The cycle of Magic is about to begin anew. The boredom and tediousness that comes from playing a block to death, in whatever format, is about to be relieved and replaced by the joyous event that comes from a brand spanking new block. This time round it is definitely gonna be one of the most exciting times for Magic.
We’re at the golden time of the five-year cycle. The broken artifact block (Urza’s/Mirrodin) was followed by the somewhat underpowered and underwhelming block (Masques/Kamigawa) and now we await Ravnica, which will step into the footsteps of Invasion and become another hugely popular block of multi-color goodness. It again comes at a time where we all have been feeling a bit bored with Magic (well, I have anyway) and need something exciting to pull us out of the doldrums. Invasion did that extremely well, and I’m sure Ravnica will, too. My excitement is most definitely already hitting fever pitch.
I can’t wait to crack open those boosters and tournament packs and start exploring a whole new plane. In years past, the qualifiers for the Limited Pro Tour in late January began not too long after the prerelease of the big set, so it was essential to come to terms with the new set quickly. Now the DCI, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to push the PTQ seasons around so there won’t be any Limited PTQs until next year. However, we here in ye olde England are once again complete lucksacks and have a big Limited event in an otherwise barren time devoid of excitement, wonder and pink fluffy bunnies. Grand Prix: Nottingham is coming soon, only three weeks after the prerelease, and it will rock.
A single GP is of course nothing like a PTQ season. At least it’s nothing like the PTQ London season was around here. There is only one shot at glory and there are only three weeks to get to grips with a brand spanking new format that has nothing whatsoever in common with the brand spanking old and stale format. Three measly weeks to break a format? That requires some atomic-powered speed demon! I intend to become that demon. All y’all can come along for the ride; but beware! If you cross me I shall strike ye down with me atomic-powered demonic sword of infinite justice. [How weird is it when an Englishman uses the word y’all in writing? – Knut, dumbfounded]
So I will share my testing and preparation for GP: Nottingham with you in this series. Said preparation starts right now – waiting for the prerelease wastes too much precious time. So out comes the spoiler and in go some first impressions. I always hate seeing the complete spoiler before the prerelease, I tend to have much more fun when I go in blind. See what I sacrifice for you people? Okay, it’s not that big a deal as I am judging at the prerelease on Saturday anyway and hence will have a full day of telling people to RTFC whilst being exposed to the new cards before I get a chance to play with them. So I might as well look at the spoiler, though I’m trying to not refer to too many specific cards here for the benefits of those who are like me and don’t like seeing the spoiler ahead of the prerelease.
Whilst Ravnica certainly is the new Invasion in many ways, they seem to have made it more like a “Greatest Hits” expansion. It’s multi-colored like Invasion block, set in a city like Mercadian Masques, has groups of creatures working together like Onslaught, one of the main mechanics is graveyard-centred like Odyssey and the whole thing has a flavor-infusion that isn’t too unlike Kamigawa. Maybe I’m just saying that last one because I love the flavor of this block, judge for yourself. Honestly though, how cool is this setting? A world where there is no boring countryside and all the breathtaking natural features have been integrated into even more breathtaking architecture. Seriously, I want to live in Ravnica. I should start a movement to ravnicafy the real world. Who’s with me?
Archetypes
Ravnica: City of Guilds contains primarily cards belonging to four guilds. Some people, such as Sean McKeown, have speculated that the set will be drafted around these guilds, in other words the archetypes are going to be based on the four guilds and mixtures of guilds. While there is a breakdown of the traditional color distribution to some extent, I still don’t think that the archetypes are going to be defined much differently than they always have been. The true multicolor cards aside there are very few cards that are truly guild-specific, most mono-colored cards can be played in decks with any other colors just as they always have. The guilds only divide traditional archetypes into two classes.
First, the on-Guild archetypes, R/W, G/W. B/G and U/B. These should, on the whole be more powerful than the off-Guild archetypes, but even though they are the only ones that have real existing multi-color cards, they don’t actually have access to more cards. The color balance in this set is absolutely fascinating. More on that later, though, let’s have a look at these four archetypes.
R/W, the Boros Legion:
This guild’s keyword ability is Radiance and in terms of how much it helps the archetype it miraculously both sucks and blows. Not that it’s a bad ability, I rather like it myself, but it has no synergy with itself and doesn’t really push you towards playing as many cards with it as you can. The two gold cards that have the ability aside none really make you want to play Boros rather than any other archetype. Radiance is rather exciting though, as it is in essence completely awesome except in the mirror where it goes from “do bad things to your opponent’s stuff” to “do bad things to everybody in the entire world”.
Come to think of it, the one way in which Radiance restricts your deck construction is by forcing you to have as many creatures that share colors as possible, hence take all of those lovely gold cards. It still doesn’t feed off itself the way Dredge does.
B/G, the Golgari:
Speak of the devil, the guild of Dredge rewards you greatly for ignoring other colors. Those people who play B/G in every format and call it The Rock (regardless of whether it is a control deck containing Phyrexian Plaguelord or not) should be happy here. Just keep filling the graveyard with creatures to dredge, dredge ’em, fill the graveyard more and wonder how you ended up in Odyssey block. B/G should be the Bomb, not just The Rock.
U/B, House Dimir:
I must admit I really can’t picture yet how this will play in Limited. Cards that screw around with libraries are generally not too hot, but does this set contain enough of them to make a working deck that can kill with milling and can make use of even the most random library manipulation? Is there a critical mass? Transmute is an interesting ability, and should prove to be awesome if you can use it to tutor up a bomb, but is it going to show up reliably? What I really like about this ability is that it forces you to know and remember the contents of your deck. That aside the Dimir just confuse me. I’ll need actual cardboard to be able to say how good this archetype will be, and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t entirely unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.
G/W, the Selesnyan Conclave:
Jamie Wakefield wrote an article recently where he was bitching about the Green cards in the set and saying how they were bad cards that just begged you to overextend, so you can be completely wrecked by Wrath of God. Fortunately, Wrath-of-God-type effects are rare and are hence not a big consideration for Limited. The cards in this guild like to play together and that’s good news for those wanting to commit to these two colors. There are a myriad of ways of generating Saprolings, and having lots of creatures is obviously the way forward when people want to Convoke. What’s not to like about generating a bunch of Saprolings and then tapping them all to make a 9/14 trampler? Nothing, that’s what! Playing this archetype should release everyone’s inner Timmy.
The off-Guild archetypes:
On the whole these archetypes should stick to their usual formula for now. B/R has tons of removal; U/W has flyers and big butts etc. It’s interesting to note that there isn’t really a set mechanic that spans all colors that contributes to the feel of the set. This should be a good thing, as it means that the block shouldn’t produce any big block decks that are good enough in extended but hardly interact with other cards in that card pool. This block should produce more cross-pollination than most.
Coming back to the point about the off-Guild archetypes, there shouldn’t be anything special about them and I don’t have anything else to say about them. One concern that remains about them though is whether you’ll usually have enough cards to choose from.
Color Balance
The four guilds are not evenly spread amongst the five colors, so this introduces a color imbalance, which has only existed once previously, in Torment/Judgment. Because Blue and Red have fewer guilds in this set than the others, there are more Blue and Red cards, which results in a small but not insignificant difference between the guild archetypes.
Let’s have a close look at how these imbalances affect RRR draft. To this end it is necessary to look at how imbalanced the 10 two-color pairs are. The total numbers of usable cards for all combinations of colors are:
Color Combinations | Total no. of usable cards | No. of usable Commons |
U/B, R/W | 120 | 47 |
G/W, B/G | 118 | 42 |
U/G, R/G, R/B, U/W | 107 | 43 |
B/W | 107 | 39 |
U/R | 105 | 47 |
We see here that the color imbalance is more pronounced in the rares and uncommons department, and that the two on-Guild combinations G/W and B/G have fewer commons available to them than any other archetype except B/W. Note that this doesn’t take into account the relative power of cards in certain archetypes. For instance the Guildmages are easy to cast and have two great abilities if you are playing both their colors, whereas in other colors they become awkward to cast and only have one ability. When you look at it in that way those 47 U/R commons don’t look that great anymore, and it becomes apparent just how shafted aficionados of B/W are, as not only does the combination have fewer cards it can use at all, it also has the highest number of cards it can’t use to their full potential.
For comparison, there were 22 commons of each color in Champions of Kamigawa, so the expected number of commons is 44. Similarly the number for the total in CoK is 122. I think 39 commons should hence easily be enough to support someone drafting the combination if he so chooses. On the other hand it may be advisable for people stuck in B/W to grab a Green splash to make use of all those guilded cards. I’m not sure whether I’m contradicting myself here, but it seems this is what Sean McKeown was talking about.
Disclaimer:
This article is an exploration written top-to-bottom and hence may contradict itself. Note this even excuses the fact that the disclaimer isn’t at the top. Wow, this is becoming the sort of stumble-in-the-dark no-clue-what’s-going-on article that appears a lot before prereleases and offers no end of comedy at the author’s expense. Listen kids, if you can avoid writing about new cards before you’ve played with them, then go out of your way to do so.
Tempo
Case in point? I looked over the spoiler and got the impression that the set was slower than CoK, in particular that there was a dearth of bears. Then I went back and looked at CoK again. And lo and behold, Ravnica has the same number of common bears and more uncommon ones! So there goes the conclusion I was going to draw on tempo flying right out of the window.
So let’s turn this into a section on the perception of tempo in new big expansions. I remember the olden days of Onslaught, when people were saying before the prerelease that Limited was going to slow down considerably. Then it came out and soon everyone was saying that the format is all about tempo, and the hands-down best archetype to draft is R/W. Then, after everyone had calmed down a few months later, people realised that the format wasn’t particularly slower than Invasion block, that there was more to it than tempo and that R/W was borderline unplayable. This spectacle seems to repeat itself more or less vigorously every year.
Moral of the story? Wait until the after the prerelease before commenting on the tempo of the set or you’ll just look like a blathering idiot with no sense of history. It’s almost impossible to derive a holistic picture of a set from a spoiler list with lousy layout on MTG Salvation.
As I don’t mind looking like a blathering idiot with no sense of history I will say for the record that R:CoG is faster than Kamigawa block and is obviously all about tempo.
Focus on Tricks
I have now firmly established that there is very little I can constructively talk about here, so maybe I’ll just have a look at the instants of the set, since the worst thing that can happen is that you’re trying to be clever and then get caught with your trousers down because you didn’t know what instants exist to wreck your day. The Speed Demon of Ravnica needs to step ahead of the curve here.
White
Let’s see, several fog effects, some enchantment destruction, a surprisingly good conditional removal spell and a pair of useful combat tricks. Oh, what the hell, let’s make this a proper review of all these cards. All cards are taken from the spoiler on MTG Salvation.
Bathe in Light
Uncommon, 1W
Radiance – Choose a color. Target creature and each other creature that shares a color with it gain protection from the chosen color until end of turn.
This one should be awesome. Blessed Breath was always good and this can be a lot better, for instance against Pyroclasm-type effects. Note that this card can counter your opponents auras and combat tricks like Giant Growth. This is true even if the spoiler is wrong and it reads “target creature you control”, as you can just target your own creature and let the radiance take care of the rest.
Boros Fury-Shield
Common, 2W
Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt by target attacking or blocking creature this turn. If R was spent to play Boros Fury-Shield, it deals damage to that creature’s controller equal to the creature’s power.
Mediocrity incarnate. An expensive damage prevention spell combined with some damage to the dome isn’t my idea of a great trick, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when this turns your dragon into a suicide machine at the prerelease.
Chant of Vitu-Ghazi
Uncommon, 6WW
Convoke (Each creature you tap while playing this spell reduces its cost by 1 or by one mana of that creature’s color.)
Prevent all damage that would be dealt by creatures this turn. You gain 1 life for each damage prevented this way.
At first I thought this might gain ridiculous amounts of life. Then I thought no, it’ll just buy you a turn and then I thought hang on, you can block and then tap all your blockers to pay for this and then gain a ridiculous amount of life after all. It’s still just a Fog + lifegain card, so don’t expect it to set the world on fire.
Devouring Light
Uncommon, 1WW
Convoke (Each creature you tap while playing this spell reduces its cost by 1 or by one mana of that creature’s color.)
Remove target attacking or blocking creature from the game.
This is the best card of this type we’ve seen in a long time. Suddenly those defenders sitting there holding the fort can bring forth destruction for the evasive attacker. Nice one. Who needs land for mana anyway? Best. Use. Of. Convoke. Ever.
Festival of the Guildpact
Uncommon, XW
Prevent the next X damage that would be dealt to you this turn. Draw a card.
Cantrips are always good. Note this card does not let you prevent damage to creatures; hence the main effect here is clearly “draw a card”. Hooray for filler!
Leave No Trace
Common, 1W
Radiance – Destroy target enchantment and each other enchantment that shares a color with it.
Okay, I’ll skip the other uninteresting and largely irrelevant sideboard cards.
Seed Spark
Uncommon, 3W
Destroy target artifact or enchantment. If G was spent to play Seed Spark, put two 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens into play.
I am just going to talk about the Constructed implications of this card. It’s a Disenchant that is at its best in a G/W deck. Green, however, has much better cards on offer, so it’s a card with a Green “kicker” that will only be played in mono-white decks. That’s deliciously… I can’t think of a good word here, but it’s definitely deliciously something.
Wojek Siren
Common, W
Radiance – Target creature and each other creature that shares a color with it get +1/+1 until end of turn.
All hail the bastard love child of Giant Growth and Overrun. This should have “If G was spent to play this, those creatures gain trample”, then it would combo with Sphere of Resistance. You’re looking for what? Useful strategy? Hmmm… Oh yeah, this is a solid combat trick that can become very powerful in situations where there are lots and lots of creatures of the same color/s on your side of the board. What’s that? You want me to tell you something you don’t know? Serial killers tend to kill people who keep asking awkward questions. Hah, that should keep non-black, non-artifact creatures from blocking!
Blue
I need to speed this up or I’ll lose y’all, so I’ll skip all the counterspells and library manipulation stuff and stick to combat tricks.
Dizzy Spell
Common, U
Target creature gets -3/-0 until end of turn.
Transmute 1UU(1UU, Discard this card: Search your library for a card with the same converted mana cost as this card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library. Play only as a sorcery.)
Is this exciting or what? Isn’t Blue sneaky again? If it’s not useful you can even turn it into a more useful one-mana spell. Riveting stuff.
Peel from Reality
Common, 1U
Return target creature you control and target creature you don’t control to their owners’ hands.
This one has interesting implications. Save your creature without losing tempo. Get rid of their enchant creature aura and reuse your comes-into-play-ability. This should be much better than Unsummon.
Quickchange
Common, 1U
Target creature’s color becomes the color or colors of your choice until end of turn.
Draw a card.
Radiance this, sucker! I shall block your fear creature! Banish this guy? I think not! What’s that you say? There are no banish effects in the entire set? Hmm.
At PT: London I played an Invasion sealed deck. I’m sure back in the days of Invasion the likes of Agonizing Demise and Plague Spores were actually rather good, but at PT: London every problem creature seemed to be Black, leading to me ignominiously going 0-3 drop. Wizards seem to have identified this as a problem and ditched the non-black bit for the multi-color set. Fair enough.
Black
Nothing but removal here. Yeah, I was hoping they’d reprint Shriek of Dread, too.
Darkblast
Uncommon, B
Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn.
Dredge 3 (If you would draw a card, instead you may put exactly 3 cards from the top of your library into your graveyard. If you do, return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Otherwise, draw a card.)
Reusable mediocre removal. Gotta love it.
Disembowl
Common, XB
Destroy target creature with converted mana cost X.
Removal that is always more expensive than the creature it kills? Not the best, but most of the time it gets the job done.
Last Gasp
Common, 1B
Target Creature gets -3/-3 until end of turn.
Now here’s something to get excited about. Cheap, efficient, elegant, effective, neat, exquisite etc. I don’t like any of the other synonyms Thesaurus.com gives me. Did you know that apparently recherché is an English word synonymous with elegant? Of course I don’t like it because, y’know, deep down it’s still French.
Red
Burn, steal, redirect, smash, hasten. Red has it all. In fact, red is hands-down the most versatile color for tricks around here.
Char
Rare, 2R
Char deals 4 damage to target creature or player and 2 damage to you.
You used to be able to Fork Psionic Blast. Now you can Twincast Char. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and to think the two damage to you was once seen as enough of a drawback to give this mechanic to a color that shouldn’t have it! Oh yeah, this card is good.
Cleansing Beam
Uncommon, 4R
Radiance – Cleansing Beam deals 2 damage to target creature and each other creature that shares a color with it.
Most of the time this is either a one-sided Pyroclasm, a normal Pyroclasm or a Shock, and none of those cards should cost five mana and you have no control over what happens. So this is obviously overcosted dross. Just kidding. Pyroclasm and Shock tend to be good enough even at five mana.
Dogpile
Common, 3R
Dogpile deals damage to target creature or player equal to the number of attacking creatures you control.
Futurama taught me the meaning of the word Dogpile, like it has taught me so many things. I still can’t help picturing dog poo when hearing the word. Anyway, this is somewhat conditional but should still be playable almost all of the time. Splash it in a G/W deck and have all your Saprolings dogpile on your opponents enormous fatty. Good times to be had by all but the fatty.
Fiery Conclusion
Common, 1R
As an additional cost to play Fiery Conclusion, sacrifice a creature. Fiery Conclusion deals 5 damage to target creature.
Shrapnel Blast that can’t finish. Oh well, this card is good because it’s an instant. Damage on the stack, play Fiery Conclusion blah blah blah. Have you ever set fire to something just so you can watch it burn? This set’s for you.
Flash Conscription
Uncommon, 5R
Untap target creature and gain control of it until end of the turn. That creature gains haste until end of turn. If W was spent to play Flash Conscription, the creature gains “Whenever this creature deals combat damage, you gain that much life.” until end of turn.
We continue with Blue’s Greatest Hits. Ray of Command never reached number one in the charts, but has remained a classic to this day and is frequently payed homage to with various cover versions that would make the original artist turn in his grave. No, I don’t care that Blue is being kept alive on life support.
Reroute
Uncommon, 1R
Change the target of target activated ability with a single target. Draw a card.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but amazingly this has never existed as a Blue card. Amazing! Are there enough amazing activated abilities around to make this amazing? Probably not, but this could be a lovely nasty surprise out of the board.
Green
Instant-speed creatures, life-gain and a pump-spell. How very green of green.
Chord of Calling
Rare, XGGG
Convoke (Each creature you tap while playing this spell reduces its cost by 1or by one mana of that creature’s color.)
Search your library for a creature card with converted mana cost X or less and put it into play. Then shuffle your library.
I wonder how other people manage to write set reviews before the prerelease without getting bored and not really saying anything about the cards that all seem kinda self-explanatory. I don’t have stories to tell about playing these cards, all I can say is that instant-speed creatures are kind of good, especially if combined with a tutor. I can’t even say how expensive this is. Overcosted? Undercosted? Time will tell!
Okay, I’ll skip the rest of the instants review. There are some great multicolor goodies, more pump, more burn etc. One card I have to keep reading because it looks too awesome to be true is this one:
Putrefy
Uncommon, 1BG
Destroy target artifact or creature. It can’t be regenerated.
That’s a Terminate with an Oxidize tagged on, without any Red in it. How good is that! This should be a staple of B/G decks for years to come. On a related note, I hope they reprint Terminate when the B/R guild comes along.
Conclusion
I think the only thing I’ve shown in this article is that it ain’t easy writing about a set before you’ve touched the cardboard, or at least that I suck at it. I’ll be back next week with something more coherent, interesting and insightful.
Until then: Sorry!
Martin
Direct your hate mail to martin underscore dingler at hotmail dot com.