Which of the Five Guilds to Play in the Return to Ravnica Prerelease (part 3)?

Part 1 and Part 2 are right below.

Last criteria is the prerelease card.  All five cards are certified bombs.  Via ranking all five prerelease cards, I’m not so sold on the Selesnya prerelease card (a land).  In this criteria, it is probably the worst of the 5.  The Azorius prerelease card is a little bit on the expensive side but considering the guild’s Detain ability, it is still a viable plan.  The Izzet prerelease card is a pure bomb and the added ability is just a plus.  Golgari and Rakdos both have prerelease cards that might be more difficult to deal with given the right situation.

Based on the above assumptions, I wouldn’t go for Selesnya.  Golgari and Rakdos come out on top.  To add, for sheer Standard playability of the prerelease card, Izzet is a viable option as a guild of choice.

So, in conclusion, which is REALLY the better guild to choose?  Azorius is a wonderful choice for winnability.

In the end, any guild of your choosing (as long as it’s any of the five) is good enough as long as you know how to play the cards out.  Play towards the strength of each guild and hopefully the card pool will provide for enough firepower to be able to follow the game plan.  The 14 or 15 cards in the guild boosters should help.

To add, I’ll be playing Golgari.  My decision stems from the talk that the prerelease card is a possible playable Standard card and that the guild colors also provide access to Vraska the Unseen (a new planeswalker) – which are all different reasons not cited in this post.  Like I said, any guild of your choosing is good enough.  And if you know how to build your Sealed deck, it really shouldn’t matter.  You should be able to play any of the five guilds without having to choose which is better.

Have fun in the prerelease!

Which of the five guilds to play in Return to Ravnica prerelease? (part 2)

(Part 1 of my post is right below.)

Here is a more in-depth look at the guild selection situation.  This time, there are only two criteria left to ponder upon: guild abilities and the prerelease foil card.

Of the five guilds, Rakdos has the worst ability.  Unleash is a creature specific ability.  Reflective upon the guild, the Unleash ability is an “attack or die trying” type of ability.  For the +1/+1 counter, the drawback being the inability of the creature to block.  Some twists can be added though.  Several creatures might have additional abilities depending on whether it has a +1/+1 counter or not.

I’m not yet convinced over Izzet’s Overload ability as a convincing reason as since Overload is just the opposite of Unleash.  Overload is a sorcery or instant spell specific ability, which unfortunately would amount to an average of 7 cards in a 40-card Sealed deck.

The 3 other guilds’ abilities are all easily playable.  Selesnya’s Populate ability should easily be enhanced by the guild’s ability to create token creatures but it is still a scary proposition (what if there are no token creatures to populate?).  Golgari’s Scavenge ability is an additional available growth for creatures which happen to use lots of in a creature-centric format.  Azorius’ Detain ability is just what a control player would want to have.

 Based on the above assumptions, Golgari and Azorius somehow come up on top.

Part 3 to follow.