Could somebody list and explain terms to me like "standard"
I'm think I know what it means but I want to know if there are any other terms I should know.
besides card stores what are the best places to buy single cards at?
Standard, Modern, Extended, Legacy, Commander, all denote various "formats", for which a collection of sets are legal to use in officially sanctioned play (or unofficial playgroups abiding by official rules).
Standard usually means the latest 2 Expansions (themed sets) and 1 Core set (Magic Core Set 2011, 2012, etc). You can read about the formats here:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/resources.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/resources/formats-sanctioned
Unrelated
So I'm looking through the guildpacks as they are listed here:
http://www.mythicspoiler.com/azoriusguildpack.html
I wanted to see which guild packs were the best and since I'm writing all of this up I might as well put it here if anyone's interested:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj1SsEIjF3u-dHVDUkdHTHhJZlRHQ1VWVzJYZU5JSnc
Metric
Ratings go from Awful, Alright, Good, Great
Awful = "I will never play this unless I have absolutely nothing else to put in my deck"
Alright = "I don't mind playing this but it won't catch my eye"
Good = "I want to play this and as I'm going through cards this leaps out at me"
Great = "I want to build a deck around this/play this regardless of what colors I'm using"
Caveats
I did 3 quick 1v1 Sealed games today using OCTGN. These are mostly impressions from those. I made a U/G/W deck, a W/G/B/u deck, and a U/W/R/g/b deck.
Creature destruction almost always warrants a "Good" from me.
Mana fixing always warrants a "Good" from me, but never a "Great". While the shocklands are invaluable in standard, in limited they're just a nice bonus. Honestly, the Gates do just a fine job of making my play more consistent without being rare as well.
Land destruction always warrants a "Good" from me, solely because there will be many players whose shoddy mana bases will be their undoing. If you knock out key lands (such as guild gates), you will win.
Flexibility almost always warrants a "Good" from me. Therefore, all the Charms are "Good" or "Great", even thought I think Izzet and Rakdos are too narrow for Sealed. Hybrid Mana is godlike in this set, and so is splashability.
In contrast to the above, prohibitive mana costs makes me dock points. Stuff like Annihilating Fire, Cancel and Ash Zealot are the worst offenders here.
Some cards, while just okay by themselves, are very good with a deck built around them (Guttersnipe is the main example here). For those cards, I rate them a "Good" under the assumption that you
do build around them. Ergo, while Populate is a shitty shitty mechanic in a vacuum, it is very powerful if you can build a Populate deck.
Cards are not rated differently depending on their guildpack. I could've done so but it would've been too complicated to keep consistent.
The keyrunes are great, and I'm certain many players will use them for acceleration and mana fixing, as well as mana dumps when nothing else is available (Azorius Keyrune should not be underestimated as an attacker and Golgari Keyrune is a great blocker)
Since players will be consistently running keyrunes, artifact hate is also pretty good to have, in your sideboard if nowhere else.
Enchantments that scale with number of enchantments sucks, at least, it would be very difficult to make a good enchantment deck. On the other hand, a few enchantments are extremely powerful, most notably Paralyzing Grasp, Arrest and Underworld Connections. Thus, enchantment hate is pretty good to pack.
Findings
Azorius
Great - 8
Good - 20
Alright - 25
Awful - 11
Thoughts: A lot of meh Blue and White creatures are filling those "Alright" and "Awful" slots, but that's not to say Azorius is bad. I also got Archon in all 3 of them, and the Archon is definitely worth its hefty mana cost. Azorius also has a lot of conditional removal in RTR (arrest, paralyzing grasp, azorius charm, avenging arrow), as well as an army of decent to great flyers. Detain is also really strong, and repeatable detain almost as good as straight creature/permanent destruction.
Selesnya
Great - 11
Good - 24
Alright - 23
Awful - 7
Thoughts: Selesnya is really strong, and Populate should not be underestimated. While it may be too slow for Constructed, in a slower environment like RTR limited, it is very powerful. Earlier I said that Slime Molding was a limited bomb, and now I feel that opinion was vindicated by my Populating it every turn with the Guildmage, or other Populate cards that suddenly became instant speed fatties. I won more than one game because I stalled for enough time to start proliferating my huge oozes.
Izzet
Great - 5
Good - 24
Alright - 24
Awful - 9
Thoughts: Izzet can work, provided you make good use of the synergy between many of the creatures and instants/sorceries. It is, however, sorely lacking in bombs, and will probably look to Rakdos and Azorius to supply its game winners. The "Good" rating there is somewhat inflated by all the situationally good cards.
Golgari
Great - 11
Good - 26
Alright - 22
Awful - 7
Thoughts: Golgari, like Selesnya, is also very strong in RTR sealed. Like Selesnya, Golgari will try to crush its opponents with sheer value. It has access to both black (for creature destruction), and green (for mana fixing/value creatures), which are two things any deck needs., and Scavenge is a really good way of recycling chump blockers.
Rakdos
Great - 6
Good - 28
Alright - 20
Awful - 9
Thoughts: I don't play Rakdos, like, ever, so take these numbers with a whole can of Mortons. I think the number of "Good" cards are inflated just like they are for Izzet, because Rakdos has a lot of Izzet-ish cards with worse instants/sorceries. It does have creature destruction, but creature destruction alone doesn't make a deck. A lot of those "Good" cards are also in the rare slot, and you won't be getting more than 3.
TL;DR
Pick Azorius, Selesnya or Golgari if you want to win.
