Introduction

Hello everyone!

The Pro Tour：Guilds of Ravnica is in the books and it’s time to reflect on it. As some of you might know I am a HUGE fan of Japan and after a short stay in July I have decided to come here for full 2 months at the beginning of September mainly with the goal to improve my Japanese language skills.

Now the thing is that as a holder of European Union passport I can freely go there, but you can’t work (or even part-time) while you’re staying there this way, so I had infinite time to play Magic and in fact that is what I did most of my days. It’s been a long time since I felt this much prepared for any event and even though I only went 10-6 (I went 1-3 in the last 4 rounds, but at least my tiebreakers were very good thanks to that and I ended up cashing the event), I was very happy with my play, drafting and my deck choice.

As I’ve already mentioned my / our testing started right after the new set came out and I was sharing ideas with my testing team for this season – Hareruya Axe/Sword on social media. I was testing with these guys for the first time ever and I have to say that it was by far the best team I have ever been a part of – the preparation was of the charts – everyone was constantly contributing with new ideas, draft logs and decklists while the smartest guy on the team; Zen Takahashi put all those in spreadsheets so that everyone had a perfect idea of what was going on. Thank you, Zen!

There was actually a Grand Prix in Atlanta a weekend before the Pro Tour and even though not all of us decided to participate, most of us did. I saw it as a freeroll – yes I lost some time of practicing for the PT, but there aren’t nearly as many GPs in Asia so I have to take my opportunity everytime I can. That being said I didn’t practice for the event at all and played a very mediocre 5C Human list to a very mediocre X-5 finish.

After the GP we have moved to our testing house for 3 days and I got to know everyone on the team more closely and I have to say that they are all awesome guys and it was my pleasure to work with them.

The testing team consists of: Me, Zen Takahashi, Christian Calcano, Jeremy Dezani, Kevin Jones, Kelvin Chew, Raphael Levy, Simon Nielsen, Jason Chung, Wing-Chun Yam, Tomoharu Saito, Kenji Tsumura, Andrea Mengucci, Lee-shi Tian and Eduardo Sajgalik. Eduardo didn’t actually participate in the Pro Tour as he decided to do coverage instead, but he still helped us out anytime we needed a sparring partner and he also cooked for us which was great!

Going into the testing I thought that I will almost certainly play BG, but I was really impressed with the power of a Jeskai Control during testing and I was strongly considering to play it, but then part of our team started working on our Boros deck and that matchup just seemed abysmal so I went back to BG.

I knew that BG is not going to be anything great, but it’s a very solid deck with overall even matchups and it was the deck I played with the most so it seemed like an easy choice for me. In the end, our team divided into two groups: Me, Christian, Javier, Kelvin, and Andrea were in the BG camp while the rest of the team was working on Boros.

Decklist

This is the list we ended up submitting.

I think that it is sort of pointless to explain our card choices in a detail now that the Pro Tour is over and the metagame has shifted (I expect the aggressive white decks to be the most played decks in the next event) so I will rather give you an updated decklist of BG as well as a sideboard guide (that’s what you came here for anyway right? 🙂

The PT went OK for me – I went 4-2 in draft drafting Dimir Aggro and Selesnya Midrange splashing Red (mainly for 《Glaive of the Guildpact》) and 6-4 in constructed.

BG List for Upcoming Events

(Note: It was written before GP Milwaukee 2018 and you can see his final list here.)

The biggest difference to notice is no 《Llanowar Elves》 – I expect the amount of BG decks to decrease significantly and therefore I think it’s correct to cut it – 《Llanowar Elves》 main strength is in the mirror but it’s actually not that good in the other matchups.

Sideboard Guide

Mirror

vs. Mirror

Out

In

To be completely honest with you I am not sure which card is better: 《Assassin's Trophy》 or 《Deathgorge Scavenger》 – they both have their moments and can be quite bad in certain situations and are bad in multiples which is why I like the mix, but I am not sure.

UR Phoenix

vs. UR Phoenix

Out

In

You don’t have enough interaction in game 1 and their decks are way more streamlined and the games often come down to a race, so 《Wildgrowth Walker》 shines game 1.

Jeskai Control

vs. Jeskai Control

Out

In

I actually keep in some 《Ravenous Chupacabra》 because everyone has 《Crackling Drake》, 《Niv-Mizzet, Parun》 and 《Rekindling Phoenix》 post-board and the games go long enough that it almost always comes down to that and it’s important to have an answer – also being able to rebuy it with 《Find // Finality》 or 《Memorial to Folly》 can be crucial.

White Aggro

vs. White Aggro

Out

In

Mono Red

vs. Mono Red

Out

In

Similarly to the UR matchup the matchup changes significantly post-board – they almost always go for the big red plan and you should sideboard accordingly – this might change for the 3rd game (in my experience this happens rarely though) especially if you are on the draw, but I would definitely board this way for game 2. I hope my article was helpful.

Thanks for reading,

Petr Sochurek