So I'm at the Torment pre-release, and I go like 0-2-drop-fuck you thanks for playing here's your useless-in-all-formats pre-release card. I decide maybe a little Torment/Torment/Torment drafting would be in order. By this time I've clued in that Black is by far the best color in the set. But I don't want to draft Black, of course. That would be too fucking easy. No, I have play Mr. Clever Metagamer and draft White, which is about as smart as Rhett Butler joining the Southern army just as the Civil War was winding down and Grant was really starting to kick Confederate ass on a regular basis. I get a couple Stern Judges, which I mistakenly think will be good at a table full of people playing Swamps (I was later introduced to Crippling Fatigue, which basically bends the Judge over a table and reams it, then comes back to do the same thing to the next one, like some kind of Johnie Cochran gone completely insane). Anyway, it's about third pick of the first pack, and there's one White card in it. I've never seen it before, so I read it over carefully.

Name: Aven Trooper. Casting Cost: 3W. So far, so good. Hey, look, it's got Flying! Another 2/2 White flyer with some kind of power, no doubt. Power: 1. Well, that's pretty weak, but it probably means its ass is fucking huge. White gets massive toughness practically for free. Toughness: 1. Huh, guess not. A 1/1 Flyer for 3W. Not looking so strong after all. But wait a minute! It's got a special ability: 2W, discard a card: Aven Trooper gets +1/+2 until end of turn. How fucking sweet is that! For 6 more mana and two more cards I can have a post-Threshold Mystic Zealot for the rest of the turn. Oh, wait, I just remembered I'm not a complete tool. What a useless son of a bitch. Maybe it's got really great flavor text, though. I mean flavor text so fucking awesome you'll play four of them in Constructed just so you can read it out loud when you cast him, and even if you lose every damned game the other people in the tournament will think you're a cool guy for being so literary.

"The very skies seethe with the aven's hatred for the Cabal". Strike twelve. So the skies are seething with Aven Troopers, are they? Man, I'll bet the Cabal is just fucking terrified. That must be why the Patriarch wears dark robes, so nobody can see when he just craps himself in absolute fear over the thought of a couple dozen Aven Troopers coming after him. I'll bet the Childhood Horrors just sit around praying they'll have Threshold and can't block that bad boy. That must be why Kirtar and Teroh are so eager to sacrifice themselves out of the game, they're so damn sick of leading this squad of hopeless retards. Hey, Aven Trooper, ever heard of Aether Burst? For you it's got special text that says "Watch your opponent discard a couple cards for no fucking reason, then laugh at him when he can't even put his lame ass creature back out since he spent six mana already".

Of course, it being a Torment draft and all, Aven Trooper was about the best White card I saw for the next five packs. Thanks a lot there, R&D. Real cute idea. "Hey, White always sucks in Limited anyway since it doesn't have any removal, let's just take away any pretense of it being playable!" I'm probably just bitter, though, because some twelve-year-old clocked me in the first round of the draft despite my savage tech of Aven Trooper plus Spirit Flare. Little bastard puts out a Balshan Collaborator, drops Cabal Fucking Coffers, and proceeds to ream me for about a million damage in one turn. The one time I get Major Teroh out he surveys all the Aven Troopers in my deck, glances at his watch, and then looks positively relieved when a Faceless Butcher sends his ass off to Swords to Plowshares Alley. Stupid fucking bird men. I went out and ate a twenty piece chicken McNugget meal after that and imagined that every one of those little lumps of bird meat was ripped out of an Aven Trooper.