Guilds of Ravnica EDH Set Review: Legends and Planeswalkers!

Kicking off a new set review! Haven't done a proper one of these in forever. So I'm going to ease into it with a shorter one today. We'll see how it goes from here.

This first part, we're just going to cover the new Legendary Creatures and a couple of Planeswalkers. Legends are always of particular interest to us Commander players, for obvious reasons, so it makes sense to start with some of the cards we might be most excited about.

But just to be a bit of a stinker, I'm going to do the Planeswalkers first. LOL.

 Bleh. The first Ral card wasn't even that great, this one seems about on par. Maybe better in some cases, worse in others, but it's never going to be a high performer. You're basically only including this for flavor/theme or if you're just jamming some janky Superfriends and need all the 'Walkers you can get.

Also it's kinda odd that his +1 is more or less Surveil, the Dimir keyword. Random. Anyway, Ral is bad and the art is awful.

Well, okay, better. Art-wise, at least, this puts that Ral card to shame. Ability-wise it's still only so-so, but it at least seems like this Vraska will be good in the right types of decks. The main issue I have is that her -3 is so restrictive and aside from killing Sol Rings and Signets, there isn't a TON of stuff you'd want to put your 'Walker to 1 loyalty to kill.

But, I can never outright dismiss any Planeswalker that has a card draw ability, and especially one tied to a + ability. The sacrifice can be quite a steep cost, but in a lot of Golgari decks, it can actually be more valuable than the draw!

This might actually be the best iteration of Niv-Mizzet we've seen yet. In fact I'm almost certain it is. Sure, that mana cost is crazy restrictive, I'll grant you. Don't see this guy showing up in decks with three or more colors, but whatever.  This guy's got a lot going for him otherwise, and I'm pretty sure he'll see plenty of action.

How good a commander he'll make remains to be seen, but he's definitely going to be in the 99 of a lot of Spellslinger decks. 

I still can't quite figure out how this is Mythic. I guess it's the Homeward Path-esque rider that they clearly tacked on because, as a Mythic, it needed some more text to jazz it up.

As cool as it is to have an Anthem in the command zone, I think Ravos Soultender has shown that an understated 5-drop isn't especially compelling, and his other ability is way better than her extra text.

Being a (small) army-in-a-can is also a plus, but not enough of one, in my estimation. She'll get plenty of play in the 99 of some GW token decks but is not the best option to lead those decks. 

Jeez that text box is just nutso. There's so much to process there! But the takeaway is that she first assassinates three of your guys, then she kills you. In between all that you have to draw and recast her. In Commander, of course, her self-tuck can be somewhat remedied by sending her back to the command zone. Or even better bounce her to your hand to dodge that pesky commander tax.

In short, you have a LOT of hoops to jump through just to kill someone with an alt-win condition. But EDH players tend to like jumping through hoops and the ones that play alt-win cards are even more prone to it.

Don't know if she's GOOD, but she's certainly UNIQUE. 

For the most part, I feel like a lot of GRN's Legends are better used in the 99 of other decks, rather than leading their own. Izoni is no exception to that. She definitely feels very Golgari and does a lot of things Golgari decks like to do. But I'd rather play her in a Savra or Meren deck than build around her as a commander.

Additionally, Izoni doesn't really open up any new deckbuilding space for the Golgari - an Izoni deck will have some differences, of course, but should largely play around in many of the same mechanical areas as her guildmates.

This dude seems to have a ton of potential for shenanigans. Everyone is already talking about Phyrexian Dreadnought, naturally. Phage also comes up a lot.

The thing is, I'm not sure he's better than the original Lazav outside of a few cute interactions like that. I kinda hope I'm wrong, but I'm skeptical this guy is really going to take off. He'll certainly appeal to a certain type of player, for sure, but don't think he'll break out beyond that.

 This is more like it, Selesnya. Seems WotC took to heart players' reaction to the Dragon's Maze iteration of Emmara and really went out of their way to make good on that flub.

Sure, if you get right down to it, Rhys is still the better GW Tokens commander, but I don't think Emmara is out of the running. She has some more interesting synergies as well - Convoke, obviously, but also: Vehicles, Glare or Subdual, and... well that's all I've got off the top of my head.

Anyway, seems good.

Ah, Boros, you magnificent, one-trick pony! Firesong and Sunspeaker were such a revelation simply for being different (but not actually good, sadly). But this IS a Ravnica set, after all, and on this plane it actually is pretty hard to envision an actual Boros card that isn't about beating down. Hopefully they'll go back to exploring new ground when we move away from Ravnica.

As for this particular case, the new Aurelia is alright. She's relatively undercosted and comes down early enough to make a quick dent in some life totals, then provides some small buffs to your other dudes later. She's good at doing what Boros is already good at doing, is the takeway. I prefer the other Aurelia, personally, but this one is acceptable.

And Tajic is still around as well. Neat. Ooh, this one's got Haste!



















And that's that. For the most part this was a solid but unexciting crop of Legends and Planeswalkers. The Dimir fared a bit better than they usually do, while the Boros fared exactly as well as they usually do. Most of the new potential commanders fail to break new ground, though the couple that do are so odd that they are likely not to find widespread appeal.

But, while opening up new avenues of deck-building is always something we desire, simply getting playable new cards for our existing deck is worth celebrating as well, and almost all of these cards have the potential to be role-players in their respective niches. And a few of you mad scientist types will have fun trying to slay people with Etrata or one-shot them with Lazav.

So far Guilds of Ravnica is no Dominaria, but it's got it's own charms nonetheless.