OK, so the Coldsnap prerelease. The only other prerelease I've been to was Kamigawa (I went to Unhinged too, but that doesn't count). Open my packs and right away what jumps out at me is Juniper Order Ranger and 2 Arctic Flats. So I figure I'm most likely running some sort of GW. Here's my cardpool:

2 Arctic Flats
3 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Snow-Covered Island
2 Snow-Covered Plains
8 lands

1 Aurochs Herd
1 Balduvian Frostwaker
2 Boreal Griffin
1 Chilling Shade
2 Disciple of Tevesh Szat
1 Earthen Goo
3 Frost Raptor
3 Frostweb Spider
1 Garza's Assassin
1 Goblin Furrier
1 Juniper Order Ranger
1 Karplusan Minotaur
1 Karplusan Wolverine
1 Kjeldoran Javelineer
2 Martyr of Ashes
1 Martyr of Bones
1 Martyr of Frost
1 Martyr of Spores
1 Ohran Viper
1 Orcish Bloodpainter
1 Phyrexian Snowcrusher
1 Rimebound Dead
1 Ronom Hulk
1 Ronom Serpent
3 Ronom Unicorn
1 Sheltering Ancient
1 Simian Brawler
1 Squall Drifter
1 Stromgald Crusader
2 Surging Sentinels
1 Survivor of the Unseen
1 Vexing Sphinx
2 Zombie Musher
44 creatures

1 Counterbalance
1 Frozen Solid
1 Glacial Plating
1 Kjeldoran War Cry
1 Krovikan Rot
1 Lightning Storm
1 Luminesce
1 Magmatic Core
1 Rime Transfusion
1 Rune Snag
2 Skred
1 Shape of the Wiitigo
2 Sound the Call
1 Sun's Bounty
1 Surging Aether
3 Surging Dementia
1 Surging Might
2 Thermal Flux
23 other spells

My thoughts on the cards:
Balduvian Frostwaker: Cool if you're committed to blue. I guess I hadn't looked at this guy that closely.
Frost Raptor: Evasion, but a little on the expensive side (as usual per blue).
Martyr of Frost: nice as a one drop, but not sure how often the ability would be useful.
Ronom Serpent: Like the Sea Serpent of old...
Survivor of the Unseen: Temporary card drawing engine.
Vexing Sphinx: OK, but not sure how often you'd be able to keep this around. Being able to replenish your hand could be nice, I guess.
Counterbalance: Interesting, but I'm doubtful you could get it to successfuly fire off too often.
Frozen Solid: Creature removal.
Rune Snag: Permission.
Surging Aether: Surging Aether.
Thermal Flux: Useless.

Nothing screams out at me from blue. I guess Balduvian Frostwaker is really nice, but you can't splash him, and I can't justify committing to blue with these cards.

Chilling Shade: It's like a Frozen Shade, but with snow mana. And this one actually flies.
Disciple of Tevesh Szat: Eh...He costs a lot, and I didn't know whether -1/-1 would be that useful in this environment.
Garza's Assassin: Requires heavy black commitment, but I dunno, I guess it could save you as creature removal. As your life gets low, you could sac it just before combat damage resolves and then get him back almost right away.
Martyr of Bones: A one drop. The ability is virtually useless.
Rimebound Dead: Another one drop. But this one is playable.
Stromgald Crusader: Nice, if you're committed to black.
Zombie Musher: I probably undervalued this guy. Virtually everybody walked around using snow lands, so this guy can win games.
Krovikan Rot: Removal.
Rime Transfusion: OK, but there are actually a lot of snow creatures running around, so the evasion is not that great.
Surging Dementia: I'm not wild about this card since the opponent gets to choose. I guess if you ended up rippling a bunch of them -- but I never saw rippling work all day.

Again, not a great bunch of cards. There is some stuff here, and I probably would go back and seriously reconsider splashing for the Zombie Mushers. Which meant I could have put in Chilling Shade too.

Earthen Goo: I was impressed by this, and plus I was playing green.
Goblin Furrier: OK, but like I said before, there are quite a few snow creatures.
Karplusan Minotaur: Not a fan of flip cards.
Martyr of Ashes: Another one drop. The ability is a little bit better than the other Martyrs, but I'm really beginning to dislike them.
Orcish Bloodpainter: Ew. Although there is the possibility of some interesting combat tricks.
Karplusan Wolverine: A better one drop.
Lightning Storm: This could be a nice finisher.
Magmatic Core: Although weird, this could be creature removal. It'd take time to build up to get rid of big creatures, at which point it could be too late.
Skred: Nice if you have snow.

So I ended up splashing red for a few cards. Now that I look at it, I might have been better off splashing black, but then I would have lost the spot removal.

Boreal Griffin: Good evasion, and the first strike potential made it dangerous.
Kjeldoran Javelineer: I wasn't so sure about this guy. He ended up helping me in one game but don't mistake him for a one drop.
Ronom Unicorn: I had so many of these guys that it seemed like he was always on the board. I don't know how many enchantments he may have prevented.
Squall Drifter: I never actually got him out that often. But he's basically removal like a Kitsune Diviner.
Surging Sentinels: First strike helps these guys a lot. I never got ripple to work, though.
Glacial Plating: This seemed to have potential, but I never got to use it.
Kjeldoran War Cry: I didn't think this was that great.
Luminesce: Sideboard.
Sun's Bounty: Nope.

The multiple Boreal Griffins and Surging Sentinels also helped me pick white as a main color.

Aurochs Herd: It was a little on the expensive side -- Maybe I should have run it but my deck was already high-costed as it was...
Frostweb Spider: I guess they were useful as blockers...
Martyr of Spores: Finally a Martyr that's semi-useful.
Ohran Viper: OK.
Ronom Hulk: Big, but normally the board stalled until I couldn't pay the cost anymore.
Sheltering Ancient: Good for one hit basically, but you have to wait until a creature is on the board.
Simian Brawler: OK.
Shape of the Wiitigo: This is nice -- they have to do something about this.
Sound the Call: 3 mana for a vanilla 2/2...eh. I ended up not running these.
Surging Might: This seemed to be an invitation for card disadvantage.

Phyrexian Snowcrusher: This is a nice fattie.
Juniper Order Ranger: This was my star.

So my deck ended up as:
2 Arctic Flats
4 Forest
3 Mountain
4 Plains
3 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Plains
18 lands

2 Boreal Griffin
1 Earthen Goo
2 Frostweb Spider
1 Juniper Order Ranger
1 Kjeldoran Javelineer
1 Martyr of Spores
1 Ohran Viper
1 Phyrexian Snowcrusher
1 Ronom Hulk
2 Ronom Unicorn
1 Sheltering Ancient
1 Simian Brawler
1 Squall Drifter
2 Surging Sentinels
18 creatures

1 Glacial Plating
2 Skred
1 Shape of the Wiitigo
4 other spells

I didn't really have any good spells, as you can see. I guess I maybe should have maybe replaced a Frostweb Spider and the Sheltering Ancient with another Ronom Unicorn and the Aurochs Herd? And maybe went for black instead? But the Earthen Goo was pretty good...No...I guess in retrospect my spells were so bad that splashing for black wouldn't have been so great.


Round 1: Michael Sutherland
He cobbled together a weird 4-color deck, so I felt like I should be able to take him on.

Game 1 I get my Ranger out and start putting counters on everything like crazy. He got me down to 4 and then went up to 24 before I took him down with my Griffins.

Game 2 My Snowcrusher started giving him problems and then the Wiitigo came down and he was gone.

Round 2: Scott Stayton
I could tell he was a good player, so I was prepared for a fight.

Game 1 He busts out the Mushers and basically snow-walks me to death. That's when I learned how good they are.

Game 2 He casts an Aurochs Herd, and searches his deck for another one. He casts it and searches his deck for another one. Yeah...I can't really compete with that...

Round 3: K something
I don't remember much about this match but I won 2-1.

Round 4: Jeff Huang
So my record is now 2-1 and the prize structure goes to 6 packs for 3-1-0 and 3 packs for 2-1-1. So I agree to split the prize with Jeff but still play out the match for our ratings. Oh man -- he's qualified for Nationals a few years back.

Game 1 I take him out with creatures without losing a single life.
Game 2 I don't remember what happened but I end up losing.
Game 3 I mulligan down to 5 cards and eventually just run out of steam.

So I went 2-2-0 and got 3 packs, as I said before. I guess I had an OK time, and I wouldn't mind doing it again now, but definitely back to back Sat-Sun was impossible for me. Oh well.