ME2 Draft #1

I bought three packs of Masters Edition 2 without having looked at the set at all, figuring I would at least draft it once. Well, I browsed the commons and uncommons and decided it looked like a horrible draft environment. Most of the cards in the set are nostalgic-but-awful, and they really drove home for me how far this game has come, particularly in bringing permanents up to the same power level as instants and sorceries. With all the banding and crappy, overcosted creatures, I predicted unfun stalemates and decided that I would raredraft—make picks based heavily on rarity over card quality.

Accordingly, I moved the packs to my warehouse account, as I didn’t want to raredraft from my primary account (Godot) and damage my rating with what I expected to be a first-round loss. Here’s the draft. I didn’t take rares over playables at every opportunity, because frankly so many of the rares I this set are so bad that I can’t see them having much value.

Pack 1 pick 1:




My Pick:



OK, not exactly a rare draft start, but I could tell Infernal Darkness would be worthless and took a body. There was a 2/2 flyer for 3U that I didn't take and probably should have.


Pack 1 pick 2:

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Pack 1 pick 3:

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Pack 1 pick 4:

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Pack 1 pick 5:

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Pack 1 pick 6:

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Pack 1 pick 7:

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Pack 1 pick 8:

My Pick:

OH yeah, Serious beats!

Pack 1 pick 9:

My Pick:

I can use some snow lands for my collection.



Pack 1 pick 10:

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Pack 1 pick 11:




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Pack 1 pick 12:

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Pack 1 pick 13:

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Pack 1 pick 14:



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Pack 1 pick 15:



My Pick:

Pack 2 pick 1:




My Pick:



Passed up an obvious crap rare for a card that could actually win me a game.


Pack 2 pick 2:



My Pick:



Another potential game winner.


Pack 2 pick 3:



My Pick:



Pack 2 pick 4:



My Pick:


I have no idea why I would take another one of thse guys over removal in Dark Banishing, but suffice it to say I wasn't drafting very hard at this point.


Pack 2 pick 5:



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Pack 2 pick 6:

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Pack 2 pick 7:



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Pack 2 pick 8:

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Pack 2 pick 9:

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Pack 2 pick 10:

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Pack 2 pick 11:

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Pack 2 pick 12:

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Pack 2 pick 13:



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Pack 2 pick 14:

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Pack 2 pick 15:



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Pack 3 pick 1:

My Pick:



This is a fun card to resolve against someone with three or more cards in hand.


Pack 3 pick 2:

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Pack 3 pick 3:

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Pack 3 pick 4:



My Pick:



It's GOLD! I didn't even read it.


Pack 3 pick 5:



My Pick:

Seems good.

Pack 3 pick 6:



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Pack 3 pick 7:

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Pack 3 pick 8:



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Pack 3 pick 9:

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Pack 3 pick 10:



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Pack 3 pick 11:

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Pack 3 pick 12:



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Pack 3 pick 13:




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Pack 3 pick 14:

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Pack 3 pick 15:



My Pick:

Checking after the fact at MTGO Traders (a great resource for quickly estimating the value of a rare mid-draft, BTW) revealed what I was sensing: short of the original dual lands and a couple of cards like Necropotence, the rares in this set are utter crap, and that is reflected in their MTGO Traders values. I probably would have been better off making a real effort to draft a competitive deck and win some packs back. Oh well.

Instead, I end up with this absolutely hideous pile. I mean it’s comically awful. I have just a couple of ways to win, and everything else is filler junk and bad rares. But, I’ll throw something together and see if I can miraculously squeeze a second round out of it. Here’s the build I sideboarded into:

5 Swamp

1 Glacial Chasm

2 Giant Growth

1 Gangrenous Zombies

2 Plains

1 Elvish Ranger

2 Tinder Wall

1 Winter's Night

1 Stunted Growth

2 Reprisal

1 Angel of Light

1 Necrite

2 Krovikan Vampire

1 Icatian Phalanx

2 Snow-Covered Swamp

1 Snow-Covered Plains

5 Forest

1 Joven's Ferrets

1 Snow-Covered Forest

1 Snow Fortress

1 Johtull Wurm

2 Roterothopter

1 Lava Burst

1 Snow-Covered Mountain

1 Yavimaya Ancients

Sideboard

2 Swamp

1 Panic

1 Gustha's Scepter

1 Gorilla Shaman

1 Plains

1 Browse

1 Mudslide

1 Mountain

1 Stonehands

1 Shrink

1 Fyndhorn Pollen

1 Marjhan

4 Forest

1 Fungal Bloom

2 Snow-Covered Island

1 Feral Thallid

1 Misinformation

1 Cloak of Confusion

1 Funeral March

1 Iceberg

I face an 1860 limited player in the first round, and fully expect to lose badly.

In game one, I’m a bit land flooded, but I have the Lava Burst in hand and a Tinder Wall to set it off. He kills off the creatures I play and casts a lot of cantrips, until we settle into a race: my Icatian Phalanx and his Folk of the Pines. He’s pumping to 4/5 each swing, and gets me down to 4; I have 9 land in play with him at 11 with one Elvish Spirit Guide that so far he has not used for blocking.

I swing in with the Phalanx, and if he blocks, I’m in trouble because I will have to chump with my wall next turn, which is my only way to produce the red for the Lava Burst. He lets it go, though, dropping to 9 and setting up my 10-point Lava Burst to his dome for the win. Heh, he clearly didn’t see that coming. I also know from experience that he’s quite annoyed right now, a 1860 player effectively losing a game to a sucker punch from a sub-1600 opponent with an openly terrible deck.

In sideboarding, I pull the Glacial Chasm, realizing after drawing it in game one that I’ve totally mistaken it for a different, playable land card that I passed in the draft (Ice Floe). I also hastily read the Winter’s Night, thinking that it is a snow-land mana doubler with no drawback. Since I drafted a bunch of snow lands, I plug the on-color snow lands in and add this tri-color enchantment with the idea that maybe it will power up another game-winning Lava Burst.

He crushes me in game two, although I do manage to draw my single snow-covered mountain and cast Winter’s Night. That’s when I realize that snow lands don’t untap during my next untap step (man, they made cards unnecessarily awful back in the day). I chuckle at how I’ve further shown my opponent what a truly awful deck he is up against. It is actually pretty fun to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing…an 1800+ limited player running a horrible deck on a sub-1600 account with nothing to lose.

We head into game three and I leave in the enchantment because it still might be the difference in a win or a loss via a powered-up Lava Blast.

He gets off to a slow start. His finishers are in green, and all he’s playing are swamps and islands (and an Underground Sea, the lucky bastard). I get out a Joven's Ferrets (sick beats!) and a Roterothopter, and I’m pinging him slowly down such that he finally uses a Dark Banishing on the Roterothopter. That is victory in and of itself.

Then I draw the killer: Stunted Growth! He clearly has no business spells and 4 cards in hand, so I cast it, locking him down to inactivity for the next three turns. I can feel his rage through the computer. I pull the Phalanx on my next turn, and my 6/6 green guy on the turn after that, pretty much sealing his fate as he redraws the islands and swamps that had flooded his hand. He chats:

1:00 AM sMann: must be nice

1:00 AM sMann is being attacked by: Icatian Phalanx, Joven's Ferrets

1:00 AM Icatian Phalanx Bands with Joven's Ferrets.

1:00 AM milesmason plays triggered ability from Joven's Ferrets.

1:00 AM milesmason plays triggered ability fromJoven's Ferrets.

1:00 AM milesmason plays Johtull Wurm.

1:00 AM Turn 11: sMann.

1:00 AM milesmason: mad skillz

1:00 AM sMann plays Forest.

1:00 AM sMann: worst deck ever

1:00 AM sMann: good job

1:00 AM sMann has conceded from the game.

So, heh, I make it to round two. I lose the first game in round two and start to play game two, but it becomes exactly what I envisioned. He has a bunch of banders out, I have some big creatures, but we are basically at a boring impasse, and it’s closing in on 2:00 AM. Happy that I squeezed two extra packs out of this mess, I tell him I have to go to bed and concede the match.

Boy, what an extreme set: piles of nostalgic crap, with a few morsels of nostalgic brokenness. The collector in me wants playsets of all the duals, but the realist in me knows I will never play serious “Classic Constructed” or whatever the format is where these cards are legal, so I imagine this will be my last ME2 event. Although I did win two packs, I’ll probably do one more.

It’s a stinky-looking set, but I do have a fondness for it since I worked my way towards “good player” on these cards so many years ago. Tinder Wall and Orcish Lumberjack powering out turn-two 4- and 5-drops were the core of the first deck I made that utterly destroyed the other players in my circle. I may have to get four each of those just to rebuild that particular engine…