Guilds of Ravnica

The Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance sets each focus on five out of the ten Ravnica guilds and the shared storyline creates the foundation for the story in the War of the Spark set. On this story design, Mark Rosewater highlighted that they wanted the Bolas Arc to "end with a big dramatic event" which required getting players to care that this event was occurring on Ravnica. however, "these Conclave mages are no pacifists. They can fight on par with the other nine guilds, and they always fight as one". • The Boros Legion serve as Ravnica's military, break up fights between the guilds • The Golgari Swarm believe that "death, and sometimes undeath, is a natural and crucial part of nature’s cycle. Consequently, many of their ranks practice necromancy" • The Izzet League is "a collection of mad scientists, wizards and drakes that are seek to push magical science to the limits, and then break those limits with glee". • House Dimir is a guild of shadows, lies and deception and is formed by "a complex and secretive network of spies, informants, assassins, and agents that all work to infiltrate other guilds and gather information of all levels regardless of importance". == Mechanics ==

Each guild receives a unique mechanic in this set: • Selesnya (green-white): the Convoke mechanic, returning from the original Ravnica: City of Guilds set, "rewards token generation and communicates Selesnya’s ethos of strength through unity". • Boros (red-white): the Mentor mechanic is a new mechanic that encourages attacking. • Golgari (black-green): the Undergrowth mechanic "is used to highlight abilities that care in some way about the number of creature cards in your graveyard", however, it is different on each card. This ability also provides "scaling effects". • Izzet (blue-red): the Jump-start mechanic, which is similar to the Flashback mechanic, is used to cast a card "from your graveyard by paying all its regular costs and one additional cost: discarding a card from your hand". • Dimir (blue-black): the Surveil mechanic, which is similar to the Scry mechanic, "gives you a look into—and some control over—the future of your draws". == Related products ==

''Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica'' ''Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica (2018) was the first Magic: The Gathering campaign setting adapted for Dungeons & Dragons'' and was released on November 20, 2018. The campaign book and the three related Ravnica card sets carried "the classic collectible card game into its 26th year". == Reception ==

Cameron Kunzelman, for Paste, highlighted that the guilds in Ravnica are defined by a color pair with matching lore. Kunzelman wrote, "any card set that takes place in Ravnica is fundamentally going to be built around these assumptions about mana and card creation at the core of Magic, and in my experience that means that Guilds of Ravnica is a more complicated set than normal. One needs to understand not just what the cards are doing, but to excel, one also needs to understand what these particular guilds (and their colors) are trying to accomplish at the design level. [...] Experienced players tend to love sets on Ravnica, and I’m one of them. [...] But it also requires the player to build very particular decks, and so this is not the kind of set that you should try to teach a friend how to play with. [...] Overall, I’ve enjoyed the cards I’ve played with in Guilds of Ravnica, and it is going to be interesting how the broader game of Magic changes in response to it. But I don’t think Guilds is going to usher in a bunch of new players who are excited about the hypercomplexity of the game". Alexander Lu, for Comics Beat, reviewed a Booster Bundle for the Guilds of Ravnica set which included items such as ten booster packs, poster art that "features the 'Guilds of Ravnica' key art of a floating city shaped like Magic‘s trademark planeswalker symbol", "insert cards that lay out the game in its most basic terms, and 80 basic land cards". Lu highlighted that "thirteen years after the first Ravnica block of sets (and six years after the second), Magic has finally returned to Ravnica once more. [...] While perhaps not as explanatory of the rules as a Starter Set, Bundles offered a variety of gameplay tools beyond just cards– making them valuable for someone who needed things like deckboxes and dice. [...] [The] player guide contains a visual checklist of every card in the expansion, easily allowing you to keep track of your collection. It also contains some information about the story in of this set, which focuses on a mysterious conspiracy that has begun to sow discord among the guilds of Ravnica. [...] That said, even though we didn’t pull a mythic, all in all, this Magic 'Guilds of Ravnica' bundle has had some incredible cards inside. I’m so psyched to have a chance to play with these cards and many others from this set". == References ==