My favorite card is difficult to decide.
Part of me wants to say thoughtseize, because it's the best pre-removal in the game. Get rid of anything, make that opponent suffer from their poor mulliganing decision. But honestly, I don't think it's thoughtseize, I don't think thoughtseize is even my favorite spell. I think I like Abrupt Decay more.
My favorite creature, though, is either Snapcaster or deathrite shaman. They're both so very powerful and give you the ability to do very unique and interesting things. Both bring a lot to the game.
My favorite land is either the unhinged foil swamp, the guru mountain, or this ice age island I used to proxy a goblin guide on. I drew a little guy and a boat on the island.
But, I honestly have to my favorite card is Mindsculptor. Like the other cards I've named here, this one is clearly very powerful, I don't think I need to discuss what is powerful about it. It's power is one of it's big draws to me, but there's more to it than that. I quit magic around the time it was banned in standard, partly because of my play group, partly because of being tired of playing caw-go mirrors. When I got back into magic it wasn't long before Jace was back to his old price tag. When my friend and I were able to trade for our first Jace of our new collection, it brought up a feeling for me. It was like coming home. It was like seeing an old friend again after a very long time. JTMS is my favorite card, because of it's power, but also because it has sentimental feelings to me, it carries a nostalgia that even cards from my childhood don't. Sure, I learned to respect the Fires of Yavimaya, I know the potency of an armadillo's cloak, or even the damage possible from a well timed goblin grenade, but they're nothing like the fear of being unable to answer a Mindsculptor.
My favorite card is Jace, The Mind Sculptor and I don't feel bad about it in the least.
You and your friends will play lots of events and get a lot of cards from these events, and eventually you'll be able to have enough cards to trade people for cards that you can use to each build a'net deck' once rotation hits.
And since you'd have played so many drafts at that point you'll have better skills than you will if you just try to jump into standard now.
This weekend there's the pre-release. Journey into Nyx is coming out, and the prerelease is the sealed format.
You'll get 2 packs of Theros, 2 packs of Born of the Gods, and 2 packs of Journey into Nyx and you use them to make a deck. Land will be provided. Land is always provided. I highly, highly, highly recommend playing sealed. For new players it's the best format to play because it puts you on equal footing with the other players and because it has the consolation prize of opening packs.
I recommend you avoid 're-drafts' and that you call and ask about prize before going to a suspiciously cheap draft.
Also, get a decent binder.
Machines aren't random, the fact is they already have a randomized distribution pattern, which they change more than once in the continuous run of each set's printing. This is exactly why there can be a box map, because machines aren't ever truly random. Even a random number generator doesn't ever truly work randomly.
Sure, if wizards wanted to hire someone to stand at the end of each assembly like and move packs around in boxes, then sure, they could do that.
But how long does it take for each box to get it's packs and come spewing down the line? Definitely less than a minute. Probably only a couple of seconds. So now you've got multiple people on each assembly line busting their ass, so you get them another person so they aren't being over worked. So pretty quickly this becomes a major cost on wizards part.
And, remember, what wizards spends is coorilated to how much they charge us. And the cost of cards is coorilated to the amount opened and the demand for that card.
How much would Voice have spiked at if a pack of DGM cost $7?
Why? Because they've killed blue's real identity.
'Snow duals' and 'legendary duals' violate the spirit of the reserved list according to wizards. The 2010 commander products didn't contain them but almost did because in 2010 they apologized for including a reserved listed card in a FTV product.
While a non reserved list legacy masters sounds like a good idea in theory, it would only cause reserved list cards to rise in price dramatically while also most likely selling poorly from Wizards' standpoint.