Orzhov because...

[Kaleo42]

After much deliberation I have chosen Orzhov for the first prerelease flight and likely will stick to it for all 3-5 events I am doing this weekend.

First reason: Life
In constructed card advantage and mana are often the most important resources, however in limited life is signifigantly more important. Limited matches are won (95% of the time) by dudes bashing away at the opponent. Not because those dudes are strong, well supported, or have special abilities. They win because that is the way limited goes, you don't have access to all the answers usually found in constructed and can usually only stop one or two dudes by any means other than combat. This brings me back to life. The absurd amount of life gain (and drain) is perfect for surviving these long wars of attrition and for anyone who has piloted an aggro deck into a {rhox faithmender}, you know the sheer power a lifelinker with a big butt has to sway the game away from being quick by any stretch of the imagination.

Second: creatures
While boros, gruul, and simic take advatage of this quality to a greater extent, orzhov exploits each of their weaknesses very efficiently. Boros has the power of numbers and ridiculous buffs, however those buffs depend on maintaining a large amount of creatures that are combat worthy. With the perfect pool, boros beats all other guilds hands down. That being said, orzhov has a higher probability of being able to keep their creature count down than boros has of pulling enough exceptional dudes to make battalion really shine. Gruuls combat tricks are amazing, but severely hurt one of the fundamental resources, card advantage. Having access to kill spells and abilities will turn an oversized near lethal threat into a two or more card sink that I just answered with one card. Simic is a fun one. Everyone is all hyped up about this amazing mechanic, but they seem to over look a fundemental flaw in it's design; people. In the short time allotted to construct you deck out of a limited pool of cards the likelyhood of amassing the correct ratio of high and low power dudes to make the mechanic effective is very slim. We are going to see a lot of simic creatures with a +1/+1 counter on then...that's it, just one. Maybe two or three dudes will see a second counter per game. By the time a creature evolves once it is already bigger than most of the simic card pool found in limited. Orzhov can simply kill the few big dudes, overpower the small dudes, or erase their damage with lifegain. Orzhov creatures are resiliant and/or backed by powerful abilities.

Third: the {Treasury Thrull}
SO GOOD IN LIMITED!! How many times have you looked in your graveyard to see the answer for whatever you are facing and remembered this is non-innistrad limited and the graveyard is a place cards go to curl up and die as the world goes on without them. He grabs your game winning (big or small) dudes back and has that wonderful attrition mechanic, extort, strapped to him like a candy bar from an impulse buy in the last moments of R&D. 4/4 is pretty beastly as well, even better with {Gift of Orzhova} (a likely pull for a orzhov guild pack). Which can be used early and brought back with the thrull later to beef him up. Pull a second thrull and watch as your opponents crumple under your ridiculous card advantage, it's like {Sun Titan} + {Phantasmal Image} minus the table flipping rage quits.

Finally: splashing
Orzhov splashes any color beautifully. Weakest to strongest: Green gives some pump and helps with mana, but the cool part here is that orzhov dudes have large enough backsides to actually trigger evolve consistantly. Red grants extra burn and kill as well as some decent pumps for your lifelink dudes and creatures with crazy effects ({High Priest of Penance} im looking at you). The thrull also cupples well with the hit it an quit it mentality of red, bringing them back for another hit. Blue...blue...blue. When is blue not amazing (oh yea, mono color, mill, without good counters)? The dimir orzhov combo of kill and keep killing, maintain life as you lose your mind (milling cards), unblockable (brace yourself....) cipher encoded dudes with multiple instances of extort for every free cast! Need I say more?

[Keyeto]

Great points! My friend and I were just discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each guild, and how they stacked up to other guilds. Orzhov looks solid, sine they can control creaturess very easily, which is going to be important, as each guild is pretty reliant on their creatures. Never thought of life as such an important resources in these prereleases. Orzhov seems even better than I had thought after reading this.

[Fenster]

Then bam boros happens and indestructible lightning helix attackers happen

[Keyeto]

Then bam boros happens and indestructible lightning helix attackers happen

Not with {One Thousand Lashes} 😏
Take that, Battalion! But of course, all answers have answers that have answers, etc.

[Birdbrain]

Simic has lots of creatures built like {kraken hatchling} though. Were one stat is rediculously higher than the other. So I think it is possible to consistently trigger evolve in the format. Also, there is an Aura were it gives a creature -1/-1 and you can pay a cost to bounce it back to your hand. So just stick that on one of the evolve creatures play a bigger creature and bounce the aura back to your hand. Also, bioshift let's you move counters around so you can reset evolve. Plus, it has blue which has counter, flicker and bounce. You can move plus one plus one counters around. And there are creatures that give your creatures with plus one plus one counters abilities like flying. Don't underestimate simic or else your goIng to have your arse handed to you by them

[Keyeto]

Simic has lots of creatures built like {kraken hatchling} though. Were one stat is rediculously higher than the other. So I think it is possible to consistently trigger evolve in the format. Also, there is an Aura were it gives a creature -1/-1 and you can pay a cost to bounce it back to your hand. So just stick that on one of the evolve creatures play a bigger creature and bounce the aura back to your hand. Also, bioshift let's you move counters around so you can reset evolve. Plus, it has blue which has counter, flicker and bounce. You can move plus one plus one counters around. And there are creatures that give your creatures with plus one plus one counters abilities like flying. Don't underestimate simic or else your goIng to have your arse handed to you by them

I think what Kaleo was getting at was the whole deck construction part. Simic has great cards, no doubt, but its a deck that takes a lot of planning. You need to find the right balance of creatures (high p/t and low p/t) in order for it to be really effective. This requires a good deal of time, play testing, and resources. These three things aren't readily available in limited formats like this. Now, that's not to say someone couldn't get lucky, but its going to be pretty difficult to get exactly what you need for any guild, and Simic is very reliant on having certain cards to make it effective. That's the way I see it. Who knows, I could be off, but it makes sense to me. The prerelease will be the judge, I suppose.

[Stoneco1d869]

Then bam boros happens and indestructible lightning helix attackers happen

Not with {One Thousand Lashes} 😏
Take that, Battalion! But of course, all answers have answers that have answers, etc.

The battalion and Angels seem pretty solid...especially  {Angelic Skirmisher} who can change from vigilance to likelink to first strike for all blockers and attackers each battle step. Granted she is a six drop but could easily be a set up to Aurelia. First swing, first strike, second vigilance or likelink as needed...just saying

[Keyeto]

Then bam boros happens and indestructible lightning helix attackers happen

Not with {One Thousand Lashes} 😏
Take that, Battalion! But of course, all answers have answers that have answers, etc.

The battalion and Angels seem pretty solid...especially  {Angelic Skirmisher} who can change from vigilance to likelink to first strike for all blockers and attackers each battle step. Granted she is a six drop but could easily be a set up to Aurelia. First swing, first strike, second vigilance or likelink as needed...just saying

True, the skirmisher is a nice, versatile card. Whoever pulls it is probably going to do pretty well. There's a decent amount of removal though, but I'll agree that it's a card that can get out of hand if not dealt with. And don't forget; Orzhov can use it too!

[Birdbrain]

Simic has lots of creatures built like {kraken hatchling} though. Were one stat is rediculously higher than the other. So I think it is possible to consistently trigger evolve in the format. Also, there is an Aura were it gives a creature -1/-1 and you can pay a cost to bounce it back to your hand. So just stick that on one of the evolve creatures play a bigger creature and bounce the aura back to your hand. Also, bioshift let's you move counters around so you can reset evolve. Plus, it has blue which has counter, flicker and bounce. You can move plus one plus one counters around. And there are creatures that give your creatures with plus one plus one counters abilities like flying. Don't underestimate simic or else your goIng to have your arse handed to you by them

I think what Kaleo was getting at was the whole deck construction part. Simic has great cards, no doubt, but its a deck that takes a lot of planning. You need to find the right balance of creatures (high p/t and low p/t) in order for it to be really effective. This requires a good deal of time, play testing, and resources. These three things aren't readily available in limited formats like this. Now, that's not to say someone couldn't get lucky, but its going to be pretty difficult to get exactly what you need for any guild, and Simic is very reliant on having certain cards to make it effective. That's the way I see it. Who knows, I could be off, but it makes sense to me. The prerelease will be the judge, I suppose.

The simic intro pack has been spoiled. So one can get a rough idea of the right balance from that

[Birdbrain]

Also. The evolve creatures themselves have one stat much higher than the other. Well some of them do

[Seth5000]

Orzhov all the way I build a deck around the ghost council card it will be fun

[Kaleo42]

Everything said so far has been true, however remember one very important thing; probability. In limited you can not make your choices based on the rares that exist, only the rares that you're lucky enough to pull. Generally youll end up with 6 rares with the occasional foil rare. 2-4 of them will be playable in the same deck, 1-2 of them will be the cards you actually want to play, and 0-1 will be the what you hoped you'd pull (to play limited with, not talking trading or constructed here). Simic will change the face of constructed, but reminds me of izzet in limited: an extremely powerful set of cards available that is difficult to acquire in the combination to be truly effective. Boros I actually fear, which is why my teammate will be playing boros (or gruul and splashing whichever of the two he doesn't pick). However the power of that guild is in the rares and uncommons which cant be counted on during initial limited planning. Commons make a deck, uncommons make a win, and rares seal your victory (mythics generally just make people jealous). Look back on whatever your choices are and look strictly at the commons and decide if that is still your choice. Once you've decided or at least limited your choices that's when you look at the uncommons to make the final decision.

[Coffee Vampire]

Remember, it's only ONE guild pack you get. The rest of your packs will not be alligned to any guild. So instead of asking yourself, "what guild should I be at the prerelease?", ask yourself: "what 3 colors would I be most comfortable running?" Then look at the guilds. See which has better utility commons. The guild that a) is 2 of your 3 colors, and b) has the best utility cards, will be the guild that you pick. The guild pack will contain what may be your core utility cards (removal, draw, couter, etc.), so even if you want to be boros, yet you are ok with splashing black, choose the orzhov guild pack and build a boros deck, if orzhv seems to have more of the removal you need.

[Birdbrain]

I had already signed up for simic. Though this is very helpfull advice. Thank you. +1 karma

[All-Mana Mania]

I had already signed up for simic. Though this is very helpfull advice. Thank you. +1 karma

SIMIC!!!!!!! Awweeee yeah 💙💚