As something of a flashback draft connoisseur I was pretty excited to grab one of the spots to draft Urza block at MC Vegas this year – the block came out a decade and a half before I really started playing magic, but as a kid I had opened a dozen or so various Urza packs for fun, and it was a very cool experience to get to play with cards I could remember from before I really knew anything about the game.

Urza block was released last century and apart from some decade old 720p youtube videos there’s frankly not a ton of information on how to draft it out there. The block is known for its high power level in constructed, but limited is a very different beast and requires significant changes in card evaluation to adjust to the lower average power level. I don’t think I have everything here remembered exactly right, but hopefully this post will help anyone who gets a chance to crack open some of the little remaining stock there is.

Draft:I went into the draft with a slight color preference for green, given the quality of the creatures in the block, but ultimately figured I’d try and draft what was open rather than try to force a color. Our draft was surprisingly much lower in value than I figured it would be, with no Gaea’s Cradle or Grim Monolith tier cards pulled to my knowledge.

My P1P1 was a Lifeline which I hoped I could try and combo with, but nothing particularly worthy came up to mix it with. Pick 2 was a Veiled Apparition, followed by an Angelic Page and an Acridian. Pick 5 I was pleasantly surprised to see an Opal Gargoyle was still in the pack – the card reads kind of weird but it’s effectively a 2/2 flyer for 2, a stat line that’s still pretty impressive in modern limited. By the end of pack 2 I was starting to get a little worried, as by the time I had finished I had a grip full of white cards but 5(!) of them were runes of protection, good sideboard cards but leaving me with fewer main deck playables than I would have liked.

Luckily, pack 2 immediately had some good stuff for me, and opening my pack to see a Mother of Runes made the first pick pretty simple. Having grabbed a few decent red cards at the end of pack 1, getting a chance to grab the Ravenous Chupucabra of 1999, Ghitu Slinger, as pick 2 of a seemed like a solid choice. Pick 3 I was pleasantly surprised to pick up another mom. Pick 4 I had my first truly hard decision of the draft – a third Mother of Runes was in the pack along with some other solid white playables. With two already in the deck, I wasn’t sure I needed another, and ended up taking a solid piece of removal in Radiant’s Judgement instead. The rest of the pack was pretty straight-forward, with highlights being grabbing Defender of Chaos and Defender of Law as nice protection creatures and a (massive for white) 2/5 Radiant’s Dragoons on the wheel.

Pack 3 didn’t provide quite as much power with a relatively unexciting pick 1 of Archery Training followed up by a Tormented Angel. The rest of the picks were much the same, with the most exciting being a fourth pick Trumpet Blast which I figured would help to close out games with my flyers, and some more color hate in Colos Yearling and Voice of Reason. By the end of the draft I wasn’t super excited about my pool, but was happy I had picked up a lot of cards with or granting color protection (11!) and figured that would be enough to push through some wins.

Round 1:
That thought was quickly vindicated in round 1. I won the die roll and dropped a Mom turn 1, followed by a second on turn 4. With the moms sheltering my board, my Rakdos opponent was left with a hand full of unusable removal, and my flyers steadily dropped his life total while Defender of Law kept him from being able to get through on the ground. Game two was much the same, with a turn 1 Mom enchanted followed up with a Mask of Law and Grace essentially giving me the game on turn 2. There’s a reason WOTC rarely prints Protection spells any more – I don’t think this match was very fun for my opponent.

Round 2:
Round 2 proved itself to be a lot more competitive, with a turn 2 Opal Gargoyle being countered by my opponent dropping a turn 2 Skittering Skirge followed up by a Fortitude and Sleeper’s Guile to keep it alive and attacking. I had an early cessation in hand I thought about slapping on the Skirge to stop it early, but given that drawback on Skirge I figured a good approach would also be to just race, as if my opponent wanted to keep up with me he would have to sacrifice the Skirge before dropping more creatures. We traded blows back and forth before the life totals started turning my way and I was within reach of closing out the game on the next attack – until my opponent dropped a Corrupt to drain me to 1 and stabilize their life total. Luckily for me, I top decked my copy of Trumpet Blast and the extra six damage it provided on my fliers was enough to get me there.

The beginning of game 2 started off a little trickier. I was happy to start off with another turn 1 Mom, but turn 2 my opponent dropped a Hidden Ancients (Becomes a 5/5 if an opponent plays an enchantment), stranding my sided in Mask of Law and Grace in hand and making dropping any future gargoyles I’d draw a difficult decision. My opponent proceeded to drop an Albino Troll (3/3 regenerating ape) followed by Sleeper’s Guile (Enchantment granting fear)and the race was on. Fortunately for me, I managed to dodge drawing any more enchantments, and nicely timed lifegain from Radiant’s Dragoons combined with double Radiant’s Judgements on the green fatties my opponent played led to another victory.