Having a Plan in Guilds of Ravnica Limited

Guilds of Ravnica is a special format. Some people have approached me asking about how to draft this set, being a little lost with their draft decisions. We are coming out of Core 19 and Dominaria where draft picks are usually decided between two cards in the same color or two similar cards in different colors. This was not very difficult. With a certain pick order in mind, those decisions usually end up obvious and even if the pick is somewhat difficult, it rarely made a huge difference in the end result. Worst case scenario, your deck plays a slightly worse card, but your deck's overall power level stays the same. Picking one card also has very little impact on the ongoing picks. This is not true for Guilds of Ravnica.

What I find most fascinating about Guild of Ravnica draft picks is that the first pick is rarely the most difficult. This goes in line with people knowing their power rankings from drafting themselves or reading them off the internet. The real problem begins when the picks after don't align with the first pick. Usually you have a very good card in totally different colors and some weaker cards in the same color.

For example, we start the draft with [Etrata, The Silencer] and the next booster has a , a , and a - what is the pick?

Does There Have to be a Best Card?

Technically, yes, because that's how choices work, in hindsight at least. In Magic, we are accustomed to the equation being quite simple - this card makes my deck X% stronger and this is better than the other card, which makes it only Y% stronger. The picks from this example, however, lead to significantly different decks. There is no clear answer because we can't possibly understand the indescribably large number of outcomes in the upcoming boosters, where we only win in one.

We can, however, say that all those picks very likely end up on a scale between winning 45% and 55% of our matches. What makes those cards a good pick is not the immediate effect on the deck (because, in this case, Tajic would make the deck much worse), it's the total outcome. And this depends on your experience and expectations. I would say Crackling Drake and Tajic are very close and Artful Takedown is a bit behind, but experience and expectation can make all three cards a defendable pick.

How to Argue?

If you have drafted this set with friends together, you'll probably have seen a lot of arguing in the first booster, much more so than in previous sets. Quite often, it comes down to cards that will likely end up in the deck against a card that might end up in the deck and/or a card, that goes in a completely different direction. While all three options are defensible, it's not about how you defend it, but why the card is better.

A long time ago at PT Dark Ascension, I watched a group of German players from a big German city. These players were arguing about a draft pick that roughly went like this:

Person A: "What do you take? Card A or Card B?"

Person B: "Card A is clearly better than card B!"

Person C: "Are you completely insane, there is no way that Card B is not the best card."

Person B: "Card A is so much better, it is not even close!"

Person D: "Of Course Card B, why are we wasting our time here?"

I mean, you get the point. This went on for about one minute, with not one person explaining why any of the cards is actually better. Nobody in this group learned anything in that moment, except for me. I learned, that the loudest person won the argument. So how do we express something so complicated and fuzzy, so everybody can agree on the same pick?

Well, most of the time, we can't. But we can try to express the reasons we see one card as "best" and why others are worse. Let's look at the following statements:

1. "I would take Tajic, because I have had good experience with Boros and being in the open guild is more valuable than setting into one guild early."
2. "I would take Crackling Drake because we can just pick up a few Guildgates later to splash Emara and I've found 4 toughness and flying to be very relevant in this format."
3. "I would take Artful Takedown because it fits with Etrata and we give decent signals to our left neighbor. Dimir is a strong guild that doesn't need other colors most of the time."

All of these are reasonable. I'd be interested in continuing this draft from any of these picks. This is why multicolor formats are that much more complicated because you have to experience those situations so many times to get a good feeling for which picks lead to which outcomes. Picking Tajic might be wrong for some people because they don't really have a good feeling what Boros needs and they end up prioritizing the wrong cards later on.

Let's say, as a given, that Tajic is the best pick and this leads to the best deck if all choices are made correctly. If we don't know what those later choices are, we might end up with a significantly worse deck and we should have picked Artful Takedown instead. But, given that Tajic is the "correct" choice, picking Artful Takedown will never lead to a point where we get to the best deck, period. While these choices are all very close decisions, understanding why those different paths lead to good decks is key to understanding the format as a whole.

Let's talk about the guilds

"Great stuff, Toffel. Could you please tell us which guild is best for Draft!"

Of course! All of them.

Honestly, after a lot of drafts, I can honestly say that every guild has about the same win percentage, with Golgari being very slightly behind the rest. That being said, I've played Golgari the least and there might be a decent plan for it that I haven't seen yet. Let's have a look at the guilds in my perceived (very close) power ranking and what I look for when I draft them. All the added pictures are 3-0 draft decks in a Magic Online competitive League.

Izzet

Izzet kind of allows you to go two different directions. They can either be pretty aggressive through and or rather controlling with and more expensive cards. The single most important card is . Sometimes it gets a bit complicated with balancing your deck for cards that need spells, like , , or , so don't feel bad prioritizing cards like to fuel those cards.

Dimir

Well, everybody loves Dimir. It is quite overdrafted right now, so I don't fancy it that much, but it is very strong when it comes together. Surveil is amazing at keeping your draw steps powerful. The deck usually just prioritizes the strongest cards, because Dimir has the strongest removal and overall best creatures with flying. is highly underrated as it is a decent creature that works very well with jumpstart and undergrowth. If you haven't really focused on the agent, try to include him in your Dimir decks.

Selesnya

Any green guild can splash easily. and are very reliable and it's necessary to get some removal in black or red. The key in Selesnya is to play a low curve with many one and two drops to convoke your important creatures as early as possible. is the single most important card to obtain. If you get access to one or even two copies of [Flower/Flourish], you can basically play only cheap creatures, token producers and convoke creatures.

Boros

I find Boros rather complicated to draft, but the more I draft it, the more it comes down to pick the cheapest creatures recklessly. You can basically fill you deck with one-drops, two-drops, and . is an unbelievable and should be considered in pick 2 - 4. After all, the guild should almost always play a mere 16 or even 15 lands, as your curve is actually that low.

Golgari

Often, rightfully, considered the weakest guild, mainly because it misses the enablers for undergrowth. At first Golgari didn't work for me at all, mainly because I couldn't get multiple copies of , but since then I started to play multiple copies of and [Hire Poisoner] in my decks and it went much, much better. I am testing this right now and I can see Golgari moving to second or even first position, because it is usually that underdrafted.

Conclusion

Guilds of Ravnica limited is very much alive and far from solved. I can see any of the guilds being number one. There are so many different approaches to the guilds that we can learn many, many things from so many different players.

As I said, your main reason shouldn't be: "what is the best color/guild," but rather, "Why does this work (or not work) for me/them"? I am pretty sure that Whisper Agent is a key card in this format and I don't think a lot of people share this thought. The way black needs access to cards in our graveyard, specifically creatures, makes Whisper Agent a very neat option. Worst case, it blocks and adds one creature to the graveyard while you're drawing a card you actually want to draw.

What are your favorite cards and guilds? Let me know in the comments below and why you think so.

Thanks for reading.

Toffel

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily Cardmarket.