Dissension Guild thoughts

Reading the title, you may think this is a little premature since we
haven't seen most of the cards yet, but this isn't a comment on likely
power levels, just my initial response to the styles revealed for each
of the new Guilds and my preferences.

Azorius: I'm not a slow control player by nature, though the Orzhov
have made me more interested in the strategy and I've got a reasonable
batch of white/blue control deck cards. Still, to me the Azorius look
to be the most interesting of the new Guilds. Taking first things
first, Forecast strikes me as perhaps the most interesting of the Guild
mechanics (along with dredge - is it coincidence that the card
advantage abilities are the ones that appeal most?) For those who
haven't checked Wizards' site recently, forecast is a cross between a
keyword and an abilty - it's keyworded as the effect works slightly
differently on each card with a common theme, but all forecast cards
follow certain additional rules (primarily, they can only be played at
sorcery speed). Cards with forecast have a secondary ability that can
be used while the card is in your hand, but aren't discarded after use.
Of all the Guild mechanics, this seems to best-suit the traditional
style of its Guild - an imaginative boon to stalling decks. Added to
that I really like the Azorius cards previewed so far (though
Aethermage's Touch should really be a Simic card as it essentially has
a polymorph effect). Perhaps most interesting, and unusual, is that
this is a blue-white deck that offers the possibility of creature-based
control along with stalling; Azorius may have a range of strategies at
its disposal, certainly more than the Simic and Rakdos which are both
variations on the 'deal lots of damage' theme.

Simic: At the same time, I find the Simic intriguing and disappointing.
Graft, the Simic mechanic, isn't much more than an improved version of
Bloodthirst and is both less interesting and less versatile than the
polymorph effect I was half-expecting and hoping for. The intrigue
comes from the direction the Simic have taken; with the possible
exception of the Orzhov and Izzet, the other Guilds fit into a
well-established deck archetype. The Simic are perhaps the last thing
you'd expect to happen when green is reinforced by blue; it's a Spike
deck, in the Tempest block sense. In fact, with the emphasis on
biological experimentation in the background I half-expected Spikes
themselves to make a comeback, but according to the Orb of Insight they
don't. The problem I have with the Simic is that, while this is
interesting conceptually, when you get right down to it Simic decks
will just be beatdown decks much like the Gruul, and at least if the
Guild mechanic is much guide, the blue component seems not to add much.
The subtlety and versatility of approach that characterise other
blue-based decks looks to be missing here. At least it may soon be
possible to make a Frog deck, though...

Rakdos: Red-black decks are rarely interesting to my mind. Efficient,
very often, but somewhat limited in their tactical finesse. I was
rather expecting Rakdos to fall into the much-maligned land destruction
archetype, since none of the current decks really fit that approach.
Apparently Wizards is leery of making land destruction a primary deck
strategy given how much players loathe it, but I'm not convinced
they've found something to replace it with. This lack of direction is
clear in the keyword mechanic, Hellbent, which doesn't appear to play
off any particularly black or red attributes, and moreover doesn't add
anything to the wholesale destruction idea of this Guild (though the
effects on hellbent cards might). Hellbent may turn out to rather
constrain the guild's card selection; from the previews so far, a
number of Rakdos cards seem to be specifically aimed at making hellbent
work or penalisng players who don't make it work. As for the Guild
direction? Beatdown, again. Big, cheap monsters with big drawbacks and
evasion. Wizards purportedly want to make sacrifice the big strategy of
this deck, but not only do the Orzhov and Golgari have that avenue
pretty comprehensively covered, unlike these guilds the Rakdos don't
have a Guild mechanic that plays off sacrifice effects. Instead, the
Rakdos look to be a version of the Gruul aimed at more competitive
players (with the Simic being the set's casual fun deck type).

Phil