards in your decks. Players quickly scraped out the fifteen pieces of chaff (I'm looking at you, Quickchange) and shuffled up their shaky mana base. I'm a fan of cutting a color from the pool, but sometimes that's not feasible.

You then play one match with your first opponent, winner takes all. That's right, you get all of the cards from your opponent's pool if you beat him or her. Congratulations. Now make a new deck of 60 cards out of the combined starter packs. The single elimination rounds continue until the finals match where two Constructed quality decks duke it out (not true, since most Master Sealed tournaments I've played in were eight or sixteen people, so the quality was still negligible).

Master Draft is more like playing a game of The Worst.

Assuming a table of eight players, play a normal Draft using only two packs. Then proceed to play your matches with your janky monstrosities (forty card minimums). All the losers give up their draft picks. They are shuffled up and divided into new “packs.” The winners then draft these dregs. Shuffle up a forty-card deck and play the semifinals. The losers contribute their pools. The finalist can either then draft normal (boring) or a two-person variant (Winston!). Again, forty card decks (wow, five Last Gasp) meet and determine the owner of all sixteen original packs.

A Master Draft can be scaled upwards to sixteen or more people. If a group had a large amount of time, Swiss rounds (probably only two or three matches deep) could be played to cut to the top half or eight.

What does Master Draft have to do with opening random packs of Guildpact? Well, box buyers are notorious for ripping open packs, denuding them of their rares, and tossing the rest into the proverbial abyss. Instead, keep those expensive pieces of cardboard in their 14 card units for a Master Draft. True, with no rares, there is no big payout, but stealing your opponents' cards is like one giant ante of love.

Meanwhile, there are also a few other practical reasons to keep your commons and uncommons intact and in order. Often it is helpful to study and learn the print runs (of commons especially) when you are a Draft fiend. I'm sure you can find someone who bought a case or two has already splayed the entire Scissors, Rock, and sometimes Paper runs, but holding the actual cards is always a bit more tactile. If you don't care about traditional Drafts or can't remember the name of that one common you like that you remember kills things, but only for two or three or four mana, and only if you are playing Boros…or was it Izzet? If you're either of those disadvantaged players, then no sweat: print runs are not for you.

At the very least, and at the most practical, take exceptional care in opening your crinkly packages of Guildpact. Open from the top or bottom and don't tear. Slide the cards out, strip the rare, and then push the cards back into the pack. If you value the foil, fine, take it too. Now you have a slightly smaller pack perfect for all sorts of Limited scenarios. Why deny yourself such a perfect opportunity?

In practice for the Sealed Pro Tour Qualifiers swarming the nation, I have spent exactly zero dollars and worked with approximately forty different Sealed pools. Let's see…eleven dollars and two multiplied by, what is it, almost four dollars now? Forty times twenty dollars…Wow. I saved 800 dollars by switching to Saving My Cards. And I didn't even need a reptilian mascot.

Enough with the lecture. Here's just some plain fun.

Pack Engineering: Biogenesis (MGC 330)

So, it's just you and your bestest of friends. You both love Magic and need something to entertain yourselves. And, because you followed my sage advice, you have a plethora of pseudo-boosters in your closet. Let's play a Draft variant.

Open up 10 packs and lay them face up on the table so that only one card (a common) is visible. Randomly decide who will go first. That player can take a gander at the cards and decide if there is a pack that peaks his or her interest. If not, like in gin rummy (or…Magic?), the first player can pass priority. The second player may then also contemplate choosing a pack. If either player chooses one of the stacks, then the other is forced to also select a pile for his or herself.

If both players pass, slide the top card of every pack down so that the top two cards are both visible. Priority now proceeds in the same direction with the option again to choose a pack. Continue this process until both players have picked one of the piles of cards. Take a gander at all the cards you won, add lands, shuffle, and play.

At the end of the game, return to the Draft. Slide another card off the tops of the stacks. The winner of the previous game has priority. When a second pack is finally chosen by each player, players now have 30 cards by which you can finally make those trademarked 40-card minimum decks. Shuffle. Repeat.

The winner of the last game and/or match (your choice) has claimed victory. Congratulations.

Of course, Biogenesis isn't limited to actual packs of Magic cards. Feel free to play with random piles of cards or commons. I just wanted to stay on the week's theme.

What? No theme weeks on StarCityGames.com?

Oh, and a reminder: play with your Magic cards. That's the whole point. Spend your money on your expensive, addictive habit while insisting that you know all about colored mana, maintaining your life total, and playing aggressive or control. It's not a drug, or anything. Just be careful when you try to tap your bank account and you find out your Vault isn't that Bottomless at all. Maybe if you choose to not untap it, it'll get a token during the next fiscal upkeep. I hear Magic has become increasingly popular in rehab…

Always, have fun.