New Year’s Eve Giveaway: Pack to Fortune!

Want to know how the coming year is going to shake out for you? Curious as to whether or not the signs are right for you to make your leap onto the Pro Tour? Tired of the fuss and muss involved with more traditional auguries like tea leaves and animal entrails? Then do we have the divination for you!

Inspired by friend of the site web8970, and with apologies to Jon Medina (@mtgmetagame) for the title nod, we’re delighted to present an activity for the community for this coming New Year’s Eve: Pack to Fortune! Here’s how it works.

1. Buy a booster pack of Magic: the Gathering cards, from any set you like. The more the set ‘resonates’ with you, the more accurate your reading will be! For reasons that will fast become obvious, we recommend going with 15-card packs rather than those from, say, Fallen Empires or Homelands… but go where the spirit takes you!

2. On New Year’s Eve, crack open your pack and take a look through the cards. You can open them at any time of your convenience, but similarly the closer you can hold off until midnight, the more accurate your reading will be.

3. Divine your fortune from the cards within. It works like this:

Common cards are your routine, run-of-the-mill cards, which represent minor events or periods of interest in the coming year ahead. You might ace a term paper, find a fascinating book and spend a memorable weekend reading it, or achieve success at your local FNM.

Uncommons, of course, are more powerful than commons. Think back on some of the important themes of your last year that you might not be so quick to recollect in five or ten-year’s time. Those are represented by your uncommons- noteworthy, but not major. You might make some new aquaintances, find recognition and an award at work, or catch the flu.

Your Rare reflects the major theme that will come to define your 2011. Perhaps you’ll meet “the one,” or achieve some remarkable success (or failure) that will have considerable impact on your life going forward.

And if something truly spectacular awaits you, a once-in-a-decade major milestone in the book that is your life, perhaps you’ll open a Mythic Rare!

Now, if card commonality determines potency, the card colour will determine your direction:

 White cards symbolise serenity, justice, or even spirituality. Depending on the commonality, this could represent anything from a resolution to go back to church regularly, to finding inner peace and forgiveness after a personal trauma.

 Blue represents contemplation and thought. Perhaps after a period of introspection, you discover some deep and fundamental truths about yourself. Maybe you solve that Rubik’s Cube that’s taunted you for years, or beat your father at chess.

 Black is the colour of change and transition. Obviously, these aren’t always good- but they’re not always bad either. Such transitions, though, often come at some personal cost. Perhaps you lose your job, or give birth to your first child.

 Red represents upheaval and disorder. There’s a thematic difference here, where this is more indicative of external forces tossing you about, demanding that you endure them. Perhaps your coworker quits and dumps their workload on you, or your car suffers a fatal breakdown.

 Green symbolises growth and development. Maybe this is the year that you’ll enroll into college, or take a backpacking trip abroad. This isn’t always easy- perhaps you outgrow your significant other, who decides that they want to still live the wild life while you start to see things a bit differently.

Now, you may well find that some of your cards don’t fit into these categories! Colourless cards represent a period in which several outcomes are possible- be extra cautious around life’s ambiguities! In some cases, they may show a leaning in one direction. For example, if you open a Soliton, you may have some Blue influence there- but nothing is certain! Hybrid cards will tend to highlight an upcoming fork in the road, and could go either way. Multicoloured cards will bring to light complicated circumstances which have multiple signs blended together. Say you open a Wrexial, the Risen Deep from a pack of Worldwake. Perhaps you should be prepared for a seismic event in the year ahead that will fundamentally change the way you think! Finally, Land cards are dependant on the type of mana they can produce, and can act as either hybrid or multicoloured- a true wild card!

So hurry out and buy yourself a booster pack for Friday! We’ll put up a post early in the day (for our friends abroad), so you can come back and post what you opened- and how you think your 2011 is going to shape up. And for one fortunate soul who posts their Pack to Fortune drawn at random the next day, a draft set (three booster packs) of Scars of Mirrodin will kick off your New Year with an extra treat!