If You Had a Case of MSH Play Boosters, What Would You Do With It?

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

If you had a case (6 boxes) of MSH Play Boosters, what would you do with it? Rather than simply enjoying the brief thrill of cracking packs, I’d rather have fun with friends, or live up to the packs’ “duty” of being drafted and opened for Sealed.

This article briefly covers the “life story” of these 6 boxes, 180 MSH Play Boosters in all: 5 eight-person drafts, 10 Sealed pools, and statistics on the cards we pulled. Read whichever parts interest you, or follow me from the start through the story of these packs.

Draft

The first draft was won 3-0 by a very sharp-curved black-green deck. Because it had so much looting, it had to play 16 lands. We also found that in black, which is built on Connive, Project Deathlok Soldiermeans you never have to worry about having no spare card to discard when you need to grow a creature; its lack of the Villain creature type was probably the result of the design team’s testing.

The second draft also went 3-0, this time won by a Jeskai midrange deck with as many as 8 removal spells, with all sorts of aggro decks falling to its powerful web of removal. The first pick King T'Challa // Black Panther, Hope Enduringdid a great job of getting the player ahead on resources; and with Agent 13, Sharon Carteron the battlefield, the Clue tokens created when a creature attacks alone not only turn into card resources, but Castle Doomcan also turn them into an army of 3/3 artifacts. Very clever!

The third draft, also 3-0, happened to be won by me, so I’ve attached the pick order too^{Note 1}. The route was the common blue-white tempo aggro. Because I took removal and strong cards higher, the low-curve plays didn’t wheel, and in the end I had to force in a Winter Soldier, Icy Assassin. You have to use removal to bridge to turn three, then overwhelm the opponent with the strong cards that follow; ideally you open with the few one- and two-drops plus S.H.I.E.L.D. Spy Kit. The final match was against another Bant aggro deck that splashed a pair of Ant-Man. Although the blue-white deck won by curving out smoothly, in terms of deck strength and completeness, the Bant deck was still a cut above.

The fourth draft went 3-0 as well, won by black-green bombs splashing blue, making good use of green’s size advantage backed by black’s removal and graveyard recursion, with an endless flow of resources, which was very impressive.

The final opponent was a Gruul big-fun deck splashing white for the super bomb The Super Hero Civil War, and it was no weaker; two Jessica Jones, Private Eyekept the deck earning nonstop! But it earned so much that Earth's Mightiest Heroescouldn’t even flip… I think we played it too hard XD

The fifth draft wasn’t recorded, but the matches were definitely played.

Sealed Pools

It happened to be a typhoon day off thanks to Typhoon Bavi, and since we couldn’t go out, it was the perfect time to use up the remaining two boxes. 60 packs make 10 Sealed pools, and my wife and I treated it as a board game, playing as we opened to burn through them.

The blue-white Heroes theme mixes in lots of green mana sources to help The Astonishing Ant-Manarrive on time. Paired with Political Triumphlying in wait on the battlefield and activating Ant-Man’s ability once he’s big enough, you can create an explosive board at instant speed! The various creatures with flash can both disrupt and add to your board advantage, and sometimes you win without the bombs King T'Challa // Black Panther, Hope Enduringor The Mighty Thor, Jane Fostereven stepping in. I personally think it had the highest average strength of the 10 pools.

Since there’s a Heroes theme, how could there be no Villains? This black-green deck is a fairly strong Villains deck. Three Red Room Recruitguarantee a smooth early curve, and I think this is an important card that you should take higher in a black Villains deck. Although the three-drop slot lacks key Villains like Baron Strucker, HYDRA Overlord, the excellent two-drop curve should be able to bridge smoothly to the four-mana threats. The six-mana Villain lord The Masters of Evilmakes sure your two-drops don’t just sit idle on the battlefield. Among the four-mana threats, Killmonger, Scourge of Wakandais definitely the key that makes black-green stand out among the many Villains archetypes, even beyond the officially intended black-red. If killing once with Killmonger isn’t enough, recur him from the graveyard to kill a second, even a third time! Super-Skrull, with the support of the Villain base Villainous Hideout, lets you activate all of its abilities without splashing, so I strongly recommend playing them together. Splashing red for just one Loki Laufeysonand a Lightning Strike looks a bit superfluous at first glance, but it actually isn’t. For one thing, this pool’s dual lands strongly support red; for another, red Loki’s copy effect is simply too strong at a very low cost, which suits this deck with little removal. As for the two green Heroes, just treat them as maximizing Decoy Ploy; after all, you can’t ask too much from Sealed.

The second blue-white pool, but much weaker than the first, and more dependent on the attack trigger of the female Thor, The Mighty Thor, Jane Foster.

The second black-green pool has about the same bomb strength, but is structurally far inferior to the first black-green Villains deck. With too few two-drops, it had to squeeze Hero cards in, and bolted on a Heroic Feastlife-gain-and-counters theme; if {% mtglink “Tigra, Feline Fury
” %} and Knight of Wundagoreare on the battlefield together, both of them get two counters out of it, but that’s about all there is to it. Because its resource staying power is weak, it went the opposite way and added two HYDRA Infiltrationto weaken the opponent’s mid-to-late-game strength.

The theme is less clear, but with 3 Red Room Recruitit should still survive the early game, and if the bombs show up there’s still a chance to win. If it gets acceleration, holding the fort and counterattacking with the 676 dinosaur Savage Land Dinosauralso works.

If white-black doesn’t have a dense low curve to go with Equipment, the other axis is to rely on lots of removal, then in the mid-to-late game use Madame Masqueand Connive effects to build a board and look for a counterattack. This pool also has M.O.D.O.K., which can pay life to connive and make a 2/1 Villain. I have to say this set’s removal is still great, not to mention Cruel Alliancegaining you 3 life; surviving the early game on strong removal, your chances of winning are still decent.

Once acceleration and card draw are in place, the creature size of blue-green will definitely not let you down! Pair some disruptive blue creatures with brute-force green creature size to get across! Pym Particlesis merely a middling card in other color pairs, leaning toward card filtering and triggering Prowess, but in blue-green it can be the key to a knockout!

The only rare, but a proper red-white deck needs just this one card, The Super Hero Civil War. Anyone who has used it, or had it used against them, knows how strong it is, and if you open it, it’s worth forcing in as a splash. But when building red-white, you’ll often find the core of the deck still has to rest on white creatures, and red basically doesn’t help much.

The second red-white is far weaker than the previous one, but thanks to the red sweeper Avengers Disassembled, it became a more controlling build. That’s also why the three-drop slot uses the toughness-4 Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.to reduce the sweeper’s impact on our side. Alternatively, some toughness-3 creatures can first be grown to toughness 4 with {% mtglink “Political Triumph
” %} before sweeping. Holding on and then killing the opponent with fliers is a reliable plan, but the prerequisite is that you hold on first.

The 10th pool should be boss-level difficulty. Opening 4 mythic rares in one pool looks like a sure win at first glance, but on closer inspection, something is off. White has a curve but no ability to splash; blue has two mythics, Kang the Conquerorand Namor the Sub-Mariner, but the rest of the curve can’t hold up the deck structure; black has cheap kill spells but no stable removal; red has a curve but not enough power; green is even weaker. If not going blue, the two Thanos, the Mad Titanare a must-play. The low curve can only be held up by red or white, but white has nothing to do with the dual lands that were opened, so I chose red. Although the curve creatures are weak, Stark Industries Executivegives a chance to make Treasure to help with fixing and ramping. As for the game plan: early on, use lots of filtering to adjust the colors of your hand and lands, and once that smooths out, try to cast the mid-game bombs, or hold the board with Thanos, then see whether there’s a chance to go for the ultimate!

Finally, a quick summary of my after-the-fact ranking of the ten MSH color pairs (not 17Lands data, purely my personal feel):

1. UW: Undoubtedly the strongest. Lots of quality commons mean this color pair can put up a fight as long as you don’t open/draw too badly.
2. BG: Less intuitive, but Connive plus graveyard use lets black-green, which excels at attrition, win steadily in the mid-to-long game. Whether you have Killmonger, Scourge of Wakanda, and how many, is the key to whether this pair’s win rate can surpass blue-white.
3. GU: Ant-Man’s home colors. Blue’s disruption makes the somewhat clunky green highly flexible, and this qualitative change makes blue-green, which is awkward in other sets, far deadlier.
4. WG: A stable, reliable pair that can fly, fight, and has great stats, but the downside is clunky interaction, relying on white’s combat tricks paired with green’s size.
5. WB: The Equipment deck emphasizes pairing many uncommons, but unlike other sets where Equipment gets little attention, good Equipment like S.H.I.E.L.D. Spy Kitgets taken early, and drawing a half-baked Equipment deck is worse than not playing it. The second axis is to use lots of removal with the quality curve of white-black to go the midrange route.
6. RW: This pair is entirely dragged down by red’s weak individual cards. If you really want to play it, make white the main color; red is only a support, like a left hand.
7. RG: Green creatures are reliably big, but red’s common removal has a range ceiling, so it relies on uncommon-and-above strong cards to hold the deck together.
8. RU: Red-blue’s artifacts happen to be among the lowest-rated cards, and this theme leans heavily on artifacts, which means you’re bringing a pile of low-rated cards to fight the opponent’s blue-white powerhouses. You can add it as a splash; Vision Questwith X=4 pulling Iron Man or Vision out of the library or graveyard is still quite strong, but without it, stay out of this color pair, or you’ll keenly feel the huge gap in card strength.
9. RB: If you want to play resources, black-green is better; if you want to play removal-spam, white-black is better; the officially designated Villains theme doesn’t necessarily have to be played in this pair, and the pair’s uncommon Madame Hydrahas long been found to be a black sheep that loses tempo and has a below-rate body. Not recommended unless you really have a lot of removal.
10. UB: A pair I can’t figure out. Boosting after drawing is worse than blue-green, and graveyard use after Connive is worse than black-green; both sides are awkward, and the payoff of wanting to draw a second card doesn’t necessarily require this pair either.

However, we don’t need to be limited by the framework of the ten draft color pairs. This set’s basic landcycling is very handy, the cost of splashing three colors is very low, and it isn’t tied to any particular colors. So let your imagination, and the unlimited possibilities of the cards in your hands, run wild!

Damage Resolution — Rare Card Statistics

Conclusion first: commons and uncommons will definitely overflow from a case. The distribution of R and M cards doesn’t seem to differ by much; some rares didn’t reach a full four copies while some mythics did, but probabilistically, from one case each rare shows up about 3 times on average, and each mythic close to 2. Of course, some M cards weren’t opened at all, such as The Mind Stone; maybe some are particularly hard to pull, or the expected values converge as the number of cases grows, which I’ll leave to the big shots to try.

As for the bonus set MAR, we opened 9. Considering the official distribution is one per 24 packs, 9 is still slightly above the expected 7.5.

The detailed table is below:

Card Name	Color	Rarity	Regular/Alt Art	Foil/Alt Art Foil	Total
Agent Phil Coulson	White	R	4	0	4
Avengers Assemble!	White	M	0	1	1
Captain America, Super-Soldier	White	M	0	0	0
Captain America, Wings of Freedom	White	R	4	0	4
Captain Marvel, Earth's Protector	White	M	1	0	1
Jennifer Walters // The Sensational She-Hulk	White	M	1	0	1
The Mind Stone	White	M	0	0	0
Monica Rambeau // Photon, Living Light	White	M	3	0	3
Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.	White	R	5	0	5
Origin of the Avengers	White	R	0	1	1
The Sentry, Golden Guardian	White	R	2	1	3
Super-Soldier Serum	White	R	3	0	3
Bruce Banner // The Incredible Hulk	Blue	M	0	0	0
Ironheart, Clever Champion	Blue	R	2	0	2
Kang the Conqueror	Blue	M	2	0	2
Leader, Super-Genius	Blue	R	2	0	2
Loki, God of Mischief	Blue	R	4	0	4
Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan	Blue	R	2	0	2
Multiversal Incursion	Blue	M	1	0	1
Namor the Sub-Mariner	Blue	M	4	0	4
Secret Invasion	Blue	R	1	0	1
S.H.I.E.L.D. Flying Car	Blue	R	4	0	4
Tony Stark // The Invincible Iron Man	Blue	M	1	0	1
The Wondrous Wasp	Blue	R	2	0	2
Baron Helmut Zemo	Black	R	3	0	3
Black Widow, Super Spy	Black	M	0	0	0
Construct a Cosmic Cube	Black	R	2	0	2
Doctor Doom	Black	M	2	0	2
Doom Reigns Supreme	Black	R	4	0	4
Elektra, Daughter of the Hand	Black	R	2	0	2
M.O.D.O.K.	Black	M	3	0	3
Super-Skrull	Black	R	2	0	2
Thunderbolts Conspiracy	Black	R	3	0	3
Avengers Disassembled	Red	R	3	0	3
Fin Fang Foom	Red	R	5	0	5
Hawkeye, Master Marksman	Red	R	5	0	5
Mjölnir, Hammer of Thor	Red	M	4	0	4
Quicksilver, Brash Blur	Red	R	4	0	4
The Scarlet Witch	Red	R	1	1	2
Thor, God of Thunder	Red	M	0	0	0
Earth's Mightiest Heroes	Green	M	4	0	4
Epic Fight	Green	R	5	0	5
Heroic Feast	Green	R	4	0	4
Mole Man, Moloid Master	Green	R	2	0	2
Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu	Green	M	1	0	1
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl	Green	R	4	0	4
World War Hulk	Green	R	5	1	6
Absorbing Man	Multicolor	R	2	1	3
Alien Invasion	Multicolor	R	4	0	4
Ares, God of War	Multicolor	R	4	0	4
Armor Wars	Multicolor	R	4	1	5
The Astonishing Ant-Man	Multicolor	R	5	1	6
Avengers: Under Siege	Multicolor	R	3	0	3
Cloak and Dagger, Entwined	Multicolor	R	4	0	4
The Coming of Galactus	Multicolor	M	0	0	0
Daredevil, Man Without Fear	Multicolor	R	4	0	4
King T'Challa // Black Panther, Hope Enduring	Multicolor	M	3	1	4
The Kingpin of Crime	Multicolor	R	3	0	3
The Mighty Thor, Jane Foster	Multicolor	R	2	0	2
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur	Multicolor	R	4	0	4
The Ruinous Wrecking Crew	Multicolor	R	4	0	4
Scientist Supreme of A.I.M.	Multicolor	R	1	0	1
The Serpent Society	Multicolor	R	4	0	4
Storm, Windrider	Multicolor	R	2	0	2
The Super Hero Civil War	Multicolor	R	3	0	3
Taskmaster, Mercenary Mimic	Multicolor	R	2	0	2
Thanos, the Mad Titan	Multicolor	M	2	1	3
Vision Quest	Multicolor	R	1	0	1
Winter Soldier, Icy Assassin	Multicolor	R	1	1	2
Wolverine, Fierce Fighter	Multicolor	R	3	0	3
Worlds Within Worlds	Multicolor	R	1	0	1
Arc Reactor	Artifact	R	4	1	5
Captain America's Shield	Artifact	R	2	0	2
Cosmic Cube	Artifact	M	1	1	2
Iron Man Armor	Artifact	M	2	0	2
Super-Adaptoid	Artifact	R	5	0	5
The Ten Rings	Artifact	M	0	0	0
Ultron, Artificial Malevolence	Artifact	M	1	0	1
The Vision	Artifact	R	4	1	5
Castle Doom	Land	R	3	0	3
Dark Fortress	Land	R	3	0	3
Gathering Place	Land	R	2	0	2
Gleaming Bastion	Land	R	3	0	3
Hidden Lair	Land	R	1	0	1
Training Compound	Land	R	5	0	5
Harbinger of the Seas	MAR	M	1	0	1
Cyberdrive Awakener	MAR	M	1	0	1
Deadly Dispute	MAR	M	1	0	1
Bedlam	MAR	M	1	0	1
Fiery Emancipation	MAR	M	1	0	1
Beast Within	MAR	M	1	0	1
Warleader's Call	MAR	M	1	0	1
Horn of Greed	MAR	M	1	0	1
Roaming Throne	MAR	M	1	0	1

Conclusion

Opening 180 packs to practice Limited is an extravagant practice. I hope this article gives readers something beyond just opening packs to see what cool stuff is inside, and that occasionally, through Limited, you can experience the gift the design team carefully prepared for players. MSH is probably the Limited set in which, since DSK, I feel almost every color pair and almost every card has a reason to exist. If real cards feel too expensive to play, you might try opening MTGA or MO first.

The right set, the right people; what could be a better way to have fun than this?

^{Note 1:If you want to record your pick order while drafting, besides taking photos as you go, you can also consider not changing the order of each card during the draft, and after the draft ends, lay the picked cards out in order to get a “Replay” effect. Interested readers may want to give it a try.}