If you asked me to guess what the worst colour pair in Limited, all time, was, I'd probably pick Selesnya. Maybe that was right, once upon a time, but it clearly isn't true any more. I expected this to be another guild with only one or two formats to discuss, but I found three pretty easily, and two of them were fairly recent. Let's take a look, shall we?

Bloomburrow

Rabbits! Successful multipliers in real life, successful multipliers in Magic. In a format where WOTC tried to make typal themes a bit more interesting than just "play all the otters," it might be considered a failure that the best of the bunch was exactly "play all the rabbits." This was your daddy's tribal, because rabbits where the anthem-iest, go-wide-iest creature type in the set, and it worked.

At higher rarities, you guessed it, the best White cards pumped your team. Valley Questcaller bridged several creature types, but was at its best in Green-White rabbits. Warren Warleader was in a similar position and in truth, that was about it for powerful rabbit rares.

It was further down the rarities that Selesnya shone. Hunter's Talent was incredible. Burrowguard Mentor was a simple but highly effective pay-off. Then there were the combo pieces, Harvestrite Host and Hop to It. The host overcame Selesnya's traditional weak point, by providing easy card advantage. Hop to It creating upward of 3 power and 3 toughness (but almost always more, in reality) for a meagre three mana could be back-breaking. This was a set where going wide paid off hugely, and no colour pair goes wide better than Green-White.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction

Love it or loathe it, OTJ was a set where Green dominated. Whether it was powerful base-set cards like Railway Brawler or bonus sheet monstrosities like Oko, Thief of Crowns, Green had bombs left right and centre. Fixing was plentiful, too, so it got to splash a lot of the other good cards, too. I don't usually bring this up in these articles, but the best "guild + splash" category on 17lands is also Selesnya, so it really was making good use of the many, many bombs in the format.

And yet, it didn't really need the help. Four of the five best uncommons were Green and/or White and even beyond that, there are plenty of Selesnya cards toward the top of the pack. Lassoed by the Law and Buried in the Garden were among the best removal spells, while Outcaster Greenblade helped ramp and fix while also turning into a relevant threat if you build your deck right. Didn't open a Bonny Pall, Clearcutter or some other top end bomb? Don't worry, Spinewoods Armadillo is here to put your games to bed.

Selesnya had an embarrassment of riches in OTJ. Wherever you look there's a Green or White card demanding attention: "Pick me, pick me." You should probably listen, too.

Kaldheim

This one surprised me. Kaldheim is a fondly remembered set, and I don't "Selesnya was good" with "this format ruled." Maybe it's just that the set was so long ago now I've forgotten what it was like.

The default list of best cards in the set doesn't particularly paint the same picture as the rest of the data. Sure, there are some Green and White rares up there, but for every Starnheim Unleashed there's a Goldspan Dragon or Kaya the Inexorable. Even when we select lower rarities, the top of the graphic is a good mix of colours. Yeah, the two best cards are Green and White respectively, but there are cards of every colour in the top ten.

The fact is, White aggressive decks in general just had a very coherent strategy in Kaldheim and Selesnya was the best of them. Boros is only 0.5% behind, by the way, so perhaps its cards like Sarulf's Packmate and Ravenous Lindwurm that make the difference. Both are just good cards, but the wurm helps put Green-White over the top of Red-White, and probably explains the discrepancy in win rate.

Perhaps the final piece of the puzzle is the fact that removal was pretty mediocre in the set. Typically, there are Doom Blades and Oblivion Rings all over the top part of the best win rate cards. In Kaldheim, there are a few, but the best ones were gold card, usually sagas like Arni Slays the Troll. If Green isn't getting its midrange creatures blown out by cheap removal, it's going to have a better time. Couple that with the fact that White had a lot of creatures you didn't really want to waste removal on and you start to see why Green-White dominated.