I’m back to put a great big bow on the Guilds of Ravnica. This time, we’re looking at two of the red based guilds, and putting it all together with the best unaligned Free Agents on the plane.
Disclaimer: Look, I’m just not going to review every single card. I’m just not. I’ll leave that Herculean task to the likes of Conley Woods, Chris Lansdell, and LSV, those that have been driven to insane levels of punnery just to make it through another set review without jumping off a high building at the thought of discovering relevance in another vanilla 5 drop. If you REALLY need me to affirm that [card]Armored Wolf-Rider[/card] is either 1.) the most broken card since Jace started sculpting minds or 2.) not worth its weight in toilet paper (hint: most cards fall somewhere in this spectrum), then consider yourself affirmed. These are the cards that jumped up and violently assaulted my inner-brewer.
Boros:
[card]Blaze Commando[/card]: If it’s tokens you want, just look at the blatant hotness that is [card]Assemble the Legion[/card]. Same mana cost, about 10X as much potential power. I think I would like this guy better had he been a 3/5.
[card]Boros Battleshaper[/card]: I completely dismissed this card until it stomped my face into the dirt and called me a little girl during a limited match. At 7 mana I highly doubt this will see constructed play. BUT, being able to dictate the terms of every single combat is sorta like having the “high ground” during a battle. Remember what happened when Vader tried to take the high ground from Obi Wan?
[card]Legion’s Initiative[/card]: This gets the award for the most confusingly powerful card in the set. Would something like mono-red aggro want this for the +1/+0? Or white weenie for the +0/+1? And that second ability… Old timers like me can remember brewing with a card called [card]Ghostway[/card]. This seems easier to set up for value (though your opponent will get to see it coming). I don’t know what to do with this, but it has my “Johnny Senses” tingling.
[card]Tajic, Blade of the Legion[/card]: I think Tajic is a handful, and will see play in standard in the next year. The Boros champion has one of the most powerful abilities in Magic, and getting Indestructible on a legitimate creature at four mana is extremely intriguing. Slapping a [card]Gift of Orzhova[/card] or [card]Unflinching Courage[/card] on this guy could get out of hand very quickly. This is one to keep an eye on, and I think he may be one of the two best Champions in the Maze.
[card]Warleader’s Helix[/card]: This just feels so damn lazy. It’s like WOTC is saying, “We like [card]Lightning Helix[/card]. We know you like Lightning Helix. But Lightning Helix is just too good. So, here, have Helix’s inbred, morbidly obese brother that likes to pick his nose and fart. Try to contain your excitement.” Erotic illustration aside, this is still good enough to see standard play.
[card]Wear // Tear[/card]: The “King of the Hill” of the set. It’s not flashy, it’s not spectacular, but it will be useful and it will be around forever. Just like the cartoon.
Boros has some exciting and powerful cards, but the guild felt top heavy. Though, given the speed and power of the standard Blitz decks right now, that may be a good thing.
Rakdos:
[card]Breaking // Entering[/card]: I can see Breaking becoming [card]Glimpse the Unthinkable[/card] 5-8 in Modern for people looking to get their Mill on ( a prospect I would get on board with, if it wasn’t for all those pesky Tron decks with Emrakul in the main). Entering is cute, and I’ve seen some people wanting to use the [card]Living End[/card] “engine” to cascade into it for easy/awesome reanimation, but it seems like you would be jumping through way too many hoops for a “combo” that’s too easily disrupted.
[card]Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch[/card]: The Rakdos Champion would look really enticing if it wasn’t for her sexier sisters, [card]Falkenrath Aristocrat[/card] and [card]Hellrider[/card]. Playing Exava over either of these would be wrong. Like, “I think I’ll bet on Will Blondon to win this PTQ Top 8,” level wrong.
[card]Master of Cruelties[/card]: Cute Commander combos aside, this seems like a “I hate lifegain decks” sideboard all-star. I would pay good money to see the game where someone plays this while their opponent is at 1 life and proceeds to draw blanks over multiple turns. A creature that can never kill the opponent by itself is interesting, but too flawed to be a legitimate threat.
[card]Sire of Insanity[/card]: One of the best cards in the set, already making waves in Jund decks. The best “I hate decks that sit around and counter everything and I want them to feel the pain of a thousand paper cuts” card we’ve got in a long time, as combining this with [card]Cavern of Souls[/card] is lights out for a control deck that doesn’t have an instant speed answer in hand. I think we are only beginning to get a grasp of just how good this thing is going to be.
[card]Showstopper[/card]: This card is a fantastic waste of great art and a wonderful name.
Rakdos gets Sire (one of the best cards in the set) and Exava (one to keep an eye on post rotation) and that’s about it. Not much to see here, time to move along.
Free Agents:
[card]Aetherling[/card]: One of the best finishers ever printed. EVER. If you get to a stable board state and play Aetherling, you will win. This guy’s so good it’s almost impossible to beat from an even board state. Well, unless the controller has spent a lifetime sniffing glue or has a heart attack reaching across the table to turn him sideways. If [card]Morphling[/card] is Superman, then this new hotness is the Man of Steel, and I have a feeling all non-Blue Mages will want the entire state of Washington to fall to a volcano before his time in standard is done.
[card]Renounce the Guilds[/card]: The fact that this is a symmetrical effect leads me to believe it was absolutely bonkers in testing. Which means we should be able to construct a deck in a way to make it absolutely bonkers in standard, especially once the single-colored standouts like [card]Restoration Angel[/card] and [card]Thragtusk[/card] rotate.
[card]Blood Scrivener[/card]: I wish we could have just gotten a [card]Dark Confidant[/card] reprint in this set (especially since he never proved himself to be stellar in standard the first time around). Bartleby here isn’t good enough to hold Bob’s junk for him while he pees.
[card]Possibility Storm[/card]: The best “WTF? I can’t wait to go 2-4 at FNM with this!” red card since [card]Warp World[/card]. This is one of those wacky cards that many of us have a genetic predisposition to brewing with, and I fully expect to get trounced by this on occasion in the Tournament Practice room and then going on tilt with a bottle of whiskey while I ponder my poor life decisions.
[card]Skylasher[/card]: This guy put the nail in [card]Delver of Secrets[/card]’ coffin, buried him in concrete, crapped on his grave, then took his wife out for a nice steak dinner.
Sorry, fellow brewers, I don’t have a deck list for you this week (though I am working on a couple of spicy brews), but I do have my top ten list for Dragon’s Maze. After looking at each guild, these are the cards that I think will have the biggest impact on brewing and constructed Magic.
[card]Voice of Resurgence[/card]
[card]Aetherling[/card]
[card]Advent of the Wurm[/card]
[card]Sire of Insanity[/card]
[card]Ral Zarek[/card]
[card]Varolz, the Scar Striped[/card]
[card]Sin Collector[/card]
[card]Turn // Burn[/card]
[card]Deadbridge Chant[/card]
[card]Far // Away[/card]
So, there you have it, the Guilds of Ravnica laid bare before you. I’ve seen lots of people claiming that this set seems to be Voice of Resurgence and a bunch of filler (going as far as to call it “Worldwake 2.0”), but I think there is a lot of value in this set waiting to break loose. I could have easily listed 5-10 more cards, as things like [card]Gaze of Granite[/card], [card]Rend Silent[/card], and [card]Warped Physique[/card] could easily emerge given small metagame shifts. Overall, I was extremely pleased with Dragon’s Maze and can’t wait to come back to Ravnica in 5-10 years.
If you like my suggestions, you can follow me on Twitter: @travishall456. I throw around random observations and deck ideas every day. You can also hear me on the Horde of Notions podcast each week, discussing deck ideas for FNM level events and the PTQ grinders.
Travis Hall is a resident Mana D rogue deck brewer with an unhealthy addiction to Heartless Summoning and Birthing Pod.
