What’s the Pick? Modern Masters 2015 Pack 1 Pick 2 with Huey

Skyreach Manta.

The best card in the pack is Spectral Procession. Your first pick is Karn Liberated, though. After first-picking Karn, the deck I most want to draft is a 5-color control/ramp deck. Getting Karn into play as quickly as possible is, of course, the optimal way to approach every game. Spectral Procession is powerful in any deck, but it does shine the most in an aggressive deck that can capitalize on the early barrage of fliers. It also prefers a deck with a ton of white mana to be cast as early in the game as possible. Skyreach Manta is a perfect threat/finisher for a 5-color ramp deck, as very often it will come into play as a 4/4 or 5/5 as early as the fourth turn. For all those reasons, I would take the Manta over Spectral Procession. If your first pick were something like Arrest, I would definitely choose Spectral Procession.

Nameless Inversion.

The other considerations here would be Cranial Plating, Tribal Flames, and Skyhunter Skirmisher. Your first pick is white, but staying in color tends to matter less in sets like Modern Masters 2015 than it does in some other formats, because here you mostly draft archetypes as opposed to color combinations. WB Spirits is one of my favorite archetypes and Nameless Inversion is the best common in that archetype, and I actually think the best common in the set. Taking Nameless Inversion and looking to draft WB Spirits is how I would proceed, but certainly with two removal spells you could end up going into a 5-color control strategy, or even any other archetype containing white or black, allowing you access to one of your two premium removal spells.

Nameless Inversion.

Again, a pack with the best common. This time, it’s unclear exactly what archetype you’d be trying to get into, though. Cryptic Command is a truly great card, but I think blue is the worst color in MM2015. The fact that Nameless Inversion only costs a single black mana to cast makes it appealing to pair with Cryptic Command. At this point, I’d likely just try to draft a blue/black control type of deck with a lot of removal and counterspells. It’s important, though, because of the weakness of blue, that you don’t get overcommitted to your Cryptic Command, even though it’s a bomb. Sometimes bombs are so powerful that they will win you the game on their own, like Elesh Norn, for example. Cryptic Command won’t singlehandedly win you a game, so you need to be aware of that fact and not make your deck too bad just for the sake of playing it.

Boros Garrison.

Bouncelands are great, as they provide card advantage. They are particularly good in decks with expensive spells, and in this instance, we already have a great one in Wildfire. Even more so than after a Karn, I want to be playing a ramp deck once I have a Wildfire. If you cast a Wildfire after your opponent has put their fourth land into play, it will, way more often than not, force them to lose every single one of their permanents. One issue the ramp decks also have is the risk of flood. Drawing too many lands is not nearly as bad in a game in which you’ve cast Wildfire, as it can be hard to get back up to 4 or 5 mana to cast threats otherwise.

Scion of the Wild.

WG tokens is one of the better archetypes in the format. Also, there are no particularly great cards to pair with your first pick Arrest. Second-picking the Scion here is a fine plan to steer your draft into the token deck. Maybe by some miracle you could wheel the Root-Kin Ally, although it’s somewhat unlikely. I’d start prioritizing convoke and token-making cards at this point, and hope that WG tokens is open.