Welcome to Part 2 of the Ideas Unbound Gatecrash Prerelease Primer.  In Part 1, we looked at Sealed Deck in general and what it took to build a good deck.  Today we are going to look at each guild individually and specific strategies for each one.  We will look at how you will want to build your deck as well as cards you will want to look for.  We will also look at how you should play against each of the other guilds.

The Boros Legion has only one object:  attack.  The Boros keyword makes this a top priority.  The battalion ability only works if you are attacking with at least three creatures per turn, so you pretty much always want to be doing this.  Your goal will be to drop creatures for the first few turns to build up your battalion.  Then you will use combat tricks and removal spells to keep your opponent’s blockers out of the way.

When building a Boros deck, you will want to include more creatures than the other guilds.  Out of your 23 spells, do not be afraid to play at least 15-17 creatures.  If you do not have enough creatures, you cannot take advantage of battalion.  With this many creatures in your deck, it is ok to err a little on the side of smaller creatures.  You want to be able to play enough early creatures to trigger battalion as soon as possible.  It is important to make sure you have a few bigger creatures though, in case the game goes long.

It is important to select the right creatures for your Boros deck.  The only battalion creature that underwhelms me is Bomber Corps.  It is not going to be very impactful and usually a blocker will just kill it.  When looking for other creatures to put in your deck, you want creatures that will be good when attacking.  Higher power and abilities like first strike and haste are excellent for enabling your battalion.

Keeping your creatures alive to enable battalion will be one of your primary goals.  You will probably want to use your combat tricks defensively to keep your creatures alive.  This will help ensure you have three creatures to attack with every turn.

If you end up using a third color in your Boros you want to look toward black or green.  The Orzhov guild will provide you some extra removal to make sure your creatures get through unblocked for maximum damage.  The bloodrush ability of the Gruul actually looks like it will play quite well with the Boros.  It will help you ensure you have enough creatures to trigger your battalion abilities and then later they are useful as combat tricks to punch through the last points of damage.

When playing against Gruul, you have to remember that their creatures are usually bigger than your creatures.  Use your removal and combat tricks to keep their creatures in check.  You do not want them to get you into a position where are unable to attack profitably.  You want to be careful when blocking because of bloodrush.  Make sure you are blocking with a creature you will not mind losing.

The Orzhov deck is going to try to stall you out and bleed you to death.  It is important to attack early and often against them to prevent them from getting too far ahead with extort.  Save your removal spells for their extort creatures to prevent them making use of the ability.

Creatures out of a Simic deck will start out smaller than your creatures, but can quickly outgrow them.  Try to make them expend some of those creatures early in blocks to prevent them from getting too large.  Try to use your removal on the evolve creatures and not the ones enabling them to evolve.

Against Dimir, the answer is speed.  You want to make sure you kill them before they get a chance to mill you or get one of their impressive finishers.  In this matchup, you want to point your removal at their evasion creatures to prevent them from getting too many cipher triggers.  Watch out for the Keyrune especially.

You will not be attacking nearly as much as the Boros.  You want to build a bleeder deck when playing Orzhov.  You want to grind your opponents out and kill them one point at a time.

Your creatures are a valuable resource for making sure the game goes long.  Do not try to attack if you will lose your creatures in combat.  You want to use the more for blocking in a profitable way to deal with your opponent’s aggressive creatures.  Several of your creatures have very defensive stats and abilities so you want to use this to your advantage.  You also have ways to get your creatures back, allowing you to reuse them to take out your opponent’s army one creature at a time.

Because of the extort mechanic, it is ok for your cards to be lower costed.  Late in the game, you will be able to play those cards and extort several times.  A one-cost spell takes on a whole new meaning when it drains your opponent for four life at the same time.  You may want to play an extra land in your Orzhov deck in order to take full advantage of your extort cards.

If you need a third color here, you will want to look to red or blue.  The Boros cards aren’t really going to play into your game plan that much so you mostly just want to look for removal from them.  Dimir have several small creatures with evasion that will mix well with your bleeder style.  One or two points of combat damage every turn will add up over time.

When playing against Boros you want to try to keep their aggressive creatures at bay.  Do not be afraid to trade a little in combat early in the game.  This will ensure they are not able to trigger battalion as often.  Try to save your removal for the creatures with the best battalion abilities.  Try to extort as much as possible to keep your life total high in the early game.

Against Gruul you will use a similar strategy as you do against Boros.  You will not need to trade as much early on because they are not trying to trigger battalion.  You will actually want to save blockers until the midgame when they will have access to their bloodrush abilities to push through extra damage.  You will want to use removal on large creatures, especially anything with trample.

The Simic decks will work on a slow buildup.  This will give you time to set up a good defensive position and try to get in with a couple of extorts.  It’s important to hold removal for when their creatures become too large for your defense.

The Dimir can pose a problem for you because you never which way they are going to try to kill you.  If they are on the mill plan they may be able to win before you can bleed them enough.  If you think they are going to try to mill you out you want to be aggressive to try to kill them before they can.  If they are on the evasion plan you will have a much better game plan.  With enough extort you can counteract their small evasion creatures, then remove them when they have too many cipher triggers.

Playing Gruul has a simple strategy.  You want to play creatures and turn them sideways.  Unlike the Boros, you are not trying to set up an attack of at least three creatures.  This gives you the advantage of being a little more reckless with your creatures because you will always have more to replace them.

Out of all of the guilds, Gruul will want to play the most creatures.  I would not hesitate to have 18-20 creatures in my deck as long as some number of them have bloodrush.  The bloodrush ability gives you a lot of flexibility and turns even small creatures into threats in the late game.  Your removal should be focused on dealing with troublesome blockers.  You want to make sure you opponent is losing creatures when they block.

You have a lot of good options when it comes to adding a third color.  You will want to look toward white or blue.  Boros will provide you a plethora of aggressive creatures and the added bonus of an occassional battalion trigger since you are going to be attacking anyway.  It will also help bolster your removal package.  With the Simic guild, you will be able to evolve creatures fairly well because you are playing a lot of creatures.  Don’t go overboard though because you want to be as aggressive as possible in the early game.

When you play against Boros, this is basically going to be a slugfest.  It will come down to who is more aggressive.  Try to put them in a situation where they need to block.  This will help keep their numbers in check and reduce their battalion triggers.  Do not be afraid to use combat tricks to take out their blockers.  Remember, because of bloodrush, you will have more combat tricks than they do.

The Orzhov deck is going to try to stall you out.  You want to play around that.  Hit them early and hard before they get set up.  You want to save your bloodrush for when they block with a defensive creature.  Use removal to take out the guys with the biggest toughness or the most defensive abilities.

The Simic deck is going to have to race you, and you are good in a race.  You have the advantage in the early game because their creatures start small and get bigger.  If the game goes too long, though, they may be able to overpower you.  Try to put them in positions where they have to block to keep their creatures off the board.

The Dimir seems like it is going to be a good match for you.  Their creatures are general small so you will be able to attack at will.  Try to save removal for the creatures they choose for Cipher.  If they are on the mill plan, just try to kill them as quickly as possible.

The Simic guild is designed to be adaptable.  Your creatures run the range from aggressive to defensive.  This gives you an advantage in game because you can tailor your gameplan against your opponent.  Your goal is to assemble the set of creatures that will allow you the best chance against your particular opponent.  It is important to keep that in mind when deciding which creature to play on which turn.  You want to order them in such a way to evolve the creatures most important to your gameplan.

The flexibility of the Simic Guild will make them one of the hardest to build for, I believe.  You have to be able to evaluate the cards in your pool and determine if you are going to focus on being aggressive or controlling.  Most of this will come from the non-creature cards you get and if you add a third color.

When adding a third color, you want to look to red or black.  If you add red cards, they are going be from the Gruul guild and it will probably push your deck toward the aggressive.  You will want to try to get your evolve creatures big quickly and attack with them.  Use your other cards to take out potential blockers.  If you add black, it will be more Dimir cards.  This will probably lead you into more of a control deck.  You can use your defensive evolve creatures to keep your opponents at bay and then kill them slowly once you have the game under control.

Against Boros, your creatures are going to be able to outgrow theirs.  Your goal will be to use removal early to keep them from hitting their battalion triggers while you continue to evolve your creatures.  Use any pump spells you have defensively to keep your creatures from dying.  This will allow them to evolve large and take over the battlefield.

The strategy will basically be the same against Gruul.  You won’t need to use your removal as early, because you don’t have to worry about battalion.  You want to save it for when they can start using bloodrush to their advantage.  Focus instead on growing your creatures quickly, because the Gruul creatures are going to be large as well.

The goal against Orzhov is to prevent them from grinding you out.  Here you will need to make sure you are being aggressive.  Get in for early points of damage when you can and try to evolve quickly.  Try to take out their extort cards when you can so they can’t recoup the life loss.

The Dimir guild is going to try and keep you from getting too large.  Again, you will want to be aggressive.  A good Dimir deck may be able to mill you out of the game before you can truly get set up.

House Dimir will be interesting to play in limited.  You have a couple of different options available to you.  Most of the time, I feel you will play a combination of the two, but occassionally you will get the pool that allows you to go all in on one of them.  Let us take a look at those two options.

The first plan is the evasion plan.  The Dimir guild has a lot of creatures that are difficult to block.  This will allow you to sneak through for combat damage easily.  More importantly, it will allow you to make full use of the cipher ability.  This is where your gameplan will hinge on the evasion plan.  You want to try and get as many cipher triggers going as possible.  This will allow you to generate a huge advantage.

The second option is the mill plan.  Here, the goal will be to control the board state as much as possible while your grind your opponent’s library down to nothing.  Just remember, in limited play, your opponent can board in extra cards.  Make sure you can reliably mill your opponent even if they go up to 50-55 cards in their library.

When looking at other color options, you are going to lean toward green or white.  Green cards from the Simic will help you when you are on the evasion plan.  They can provide you a few extra creatures to use, as well as some nice combat tricks to make sure you are doing maximum damage when you can.  If you are on the mill plan, then Orzhov can provide you some additional support in the control area.  They have some nice removal spells that help you maintain a game state in your favor.

Playing against the other guilds varies with Dimir.  It will depend on the focus of your deck.  You will want to look at ways you can sideboard between games to change the focus of your deck if necessary.

Against Boros, I think the best plan will be the mill plan.  Try to keep their guys at bay long enough for you to grind through their library.  Do not be afraid to use your removal to take out their most aggressive creatures early.  If you are on the evasion plan make sure you are getting the most value out of your cipher triggers.

Fighting Gruul will be very similar.  You can be a little more picky with your removal because of the lack of battalion.  Try to get through their library as much as possible and prevent damage from coming through when possible.

Against Orzhov, you will probably be better suited on the evasion plan.  They are going to try to be defensive but your creatures make that more difficult.  Do not let their extort triggers get out of hand, or you will find yourself behind.

Against Simic, either plan will probably work.  Your evasive creatures will be able to get through before they can evolve out of control.  Or just keep their guys back while you mill through their deck.  They will be drawing a few extra cards here and there which should help you along the way.

Whichever guild you choose at the Prerelease, it’s important to realize that your guild has a focus.  You don’t want to stray too far from that focus, or you will not be using your cards to their full advantage.  Each guild has a lot of synergy built in to its cards.  It is important to see this synergy and take full advantage of it.