Locations
Hey there! During the last two weeks, I talked quite a lot about Return to Ravnica in Constructed, so I thought it would be nice to take a break from that for a while. The original Ravnica: City of Guilds was an absolutely awesome Limited format, filled with card advantage and slow control decks. So . . . just the kind of Limited I like!
This time around, I’m hoping there will be more options available so that you can either go very aggressive or utterly controlling. This week, I’ll be taking a look at each guild and listing the top cards for Limited. I was originally planning on doing top five commons per color and then top five cards by guild, but then I realized there are only fifteen commons per color. I decided to just focus on the guilds, as it seems that you really want to be drafting at least one of the guilds to have access to the awesome gold cards. I’ve chosen to only include the hybrid cards that are exactly the two colors of the guild for simplicity’s sake.
Azorius
I can’t say I am very excited by the Azorius commons. The multicolored cards are all pretty poor, with the exception of Hussar Patrol. I imagine the best archetype would be some sort of midrange flyers deck, an archetype that is good in about every Limited format in existence.
Trostani's Judgment is not nearly as good in Azorius as it is in Selesnya, but it is still a good removal spell that gets rid of any bombs your opponent might have. You never know, maybe you’ll be able to make a token every once in a while. Hussar Patrol offers up a potential free card if you can surprise your opponent with it in combat, and Sunspire Griffin is just a solid creature. I ranked Vassal Soul above the other remaining flyers here mainly because of the mana cost. It’s nice to have cards in your deck that help with mana screw, and the fact that you can always play Vassal Soul with any three lands is quite good. Avenging Arrow makes the Top 5, but barely, as it is quite far from being an actually good removal spell.
Izzet
The multicolor cards are again quite lackluster, with the exception of Pursuit of Flight. While not a multicolored card in the traditional sense, it becomes a whole lot better when you can afford to make the enchanted creature Jump. I feel there is potential for an aggressive U/R deck featuring unleash creatures and flyers, but I suppose there is also room for a slower and more controlling U/R deck with all the defenders running around.
Runewing gets the nod over Tower Drake and Vassal Soul mainly because I assume a lot of trading will be done in this format, and pulling ahead there can be huge. Splatter Thug seems to be a really solid creature, as it plays decently on defense and very well on offense, especially with all the instant-speed tricks available to Izzet. I already covered the removal spells earlier, but it is worth noting that Annihilating Fire is even better in this format than in typical Limited formats, since exiling the creature is quite relevant when playing against Golgari.
Rakdos
I feel quite certain about the top two cards, but I’m not that sure about Explosive Impact. It’s a fine card, as discussed earlier, but if you are an aggressive deck, I feel that you’d rather have one of the good 3-drops. As there are three pieces of premium removal available, I think you can afford to pass up on the mediocre removal to pick up some solid creatures. This is a thing that naturally changes depending on previous picks. If you have a lot of creatures and are light on removal, you’ll want to pick up that Explosive Impact and ship those 3-drops.
I like the fact that Rakdos has the potential to be a very aggressive deck, but it does seem that all the x/4 defenders in the format hamper the strategy. When most of the creatures you want to play in the early game have 3 power, something like Doorkeeper or Lobber Crew can really ruin your day. You probably need to kill the defender, usually costing you a full turn that could be used to play another threat. Either that or you have to accept the fact that you are attacking for 3 less damage for several turns.
Golgari
Golgari feels much deeper than, for example, Azorius, and there are a lot of solid cards that just didn’t quite squeak into the Top 5. It’s also worth noting that I’ve ranked cards based on the fact that you are playing only two colors. If you are looking to play three or more colors, the 2-mana fixers mentioned earlier rise a lot in value, and you should be looking at taking them very highly. One thing that it worse than in the original Ravnica block is that the fixing creatures have worse stats, which is a bit of a shame. Civic Wayfinder was awesome because you could trade it for your opponent’s creatures, but Gatecreeper Vine won’t be doing a whole lot of trading.
Selesnya
I might be really overvaluing Centaur's Herald, so feel free to diss me in the comments section. As mentioned in the previous section, I think putting that first large token out there is really important, and Centaur's Herald is the best way to do it quickly. Centaur Healer and Korozda Monitor feel quite equal, and I think the life and the 1-mana difference in casting is roughly equivalent to the scavenge ability. Trostani's Judgment is actually a really good card here, and the fact that it is an instant helps you generate potential two-for-ones in combat.
This is one of the decks for which I feel that the uncommons and rares influence the pick order greatly. If you have ways to make large tokens in the early turns, such as Selesnya Charm or Call of the Conclave, the various populate cards rise quite rapidly in the pick order.
Prerelease Primer
Next week, I’ll try to cover some of the things I learned at the prerelease while also delving deeper into what the whole Return to Ravnica format looks like for Limited. As always, feel free to contact me either through Twitter or the comments section, as I always like to hear what you think.
Thanks for reading and best of luck at your local prerelease,
Max
@thebloom_ on Twitter
Maxx on Magic Online
You can find my music on: http://soundcloud.com/bloomlive
