There are five guilds in Magic the Gathering's latest expansion, Return to
Ravnica: Azorius (white and blue), Izzet (blue and red), Rakdos (red and
black), Golgari (black and green), and Selesnya (green and white). Previous expansion prereleases (and most
especially Core Set prereleases) encourage the combination of allied colors
(white-blue, blue-black, black-red, red-green, or green-white) and discourage
the combination of enemy colors and more than two colors. A word of caution: playing more than 2 colors
in a prerelease is not for the beginner because it takes quite a skill to play
3 colors with only 17 to 18 lands available in a 40-card deck. Fortunately in Return to Ravnica, such a
decision is moot with the game designers putting in the above 5 guilds in the
expansion.
GatheringMagic.com site recently
featured an article on how to play and enjoy the prerelease. Those are only the basics in building a
sealed deck. What was left out was the
decision on choosing which of the five guilds to play.
Choosing which guild is
important because it has to be known before the tournament starts. Return to Ravnica has added a few new twists
to the prerelease play. Only 5 regular
booster packs will be provided with the 6th booster pack belonging
to the chosen guild. Also, there are 5
prerelease foil cards and the player will get a prerelease card based on what
guild was chosen.
Here’s a quick rundown based on
previous experiences. As always, it is
worth noting that threats (with evasion) and a little bit of removal are always
better than lots of removal and little bit of threats. All possible threats can be dealt with but
not all threats can be removed. A threat
can be matched by another threat from an opponent resulting in a
stalemate. Thus, threats with evasion
are very important in Sealed Deck play.
All colors have the capability
of providing threats. The biggest ones
can be commonly found in green (always the color of creatures). Common evasion ability found in green is trample,
which can be a key ability as long as the creature stays 1 point toughness
ahead of opponent’s creatures. In no
particular order of importance:
·
White has flying, first strike,
and vigilance abilities. Both flying and
first strike may appear in minimal dosage among creatures. Meanwhile, vigilance, if it would be
considered as an evasion ability, is almost exclusively a white ability.
·
Blue has flying, hexproof, and
being unblockable. Like in white, flying
appears in minimal dosage. Hexproof can
be treated almost similarly to vigilance.
An unblockable blue creature can be a bomb in limited environment as
long as it has more than just 1 point of power.
·
Black has deathtouch. What black lacks in creature evasion is
relegated by creature removal. Black
also gets regeneration in minimal dosage.
·
Red has first strike. Like black, it almost usually has a suite of
creature removals by way of damage dealing.
Red also has haste creatures (though this can’t be treated as creature
evasion).
·
As mentioned already, green has
trample. Green also gets a bit of
regeneration, hexproof, or deathtouch here and there.
If green is more likely to get more creatures, it doesn’t get much
love in terms of creature removal. Black
and red are more likely to get the brunt of creature removal. White gets enchantments as its way of
creature removal (a la Pacifism type of enchantments) and a few damage here and
there to attacking or blocking creatures.
Blue gets bounce and counter magic.
Based on the above assumptions, I wouldn’t be surprised that most
players would choose Rakdos (black-red) simply because of the availability of
removal spells. I also wouldn’t be
surprised that Selesnya (green-white) would be in the same debate (green-white
is an easy color to choose because of the availability of large creatures in
both colors). A middle ground between
Selesnya and Rakdos would be the Golgari guild (black-green): removal from
black and beasts from green. My personal
opinion is choosing Azorius (white-blue).
The availability of flying creatures and a few removal here and there is
enough to sway me to that guild.
