Rakdos was easily the best guild for actually winning.
Unleash is ridiculously strong, especially if you luck into a Cackler turn 1..oh and I had to see it in person to confirm how OP Mizzium Mortars/Cyclonic Rift are when overloaded. They turned a winning game into an complete and utter blowout.
I once farted during the final match for prizes at an FNM. It was a tense moment, everything was quiet, control vs control, I was about to mana leak, thought about it.. and farted. Then mana leaked.
I think people are overrating Detain. Azorius is basically skies and has little removal. IMO it's a one-trick pony, unless you have one of the expensive critters or Martial Law.
Rakdos however kicked my teeth in. Every. Single. Game.
Selesnya is good if you can make the tokens, otherwise populate is useless. I saw a lot of players struggling to get a decent token....
Izzet was just bizarre and felt unnatural.
Golgari seems solid if uninteresting. I had my most even matchups playing against golgari as Azorius.
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I think people are overrating Detain. Azorius is basically skies and has little removal. IMO it's a one-trick pony, unless you have one of the expensive critters or Martial Law.
Rakdos however kicked my teeth in. Every. Single. Game.
Selesnya is good if you can make the tokens, otherwise populate is useless. I saw a lot of players struggling to get a decent token....
Izzet was just bizarre and felt unnatural.
Golgari seems solid if uninteresting. I had my most even matchups playing against golgari as Azorius.
I would say people are overrating Azorius, not detain. Detain is good. Thinking about it some more, I think Rakdos was the overall best, and I think it'll be a pretty dominant guild for Limited, if not constructed.
I played Azorious today but I placed dead last in the whole tournament. I guess the tempo mindset just doesn't match my playstyle. That, and I got nothing useful in my packs. So needless to say, my morale at the moment is pretty crushed.
The LGS I go to had 6 total flights including Friday night midnight pre-release, all limited to 50 players, 10 per guild. All flights were filled evenly. The owner kept track of which guilds did better. (The owner didnt look at the decks that a certain player played with in the cards they received for their guild, and I saw many playing totally out of their guild colors in some cases, including some playing 5 colors.) A side note, the LGS runs pre-releases of 4 rounds paying out for 4-0, 3-0-1, and 3-1. The stats showed the Radkos guilds card pools were in the prize 34.2% and was the leader. Izzet was 23.1% and was by far the worst.
It seemed like the top decks at my store were all Rakdos and Golgari. I played Rakdos and went 3-1. The one match I lost was due to 2 games of my Golgari opponent scavaging onto the lifelink flier, and even then I only lost because I made a play error on the last turn. Every game I won, I completely murdered my opponents. The commons and uncommons in my pool were just so strong that I cut Jace and Utvara Hellkite, despite having more than enough blue/fixing to splash, and the only rare I was playing was Carnival Hellsteed.
Speaking of which, Carnival Hellsteed hits like a truck and doesn't afraid of any creature in the set. He's even resistant to a ton of the removal spells too, since his toughness is so high. The Golgari decks seemed to be dominating by scavaging onto the 1/1 lifelink flier, and riding that to victory. I saw that in quite a few games, and not just the ones I lost.
As for why Rakdos is so strong, you're in the 2 colors of removal, and with unleash, your creatures are just way more efficient in limited. You also get the option of splashing into Golgari for the extremely strong scavange mechanic. Also, Stab Wound and Guttersnipe both seemed crazy-powerful in limited.
Just came from the finals of the last flight and we were both azorious. We both had: 2x of that 2/2 flying spirit. 1 detention sphere, 2 arresters, and 1 hussar patrol. My detention spheres would often hit my own guys lol. He had palisade giant (soooooo good) and I had martial law. He had two lyev skyknights and I had 2 charms. He narrowly beat me but we split the packs beforehand. I would have expected to see more selesnya in this final flight, but they were all gone haha.
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Went 3-1 running rakdos with myself and another rakdos playing for 1st place. I went RBu as my splash got me Cyclonic Rift and Hypersonic Dragon. The 2 and 3 drops in rakdos were outstanding and the unleash was a HOUSE! In the end it came down to quality of removal...rift vs Mizzium Mortars overloaded and my board is whipped.
Azorius tricks were usually short lived and with unleashed the clock was still on my side. I played against 2 Selesnya token poppers....rift ruins their day.
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Two flights of 30+ people each tonight - I picked Selesnya for the first flight, splashed blue for some detain goodness, and with only a Hallowed Fountain, Temple Garden and Trostani as color viable rares for the deck I went 4-0 with only one or two tight squeezes, both of which at the hands of Azorius splashing red. Overall, Azorius and Selesnya were the hands down most consistent, Rakdos was just pure nuts if you pulled a few good cards to go with it (Desecration Demon just walked all over my advantage in a few games) but nothing too frightening without a decent pool. Golgari and Izzet needed hard splashing to stand a good chance, though Izzet needed far more.
Azorius was pretty good imo. Those colors are very strong in removal for late game (Avenging Arrow, Trostani Judgement, Cancel, Paralyzing Grasp all in common). And as expected they excell in flying creatures.
I splashed Red for the haste land aura and Dynacharge for aerial alpha strikes. 3-1 here.
I think Azorius, Selesnya and Rakdos are equally good and it depends on the meta. I think it's a Rock-Paper-Scissors.
Azorius can easilly fly over Selesnya because Archweaver is just too slow and is uncommon and white's flying creature asks two white manas, making it bit hard to cast. By the time populating is kicking chances are you have 6 ot 8 damages connecting every turn.
Rakdos just outrun Azorius flyers and White and Blue removal is too slow. Flying doesn't really make a difference when your opponent is playing creatures that cannot block anyway. White also doesn't have lifegain, so red burn adds some reach for that deck even if Azorius has a chance to breath.
Selesnya can stop the Rakdos bleeding. Betwen 3/3 creatures, life gain and druid's deliverance. Selesnya is unstopable when populate kicks in and spot removal won't do the trick, only delay it.
I think Scavenge is the most overrated keyword ever. It gives you oversized guys but only in small quantities so spot removal still do the job. Scavenge gives the illusion that card are 2 for 1 but they aren't. Two creatures both with scavenge still die to 2 spot removals. You need a third creature to make those work. Anything you draw will get big, thats cool. But you loose one turn for each scavenge so thats not a ground breaking deal.
In general i think Rakdos can outrun scavenge, Azorius can fly over it and Selesnya tokens are just better when players have enough mana to abuse those abilities.
I think the defining factor of a guild's power in sealed is the amount of good multicolor at common and uncommon though. Izzet cards are filled with combat tricks but no creatures to acomplish it !
Rakdos is definitely absurd. Just so much removal and decent to great creatures.
I don't think Azorius is bad, but in traditional blue fashion it does take a lot of work. I played Azorius the first day and felt that detain was pretty bad. But today, this one guy had a great Azorius deck that ran 3 Inaction Injunction and he would just get there with the 3/1 flyer. Detain is fine, but you really have to work a lot harder at deckbuilding I think.
I had a pretty sweet Selesnya deck today. IMO, Selesnya is by far the most fun, and populate is just such a great limited mechanic.
I am extremely impressed with the set though. We all kinda had that let down moment when the rest of the spoilers came through, partially because Wizards threw out so much good candy early on. After playing the set though, I can tell this will be one of my favorite limited formats.
Ouch... That happened to one of my Izzet opponents too. Even though Selesnya was their best pool, it was still pretty poor. But luck is a huge factor here. One of my friends pulled two Armada Wurms and an Angel of Serenity, for instance. Having a lot of bombs like that go a long way.
If you end up with solid discard and can keep a Selesnyan player down until they're in top-deck mode, you can almost guarantee the win. However random Armada Wurms are nothing to scoff at (I'd know, I got hit by one)
On the flipside, if an Azorius or Golgari player has too much time, they'll destroy you.
Rakdos was great, tons of pressure, and with lots of cards to insure inevitability it was fun.
Didn't play any Izzet.
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Izzet in general was just terrible. All of their creatuers are trash and rely on even worse spells to be "just ok".
Selensya was the most powerful lategame by a mile from what I saw. Populating the 8/8 Vig Land-dude was huge.
I played Azorius and built into Izzet to make a tri-color deck. 75 players and I went 5-2, grabbing the last slot into top 8, drafted the same color in top 8 draft, and ended at top 4. I have to disagree that your statement of "Izzet creatures are trash". Frostburn Weird blocks well as a 1/4 for 2, and could be quite a beater when both players are topdecking. Goblin Electromancer is crucial to reduce some high-costed azorius/izzet spells. Nivix Guildmage is a standing Desolate Lighthouse, filter draws and occasionally gain card advantage when copying a spell. Not to mention Izzet Staticaster.. That's just common/uncommon.
Their abilities and p/t is all relevant in limited, I can't justify that to be "trash".
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Azorius all the way? The winning tables were the experienced players and all the experienced players chose azorius.
I'm not sure how people were losing to rakdos, since they are mostly X/2 toughness. Azorus has a ton of 2/x creatures.
I think a lot of players do not know how this format works, if you were going for 3-5 drops skies off u/w then you are playing it wrong, starting turn 3 means you are getting your teeth kicked in regardless if its rakdos or not. You were suppose to have a lot of 2-3 drops to match rakdos early game. Rakdos has a really bad late game.
My Azorius U/W/g deck was 18 spells all at 2-3 cmc. I played against 2 rakdos opponent both with Rakdos out, and i crushed them. Every game after turn 6 they were out of gas. Winning with Azorius means winning at around 5-8 life everytime
In hindsight, Rakdos was probably the most consistent, although it didn't have the most raw power.
I attended multiple events, running Golgari and Izzet. Did just fine with both. Would have done better with Izzet, but the Magic gods conspired against me so that I could almost never draw a decent amount of mana in my opening hand.
I played in 5 events this weekend and there is a clear winner in the power level of the guilds. I played Rakdos at the Midnight pre, and ended up opening Vraska and two Overgrown Tombs and went 3-1 tying with multiple people. The person who 4-0'd that tourney went Selesnya, the other person who 4-0'd was Azorius I believe. I tried out Selesnya the next day at 1pm and went 2-2, losing to the eventual winner playing Selesnya, and the other loss was a heartbreaker to someone playing Grixis with infinite amounts of removal. I played Izzet after that at 6:30pm, and Izzet just sucks. Azorius/Selesnya won that tourney. On Sunday, I learned my lesson and went Selesnya at 1pm, won that tourney handily against another Selesnya deck. I had 4 Eyes in the Skies and 2 Trostani's Judgments in that pool. At 6:30, I went Selesnya again, opened the faceless butcher angel, and went 3-1, losing to a sick Rakdos deck that ended up winning the tourney. I got 3rd.
In my experience, the only guilds I see in limited are Rakdos, Selesnya, and Azorius, but only if you're set up to beat huge tokens, or tempo Rakdos out of the game.
My LGS had a pre-release three days. On the two that I could make it, I went undefeated both days getting "first" once with rakdos. The other day I played Azorius. Rakdos surprised me, as I definitely underrated it. Azorius was as good as expected. The biggest surprise of the weekend was how awful Izzet was.
Rakdos was insanely consistent... It was really hard to out pace them. Especially if they pulled a stab wound or some other removal. I played Rakdos both times. My only losses came from a crazy Izzet deck that looked like a constructed deck... and Selesnya decks that made millions of centaurs and fogged until they got their 8/8 who could stop any threat I tried to push through.
Our prerelease was dominated by Selesnya, three of top five were Selesnyans. One Azorius was third and one Golgari was fifth.
Quite interestingly, the winner has no rare card except for Grove of the Guardian in his pool.
I was playing Izzerius and the games were quite close, with an exception of playing against a Selesnya deck that streamlined from Centaur's Herald through Call of the Conclave, Guildmage, Eyes in the Skies, Courser's Accord, Trostani's Judgment, Risen Sanctuary, Horncaller's Chant. Even a pure Azorius deck with lots of detain would not be able to withstand this.
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My prerelease had 2 undefeated Rakdos decks taking first and second. I feel Rakdos had a large advantage this weekend due to the guild packs. Rakdos just can't reliably get the aggro cards in a normal sealed pool since Red gets diluted with Izzet controlling cards. To be fair, I piloted a glacially slow Azorius deck to a 4-0-1 finish to take third, the draw being in the Azorius control mirror going to time. I think another factor is that I didn't see anyone with a truly outrageous Selesnya pool, which I think can probably stand up to the Rakdos decks, especially with a 3/3 for 3 that gains you 3 life, which is just golden against Rakdos. That said, my hardest fought wins were against Rakdos. It seems that if you want to defend, 4 toughness is where you want to be in this world of 3 power beaters. Again, the nut Selesnya is probably the best place to be. It's just hard to get there. I don't think anyone was surprised by Izzet being weak. It has the issue of being schizophrenic between aggression and control, and then failing to do either enough.
Once we hit normal sealed, without guild packs, I think that we're going to see the format slow down without the extra little boost from a pack devoted to your guild and the promo.
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Azorius early fliers and detain and Rakdos super aggression and removal were also very good.
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Unleash is ridiculously strong, especially if you luck into a Cackler turn 1..oh and I had to see it in person to confirm how OP Mizzium Mortars/Cyclonic Rift are when overloaded. They turned a winning game into an complete and utter blowout.
Rakdos however kicked my teeth in. Every. Single. Game.
Selesnya is good if you can make the tokens, otherwise populate is useless. I saw a lot of players struggling to get a decent token....
Izzet was just bizarre and felt unnatural.
Golgari seems solid if uninteresting. I had my most even matchups playing against golgari as Azorius.
I would say people are overrating Azorius, not detain. Detain is good. Thinking about it some more, I think Rakdos was the overall best, and I think it'll be a pretty dominant guild for Limited, if not constructed.
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Ha! That's a good one.
It went from
1) Radkos
2) Selesneya
3) Golgari
4) Azorious
5) Izzet
Speaking of which, Carnival Hellsteed hits like a truck and doesn't afraid of any creature in the set. He's even resistant to a ton of the removal spells too, since his toughness is so high. The Golgari decks seemed to be dominating by scavaging onto the 1/1 lifelink flier, and riding that to victory. I saw that in quite a few games, and not just the ones I lost.
As for why Rakdos is so strong, you're in the 2 colors of removal, and with unleash, your creatures are just way more efficient in limited. You also get the option of splashing into Golgari for the extremely strong scavange mechanic. Also, Stab Wound and Guttersnipe both seemed crazy-powerful in limited.
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Azorius tricks were usually short lived and with unleashed the clock was still on my side. I played against 2 Selesnya token poppers....rift ruins their day.
I splashed Red for the haste land aura and Dynacharge for aerial alpha strikes. 3-1 here.
I think Azorius, Selesnya and Rakdos are equally good and it depends on the meta. I think it's a Rock-Paper-Scissors.
Azorius can easilly fly over Selesnya because Archweaver is just too slow and is uncommon and white's flying creature asks two white manas, making it bit hard to cast. By the time populating is kicking chances are you have 6 ot 8 damages connecting every turn.
Rakdos just outrun Azorius flyers and White and Blue removal is too slow. Flying doesn't really make a difference when your opponent is playing creatures that cannot block anyway. White also doesn't have lifegain, so red burn adds some reach for that deck even if Azorius has a chance to breath.
Selesnya can stop the Rakdos bleeding. Betwen 3/3 creatures, life gain and druid's deliverance. Selesnya is unstopable when populate kicks in and spot removal won't do the trick, only delay it.
I think Scavenge is the most overrated keyword ever. It gives you oversized guys but only in small quantities so spot removal still do the job. Scavenge gives the illusion that card are 2 for 1 but they aren't. Two creatures both with scavenge still die to 2 spot removals. You need a third creature to make those work. Anything you draw will get big, thats cool. But you loose one turn for each scavenge so thats not a ground breaking deal.
In general i think Rakdos can outrun scavenge, Azorius can fly over it and Selesnya tokens are just better when players have enough mana to abuse those abilities.
I think the defining factor of a guild's power in sealed is the amount of good multicolor at common and uncommon though. Izzet cards are filled with combat tricks but no creatures to acomplish it !
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I don't think Azorius is bad, but in traditional blue fashion it does take a lot of work. I played Azorius the first day and felt that detain was pretty bad. But today, this one guy had a great Azorius deck that ran 3 Inaction Injunction and he would just get there with the 3/1 flyer. Detain is fine, but you really have to work a lot harder at deckbuilding I think.
I had a pretty sweet Selesnya deck today. IMO, Selesnya is by far the most fun, and populate is just such a great limited mechanic.
I am extremely impressed with the set though. We all kinda had that let down moment when the rest of the spoilers came through, partially because Wizards threw out so much good candy early on. After playing the set though, I can tell this will be one of my favorite limited formats.
My rares:
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Palisade Giant
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Pithing Needle
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On the flipside, if an Azorius or Golgari player has too much time, they'll destroy you.
Rakdos was great, tons of pressure, and with lots of cards to insure inevitability it was fun.
Didn't play any Izzet.
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I played Azorius and built into Izzet to make a tri-color deck. 75 players and I went 5-2, grabbing the last slot into top 8, drafted the same color in top 8 draft, and ended at top 4. I have to disagree that your statement of "Izzet creatures are trash". Frostburn Weird blocks well as a 1/4 for 2, and could be quite a beater when both players are topdecking. Goblin Electromancer is crucial to reduce some high-costed azorius/izzet spells. Nivix Guildmage is a standing Desolate Lighthouse, filter draws and occasionally gain card advantage when copying a spell. Not to mention Izzet Staticaster.. That's just common/uncommon.
Their abilities and p/t is all relevant in limited, I can't justify that to be "trash".
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I'm not sure how people were losing to rakdos, since they are mostly X/2 toughness. Azorus has a ton of 2/x creatures.
I think a lot of players do not know how this format works, if you were going for 3-5 drops skies off u/w then you are playing it wrong, starting turn 3 means you are getting your teeth kicked in regardless if its rakdos or not. You were suppose to have a lot of 2-3 drops to match rakdos early game. Rakdos has a really bad late game.
My Azorius U/W/g deck was 18 spells all at 2-3 cmc. I played against 2 rakdos opponent both with Rakdos out, and i crushed them. Every game after turn 6 they were out of gas. Winning with Azorius means winning at around 5-8 life everytime
I attended multiple events, running Golgari and Izzet. Did just fine with both. Would have done better with Izzet, but the Magic gods conspired against me so that I could almost never draw a decent amount of mana in my opening hand.
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In my experience, the only guilds I see in limited are Rakdos, Selesnya, and Azorius, but only if you're set up to beat huge tokens, or tempo Rakdos out of the game.
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Quite interestingly, the winner has no rare card except for Grove of the Guardian in his pool.
I was playing Izzerius and the games were quite close, with an exception of playing against a Selesnya deck that streamlined from Centaur's Herald through Call of the Conclave, Guildmage, Eyes in the Skies, Courser's Accord, Trostani's Judgment, Risen Sanctuary, Horncaller's Chant. Even a pure Azorius deck with lots of detain would not be able to withstand this.
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Once we hit normal sealed, without guild packs, I think that we're going to see the format slow down without the extra little boost from a pack devoted to your guild and the promo.