Return to Ravnica prerelease

I attended Return to Ravnica prerelease event at Neutral Grounds Cebu at JY Mall, Lahug, Cebu City.  60 players registered for the said event.

As indicated in previous posts, I decided to play Golgari guild instead of the more favored Azorius guild.

First of, I'm highly satisfied with WotC's effort with their prerelease kits.  The sticker and the 20-sided die is an improvement over previous prereleases (or rather, before Avacyn Restored).  More freebies would attract more players and having 60 in an event like this is huge.

I first opened the guild booster pack and got a nice Jarad out of it.  I guess it all went downhill from there.  I don't think I built the optimal Golgari guild deck.  I was lacking creatures to be called a swarm and there weren't much creature kill to go around.  I guess the card pool was not cooperating (though I never tried to check what color combination I could have gone with if ever I didn't go green-black).  I did splash white because of Collective Blessing (the only white-x card in the deck).

Return to Ravnica sealed seems like a slow format.  The best way to go is to get to the bombs for the win.

I went 2-2 which isn't too bad.

Furthermore, I would say that Golgari is not really the guild for me.

I look forward to Gatecrash and this time I aim to choose the best guild.

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.

Which of the Five Guilds to Play in Return to Ravnica prerelease

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 6^th 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.