Alterations/conclusions on the last post:
1) "Best Draft Decks" is better than "some other confusing name", because it implies what this deck is. A sort of competition to see what the best draft deck would be, with rarity based limitations to keep things "fair" (and not too "constructed" feeling).
2) Set isolation seems necessary. A set tends to be self-contained, and it has all the tools in it (at least in the Return to Ravnica block) that you need to build a deck. If we open up the entire set, it will just lead to more broken decks and removal is sniped from other sets, and it should not open up much of the guild "feel" that you don't already have.
Being quicker to set up, quicker to start playing, and quicker to change, along with preserving the guild "flavor" makes set isolation better in my mind.
3) We should include both sets in the block. Without both sets, there won't be enough variety in the decks. With both sets, you have multiple choices for guilds in each role, and even sometimes roles inside each guild. It wouldn't be just "play Boros" if you want to be aggro, you could choose Rakdos, Simic, Selesnya (or something else), and these more subtle differences in style will appeal to a wider range of players than the idea that if they want to attack there is only one option for them.
4) I am most worried about an aggro dominated format at this point, because curve matters most there, and you can set up cheap creatures plus removal to bash through, and overrun a somewhat slower deck, but deck designers will have to keep the format in mind, and not just play 4+ drops unless they are suicidal.
Just sitting here, I can see strong arguments to playing Boros, or Rakdos as the aggroeyist of the aggro decks, but it's not clear that they will certainly be superior to slightly slower decks from other guilds, that are adapted to the meta. (And then if slightly slower is more prevalent, slightly slower than that is better, and so on, until everyone is playing "fair" and the over the top decks win, at which point Rakdos/Boros will run everyone over again).
It's also not clear that a three color deck splashing for removal or powerful uncommons wouldn't necessarily be the best (Golgari comes to mind here, with their plethora of defenders and mana fixing)
I am pretty excited about this as a format, and I'm ready to start brewing decks for it. Since my prerelease guild was Selesnya, I'll toss out one of those here, as a middle-of-the-pack offering...
Land:
2x Selesnya Guildgate (C)
8x Forest
7x Plains
1cc:
2x Giant Growth (C) (over a bunch of other pump effects that would be reasonable)
1x Dryad Militant (U)
2x Centaur's Herald (C)
2cc:
1x Selesnya Charm (U)
1x Call of the Conclave (U)
1x Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage (U)
1x Keening Apparition (C) (over Concordia Pegasus)
1x Brushstrider (U)
3cc:
1x Arrest (U)
1x Security Blockade (U)
2x Centaur Healer (C)
1x Rootborn Defenses (C)
2x Seller of Songbirds (C)
4cc:
1x Phantom General (U)
1x Slime Molding (U)
1x Chorus of Might (C)
2x Eyes in the Skies (C)
5+cc:
1x Collective Blessing (R)
Note: I started sorting by rarity, and I had around 35 cards competing for 23 slots. I was able to cut it down to about 28 cards, but then I had to sort by casting cost for it to make sense at all. There were a lot of cards I cut near the end that I did not think I would, and in the end, this has become more of an aggressive deck, since the expensive (removal) spells got cut.
Even the last three to five cuts were very hard, and you could end up with a very different deck if you include different cards. As is standard for RTR, there are a million three drops, so you'd have to be sure to not overload there. I didn't include much pump, only the cheapest and/or most lethal, because removal should be somewhat more prevalent now. I didn't include Common Bond, which is widely considered to be a strong pump spell, because it costs a huge 3 mana, but including that could be quite reasonable.
You could also go quite a bit slower/bigger, but we don't exactly have a ton of removal here. (Also cut Trostani's Judgement, since it costs a million)
Overall, what I'd like to stress is that even in this relatively limited problem space, there are still a ton of decsions to be made, and I'd be surprised if any of 10 builders of "Selesyna" came up with the same 40 card list.
Happy brewing!
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