So, the mono-color portion of the set was hit and miss. And honestly it leaned a little heavily toward the miss end of the spectrum. Sure there were a few bombs and a few more solid cards, but the chaff definitely outnumbered the good stuff.
But, it's Ravnica, after all, so naturally the cream of the crop should most often be found in the multi-color cards. Let's find out if that holds true, or if the set continues to be moderately underwhelming.
Boros
This cycle of Guildmages is pretty disappointing overall. Tapping to use their abilities is a new thing, and I don't like it. Sure, you might ask "How often do you actually use their abilities more than once in a turn anyway?" Fair question.
A better one would be "How often do you put guildmages in your decks at all?" Probably not often, I would guess. Outside of a few niche combo applications very few of the guildmages see any real play.
At the end of the day, however, the key to fixing that isn't to make them
worse.
An absolutely outstanding 2-drop for Equipment-heavy Boros decks. Those three keywords together are a dream come true.
Well this is just going to get annoying, smart-ass replies, now, whenever someone asks "Do you have a response?" I can just see it now. "I do not have a Response... but I do have this counterspell." Screw you, WotC, for making a card just called "Response" - that was highly irresponsible.
Oh, there's another half? Right! Anyway, you're clearly playing this hoping to use the Resurgence half, with the Response half being a nice "just in case" option.
Ultimately, what might make this playable is that the Response half is Sunforger-able, which means you can get cheaty with Resurgence.
Damage-base sweepers are, generally, not that great in EDH unless they scale (Lavalanche), or just do a ton (Blasphemous Act). This one'll get some play for it's flexibility, plus it's probably good in specific decks like Gisela, Firesong and Sunspeaker, or the new Tajic. Could be a meta call, too, if you have a lot of weenie swarm decks in your playgroup. Niche card, at best.
Borderline garbage, given that White already has quite an array of fantastic removal that far outshines this. I merely included this for that stunning artwork.
Would be funny to hit a Phyrexian Negator with this, but no one plays that.
I generally dislike these sorts of cards in EDH as there is such a high capacity for even the best-laid of plans to go horribly awry in unpredictable ways. Someone has Aetherize or Teferi's Protection, you're in real trouble. But it can win games, so it'll probably be playable. I'd actually like it more if it was a "choose one or more" template, where you can just use it as a Boros Charm in a pinch. Oh well.
This is actually pretty decent, but the mana requirements are a bit of a downer. I don't think you really play this unless you're just going deep on the Mentor thing.
Almost certainly not a good card in EDH, but that triggered ability COULD have some applications with certain equipment like, oh, Basilisk Collar maybe? Yeah, that could get some work done.
That's a bit better - three rares with at least niche play-ability, and a mythic that will certain get played even if I don't like it much myself. The doublestriking 2-drop is the only one I'm really over the moon for; that guy is just great. And I do really want to try and make the Swathcutter+Basilisk Collar dream happen, just once!
Anyway, if you like Boros decks already, then you're probably happy with what we got here, but nothing is likely to change your mind if you don't like Boros.
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