The final installment wraps things up with a look at the Selesnya cards.
Selesnya
I really love these types of spells - the ones that save your team from a Wrath effect. But I feel like this one is just a bit too costly to leave up. Sure, if you're playing with Cradle or maybe Priest of Titania, it can be workable. But even the 4-mana ones like Faith's Reward, I have found to be very hard to make use of. I think the sweet spot for these effects is 2 to 3 mana. I doubt we're going to get another Heroic Intervention anytime soon, but there are a few 3-mana versions already.
In most decks, I don't think the untap effect will be worth the premium you're paying for this.
Another guild, another disappointing guildmage. Six mana for a single 2/2 is terrible. It's clear WotC has balanced this cycle for Limited. Oh well.
See, this is why the guildmage above sucks. This is EIGHT power and toughness worth of creatures for four mana! Still probably not prime EDH material. The main sticking point being that it has a "dies" trigger which is more of a Golgari thing, in terms of what types of decks can most abuse this.
Yeah, I get why it's not, but man I wish this was a Golgari card instead.
Flower is an effect very few decks in EDH want. 99.9% of the time we'd much rather put the land directly into play, and there are plenty of good, cheap cards that do just that. Flourish is also a pretty terrible cost/effect ratio when compared to other cards we have access to. I can't think of a single archetype that would want this over almost any other Overrun variant.
This might walk a fine line between "win-more" and just "win". It's Instant speed, and has convoke, so I think it lands in the "win" column. Unlike in 60-card, 1v1 Magic, token-based go wide decks often need to go REALLY wide to push through defenses. I think this accomplishes that goal nicely. And being an Instant means you minimize your risk of being blown out by a sweeper immediately after casting it. Very solid card for GW token decks.
Holy crap, Reclamation Sage just got the same treatment Fleshbag Marauder got with Plaguecrafter. It is unfortunate that in this case, the upgraded version didn't stay mono-color. Still, this is straight up staple material in any deck that can run it.
Sure, it's just going to be Rec Sage probably 75% of the time, but the other modes can be useful in a pinch. If you just need a fast threat to pressure an enemy Planeswalker or get some +1/+1 counter synergies going, a 4/3 for three ain't bad.
Put this in a blink deck like Roon and it really seems like a winner. Great utility creature with versatile options.
Eh, I typically like these sorts of cards, but this one not so much. It does a lot for six mana, I'll give it that. But most of the time I think I'd rather have Shamanic Revelation, or in some cases, Rishkar's Expertise. Still, if you're on GW tokens and starved for even more card draw, this ain't strictly terrible.
I'm not impressed with either side of this card, and I don't think the versatility factor does enough to save it.
So, that about does it for the full set review. I have to say, I went into this thinking Guilds of Ravnica was pretty close to being a home run, even though right from the outset I thought it fell short of the amazingness Battlebond and Dominaria. But after the review, I feel it falls even shorter than expected. It's not bad, by any means, and there's a lot of good stuff, but much of the power in the set feels very highly concentrated in a few rares/mythics while much of the rest of the set winds up feeling like many cards are just a hair too much mana or just slightly nerfed from older versions of their effects.
But on the flip side, I'm glad this set isn't loaded up with instant staples a la Cyclonic Rift. There are a lot of cards that aren't broadly powerful but should be quite good in specific decks. And that's fine! I build and play a wide variety of decks and I'm constantly experimenting and trying new things. So I will probably get a chance to use a fair few of these niche cards. Of course, if you're the type that just runs only one or a few decks, or you stick to specific archetypes, you may or may not get much mileage out of such a set as this one.
Well, until next time, enjoy!
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