Magic Untapped takes a look back at Guilds of Ravnica as the game builds towards the climax of Nicol Bolas' villain story arc.
Check it out:
Video Transcript:
The 79th expansion for Magic: The Gathering, Guilds of Ravnica came out on Oct. 5, 2018. The set marked the seventh set to take place on the popular plane of Ravnica.
It was also the first of three consecutive sets to take place on the plane, making it a de-facto block despite the block structure being thrown out the window with the game’s previous set, Dominaria. This was, in part, because when Wizards of the Coast began designing the set, Magic: The Gathering was still employing block planning.
<MARO SOT 3:55-4:28 “Essentially for all…done together.”>
The story of Guilds of Ravnica is broken up into a short story for each of the set’s guilds as well as a main, over-aching narrative. Here is a quick summary of it all for you:
“Under the Cover of Fog”
Merret, a low-ranking operative within House Dimir who honestly is not very good at his job, takes to petty theft and steals an Elixir of Focus and a loaf of bread from his boss, a minotaur named Grimbley Wothis. Merret soaks the stolen loaf of bread with some of the likewise stolen elixir and manages to spill a bit on himself as well just as his boss walks in.
The theft, obviously, is discovered and Merret flees. Grimbley chases after him all the way to his house. Shortly after arriving home, Merret’s infant is discovers and begins to eat the elixir-soaked bread and instantly shows signs of newfound magical powers. Grimbley, who had arrived at Merret’s house but a moment after, tells the thief that he owes him and that he wants the baby as payment.
Just then, Lazav, guildmaster of House Dimir, appears. He wipes the minotaur’s mind and apologizes to Merret. The guildmaster then inserts an “aunt,” as it were, to Merret’s family to watch after and tutor the child.
“Testing the Dark Waters”
Leighbet, an Izzet scientist, has discovered a way to make plants immune to electricity. As luck would have it, though, she finds herself fired from the Izzet League for her unauthorized use of guild equipment.
Now on her own, she sets up her own lab and hires for herself an assistant named Tamsyn. Building upon her research in protecting plants from electricity, Leighbet begins experimenting on humans, trying to find a way to make them electro-proof. Through the experiments, Tamsyn kills the test subjects as to keep the project a secret.
Needing more funding to continue her work, Leighbet signs up for a Simic experiment. Things go poorly for the scientist, though, as she winds up becoming mutated as those experiments have an ill-reaction to the magic she had, herself, been exposed to.
Now hiding in the sewers, the disfigured Leighbet is tracked down by Tamsyn. There, she informs her employer that she is actually a Dimir agent. In response, the mutated Leighbet kills her.
“Clans & Legions”
An up-and-comer in the Boros Legion, a minotaur named Osset Meslyn, gets promoted to Wojek counterintelligence officer by Embrel Skormak, a flamekin and one of one of Osset’s superior officers.
While excited for the promotion, things go a bit awry during his very first assignment once his informant turns up dead. Upon returning to Legion headquarters, he finds Skormak debilitated and two other of his superiors dead due to poisioning.
Osset is framed for the crime. With the help of Aresaan, an Boros angel, he’s able to figure out that Skormak did the poisoning himself to clear the way for his own promotion to one of the suddenly vacant positions.
Having figured out the plot, Osset and Aresaan manage to slay Skormak using a water elemental-powered fire extinguisher on the flamekin.
“Death’s Precious Moments”
Bozak, an insect-being within Golgari society known as a Kraul, begins working for a lich. Even within the Golgari, though, there is anti-Kraul sentiment. As such, Bozak is only given the crummiest of tasks.
One day, Bozak overhears information about his lich master being in on a plot to overthrow the Golgari queen, Vraska, by means of framing her for a causing a massacre with poisonous mushrooms.
In defense of the Golgari, Bozak sacrifices his life to stop the massacre that would overthrow Vraska’s rule. His reward in the end? Bing resurrected as a fungus-zombie by the Kraul death priest, Mazirek.
“Bound and Bonded”
Terrik, a Selesnyan wurm herder, is tried and found guilty of killing 24 people when a building collapsed after one of his wurms passed by it.
One of the children orphaned in the event shows Terrik an artifact that gets identified as part of an old Izzet device. This leads them to look into things further, which brings them upon an old pontiff of the Orzov. This pontiff had enslaved a number of wurms and had been using them to dig for the Izzet machine – a machine that quite literally prints money.
As it turns out, it was the digging that caused the building’s collapse and not Terrik’s herding.
The pontiff, though, unhappy of his operation being discovered by these trespassers, enslaves the whole lot of them under a debtor’s contract. But, as karma would have it, the group trick the pontiff and manage to knock him into a fairly large hole in the ground.
The pontiff eventually manages to get out of the hole, but by then the group of managed to print out enough money to pay off the contract and leave from the pontiff’s control forever, though not before first sabotaging the money printing machine beyond use.
“The Gathering Storm (Pt. 1)”
Ral Zarek, a planeswalker and prominent member of the Izzet Guild heads off to a mysterious meeting. Once there, he is met by another planeswalker, Tezzeret.
Tezzeret, a known agent of Nicol Bolas, tells the Izzet planeswalker that his master has a deal for him. Ral, however, says that he is no longer interested in working for the dragonic planeswalker and that Tezzeret is already aware of this fact. That’s when Ral thinks this meeting might be a diversion.
The Izzet planeswalker rushes back to the Izzet League’s headquarters just in time to witness an agent of House Dimir (working under orders from Nicol Bolas) infiltrate the building. Niv-Mizzet, the Izzet’s Parun (or leader) is less than pleased about this and suspects that Bolas might be planning some sort of invasion against the city-plane of Ravnica.
Niv then tells Ral that if he is to repel Bolas, he’d need to find a way to become much more powerful – something not allowed under the laws of the guildpact. Due to that, Niv informs Ral of his intent to leave the guild, leaving the planeswalker in charge. The dragon believes that, in doing this, he’ll have more liberty and agency against this possible Bolas threat. After all, Jace, the Living Guildpact, hasn’t been seen in months.
The only other alternative Niv sees is getting all ten of the guild paruns together to alter the guildpact without Jace’s presence or approval, but that would be a monumental task to say the least.
Ral pays a visit to the Azorius Senate and meets with Dovin Baan, a planeswalker from Kaladesh (now Avishkar) who has quickly made his way up the ranks within the Azorius guild. In the presence of his superior, Isperia, along with Aurelia, leader of the Boros Legion, Baan confirms to Ral that planeswalkers from other worlds are, indeed, real. Both Isperia and Aurelia agree that a summit of the guild leaders is necessary.
Ral then goes to meet with Ravnica’s other seven paruns.
Elsewhere on Ravnica, Kaya Cassir, a ghost-assassin planeswalker from Tolvada, appears. She’s looking for a high-ranking member of the Orzov named Tesysa Karlov whom she hopes to save from her own guild as she was hired to do by Nicol Bolas.
Teysa, though, doesn’t want rescue from her guild. Rather, she wants control it. She tasks Kaya, who is an expert at killing ghosts, to kill the Obzedat – the council of ghosts that control the Orzov – and make sure it looks like anyone other than Teysa was behind it.
Back with Ral, he is meeting with an agent of the Dimir who he hopes can help overthrow the shapeshifting Dimir parun, Lazav. Lazav, though, was there waiting for the Izzet planeswalker. Angry at him, he informs Ral that the Dimir do not serve Nicol Bolas and that the dragonic plansewalker stole one of his agents without approval. Lazav then informs Ral that he wants to protect Ravnica as much as anyone – perhaps moreso.
Lazav agrees to join the summit.
Meanwhile, at the Selesnya Colclave, Trontani – the three dryads that make up the guild’s parun – are in discord and have stopped communicating. Emmara Tandris, a high-ranking priestess expresses her desire to attend the guild summit as Trostani’s proxy, but others in the guild oppose the idea.
Ral approaches Emmara about doing just that, but they’re attacked by Garo, a Selesnyan glademaster in league with Bolas, as he wants the guild summit to fail. Garo’s attack is handled by Ral and Emmara and the elven priestess agrees to attend the summit for the Selesnyans.
A little while later, Ral is looking to visit the Golgari where he hopes to gain an audience with Vraska, a gorgon planeswalker and the guild’s queen (as was promised by Bolas for her help on Ixalan).
Not everything is right with the gorgon, however, as she feels that something big has been missing as if there’s something extremely important that she can’t remember. Thankfully, a helpful telepath within the guild, reaches into her mind and helps her unlock suppressed memories. Suddenly, everything that occurred on Ixalan – including her friendship with Jace and how she and he were working together to take down Bolas – came flooding back to her.
Seeing as Jace is nowhere to be seen at the moment and Ral had just approached her seeking her assistance against Bolas, she agrees to help and join the guild summit.
The thing is, though, even though Vraska is willing to help, Ral simply doesn’t trust her. So, he gives her a task to earn his trust first: Deal with the Obzedat.
Ral, you see, had previously met with the Orzov leaders and they showed zero interest in joining the cause. Teysa, however, expressed interest. If Vraska can somehow take out the Obzedat and ensure Teysa’s ascension to leadership, all will work out.
To that end, Vraska (along with assistance from Kaya) leads a Golgari attack against the Orzov’s main temple where Teysa and the Obzedat were meeting. The Golgari draw the attention of the guards, which allows Kaya to slip in unnoticed.
As members of the Obzedat began to fall, the remaining members unanimously agree to make Teysa the guild’s leader, believing that Vraska was behind the attack all along. When Kaya killed the Obzedat’s head ghost, however, all of his power as parun magically transferred over to her, making her legally the guild’s leader rather than Teysa.
Once things had calmed down, Kaya agrees to attend the guild summit.
The summit now about to begin, Vraska is approached by a zombie who is under Bolas’ influence. The dragonic planeswalker has come to realize that Vraska has begun to work against him and he wanted to remind her that she’s only in power at his leisure and he can easily destroy her and her cherished Golgari if he so wanted to.
During the summit, each parun is in attendance, though not everything is harmonious. Niv shares with the other leaders of his plan to become super powerful so that he can combat Nicol Bolas – something that makes the other guild leaders nervous should the dragon decide to use that power against any of them. Niv says that he’d never do that, per the rules of the Guildpact.
Isperia, who is running the summit under the radical idea of cooperation, suggests that they take a recess to read the rules of the Guildpact to verify Niv-Mizzet’s claim.
During this break, Isperia is met in private by Vraska. The gorgon turns the Azorius leader to stone. Once this is discovered, the summit falls apart as none of the guildmasters trust one another enough to stick around to find out what happens next.
The summit failed, Niv and Ral are left with finding a different way of protecting Ravnica from this increasingly real Nicol Bolas threat.
And that pretty much does it for the story of Guilds of Ravnica, but there’s much more to say about the set in card form.
The set was sold in 16-card booster packs, two planeswalker decks, 35-card theme boosters, and a bundle consisting of 10 booster packs, a spindown life counter die, and more. The set’s two planeswalker decks feature the cards Ral, Caller of Storms and Vraska, Regal Gorgon as their face cards and include a total of eight cards not found in the base set.
Including the planeswalker deck cards, Guilds of Ravnica consists of 267 cards and features five of the ten guilds of Ravnica: W/G Selesnya, W/R Boros, B/G Golgari, U/R Izzet, and U/B Dimir. Each guild has its own keyword or ability word associated with it. One of those, the Selesnya Conclave’s Convoke ability that lets you use your creatures to assist you in casting your spells, is a returning mechanic having debuted in the original Ravnica set, Ravnica: City of Guilds. All of the other four are brand-new mechanics:
- The Boros Legion have Mentor, a creature ability that says whenever this creature attacks, put a +1/+1 counter on target attacking creature with less power;
- The Golgari Swarm get Undergrowth, which essentially says you can perform a specific action with value equal to “X” where “X” is the number of creature cards in your graveyard;
- The Izzet League introduce Jump-start, an ability that gives spells new life by allowing you to cast them out of your graveyard by discarding a card in addition to paying other costs. The jump-started card is then exiled, and;
- House Dimir introduces the now-evergreen Surveil ability. Surveil allows you to look at the top however-many cards of your library, put any number of them into your graveyard, then the rest back on top of your library in any order.
<MARO SOT 11:49-58 “Every guild gets…a guild mechanic.” 15:39-16:18 “One of the problems…the mechanics themselves.”>
Split cards, which had become a staple of sorts for sets that take place on Ravnica, return. Each of these cards highlight a single guild with a small hybrid mana effect on one half and a larger multicolor effect on the other.
Also making their return with Guilds of Ravnica are two half-cycles of lands: the two-color Guildgates along with the two-color shocklands.
As for other cycles found in the set, most notable of the 14 in Guilds of Ravnica include:
- Guild leaders, one mythic rare legendary card for each of the set’s five guilds with two of those cards being planeswalkers: Ral, Izzet Viceroy and Vraska, Golgari Queen;
- Guild champions, one rare creature for each of the set’s five guilds that, in the story, act as each guild’s second-in-command;
- Mythic rare guild spells, one each for each of the set’s five guilds that play well with that guild’s mechanic in one way or another;
- Guildmages, an uncommon 2/2 creature for each of the set’s five guilds that each have two activated abilities;
- Uncommon multicolor creatures, each of which costing four mana (two of each of their respective guilds colors), and;
- Lockets, which is a cycle of mana-producing artifacts at common that each cost three generic mana to cast and can tap for either color mana of its corresponding guild as well as be sacrificed by tapping and paying four hybrid mana to draw two cards.
In terms of notable cards, Guilds of Ravnica has a handful:
- Arclight Phoenix, a popular deck in Standard and other formats that values card draw and spell slinging to overwhelm your opponent with repeatedly-returning phoenixes;
- Assassin’s Trophy, a popular and prominent sideboard card in Pioneer, Modern, and Legacy;
- Chance for Glory, an extra turn spell that is also an alternate-loss condition card if you don’t somehow win the game by the end of that second turn;
- Etrata, the Silencer, an alternate-win condition card;
- Impervious Greatwurm which, with a power and toughness of 16 apiece, is one of the physically strongest creatures yet printed in black-border Magic;
- Invert//Invent due to the card requiring a day-one eratta as the text on the Invert side (as written) lacks the “until end of turn” clause;
- Thousand-Year Storm, a rare enchantment card that essentially gives the storm mechanic to all of your other instant and sorcery spells;
- Vicious Rumors, a card that (for a single black mana) deals one damage to each opponent, forces each opponent to discard card, forces each opponent to mill a card, and gains you one life, which is amazing value;
- Vraska, Golgari Queen, which has an ultimate ability that serves as an alternate win condition, and (of course);
- The set’s five shocklands: Overgrown Tomb, Sacred Foundry, Steam Vents, Temple Garden, and Watery Grave.
In terms of promotional cards, prerelease participants received a foil, date stamped rare or mythic rare belonging to one of the set’s five guilds. Draft weekend’s promo was Firemind’s Research. Magic Open House’s promo was a full-art Boros Challenger. Store Championship’s promo was a full-art Emmara, Soul of the Accord. Magic League’s promo was Necrotic Wound. The Buy-A-Box promo was Impervious Greatwurm.
But things didn’t end there as Guilds of Ravnica also had some supplemental releases that complimented the set.
Firstly, Wizards of the Coast released a Guild Kit for each of the set’s five guilds. Each kit included a 60-card preconstructed deck containing cards from throughout the game’s history on Ravnica along with five double-sided tokens, a guild sticker, a guild-specific spindown life counter, and an enamel pin featuring that guild’s symbol.
Wizards of the Coast also released what they called Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition. Exclusive to the U.S. and Canada and selling for $249.99, it was an experimental product available only through Hasbro’s online storefront.
Mythic Edition contained just 24 booster packs (12 packs fewer than the standard booster box). Eight of these boosters, marked as “Masterpiece boosters,” contained one of eight foil masterpiece planeswalker cards in them: Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Liliana, the Last Hope, Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast, Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, Ral, Izzet Viceroy, Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, and Vraska, Golgari Queen.
Overall feedback for Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition was negative to say the least, with the player base pushing back on the high price, reduced number of booster packs in the box, and issues with the Hasbro website.
Now, in getting back to the base Guilds of Ravnica set itself, here once more is Magic: The Gathering head designer, Mark Rosewater.
<MARO SOT 46:00-08 “This is definitely…pushed thing a little bit.” 46:33-47:05 “I think that’s what…your Ravnica mechanics.”>
So, what are your thoughts on Guilds of Ravnica? Is it one of your favorite Magic: The Gathering sets? Where does it rank for you among Magic’s various sets that take place on the plane of Ravnica? Let us know all about it in the comment section.
Please remember to click on that like button, that subscribe button, and head on over to our Patreon to toss a buck in our tip jar. We appreciate the support.
Thank you for watching.
