80 pack Magic draft at Gen Con

[KrauserKrauser]

So, there will be a 20th Anniversary Magic draft for winner of one of 8 qualifying tournaments at Gen Con this year.

The description of the the event:

Players draft packs from throughout Magic's 20-year history! Face off with cards from Alpha through Magic 2013. The winner gets a booster pack of every set ever produced!

You must win one of 8 qualifier events throughout the weekend to qualify. 80 different packs from Magic's entire history will be laid out at the start of the event. Players will take turns selecting a pack each until all packs have been taken. These packs will constitute their Sealed Deck pool for the event. After 3 single-elimination rounds, the last remaining player will win a set of 80 packs, each from a different set of Magic going all the way back to the very beginning!

So, every pack in existence (barring Unhinged/Unglued I would assume).

Assuming you keep what you draft, what would the pick order be? 

[xouman]

The most valuables should be Alpha/Beta, but speaking of draft quality they would be really poor most of the time. I have drafted veeeeeeeery little, so I have no idea about which sets would be the best.

[rpf5029]

If you're playing to win, you're probably drafting from 8TH and up. (Less Kamigawa Block, perhaps. )

That said, if you get first two picks, if you don't take Alpha or Beta, you're a fool.  Then something like Unlimited, Arabian, Antiquities.  But P1 and P2 will almost certainly be Alpha and Beta, respectively. 

[PETER FLUGZEUG]

Well, just don't open the packs and build your deck with the rest.

[Wagner]

Well, just don't open the packs and build your deck with the rest.

This seems like an amazing idea. Same with Arabian Night and Antiquities and maybe Legends, the odds of you getting something playable out of those are pretty slim.

Also, I pity the last 2 players who are stuck picking Homeland and Fallen Empires, both sets are pretty weak AND the packs only have 8 cards each.

[vaughnbros]

I think this sounds like one of the funnest things to do and if they ever decided to put something like it on Modo I would be playing it a lot.

As for drafting the packs I would think going for 1 specific type of strategy would be the best route. 
If you want to go multicolor you can pick from both ravnica blocks, invasion block, shards block, and fifth dawn.
If you want to go artifacts you can pick from antiquities, urza block, and both mirrodon blocks.
If you want to go creature types you can pick from onslaught block, lowryn block, kamigawa block and innistrad block.
If you want to go graveyard you can pick from odyssyey block, innistrad block, and ravnica.
I'm sure there's some other builds that you could go for as well.

Also, I pity the last 2 players who are stuck picking Homeland and Fallen Empires, both sets are pretty weak AND the packs only have 8 cards each.

There are some decent draft cards in fallen empires.  The last pick homelands though...

[Wagner]

There are some decent draft cards in fallen empires.  The last pick homelands though...

There are, but it's still a tribal set, meaning a lot of the cards will be dead in all situations (how many other sets play well with Homarids and Dwarves), plus, you get about 6-7 fewer cards than a normal pack.

For fun, I went through the list and checked was is actually a bit playable.

Aeolipile
The 5 storage lands (possibly)
Brassclaw orcs
Derelor
Dwarven Catapult (absolute bomb)
Elvish Hunter (bad tapper dude)
Farrel's Zealot
Feral Thallid
Goblin Flotilla (sideboard card )
Homarid Shaman (sideboard)
Hymn to Tourach
Icatian Javelineers
Mindstab Thrull
Orcish Veteran
Order of Leitbur
Order of the Ebon Hand
Seasinger (sideboard)
Thallid
Thallid Devourer
Thelonite Druid
Thorn Thallid
Vodalian Knights (sideboard)
Zelyon Sword (bad Boneslitter is still decent)

Ok, so that's actually not that bad, but a lot of those are 2/2 for 3 with a minor good ability, technically playable, but still low on the power level.

[bactgudz]

I had the pleasure of playing in this event, lost in the first round, but still had a blast!

I was seated 3rd.  the first guy cracked the beta pack, rare was Roc of Kher Ridges, notables were Dark Ritual and Stone Rain.  First pick was Ritual, then the Roc, and I got Rain, on the wheel i picked up a Sacrifice.  Unlimited pack was next, rare was Fungusaur and the only notables were Dark Ritual and Power Sink.  Ritual was again the first pick and I ended up with the Sink...I actually got the Fungusaur too as it wheeled, people were picking basics over it, lol.

After those two packs, I had my pick of opening Arabian, Antiquities, Legends, P3K, Revised, or Zendikar.  I had conversations with some of my friends the night before about making such a pick, and we had actually come to the conclusion that the best pack to open out of all 6 of the money packs from a playability perspective (you obv wouldn't pass a Beta pack if you had the chance to crack one) is Antiquities.  You have a very reasonable chance of opening a Factory or Strip Mine, can open money, or the following playables:
Primal Clay
Rocket Launcher
Tawnos Coffin
Tetravus
Trike
Urza's Avenger
Wall of Spears
Yotian Soldier
out of a 100 card set
After opening Stone Rain, I was muttering Strip Mine, Strip Mine, Strip Mine to myself as I opened it. I was disheartened to open:
Drafna's Restoration, Tablet of Epityr, Urza's Tower, Dragon Engine, Crumble,Martyrs of Korlis,Crumble, Onulet

I picked Crumble, in retrospect Dragon Engine would probably be a better pick.

The next Pack opened was P3K, notables were Burning of Xinje and Spoils of Victory...I ended up with Zodiac Rats.
Then Legends contained Karakas and trash, I got Syphon Soul.
Arabian: I'm drawing a blank on this pack right now, nothing exciting.

The last two packs we would draft from were revised and Zendikar before moving to snake drafting full packs.  The guy correctly picked to open Zendikar and took Underground Sea...yes I said that correctly, it is not a typo (crowd went crazy); I ended up with a Goblin Shortcutter out of the pack.

Revised was opened last, had a bolt, REB, and not much else.

Then on to whole pack drafting, the 8th seat would pick two and then it came back around so I ended up with 7th pick...I could not believe that saga was left when it came around to me, so I snatched it up (and of course ended up cracking pestilence!).  My next picks were Tempest, Time Spiral, Legions, Stronghold, M14, Mirage, Exodus, The Dark...yes I got all the slivers except Planar Chaos and Future Sight.  Ended up with 4 of them in my deck.

We had to build 60 card decks.  I built a fairly aggressive RB build which I thought was decent.  R1G1 was pretty close, I landed a pestilence, wipe the board with his Grizzled Outcast transform trigger on the stack during my upkeep and drop a Metallic Sliver, say go, with one black open and one card in hand.  He says shock your guy to kill pestilence...I comply and realize my play mistake almost immediately...I should have held up my card and asked "are we still in my main phase?" to at least give him the chance to mess up and say no so that pestilence sticks around for his turn...he drops the 5/1 haste cycling dude on his next turn for the win.  G2 I'm pretty fast and take him down, G3 I mull to 6 and have a hand with 2 land and 4 three drops...don't get there.

So lost pretty quickly, but still an amazing experience.  Cracked an LED which was the 3rd most valuable card opened overall.

[mmcgeach]

wow.  Fantastic tale!   I'm really glad someone from the Vintage community got in on this. 

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!

[nedleeds]

Congrats man! I'm glad you enjoyed the draft. I enjoyed the sheet for about 40 hours until my shops opponent from top 8 simply had to have it hanging over his bed