CCGs / Gaming

The War Report: Guilds of Ravnica Pre-Release

Izlain

This past weekend the Pre-Release events for Guilds of Ravnica kicked off. My roommate and I ended up going as usual, this time on Sunday afternoon. Each one of these events that I’ve gone to has been a bit different, and I really enjoyed the themes of the kits this time around. Battlebond was the last prerelease I went to and it was a special occasion. Being a two-headed giant based set, it was a ton of fun to play as a team and do something a little bit different. Guilds of Ravnica was a standard limited event, but this one was more unique than some of those I went to in the past.

Given that this set is focused on five of the ten color pairings, we had five guild kits to choose from when we arrived at the event. Each of these decks came packed with a d20 and divider with the guild’s symbol, along with a special pack of cards in those colors and a few GRN boosters. I had decided going in that I would be representing House Dimir (clearly, from my Twitter profile) and my roommate chose to roll with Izzet. When we got down to opening packs, I ended up with quite a few good cards, though some that didn’t make it into my deck for the day. Many people were splashing a third color, but I literally didn’t get any bombs in other colors, so I stuck with a 2-color deck. Thankfully I pulled a bunch of cards with the new Surveil keyword and managed to make a decent deck out of it.

In the first round I ended up against another Izzet mage, but I was able to conquer 2-0 pretty easily. The first game took a while to get things going, but with 8 creatures in graveyard I dropped a creature with the Undergrowth keyword that pumped another creature by 8 power and that was all she wrote. In the second game my opponent couldn’t get anything going fast enough and I finished them off quickly.

Round two didn’t go as well. This time I was up against a Boros player, but he had also splashed green. In the first fight I pulled off some trickery but still got smashed. In the second game my opponent was mana starved and couldn’t stop me, but in game three the tables turned and I was mana starved. I finished the day 1-1, or 3-2 overall. I wasn’t able to stay for the third round but I was happy with my performance since I suck at building decks that aren’t commander decks. However, with MTG Arena in beta now (no more resets) I may start playing a bit more just to stay sharp between these events.

Above are the best cards I ended up with, at least for my current needs. Etrata was my promo card with the prerelease date on it, and a card I plan to use in my Lazav deck that I shared recently. Mission Briefing and Steam Vents have the most value, but I already own a set of shocks, so this one might just slam into Niv-Mizzet when I get around to building that, or will be some trade fodder. Mission Briefing and Plaugecrafter also slot into Lazav, and the little goblin there has a spot in Krenko. Overall it was a fun event again, and I look forward to getting my hands on a few more packs here in the near future. How have you been doing with your pulls?