Welcome all to the Daily Dose of Guilds of Ravnica as we enter the third week of previews and are just 12 days away from prerelease! The full set is going to be spoiled this week, but there are still tons of great cards to talk about this week. Today I'm going to be talking about two more legendary creatures from the set as well as a split card that makes you decide between going big or small. The guild leaders in Guilds of Ravnica are turning out to be powerful creatures that are looking to dominate the set. Today is no different as I investigate more into the Boros and Selesnya leaders. Each of the legendary creatures plays well into its guilds' mechanic for the set and each will help you boost your other creatures as well.
Before I get into those two creatures I want to talk about the Dimir split card from the set. Here is Connive // Concoct.
I believe that both halves of this card are powerful by themselves. Let’s start off with the hybrid half of the card, Connive. It is now the trend in recent sets, to have spells that take control of creatures that aren’t auras. This allows you to permanently take over control (in most cases, read more to find out) of a creature rather than lose it to enchantment destruction. There is a limitation to what creature you can target (power 2 or less), but that still leaves a large range of early-to-mid game creatures for you to take control of. It can even take control of a certain Boros guild leader, which I will talk about shortly. The other half of this split card is Concoct. There are two key parts to this spell. First off, is the part where you get to surveil 3. That gives you many cards to look at and either keep on top of your library or ship them off to your graveyard. To make it even better, you can than take one of those creatures that are in your graveyard and put them straight onto your battlefield. I like how if you are truly desperate, you can use this spell with no creatures currently in your graveyard in hopes of using surveil to put one in the graveyard. I like the versatility to be able to use this card on turn four or later and I believe we will see it show up in some control decks soon.
Now that we know we can take creatures or bring them back from the dead, we need a leader, specifically a Boros one. Here is Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice.
Aurelia is back, and boy does she pack a punch. At it’s base you get a 2/5 Flying creature for four mana which is fine. This card has an ability that can be used the turn that you cast it. You get to put her on the battlefield and right away during that first combat phase you can give a creature possibly +2/+0 and vigilance. There are plenty of red and white creatures that will be able to take advantage of this. Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice herself has Mentor but using her second ability to give a different creature with Mentor +2/+0 can allow you even to put +1/+1 counters on to Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice. Don’t have any other creatures on the battlefield, that’s fine. You can use her ability on herself to make her a 4/5 Flying creature with vigilance. At only four mana it fits perfectly at the top of an aggressive deck’s curve. I look forward to getting very aggressive starts with this card.
Selesnya is known to have cards that help you get more creatures onto the battlefield and use those creatures to your advantage. This next creature helps you get more creatures onto the battlefield while in addition helping all your creatures get bigger. Here is Trostani Discordant.
This card is one I’m trying to figure out if I like or not. There are some good starting points to start off. For five mana you get 5 total power and 8 total toughness of creatures which is pretty good. The tokens you create have lifelink which can help you gain some life. All of your creatures get pumped up thanks to Trostani Discordant. This last ability has me a little perplexed. There are some obvious advantages to this ability, such as your opponent using Connive we which we saw earlier on one of your creatures. At the end of whoever controls Trostani Discordant’s end step, you will even regain control of herself making her unable to be controlled by your opponent. There is also the scenario where your opponent reanimates one of your creatures with a card like The Eldest Reborn. Overall though, it seems like a very situational ability that won’t come up very often.
Three more amazing cards that I'm looking forward to opening from Guilds of Ravnica packs in a couple weeks. I'm excited by the power of the split cards in this set as I love modal cards and other cards like these split cards that provide versatility and options while playing the game. Thanks again for reading the Daily Dose of Guilds of Ravnica as we get close to opening some sweet new packs. Join me again tomorrow as I review some more new cards from the set as we get closer to the set being fully spoiled.
