Last week I took a Selesnya Guildmage, and with my final Modern Masters 2015 pack, I thought I would base my pick after taking it. This means there will be only 14 cards to choose from, so lets break down a pack.

Commons

Within the first few picks of a pack, I like to try and stay open and try and figure out the most powerful card in the pack. If you are ignoring stronger picks, to try and force a preferred deck, you are doing yourself an injustice. This may then set up the person to your left in a very strong deck, one that you could have ended up in. Remember you are not married to your first pick. Use it as a tie breaker, such that if you come down to a choice of two, and one is in the same colour as your first pick, then perhaps that sways you.

Once again the black and the blue cards do not hold my interest. Waking Nightmare and Wings of Velis Vel aren’t likely to make my main deck, and even Repeal isn’t a certainty. As they are not powerful, none would move me from the Guildmage. The green cards hold one card that works very well with the Guildmage: Scion of the Wild. Working well with token produces, as I mentioned in my week 1, with the ability to churn out the tokens using only mana, this then causes this guy to grow. This is in my consideration to pick.

Goblin War Paint is a strange card in Modern Masters 2015. There is a red white double strike deck, but those cards work better with the equipment rather than this enchantment. If they are able to deal with the enchanted creature then they have used 1 of their cards, to deal with 2 of yours. An unfavourable trade. I think the stand alone strongest common is Arrest. Being able to interact with an opponent’s creature that you deem too powerful to deal with via combat, is a powerful effect, and one that I would have been willing to take even if my first pick was not a white card.

Between the Scion of the Wild and Arrest I feel that I would not be able to “Wheel” the other on the second time that this pack gets to me. I would be pleased if I could end up with the Conclave Phalanx or Gnarlid Pack.

Uncommons

Dispatch fits fantastically in an affinity deck that can constantly have active metalcraft. The ability to tap a creature is not worth a card by itself, but with the metalcraft active then it becomes a Swords to Plowshares but without a drawback. (Giving an opponent some extra life isn’t a drawback anyway) 

Incandescent Soulstoke is the elemental lord, providing +1/+1 to other elementals. If I were deep into a red based elemental deck, then I would snap this card off. However I have very little interest due to:

Spitebellows. A 6 mana 6/1 seems very expensive for a creature, and if they were the only thing you read on the card it seems very uninteresting. However it’s the text box that turns this from a creature into a burn removal spell. 6 damage is a huge amount of damage to deal. Outside of the 5 Eldrazi there are 4 more creatures that have more than 6 toughness, which means that spitebellows will trade a card for a card most of the time. If I were in a red deck then I would be happy to have this, not as a creature, but as a removal spell.

My Pick

For me, the cards that leap out from the pack are Spitebellows, Arrest and Scion of the Wild.

Whilst Scion of the Wild synergises with my first pick, I don’t want to take it as a signal that the guy to my right isn’t going to be cutting all of the token cards. For all we know he also took a Selesnya Guildmage or perhaps Wilt-Leaf Liege. If this ended up being the case I feel I would be unhappy knowing that I had passed either of the other two cards.

As I said earlier, sometimes you may want to use your first pick as a tiebreaker. Spitebellows is powerful, but to evoke it, requires 2 red mana, which suggests a heavy red deck, and I don’t want to commit to it at this stage.

Arrest is my favourite card in the pack, regardless of my first pick. It does help that the first card I took can be played in a white deck, but here the Arrest becomes my second pick from the pack.

What’s your pick? Do you have a preference? Vote for your pick at the following link:

http://strawpoll.me/4633487 and leave some comments.

You can find me on twitter at @TrollTraderAdam

Until next time; draft.