MTG Ravnica Remastered draft guide: How to draft for each guild
WOTCRavnica Remastered has finally been released, and we’ll give you the rundown on how to draft this value-packed MTG set.
Ravnica Remastered is a bumper-sized reprint set, with hundreds of cards available to draw and draft.
With excellent cards being pulled from all across Ravnica’s history, there are many tried-and-true gameplans to follow for each guild, as well as unexpected synergies to try out.
We’ll walk you through the archetypes and strategies you’ll want to be focusing on for each guild, to ensure that you can perform at your peak in Ravnica Remastered draft.
Ravnica Remastered: How to draft each guild
Past individual Ravnica sets often work around each guild fronting a specific mechanic. However, with Ravnica Remastered drawing on multiple Ravnica sets, honing in on one specific mechanic per draft archetype is much more difficult.
When drafting Ravnica remastered, you’ll be assembling more of a bundle of ‘goodstuff’ focusing on each guild’s themes. Building within the theme is generally the way to go here, though there’s always room for a wildcard or two if you pull something powerful enough on its own.
The Azorius Senate: Blue/White tempo
Azorius can help you quickly soar to victory, as the aim of the game here is bringing out flying creatures, weaving past your opponents’ defense, and winning via direct damage.
Blue and White have access to enough fliers to construct your whole deck around. If opponents are building up to overpower you, the Azorius’ control options are more than enough to stop them in their tracks and allow you to accrue the momentum you need to clinch the win.
House Dimir: Blue/Black Control
If there’s one thing Dimir has done well historically, it’s front control decks. With access to excellent card draw, removal both conventional and unconventional, and a graveyard recursion subtheme, Dimir will out-resource its opponents without too much trouble, inching incrementally towards an inevitable win.
The Cult of Rakdos: Red/Black Aggro
While Rakdos Midrange has been sweeping its way to victory after victory of late, outright aggro is the name of the game in Ravnica Remastered. Thankfully, you’ll have no issue going right for the throat, as Rakdos’ red mana allows for speedy, powerful plays right out of the gate.
With Spectacle as their key mechanic, Rakdos encourages going for damage every single turn and accruing value as a result, pulling out your best plays far earlier than your opponents will be able to answer.
The Selsnya Concalve: Green/White Token go-wide
Green and White have access to the most token generators and boosters in the game, and that prowess is on full display in Ravnica Remastered. Selesnya has some of the most straightforward gameplay in Ravnica Remastered, but that doesn’t stop this guild from quickly becoming a real powerhouse.
Generate as many weak creatures as possible, buff them with across-the-board power/toughness boosts, and swing away to overwhelm your opponents.
The Izzet League: Blue/Red Spellslinger
The Izzet has always done one thing extremely well, and that’s throwing out a barrage of instants and sorceries. Ravnica Remastered consolidates this strategy, with a whole load of explosive options stacking up in the Izzets’ arsenal
While the card draws may be thinner on the ground than you’d expect for a deck that includes blue, all the rest of your spell slinger payoff is right there for the taking. You just have to be careful as to when you time your biggest plays and ensure you don’t end up out-of-pocket.
The Orzhov Syndicate: Black/White Lifegain Control
Orzhov Lifegain is a more brutal variant of a typically defensive strategy. Most Orzhov Lifegain options are draining life from opponents at the same time, topping up your reserves, and making you a more difficult target to take down as they wither away.
Orzhov have always excelled as Aristocrat decks too, and there are enough sacrifice payoffs available here to make this sub-theme well worth considering.
The Boros Legion – Red/White Aggro
Another straightforward and aggressive archetype for Ravnica Remastered. Boros build up a board presence extremely quickly through small, cheap creatures that can be boosted efficiently.
These creatures work best when attacking in tandem with others, and in some cases, their abilities only work when paired up. By buffing as many of your creatures as possible with their own effects, Boros can easily start to run away with the lead.
The Gruul Clans – Red/Green Midrange
Playing Gruul signals a step away from the cheap, speedy creature generation of Selesnya and Boros. You want to field big creatures here, pumping your mana into some real titans that can rattle the board on their own, while fielding removal to ensure that your biggest swings can go through unanswered.
Playing Gruul means stomping over your opponents, but that doesn’t mean you’re playing a brainless guild. Investing in a few key pieces and ensuring they get to do their thing can require careful planning, but the payoff is well worth it.
The Simic Combine: Blue/Green counters
Simic has always been a tricky color combo, capable of incredible value and versatility. Blue and Green provide access to mana and card draw in abundance, so you’ll rarely have to worry about being able to drop your biggest plays.
Here, the focus is on generating and manipulating +1/+1 counters, ensuring that you can rapidly boost your board into a threat, while carefully switching and positioning exactly how and where your buffs are being deployed.
The Golgari Swarm: Black/Green Graveyard Midrange
Golgari is all about reanimating from the graveyard. With destruction, sacrifice, and recursion, their threats are rarely gone for good, and opponents’ cards rarely get to stick around for long.
The upsides here are twofold. For one, you have amazing recursion and the ability to swiftly make a comeback from removal. But also, there are numerous ways here to get your own cards into the graveyard and cheat them out rather than paying the casting cost. They aren’t the easiest guild to run, but the Golgari can make good on their name and utterly swarm the board in the right hands.
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