Modern Masters has provoked a rollercoaster of emotions in me—granted, since it’s just a Magic set, it’s been a pretty tame coaster. Nonetheless, I went from being incredibly excited for a few months—"OMG, it’s like Cube where you keep the cards"—to a bit frustrated during the release drafts—"I have two copies of Scion of Oona in play, and I’m losing to a Penumbra Spider." Then, when the set was released on Magic Online, I became excited again because I somehow have completely divorced my real life and online experiential expectations from each other.

If that’s your marketing plan, Wizards…well played.

For the first time, I’m taking my Limited content to the digital realm. I generally have a stream of consciousness dialogue running in my head when I’m playing Magic. This week, I attempted to verbalize it (only realizing later that mic quality matters) into a draft and match analysis monologue. If I do this in the future, I expect that I will become more comfortable with it.

My plan was to force a green ramp archetype of some sort because that’s the kind of strategy that seemed to be succeeding at the release draft. My picks were a bit unusual, and my play wasn’t the tightest, so without further dudes, here’s a start-to-finish Modern Masters draft.

The Draft

Round 1: Versus G/W Giants/Good Stuff

Round 2: Versus B/R Goblin/Storm

Round 3: Versus W/B Rebels

A Random Extra Draft

One thing I realized after discussing the draft above with several people is that the big, stupid Spider and Tree deck simply isn’t fun for some people to play. Although I didn’t record a second set of videos because of the high level of environmental noise in my house while I was playing, I did run a second Modern Masters draft and attempted to force a control strategy by first picking Feudkiller’s Verdict.

Due to some incredibly heavy lifting by Epochrasite and the two Errant Ephemerons, I was able to win this draft as well. (I only was able to play Elspeth, Knight-Errant in a single game, but she was as good as advertised in that game.) Astonishingly, one of the other key cards in this deck was Echoing Truth, which consistently dealt with Saprolings, Goblins, and, in one case, Incremental Growth. I had a second copy in the sideboard, and I consistently boarded it in while removing the Spell Snare, which was only decent against my finals opponent (artifacts/burn).

My final verdict on Modern Masters Draft is that it’s a pretty good format—maybe even very good. However, it’s important not to enter into it with the assumption that certain strategies are automatically the best (U/B Faeries) because the set is designed in such a way that certain strategies will just crush you (Penumbra Spider is a common).

If you decide to brave the 25-ticket waters on Magic Online and play a few drafts, best of luck to you!