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For those of you who don't know, to run a Friday Night Magic event, and get the Promo cards to give out, a store has to register several weeks in advance, and block out those dates.  That gives Wizards of the Coast time to send the store the cards and other material for the event.
For November, somehow, we goofed, and we missed the window.  We registered for December already, but we missed the November window, so we have no Promo cards to give out. That makes us sad.
What's worse, is we didn't even catch it until our first FNM for the month, last Friday.  Ouch.  Thankfully, we all survived, but we have three more Fridays in November to get through, and we don't have Promos.
So, what's a store to do?
We spoke with Wizards of the Coast and they suggested we look at our inventory of Promos and other Magic supplies, and try to make the next three Not-Quite-Friday-Night-Magic events special.
Turns out we have a lot of cool promos from older FNMs and other events.
We also have a decent supply of Modern Masters boosters.
So, here's the plan.
For the next three Fridays (November 13, November 20, and November 27), we're giving out a single pack of Modern Masters to every player that participates in the event.  That's right, the participation packs for these three Fridays will be Modern Masters boosters.  You'll also get a random promo for participating as well.
Our event will remain the same price as our typical FNM – $5.00, and it will be Standard Constructed, just like normal.  The only difference is that you'll be receiving a Modern Masters Pack as your participation prize and, instead of the expected FNM Promo card, you'll get a random Promo from our archive of cards.
The match-win packs will be just like normal FNMs – a pack from Zendikar, Origins, or any of our other current loose packs.  For those who have never attended our FNMs, we have a flat prize structure – each match-win gets you a pack, and there are no additional prizes for placing at a particular level in the event.
Because we have to make sure we have enough Modern Masters packs and promos to cover all three weekends, we'll be capping attendance at 56 players per event.  We've never had that many players at an event, so we're not too worried about it, but we had to say it out-loud in case this post gets more attention than we anticipate.
We hope to never make this sort of mistake again but, if we do. . .well, we will figure something out.