Eternal Masters is a supplementary product for Magic: The Gathering that has the intended purpose of allowing Wizards of the Coast to print cards that people need in so-called “eternal” formats that stretch all the way back to the beginning of the game. These formats are notoriously difficult to break into, and Eternal Masters hopefully will allow people to get closer to playing the Vintage or Legacy decks of their dreams.
However, since Eternal Masters is coming in booster packs like any other set, you can draft with it. I cannot stress how fun opening cards and playing with them immediately is, and the fact that Eternal Masters is draftable gets me infinitely excited. I want to play with weird, 20-year-old combos. I want to amass a critical number of elves, or reanimate things from the dead, and I want to do it in the unbalanced and weird way that only a long-lived game like Magic can provide.
With that in mind, I want to share with you a preview card from Eternal Masters that I am unbelievably jazzed up to play with: Wee Dragonauts.
I began playing Magic around the time that Wee Dragonauts was printed, and there’s some real beautiful joy in getting this muscular flying creature onto the board and then playing card draw, burn spells, or literally anything else to push your opponent into “deal with this card or lose” territory. While Dragonaut’s ability has become more regularized in the Prowess mechanic, both Dragonauts and Kiln Fiend make me nostalgic for a time when red and blue had a whole lot of value for just a little commitment.
There is nothing I want more in life than to draft this card and a bunch of other goofy commons and uncommons to overwhelm everyone (even myself) with the mystery of why these tiny dragonauts aren’t dying from electricity writhing through their bodies.
You might be wondering what kind of deck Wee Dragonauts might go into. Surely it can make some kind of deck with burn, Counterspell, Prodigal Sorcerer, and whatever other great blue cards get spoiled between now and release, but is this the card that’s going to win the game for you?
What if I told you that there was a giant elemental creature that flew through the sky? What if I told you that it was part octopus, part elephant, and all trouble? What if I told you that you could get two of those big buddies to help you close out games?
Call the Skybreaker, much like Wee Dragonauts, is a card you want to grab and play with. I’m legit excited about opening this card and flying my way to victory with red and blue value spells that protect my pumpable or beefy creatures.
Based on what has been spoiled so far, I have the feeling that Eternal Masters is going to be both an incredibly powerful limited format and one that is legitimately a lot of fun. While I know that many people are going to be digging into the set for the value of the cards inside, what Wee Dragonauts and Call the Skybreaker suggest to me is that Wizards development really though a significant amount about what kinds of archetypes might be the most fun to play with in a set that could have an incredibly deep pool of cards. They chose things that I want to play with, and just as importantly, they chose cards that I’m excited to throw into a Commander deck to have fun with my friends.
All images are © Wizards of the Coast LLC. Images used with permission.
Cameron Kunzelman tweets at @ckunzelman and writes about games at thiscageisworms.com. His latest game, Epanalepsis, was released on May 21. It’s available on Steam.