Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica: Day One Wrap Up
by SaffronOlive // Nov 10, 2018
After six weeks of waiting, today marked the start of Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, a chance to see what the best players in the world think of our post-rotation Guilds of Ravnica Standard format. After three rounds of limited, we got a look at what the pros brought to battle in Standard, and it looked like this:
The Metagame
Let's start with the good news: even at the Pro Tour level, Guilds of Ravnica Standard is quite diverse. The most popular deck — Golgari Midrange — only makes up 22% of the format, which is great, especially since we've had some recent Pro Tours where the most popular deck was 40% or more of the field. Furthermore, the most popular decks at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica cover all of the major archetypes. If you like grindy midrange decks, Golgari, Jeskai Midrange, and some Angels decks have you covered. If you like smashing face with cheap creatures, Mono-Red Aggro, Boros Aggro, and White Weenie give you the option. Is controlling the game more your style? Izzet Drakes, Jeskai Control, Turbo Fog and Esper Control will be right up your alley. While we'll know more about how these decks perform at the end of the weekend, but at least for now, Guilds of Ravnica Standard is looking diverse!
If there's any bad news from the day one metagame breakdown, it's that we don't really have any spicy new decks. In fact, every deck on the day one metagame breakdown was known heading into the tournament from other paper events, Magic Online or Magic Arena, so rather than finding new breakout decks, it seems like this weekend will be more about seeing some finely tuned versions of known decks played by the best players in the world. While this isn't a bad thing — especially since the metagame looks so diverse — it's still a bit disappointing that we won't have an exciting breakout deck to follow throughout the weekend.
The Decks
Last Pro Tour there was a a bit of an issue where coverage accidently spoiled one of the most unique decks of the event early, potentially putting the players on the deck at a disadvantage. This Pro Tour, Wizards drastically cut back on deck techs on day one of Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica. In fact, we only had a single deck tech featuring Jeskai Control. Hopefully tomorrow we'll have some more deck techs to fill out the metagame. Make sure to check back on Sunday when we should have full deck lists for all of the top performing decks. In the mean time, here are some example lists if you're wondering what the top decks at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica look like or if want to get a head start playing them this weekend on Magic Arena, Magic Online, or at FNM!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today! We'll be back tomorrow with the deck lists and metagame from day two of Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, and then we'll have a full breakdown on Sunday after all the successful list are published! Until then, enjoy all of the action from Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica!
