Well everybody after long last I bring to you my first post on Magic the Gather. However instead of talking about Core Set 2013 I'm going to talk about the Return to Ravnica set coming out TODAY October 5th. So this post will serve as a jump in point for what new things you can expect at the new FNM standard this weekend, but how can I talk about a set that has just come out you ask? Well this past weekend was prerelease weekend for RtR, and of course I took part. As a forewarning this post will not contain pictures of the full product and will be generic in nature while I describe the set I played with, so for a full review of the stuff you get wait for the video review that will be put out sometime this week (I'll put the link here when the video goes up). Now let's get on with the post.
Return to Ravnica is a set that brings back and updates cards from the original Ravnica set. The basics of the lore is that the plane of Ravnica is controlled by 10 guilds, each of which being comprised of two mana colors, vying for power and control. These 10 guilds are the Azorius Senate, Orzhov Syndicate, House Dimir, Izzit League, Rakdos Cult, Golgari Swarm, Gruul Clans, Boros Legion, Selesnya Conclave, and the Simic Combine. In depth looks at the individual lore to the guilds can be found
here. For the purpose of this post however we will only be covering the five guilds in Return to Ravnica, the other five coming out in the next set called Gatecrash. The five guilds in RtR are Azorius, Izzit, Rakdos, Golgari, and Selesnya.
So for a brief run down of the five guilds....... Azorius are the "ruling" government in Ravnica and are comprised of white/blue lawkeepers and things of the sort and work with the Detain mechanic which taps an opponents creature till your next turn. Izzet are the red/blue scientist and inventors of Ravnica and use a mechanic called overload where for an additional mana cost you can turn a card from targeting a single card to targeting multiple cards. Rakdos (the one I picked for prerelease) are the black/red murderous and destructive creatures that use a mechanic called unleashed so creatures enter the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter in exchange for the ability to block. Golgari are the black/green necromancers and use the mechanic scavenge where you pay a mana cost to exile a creature from your graveyard and give a creature +1/+1 counters equal to the exiled creatures power. And finally Selesnya are white/green druids and centaurs who use populate to give them extra token creatures that are copies of what they have on the field. Once you pick a guild for the prerelease you get a new thing to the prerelease scene called Guild Packs
So once you pick your guild you get one of the guild packs, and everything inside is useable including the promo (unlike past prereleases). Inside the packs you get a guild themed booster with 15 guild specific cards, five boosters, a guild colored life counter, an achievement card (which does nothing), a letter from your guild, and a guild logo sticker. So playing Rakdos like I did is about aggro with a little control with discard effects. Rakdos was a pretty strong force in my experience at the prerelease. I beat the Golgari players I played, however at prerelease the winning decks were Selesnya. Everything that played with the deck was pretty balanced and served as a great burn. For my deck Hellhole Flailer's were pretty much a big kill, being a three cost 3/2 you can unleash them to make them 4/3. Then next turn you pay four mana and sac it dealing damage equal to it's power to target player. Another good deck type, that while wasn't super powerfull to win was able to pull of a couple victories was Azorius. One of my friends who went with me played Azorius and he went crazy with detention and could tap creatures whenever he wanted and just truck opponents. All in all this set is going to be very interesting and I'm wonder how this set is going to affect standard FNMs and even the Hartford open coming up. Will RtR make up good chunks of decks or will Innistrad block control the circuit for awhile? I'm excited to see what happens and I hope you guys are as well.
Zack
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