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Top 10 Magic: the Gathering Cards That Defined Guilds of Ravnica Standard


Wizards of the Coast/ Image: WotC

With the release of the latest Magic: the Gathering set Ravnica Allegiance just around the corner, it’s a good time to take a look back at the cards that defined the Standard format of Guilds of Ravnica.

Guilds of Ravnica came out after the home run of power and flavor that was Dominaria, with core sets making a return with M19 in between.Its introduction to Standard also coincided with the rotation of the Kaladesh and Amonkhet blocks. Top decks like Black/Red Aggro headlined by Goblin Chainwhirler, Heart of Kiran, and Hazoret the Fervent ceased to exist. Control players lost much of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria’s supporting cast, including Glimmer of Genius and Torrential Gearhulk.

Fortunately,Guilds of Ravnica managed to bring a ton of powerful bombs, removal spells, and deck enablers to the Standard party. Several of the cards on this list birthed fun and competitive archetypes and strategies, while others were already staples that continued to see heavy play in the new Standard.

  1. Honorable Mention: Vraska's Contempt

    Before rotation and the release of Guilds of Ravnica, it was hard to find a black deck that didn’t run the full playset of Vraska’s Contempt. Decks like Blue/Black Midrange and Esper Control were empowered by this catch-all answer that also bought more time to stabilize against the red decks. A variation of the Red/Black Chainwhirler deck even saw some success going over-the-top of their more aggressive counterparts by playing more black sources for this Ixalan rare to answer Planeswalkers, The Scarab God, and Hazoret.

    Since GRN dropped, however, Vraska’s Contempt has mainly been a role player in Golgari Midrange, one of many flexible removal options like Cast Down and Assassin’s Trophy. Some successful lists have played 4 in the main deck, but lists with 2-3 are more common.

    Contempt still deserves the honorable mention because, aside from helping Golgari deal with threats efficiently, it’s a crucial component of less popular but still competitive archetypes like Dimir Surveil and the Mono-Black Chromatic Lantern deck.

  2. Deafening Clarion

    From the moment Guilds of Ravnica hit Standard, Deafening Clarion has been a default inclusion in the various builds of Jeskai Control that share the top tier of Standard with Golgari Midrange, Blue/Red Drakes, and white aggressive strategies like Red/White Aggro.

    This cheap sweeper is simply the most efficient answer available to the creature decks of the format. At only 3 mana, Clarion affects how midrange and aggro players build their decks. Weenie decks try to get around the sweeper with resilient threats like Adanto Vanguard, Dauntless Bodyguard, and even Hunted Witness. Golgari Midrange pilots, meanwhile, have made Midnight Reaper an important part of their grindy gameplan.

    One of the best things about playing Deafening Clarion in Jeskai is that it can deliver a knockout one-two punch alongside Crackling Drake by sweeping the board andletting the Drake get in for a big chunk of life-linking damage. The combo is so backbreaking that some Izzet Drakes decks splash white just for the sorcery. It’s also not hard to imagine how devastating it can be when paired with a certain Dracogenius.

  3. Experimental Frenzy

    Experimental Frenzy is a card with the power level to match its stellar art and flavor text. If it isn’t dealt with right away, and as long as you don’t find too many lands on top of your deck, this 4-mana enchantment will provide you with loads of card advantage and damage potential at almost no cost.

    Paired with fellow Guilds of Ravnica rare Runaway Steam-Kin, Frenzy helped keep Goblin Chainwhirler decks from falling too far out of the top tier when Hazoret the Fervent, Heart of Kiran, and the rest of the gang rotated. The enchantment is also a crucial part of White Weenie’s sideboard plan against control decks alongside another card that almost made this list, Banefire.

    If you’ve ever played Jeskai and felt great sweeping your opponent’s board with Clarion, only to face down Frenzy next turn without an answer in your hand, then you know how game-winning the card can be. In fact, the only reason that it isn’t higher on this list is that a lot of main deck tools exist to deal with it before it gets out of hand, including Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Vivien Reid, and Conclave Tribunal.

  4. Treasure Map

    While Treasure Map had been in Standard for a while before Guilds of Ravnica dropped, it didn’t see much play. Abrade was one of the most played cards in the format, especially with Black/Red Aggro dominating tournaments. While you could sometimes get a scry or two in before your Map was set on fire, investing mana in the card put you too far behind on tempo without enough reward.

    Now, the lack of cheap main-deckable artifact removal means players are regularly digging for buried treasure. It’s a safe early play that dodges 3-mana counterspells and Essence Scatter, helping you hit land drops and find key cards before delivering your choice of immediate mana ramp or card advantage over time.

    Control player and coverage-rogue Adrian Sullivan (he famously played his cards upside down and with lands in front in his PT Dragons of Tarkir top 8 appearance) won Grand Prix Milwaukee in November with an innovative take on Jeskai Control. He played the full 4 Treasure Maps over more conventional card advantage engines like Search for Azcanta or Chemister’s Insight. He was consistently able to play Map on turn 2, keep the board clear while scrying, then slams one of his 4 Niv-Mizzets on turn 5 with enough mana up for Dive Down, Spell Pierce, or Opt.

    Since then, the Map has been a fixture in control decks, as well as in recent versions of the Izzet Drakes deck. It will be interesting to see whether the versatile artifact will continue seeing play in the new Standard format with Bedevil soon to make its debut.

  5. Arclight Phoenix

    At Guilds of Ravnica’s release, copies of Arclight Phoenix were available for around $3. As of this writing, the card costs about $30. Initially written off as another kooky red mythic, it didn’t take long for brewers and pros like Gerry Thompson to unlock the Phoenix’s potential not just in Standard, but in Modern as well.

    Variations of the combo-like Izzet Phoenix list were soon a fixture of Magic Online Competitive Standard League5-0 lists and premier tournament top 32s. 4 copies of the deck made top 16 at Grand Prix Lille on October 28, and Yuuya Watanabe took the deck to a top 8 finish at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, with 4 other players going 8-2 or better in the Standard portion of the event.

    After Grand Prix Milwaukee, which took place a week after the Pro Tour and saw Owen Turtenwald also make top 8 with the deck, a variant of Drakes emerged without Arclight Phoenix. This newer version adopted a more midrange game plan, going over the top with Niv-Mizzet, Parun and burying opponents in value from Search for Azcanta or Treasure Map. As a result, the deck is more resilient to commonly played exile effects like Lava Coil and Seal Away.

    By the 2018 World Magic Championship, the best performing Drakes decks omitted the Guilds of Ravnica mythic entirely, with the exception of Lee Shi Tian’s 4th place Phoenix list. While Arclight Phoenix sat out the last weeks of 2018 on the bench, there’s no doubt that this card made a huge impact on this Standard format.

  6. Find//Finality

    If you looked through the countless Golgari Midrange lists that have made it to the top of MTGO Standard Leagues, Grands Prix, Star City Games tournaments, and Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, you’d notice that most of the cards in the deck were legal before GRN released.

    But with the exception of the powerful Jadelight Ranger, creatures Merfolk Branchwalker, Seekers’ Squire, and Wildgrowth Walker never saw much play. Instead of utilizing this “Explore Package” to generate value by drawing extra lands, gaining life, and making giant Walkers, BG decks instead relied on the insane +1/+1 counter synergy enabled by Winding Constrictor, Walking Ballista, and Verdurous Gearhulk.

    After the rotation of Snek and his friends, the Swiss knife card that is Find//Finality quickly filled the void they left behind. This split card turned the durdley Explore Package into an almost unstoppable engine of value, while also providing a game-ending sweeper that just happens to play well with Wildgrowth Walker’s 3 toughness. The card, when used optimally, can be backbreaking against both control and aggro decks alike, a rare attribute that didn’t take long for midrange mages to find and build an archetype around.

  7. Llanowar Elves

    It wasn’t too long ago that Mark Rosewater, head designer for Magic: the Gathering, told followers of his Tumblr page Blogatog that Wizards R&D found 1-mana accelerants like Llanowar Elves a little too strong for Standard.

    And yet, when the green one drop was unexpectedly reprinted in Dominaria, it wasn’t as heavily played as people thought it would be. It turns out that another card from the set, Goblin Chainwhirler, would make life very difficult for one-toughness creatures in the months to come. Elves still featured in the previous Standard, helping accelerate the deployment threats in most builds of BG Constrictor and in Green Stompy lists.

    Now that Mono-Red Aggro isn’t the most powerful strategy in the format and Chainwhirler is seeing a lot less play, Llanowar Elves is a key component of Golgari Midrange’s game plan, helping power out its many threats a turn or two early.

  8. History of Benalia

    White Weenie was the breakout deck of Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, putting six copies in the Top 8. Five of them played some number of red cards in the main deck or sideboard, while one played only Plains. Of the Standard decks that earned six or more wins at the PT, a third of them played History of Benalia.

    The mythic Saga from Dominaria has been a powerhouse since its release, almost single-handedly making white aggressive archetypes like WB Knights and Green/White Midrange playable. It even made it into the sideboard of white control decks to attack the mirror match.

    The card’s full potential was unlocked once Guilds of Ravnica arrived chock-full of other toys for white decks. Selesnya Tokens’ go-wide plan benefits greatly from the two Knight tokens History spits out while low-to the-ground Mono-White and Red/White Aggro decks have access to the powerful and often unbeatable “combo” of playing two Sagas on consecutive turns.

    Combined with other resilient cards in white like Adanto Vanguard, Dauntless Bodyguard, and Shalai, Voice of Plenty, History of Benalia will surely be writing more and more chapters on how to beat control in the months to come.

  9. Carnage Tyrant

    When Ixalan came out in late 2017, it looked like playing Carnage Tyrant in green decks would usually be the correct maneuver. But even after the banning of busted Kaladesh Energy mechanic cards Rogue Refiner and Attune with Aether (yes, Attune was busted), this untouchable beat-stick couldn’t find a home in Standard.

    The card was surprisingly absent from top performing decklists in the Pro Tours that followed. Even the Steel-Leaf Stompy deck often preferred cheaper threats like Verdurous Gearhulk and Rhonas the Indomitable to combat the Black/Red Aggro menace. Its usefulness against control at the time was also limited by the fact that Teferi decks packed multiple copies of Settle the Wreckage.

    Rotation and the release of Guilds of Ravnica changed Standard’s landscape dramatically, and Carnage Tyrant has finally claimed its rightful place at the top end of green decks like Golgari Midrange. The deck is basically a finely-tuned factory of Carnage, with the Explore Package to hit land drops and stall the board, Llanowar Elves and sometimes Druid of the Cowl to power it out early, efficient removal to clear the way, and Find//Finality to either recur it or to enable it to swing in for the win.

    Mirror matches usually come down to which side has the last Tyrant standing, and control decks like Jeskai often need to devote multiple cards to deal with the dinosaur, only to see one or two copies returned to the opposing hand with Find. The implacable death lizard has been a mainstay of Guilds of Ravnica Standard, and the imminent arrival of Gruul and Simic cards will only strengthen its position as the premier finisher in green decks.

  10. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria

    Unlike some of the other cards from previous sets on this list, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria has been a cornerstone of Standard since his glorious comeback as a planeswalker in Dominaria. Various builds of Teferi control have seen success in the format, with UWx being one of the few decent alternatives to BR Aggro between Dominaria and the latest rotation.

    Teferi’s potent combination of card advantage, premium removal, and a game-ending ultimate ability make for one of the strongest planeswalkers since Jace, the Mind Sculptor. In fact, the two blue mages tend to team up and consistently excel in Modern control decks.

    Perhaps the most busted aspect of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is that he essentially costs 3 mana. Players can either slam him on turn 5 and untap two lands to represent any number of cheap counters or removal, or they can wait until the untap ability allows them to leave up mana for Sinister Sabotage or Settle the Wreckage. Some early versions of UW Control skipped playing win conditions entirely, instead relying on Teferi’s ultimate and -3 ability to eventually deck the opponent or bore them into conceding.

    With players having access to cards from two more blue guilds in Ravnica Allegiance, Teferi will surely continue to win big tournaments, as he did at GPs Milwaukee and New Jersey.

    But while this Dominarian time traveler has been at the center of Standard for many months, a certain resident of Ravnica couldn’t let himself be upstaged on his third foray into the format.

  11. Niz-Mizzet, Parun

    When Niv-Mizzet, Parun was spoiled, there was no doubt that this Dragon Wizard was as powerful as he was conceited. The card has insane game against each of the three main deck archetypes you usually see in Standard.

    Being uncounterable against control is huge, with those decks likely having to go down on card advantage to deal with him rather than trading one-for-one with a counterspell. His ability to hit any target for 1 damage is devastating against aggro decks that aren’t able to close the game out before he hits the table. And Niv can easily bury midrange decks in card advantage and damage as long as he’s well-protected.

    But early on in the format, players hesitate to make much room for him in their decks. His mana cost is especially restrictive, and it was easy to fall behind on tempo if your Dragon was answered with an opposing Teferi, Vivien, Ixalan’s Binding, or other commonly played spells. Eli Kassis’ winning Jeskai Control deck at GP New Jersey at the end of October included only one copy of the former guildmaster in the sideboard.

    Fortunately for the Dracogenius’ fans, control masters like Adrian Sullivan soon realized that the card was just too broken not to play in decks that could cast it, especially if you, like the Izzet League, built around him. Sullivan’s Grand Prix Milwaukee-winning deck played the full 4, backed up by Treasure Map and cheap interaction like Spell Pierce and Dive Down. Drakes decks also played multiple copies of Niv in the sideboard.

    Niv was the 2nd most played card at that tournament behind Crackling Drake, with half of the decks in the top 32 playing him. As the format progressed, Niv settled into his role as a game-ender for Control and Drakes decks, though he hasn’t ended up nearly as oppressive a threat as The Scarab God.

     

    Guilds of Ravnica Standard has been an extremely fun, diverse format with a lot of different available strategies and archetypes. While a top tier of decks did eventually emerge, players could find success playing whatever they wanted, including budget decks like Mono-Blue Tempo.

    What do you think? What other cards from this format defined the metagame and led to interesting and fun gameplay?

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