It’s long before the Ravnica prerelease, and only the very first week of previews over on MagicTheGathering.com… but it’s not necessarily too early to have a look at the radical way in which Ravnica: City of Guilds will diverge from previous sets. The point of this, premature as it may be, is to give us a chance to figure out how drafting Ravnica will work, even without knowing more about the individual cards. Using the Orb of Insight has turned up a lot of interesting things, including confirmation of the “spoiled” abilities of the four Guilds found within Ravnica: City of Guilds, and so hopefully we have enough to start working on what it will feel like to draft with this set, and what is going to matter.
History has shown us a lot of different variations within the game, and starting with Invasion Block is as good a place as any to remember what it was that first brought up the “X Matters” theme that has come from block to block ever since that first paradigm shift. In Invasion block, the themes we saw time and again told us that color mattered. Anything could, and often did, happen. Committing to three colors happened as early as pack one, especially when Apocalypse came around and made it all the more difficult to draft “just” two colors and get enough cards for a deck.
This was followed up by Odyssey Block, which changed the scope of things entirely: we got Flashback, Madness, and Threshold, a trio of abilities that focus on the graveyard as a resource, or getting some benefit out of discarding cards. Where Invasion Block taught us to manage our resources with color balance and color manipulation, Odyssey Block taught us to manage our own resources with the utmost care, trying to get to Threshold or re-use Flashback cards at the lowest cost to the rest of the cards in the deck. It’s nice to have a 4/4 Werebear, but you need something else to go with it because it’s probably not going to win you the game by itself.
Onslaught Block followed soon after, and it was Creature Type that mattered now: the tribe of your creatures was the resource to be managed, and instead of drafting “colors” as we normally do we drafted “tribes”. White and Black shared Clerics, Red and Green shared Beasts, Blue and Red had some Wizard action going on, and you’d be surprised how relevant it was to have your 1/1 for one mana be a Zombie Goblin. Instead of strict “color” alliances, you wanted to maximize your tribal alliances, which could put unusual strains on your deck at the oddest of times.
Mirrodin Block followed, and revolutionized things once again – color once again didn’t matter, but mostly because there weren’t really any to be had. Color was a suggestion, and could be varied between one and five at whim, especially when Fifth Dawn brought Sunburst cards. Single-color strategies, to take advantage of the Affinity for Basic Lands creatures from Darksteel, were every bit as valid as four- or five-color strategies to take advantage of Sunburst cards, and the traditional strengths and weaknesses of the colors were turned on their ear. Shatter was the better Terror in the set. Mana acceleration and artifact count (for Affinity or other effects) were highly relevant, and it was a disadvantage to have a White, Red, Black, Green, or Blue border.
And Kamigawa Block is well within recent memory, again with a hint of a Tribal theme thanks to Spiritcraft and Soulshift, but with an unusual strain of “tribal” spells thanks to the sub-type Arcane, and with a theme of maximizing synergy to get the best use out of your resources.
The Orb of Insight has confirmed the words “Convoke”, “Dredge”, “Radiance”, and “Transmute”, which gives us reason to believe that there will be entire classes of cards within each of the four two-color combinations that are proprietary to a specific Guild, a separate mechanic for each Guild to set apart their flavor and their talents. This goes along with the main look I wish to have at drafting Ravnica: City of Guilds, and while it is quite possible that these abilities are still speculation, and how good these abilities are will depend on the individual cards, we presumably know enough to look. What we do know is that for some time at least we will be drafting using a Guild system, working with the Selesnyan Conclave, House Dimir, the Boros Legion, and the Golgari.
While we only suppose we know about the four Guild mechanics, we do know about “Guild mana”, which is a system by which the same cards can cost any variation of colored mana between the colors of a guild. Instead of 1WW, for example, you’ll have 1 (colored) (colored)… accepting only colored mana, but either colored mana for the guild’s colors, and so the same card can be used as either a White card or a Green card, if the Guild being used is a Green/White guild. This helps to fuddle things a bit on the colored card count, and should help with a strain that is otherwise going to be a large focus for the set.
The Boros Legion is a Red/White color-pair, which focuses on unity and martial force. It’s believed, and likely true, that their Guild ability (“Radiate”) is similar to the card of that name; a spell targeting one creature will multiply its effects to copy itself for all other creatures of the same color (or creature type, or who knows just what really…) allowing for one small spell to have larger or smaller effects depending on how well you’ve matched the “tribal” effect that the card multiplies off of. Getting a lot of bang for your buck seems to be the plan for the Boros Legion.
The Selesynan Conclave is a White/Green color-pair, which focuses on the care and feeding of creatures. It’s believed, and likely true, that their Guild ability (“Convoke”) is a variant on Affinity, reducing the mana cost of its cards by one mana for each creature you tap in the process of casting it. Big armies, and big things cheap, seem to be the order of the day for the Green/White mages.
The Golgari is a Green/Black color-pair, which focuses on the death and return to life of creatures (through zombification). It’s believed, and likely true, that their Guild ability (“Dredge”) allows you to fulfill a cost (milling cards from your library into your graveyard) to return cards from your graveyard to your hand instead of drawing a card. Using the same thing over and over again seems to be the plan for the Golgari.
House Dimir is a Black/Blue color-pair, which focuses on manipulation and exhaustion strategies. It’s believed, and likely true, that their Guild ability (“Transmute”) allows you to turn one card into another card, switching a card in your hand into one of the same casting cost by paying a cost… a mix of Cycling and tutoring. Having a lot of things that could be the one thing you need most seems to be what House Dimir is about.
Now, as you see we have two Guilds that use White mana, two Guilds that use Green mana, two Guilds that use Black mana… and one Guild each for Red and Blue, at least in triple-Ravnica draft. We are expected to liken these to having four colors instead of five, drafting the colored pairs of G/W, R/W, G/B, and U/B. Drafting is normally about eight people at a table fighting for five colors, and traditionally this is done by drafting eight two-color decks which will average four of the five colors having three players each dipping into it, and one color having four players dipping into it. The numbers require it, though of course you can get two players in one color and four players in two different colors with ease. What colors can support how many people come down to players’ perceptions of the colors’ depths and strengths, as well as the strength of the cards they get in their early picks and the signals they read. All well and good, and territory that’s been covered forever… but will it be the same for Ravnica?
Drafting four “colors” instead of five, or more accurately drafting four “guilds”, will likely see two players focusing on each guild. Assuming that people are going to draft two guilds each, based on the shared colors of each guild’s hub, makes the situation much more complex. If everyone is going to focus on two guilds and make their decks work, you can’t have the basic assumption that people are going to willingly attempt this with four-color decks. It’s also probably a safe exception to believe that people will try and shy closer to two colors than to three, splashing for powerful effects within the “off” color not shared by their primary guild. So not all of these options are valid – we can expect people to try G/W/r, W/R/g, G/W/b, B/G/w, B/G/u, and B/U/g if they are sticking to one main color, one second color for their main tribe, and one splash color for their secondary tribe. Six guild combinations are valid off the bat, where otherwise for “two-color” decks we’d have ten. For a dedicated “bridge” deck, we also have the possibility of playing Black/White (with a Green bridge), Red/Green (with a White bridge) and Green/Blue (with a Black bridge), giving us a total of nine key combinations.
This is the part where we start to go off into speculation, as we really need to know more about Ravnica before having any certainty about what is going on, but the set is designed by a fair chunk of highly intelligent people, from the creator of the game to other “lesser” innovators who nonetheless have thrown quite a few interesting curve-balls our way over the years. There are two reasonable beliefs: the first is that the color balance will be normal across the set, as it is with very few exceptions. This doesn’t seem likely somehow – whichever way the colors skew I would expect them to skew away from the normal in some fashion. The second is that because of the skewing of the Guild system and the blurring of what is and is not a card of a single color, we can expect to see the colors skewed accordingly. Where otherwise sets tend to have an equal number of cards for each color, this time we’ll see an equal number of cards for each guild, meaning that Red and Blue will be under-represented and should likely get half as many cards as the other three colors, to maintain color balance across Guild lines.
Early information suggests that there will be fifteen commons each for White, Black, and Green, and 20 commons for Blue and Red, plus four commons of each guild color combination and four common guild-mana cards, for a total of 17 commons each color can cast and an additional 4 gold cards per Guild. It seems that the initial expectation for which way the colors would skew is in fact the opposite of the way things will be, which should keep things interesting. Color balance across the expansions is the likely culprit, as it will be difficult to draft those two colors when they are better represented in the second or third sets if they are so painfully absent from the first set.
The likely end result is that you can draft the two better-represented colors across their color bridge. You can try to draft Red/Blue, as Red/Blue has a deeper pile of cards, and the same may also prove true for Red/Green, Red/Black, Blue/Green, and Blue/White to a lesser extent. These latter four seem to sacrifice Guild synergy for not quite enough benefit (accessing one, but not both, of the deeper colors) and so should probably be considered exceptions to the rule, rather than an opportunity to get distinct benefits.
So we have six probable options for two-Guild, three-color decks, and one likely alternative, that being the well-represented non-Guild-colored deck of Red/Blue. We’d expect to find eight two-Guild decks staggering two different guilds as a primary Guild and a secondary Guild, but the W/R/B/U deck is expected to be impossible, thus eliminating two decks based around varying the Boros Legion and House Dimir cards as a ‘main Guild, secondary Guild’ arrangement. It may end up being existant anyway, in the guise of the Red/Blue deck, but it will not look like the other guild combinations do. There’s also a single-Guild possibility, but there’s no reason to think that will be any different than a single Guild ‘splashing’ the second guild of its associated colors to reach the necessary card count for a draft deck.
With seven reasonable options, we can expect the colors to be split accordingly:
White: W (Boros/Selesyna), W (Selesyna/Golgari), w (Selesyna/Golgari)
Black: B (Golgari/Dimir), B (Selesyna/Golgari), b (Selesyna/Golgari)
Green: G (Boros/Selesyna), G (Selesyna/Golgari), G (Golgari/Dimir), g (Golgari/Dimir)
Red: R (U/R), R (Boros/Selesyna), r (Boros/Selesyna)
Blue: U (U/R), U (Golgari/Dimir), u (Golgari/Dimir)
This is the part where it gets rather interesting, because the question is then raised “How many players can each color support at a draft table?” Expecting that the deeper colors will be the ones less likely to be dipped into for guild colors, and that most people will still be trying to draft guild colors than to break with the guild associations for a Red/Blue deck, we have seven archetypes that split five colors: four colors drafted by three players each, with two dipping heavily and a third accessing it lightly, and the fifth color being used by four players. The key difference is that instead of a “random” distribution where any color can be the heavily-used color, that color will more often than not be the color Green. There are eleven options altogether, four guilds by themselves, six combinations of any two guilds, plus Blue/Red, the “non-Guild” choice… but the only discernable difference between a Selesyna deck and a Boros/Selesyna deck is a) whether they add any Golgari cards that can be played off of just Green mana, and b) whether they add any Boros cards that require Red mana.
So if everyone opens their cards and picks a specific role, everything will work out fine so long as no one else is following the same plan, so long as Green is strong enough to support three drafters and one dabbler. This part at least doesn’t seem very likely, especially with Green (along with Black and White) getting a smaller number of cards than Red or Blue. The assumption would be that the naturally deeper common sets (Red and Blue), would be the ones most likely to afford the greater number of people drafting them…
… and that’s not even accounting for the fact that most drafters would sooner jump out of a window than willingly draft Green/White, and would need some very strong enticement to do so. While there have been functional Green/White draft archetypes in the past, as in Invasion, or with the appearance of Judgment, or even in Kamigawa Block after the powerful Green cards of the third set appeared, even then the color combination has never been “popular”.
Dealing with the tensions of this draft format therefore will likewise be quite interesting, because much as with Invasion Block, a single draft pick is going to imply at least one other serious color commitment, and likely imply a third color. Color combinations will dry up more readily if you’ve picked the same two-color combination as the people feeding you, and so there are bound to be frequent changes early on in the draft for as long as we’re drafting triple-Ravnica. The question is simply a matter of numbers, and we don’t have access to those yet, other than the suggestion that there will be more Red and Blue commons than the other three colors. That statement doesn’t say anything about the quality of those extra cards, and I can remember seeing cards like Sea’s Claim and Goblin Sky Raider in recent memory.
The next thing to have a look at then, is the mechanics we can expect to see on each guild’s cards, to gauge how likely they are to impact the respective draft archetypes. The one I think is the most powerful overall, not knowing what individual cards do, is Dredge. For those not reading spoiler boards, the Black/Green guild will have Black and Green (and Gold) cards that can be returned from your graveyard to your hand at the cost of milling X cards from the top of your deck, where X is “Dredge: X”. A deck based on the synergy of Dredge spells and Dredge creatures has the ability to make sure that it does not draw mid-game lands, instead turning its draw steps into spells. While this helps aid in exhaustion wars, it requires you to balance your current need for drawing a “live” card guaranteed against your need to not run out of cards, or to make use of future Dredge cards at the cost of the limited resource that is cards left in the library. In addition to all of these benefits, using Dredge cards can find more Dredge cards, so if your best cards have Dredge not only do you get to re-use them, but by starting a chain of events that mills through your deck, you increase your odds of seeing your best cards each game and being able to use them. The obvious counter-balance to this, a mix of recursion and limited tutoring, is that the Dredge cards you have access to have to be better than (or at least as good as) the cards you could have had instead. A consistent deck filled with under-powered cards is, well, consistently underpowered.
Looking next to Transmute, you can get a sense of why it is that Dredge is so good. Unlike Transmute, Dredge doesn’t (seem to) have any mana costs attached to it, so you can improve your draws without having to invest any mana when you’d rather be curving out and making the important creature drops. Transmute is the Black/Blue guild’s ability to turn one card (that happens to have Transmute on it) into any other card with the same converted mana cost, regardless of color of mana. On the upside, you can get the best card every time, but the downside is “how consistently can you match the best card in your deck that you need now with the Transmute card of the proper casting cost?” On top of that, the Transmute cost always costs you some mana and thins your deck of presumably good cards. Unless you’re winning solely on the strength of the cards you are pulling out of your deck, you are lowering its long-term strength by lowering its threat density and setting yourself back the mana and/or turns it takes to pull off the searching.
As nice as it might be to have as an option on otherwise good cards, and to always have the right good card, it doesn’t seem like it is very relevant in Limited… which is unfortunate, as it is obviously a monster in Constructed, to the point where this uncounterable Tutoring effect can’t help but cause some changes in the way that Vintage is played and may shake up Legacy as well. What if any changes this may require, from the removal of Yawgmoth’s Will from Vintage to the restriction of Dark Ritual will be interesting to watch, but ultimately not necessarily worth the low-impact cards that don’t do much of anything in Limited, and don’t have the greatest promise for Standard.
Moving along brings us to another unknown quantity, Radiate. Radiate is the Red/White ability, which is all about sharing. Radiate cares about colors, and so (at least in this guild-centric world) seems to map most nearly to Onslaught block’s “tribe matters” theme, as the more cards of the same type Radiate cares about, the more powerful your Radiate spells will be. Red and White together here seem to believe in unity and sharing, and maximizing your creatures of the same color or creature type seems to be one good way to benefit from the inevitable Radiating combat tricks. Even moreso than Dredge, Radiate is going to live or die on the strength of the cards that use the ability and the ease of assembling that much in common in a 40-card draft deck. Presumably the cards will make it fairly easy to benefit from their “unity” theme, as this “be the same as the rest of us” theme obviously strains up with the multi-colored (and -guilded) nature of the block, making this one a potential big hit with equal potential to fall flat on its face and be a waste of time.
And the last of the four is Convoke, the misunderstood abilitiy of the Green/White guild which cares about the kinds of things you’d expect Green and White to care about together. Convoke is a mix of Affinity and pitch cards, offering a different casting cost for spells and creatures based on how many creatures you have in play and how many of them you are willing to temporarily inconvenience by tapping them as if they were mana sources towards the casting cost of your cards. Initially, if the set is like the rest of the sets we’ve seen, unless we’re getting a serious discount along the way or doing things we shouldn’t be able to do, it’s not going to be worthwhile tapping all of your creatures just for mana to play more creatures. Seeing that much invested in a single card, only to have a much less expensive card like Dark Banishing kill it easily, might normally be a nightmare. Of course history has frequently shown Green mages will always have a couple of extra Saprolings lying around not doing anything especially interesting, and that they surely wouldn’t mind being tapped for a few mana to crank out fatties faster than there’s any right to play them. While every initial thought that seems to have flitted around has been that Convoke isn’t going to be worth its while, my suspicion is that it will be pushed aggressively enough to make the thought of drafting Green/White bearable… or possibly quite attractive, if it can compensate for the usual weaknesses of Green/White by allowing for a fast and aggressive rush of fat monsters.
As much as we have to play a game of wait and see to learn what the actual cards will do, there’s still plenty to be learned by thinking about the ramifications of the abilities and balances that are being presented to us. Recent blocks have been about balancing different opportunity costs and juggling variables, and getting in some advanced time to think about the vague and esoteric interactions and tensions can’t hurt. Learning what is going to change the “normal” draft strategies and gauging the strengths of the different mechanics that change the game away from what you’ll find in Kamigawa Block Draft or even Ninth Edition draft can be a vital edge.
Admittedly, more details could probably have been safely gone into regarding individual cards, but as reliable as the advanced spoilers that tend to be found on the reputable Internet sources (including StarCityGames’ Future Set Speculations board) any individual card speculations not previewed by Wizards of the Coast are not quite reliable enough to begin forming advanced opinions on.
Hopefully this has been a bit of food for thought…
— Sean McKeown
— [email protected]
“So let’s sink another drink
‘Cause it’ll give me time to think
If I had the chance
I’d ask the world to dance
And I’ll be dancing with myself…”
— Billy Idol, “Dancing With Myself”