Ah, the guilds. A three block series, Ravnica, Guildpact, and Dissension, that was oh so hard on my wallet. There are nine other guilds with starter decks, all have their good points.chaos order said:
My favorite guilds from that series are, Boros, Selesnya, Dimir, and Orzhov.
First off I will tell you that if you are just planning to play casually, then go nuts, buy what ever cards you feel like buying no matter what the age they are; I love some of the really old cards from the 90's and early 2000's.
Now, if you ever want to play serious tournaments, you will have to find out what is legal to play. I'm not sure if even the guilds are legal to play any more in certain tournaments because they are of a different type set. Though I would have to ask one my friend, he knows more.
Now what you must understand is that starter deck is what it is, it is a deck that will introduce a set of cards from a block and show you what they can do. I usually only keep a starter deck together for many 3 or 4 games, after that I go through my card collection and bolster the deck with cards that work better with it and take out the cards that aren't as fluid with the decks flow.
As with card collecting games, the key is collecting cards of course. Most of the time I just buy starter decks for a select few cards that I know are in them, other then that, buy lots of booster packs from many different blocks. Since you are in the guild series, start with those blocks. There are some extremely awesome cards in those blocks.
Now you don't have to have an insanely large collection to make some good decks. Considering the collections of my friends and the other people I have encountered, my collection is pretty small. My collection has around 2000 or so unique/different cards, and way too many copies of some that I care to have, only 200 or so of those 2000 are rare. But, while some rares are good, there are many uncommons and commons that can be better than most rares. I have a few common cards that I am surprised that they were allowed to be common.
When creating new decks, try to get as close to 60 has you can, but sometimes I have had decks that are 75 cards or more that have flowed better than any 60 card deck I have created.
Now if you can find a local card shop, they can be great for building collection, and in my cases for cheap. The card shop that use to be near me before it went out of business, was biggest in Magic, and use to sell commons 10 cents a piece, and uncommons for a quarter(It's been so long, I'm not sure if that is right it could have been a nickel for commons and a dime for uncommons). Other then that they had awesome incentives like if I bought three booster packs, I got to draw a free card from a stack of a 100 or so rares that they laid face down(I got some awesome rares that way, a couple that were foil and signed); the store also had loyalty rewards if the buyer was store club member, they got discounts with the member card and every couple card uses I got a free booster pack of my choice.
The other reason for finding a local card shop, is finding one that does Friday Night Magic. FNM is a thing where the store holds Magic tournaments and get togethers that have prizes, and participants get a special FNM card. It is a good time to meet other people that play and make friends and trade cards.
Well that is the stuff and advice I have to tell you about playing and being new to Magic.
