Pack 1, Pick 2
The Picks So Far:
Remember getting slaughtered by Ravenous Chupacabra in Rivals of Ixalan Draft? Well, it’s still a slam-dunk first pick in this Masters set. The Chupacabra is so good that I will heavily bias myself towards black if possible, but unfortunately, this pack doesn’t have much to offer in that department.
The Pack:
The Pick:
Heavy Arbalest is quite a clunky card, but it is also an absolute machine-gun with Horseshoe Crab. Personally, I think the Crab combo decks are a bit of a trap. Yes, the combo can certainly be potent, and there are good versions that have a lot of countermagic and card velocity, but more often than not, the deck has too many bad cards, and that just doesn’t lead to success in a format with this many powerful cards and strategies.
Enthralling Victor isn’t really in the equation for me, since Spikeshot Goblin is a better card by a country mile. However, the Chupacabra makes the distinction a bit more important, as there are certainly versions of the B/R archetype that would rather have Enthralling Victor than Spikeshot Goblin. That said, I would rather not corner myself with a narrow card, as Spikeshot Goblin is a card you’d splash and also would be good in any texture of B/R.
So the pick is between Counterspell and Spikeshot Goblin. Personally, I’m on the Goblin. While I love a Counterspell in this format, which you could tell from my last article, Spikeshot Goblin is a Magic card begging to be abused that is almost always solid and occasionally will be the best card in your deck. And, as I previously stated, it’s splashable!
Pack 1, Pick 4
The Picks So Far:
While Chartooth Cougar is not an exciting third pick, it does mean that I’m less tied down to red, because while I have two red cards, one is splashable, while the other enables the splash. Keep that in mind when looking at this pack.
The Pack:
The Pick:
While I think the majority of players will look at these options and think it’s an easy Blightning, I think this pick is much more nuanced. I do believe that the pick is Blightning, but it isn’t by a landslide. Both Red Elemental Blast and Prophetic Prism are quite defensible.
Red Elemental Blast is one of the best possible sideboard cards in the set. Personally, if I have a lot of filtering effects — think Merfolk Looter or Sift — I don’t hate starting the card rather than sideboarding it. I feel like I play against blue decks over 50% of the time in this format, and against a blue deck, that card is an A+. Given this, I take the card highly, though not over cards that aren’t particularly replaceable. And both Prophetic Prism and Blightning fall in that category.
This entire pick comes down to whether or not you think you’re more likely to have red as a base color. Since Prophetic Prism both facilitates a splash and is quite useful when it comes to casting this Ravenous Chupacabra, I would have no qualms with taking the card. Still, Blightning is both very powerful and has the ability to push somebody downstream into B/R, which wouldn’t be great for me if I end up on that trajectory. And so I’m going to go with Blightning, but I think this pick is very close.