Even if you haven’t paying much attention to the Magic world recently, you might be able to guess just from the name Modern Masters that MMA is a Magic set designed to be used for the Modern Constructed format. What might be less obvious is that it’s also a really cleverly designed and challenging set for booster drafting. While many sets are all about opening bombs and choosing the right colors for your seat when it comes to Draft, Modern Masters isn’t one of them. MMA is all about finding the right engine for your seat. For players like me (old) who have played with all of these cards before, drafting these engines is a nostalgic trip down memory lane (a lane with savage Dragons and vaulting Goblins all over the place of course.)

I recently had a writing project that involved discussing each card in Modern Masters and evaluating it for Draft. I was expected to give each card a rating designed to reflect its value in Draft and to recommend how high to take that card in Draft. This task turned out to be surprisingly difficult compared to most other sets. All too often, I came across cards that—even if you were playing the right color—could range from a first pick to a last pick depending on whether you were drafting the right type of deck using that color. Modern Masters puts massive pressure on drafters to draft a specific archetype and not just to pick colors. The success of each Draft archetype relies heavily on your ability to find and assemble the appropriate powerful engine for that archetype.

W/B Rebels

Considered by many to be among the dominant archetypes in MMA, Rebels makes for a great example of drafting a specific engine and ideally building your deck around it. If you pick up a Rebel searcher such as Amrou Scout or Blightspeaker in the first pack, it will usually be correct to proceed to draft every Rebel card you see after that. If your Draft goes really well, you’ll have three or more searchers, at least one Bound in Silence, at least one Rathi Trapper, and at least a couple other Rebels. At that point, in most games, you’ll draw a searcher in the early game, and it will have the potential to dominate the game. Even if you only have one searcher and just a couple other Rebels, it’s worth running them, but now it’s just a minor subtheme in your deck and not a powerful engine that your deck is built around.

U/B Faeries

Another one of the various tribal archetypes in MMA, it’s usually the most powerful one after Rebels. There are eight common Faerie cards in blue and black in MMA. The seven that are creatures all have flying and all are reasonable to play in Limited even if you don’t have any other Faeries in your deck. The fact that your Faerie cards grow more powerful if you’re playing with a lot of Faeries means that this is another simple, yet powerful engine. The drafting is actually the easy part; if it says Faerie, take it. The hard part is playing your Faerie deck optimally. Many Faeries have flash, and most have enters-the-battlefield abilities that require careful decisions on your part to give you the best opportunity to control the game. Opening a Faerie card in the third pack is often like opening a Rebel searcher—if you’re already drafting that tribe, it will often be a first pick; if not, it might only barely make the cut in your deck.

U/R Arcane Mill

This is among the most difficult MMA engines to pull off in Draft. While there are seven common Arcane cards in blue and red, there is only one—Dampen Thought—that’s a realistic victory condition. Unlike drafting Rebels or Faeries, if you go for this archetype and it dries up on you, it can be very hard to salvage your Draft. It’s both hard to draft and hard to play, but if you beat someone with it, you deserve the feeling of accomplishment that goes with it.

W/U Artifacts

Due to the very nature of artifacts, you can draft an artifact deck no matter what colors you’re in, but white and blue have some of the best colored tools for it: Etherium Sculptor, Faerie Mechanist, Thirst for Knowledge, Esperzoa, Court Homunculus, and Sanctum Gargoyle. That’s just the commons; if you open up the right rare or uncommon, you can get all sorts of cool things going. If you happen to pick up a couple Myr Enforcers and some modular creatures, this can also be among the stronger engines. Like many of the cards in this archetype, Myr Enforcer can be anywhere from a first pick in pack three to pretty much unplayable depending on your engine/archetype.

Sunburst/Domain Green

Modern Masters features four sunburst cards and three cards with domain. A base-green deck with cards such as Kodama's Reach, Search for Tomorrow, and Sylvan Bounty can reliably play enough colors to make these cards extremely powerful. If you find a Tromp the Domains or a Skyreach Manta in pack one, you should seriously consider building a domain engine, which has the added bonus of allowing you to cherry-pick bombs in every color.

Basic Green

While Wizards of the Coast has helpfully supplied us with a cycle of Vivid lands to make our sunburst cards better, it has also a made a common 5/5 for 4 mana—Imperiosaur—which makes green players want to play base-green with all basic lands. Thanks to cards such as Penumbra Spider, Nantuko Shaman, Masked Admirers, and Citanul Woodreaders, a creature-heavy base-green deck can have great card advantage and is a quite viable option in MMA Draft.

R/W Giants

Like Faeries, one of the strengths of this tribal archetype is that most of the cards in it are fine to draft even your engine isn’t really coming together. If you happen to draft enough Giants to justify playing with Blind-Spot Giant (probably seven to ten depending on the deck), your engine must be really humming, though. This archetype has the right support cards to create a tight and surprisingly powerful engine: Stinkdrinker Daredevil, Kithkin Greatheart, Crush Underfoot, and Thundercloud Shaman. Crush Underfoot goes from being a solid removal card and a fairly high pick if you have a good Giant engine to a dead card if you don’t—just another example of the difficulties of card evaluation in MMA Draft.

B/R Goblins

While not as easy to draft as Giants, Rebels, or Faeries, and usually not as powerful, it’s entirely possible to assemble a powerful Goblin engine. If you happen to pick up a Mad Auntie or an Auntie's Snitch in pack one, it may be worth considering going for it. Draft enough Goblins, and suddenly, Facevaulters, Marsh Flitters, and Tar Pitchers start to look like very powerful cards.

B/G or U/B Self-Mill

In addition to having a viable engine for milling your opponent, Modern Masters also has a viable engine that revolves around self-milling. MMA has six cards with dredge and multiple blue cards that are good for filling your graveyard: Careful Consideration, Thirst for Knowledge, and the like. This means that you can make delve cards such as Death Rattle and Tombstalker quite powerful. It also means that in the right deck, Worm Harvest can actually be a game-ender as opposed to the dead card it is in most decks.

G/W Thallids

This tribal archetype has an engine that’s hard to really get going, and it’s among the weaker tribal archetypes in MMA, but some of the creatures are powerful enough to play on their own, such as Sporesower Thallid and Sporoloth Ancient. If you do happen to craft a deck bursting with Fungi, a couple of which are Pallid Mycoderms, suddenly, your engine could start looking pretty menacing.

The way Modern Masters is constructed rewards advanced drafters and punishes those who simply pick colors and draft “good” cards in those colors. If you think you’re ready for the challenge, you might consider starting by drafting tribal decks such as Rebels, Giants, and Faeries first—or even a basic green creature deck. Pay attention when you run into people playing good Arcane, dredge, domain, or artifact decks so that, over time, you can add building those engines to your repertoire. Just be sure to start drafting MMA right away before it’s gone and all you have are the memories.