Community

Alliances.

...

And if you can find a box of Alliances going for $100 get as many as they have.

While I think it's a little bit light on playable common and uncommon cards (usually what you look for when valuing a booster box since you don't know ahead of time which rares you'll get) I still think RTR is the best value considering how long it will be in standard. In addition some of archetypes that you'll be able to build with the set will see more support from the final set in the block which is going to give support to each guild. So while it may not seem as powerful currently it is only going to improve from here.

I personally have moved away from standard for just this reason, the sets rotate too fast and due to design and development philosophy they haven't been printing the same quality of common/uncommon as we've seen in the past which marginalizes the value of the cards you get from opening packs (drafting or buying boxes). I'm hoping to find or create a healthy modern environment somewhere which is a format I feel I can partake in without breaking the bank (hopefully).

I would like to repeat what others have said here already. Don't buy a booster box, if you're not going to use it for drafting and really just want to build a selesnya deck. You can get the cards you need for a Selesnya deck by just buying singles. A playset of every common costs about 10-15€ in europe on a certain popular auction site. I Imagine it can't be that much more expensive in the US or wherever you live.

I know opening packs is nice and addictive but resist the temptation to buy a box. You will ultimately not get your money's worth unless your get really lucky with your pulls. Don't count on it.

So after you've got the commons, all that you want to get are varying amounts of the following cards. They don't all need to be playsets and I'm not even saying you should run all of them:


Multicolored:

Call of the Conclave - very good body for the manacost + decent populate target
Selesnya Charm - it says selesnya in the name, it's a versatile spell but the 2/2 token it can make is hardly a worthy populate target. 
Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage - good cheap body, good abilities, can take over game by itself if not dealt with

Growing Ranks - duh
Trostani, Selesnya's Voice - shiny mythic card. Expensive but maybe not for long. Manacost makes it very specific.
Wayfaring Temple - This one's very cheap right now. Probably because it's only strong, when you're already in good shape and really weak when you have nothing on the table and really need something strong. A "win more"-card.
Armada Wurm This is probably the one, that is going to be expensive. But it's not like spending $100 for a *chance* to pull one is the better move...
Loxodon Smiter Doesn't do anything with the guild mechanic, populate, but it's kinda awesome.

Green:

Slime Molding - Certainly not as exciting as Armada Wurm, but it's more flexible and gives populate a target.

White: nothing in uncommon or higher, that stands out to me as being synergistic with selesnya's guild mechanic.

I'm not sure if you're down with older cards:

Call of the Herd - gives you two shots at getting to stick a token for populate on the table, in case your opponent is hellbent on killing everything you play. This'll make it harder for him to answer every one of your threats.
Blade Splicer - efficient stuff.
Garruk Wildspeaker is not so expensive anymore, is an excellent card by himself and plays well with populate.
Kazandu Tuskcaller - decent 3/3 token maker
Elephant Guide - they destroy stuff, you get another populate target.

You probably want to get your hands on Rancor to make your vanilla tokens more threatening.

Oct 5, 2012 -- 2:00PM, morticianjohn wrote:

While I think it's a little bit light on playable common and uncommon cards (usually what you look for when valuing a booster box since you don't know ahead of time which rares you'll get) I still think RTR is the best value considering how long it will be in standard. In addition some of archetypes that you'll be able to build with the set will see more support from the final set in the block which is going to give support to each guild. So while it may not seem as powerful currently it is only going to improve from here.

I personally have moved away from standard for just this reason, the sets rotate too fast and due to design and development philosophy they haven't been printing the same quality of common/uncommon as we've seen in the past which marginalizes the value of the cards you get from opening packs (drafting or buying boxes). I'm hoping to find or create a healthy modern environment somewhere which is a format I feel I can partake in without breaking the bank (hopefully).

I couldn't agree more, I already broke the bank for this year with my limited budget!!!!

This is a subject I am very interested in. Commander has made many legendary creatures playable in a new format. What can we do with all those common cards sitting in boxes????

And to stay on topic: RTR is beautiful and also great in sealed format. But a booster box yields a fairly incomplete uncommon/common playset-and the latter can be had for $30 once a set has been out for two months or longer; and there are too many junk rares we get stuck with after opening a booster box.

If the number of rares and mythics per box increased that would be another matter entirely, but right now if you get 4 to 5 mythics out of a booster box and there are 15 of them it sucks to pull a couple of junk mythics out of a $100 box.