OSSR: Magic: the Gathering : Ravnica: City of Guilds

[Mistborn]

The Year is 2005. New Orleans is in shambles and the nation is almost immediately regretting given George W. Bush as second term in office. And in constructed MtG cards were be banned in standard for the second time in under a year in order to end the Affinity decks reign of terror.

The last block Kamigawa is generally regarded as the worst block Magic's history and it itself had followed up what is consider one of the more degenerate blocks magics history. Magic was floundering and the next set would have to wow people to bring the players who quit in the last two years back into the game.

spolier: they succeeded

Ravinca: City of Guilds was the first set of the extremely popular Ravnica block. It's so well remembered because it is an exemplar of good design and also because it was the backbone of one of the best standard formats in history. The format that Ravnica created was also closer to being the format that people who designed the set had in mind than ever before. On top of all that the set was dripping with flavor which interwove with the mechanics like never before. So what exactly made Ravnica such a sucess?

Let's start with this

This was the first card from Ravnica block to be officially spoiled and it along with the other nine "shocklands" as they would be termed would redefine what sort of decks you could play. First in standard, then in extended, and then in modern. What made these new lands so revolutionary is that the were good in fast decks and they were also good in slow decks. They let aggressive have the best mana bases since the original dual lands. Basically any 2-3 color deck you could dream up could have a solid mana base and that went a long way to creating a format with 10-20 competitive decks at once. (and let a new generation of players experience the joy of playing Kird Ape and Savannah Lions in the same deck) But A-class mana fixing wasn't all Ravnica had.


These guys were here too.
The core of Ravnica are the 10 Guilds, one for each 2-color combination. The were the major power players in a city that covered an entire plane, the prosperity of which rested on the magical Guildpact which curbed outright war between the guild and gave each one of them a role in administering the city (sort of like factions in Sigil only not stupid) Every guild was designed with a unique identity and every guild had
-a shockland
-a karoo (comes into play tapped and makes you return a land to your hand but taps for one mana of each of the guilds colors)
-a guildhome (taps for colorless but has a repeatable effect you can activate for mana of both of the guilds colors)
-a hybrid mana spell at common and rare
-a guildmage (a 2/2 for 2 hybrid mana with a activated ability for both of the guilds colors)
-a signet (2 mana artifact with 1:tap and one mana of both of the guilds colors)
-a guildmaster (big splashy legend in both the guilds colors)
-a guild champion (slightly smaller legend in both the guilds colors)
-an artifact with an ability that cost guild colors to activate
-two 1 color spells that got better if you cast them using one of the guilds other colors
-a keyword mechanic
As with basically every set the guilds got some cards that rocked your socks and others that were turkeys but every Guild had one or more decks in it's colors that was viable which is a level of diversity rarely seen in standard.

there were good U/B decks but none of them played this card

In order to cram all these guilds into a block however they had to split them up. Ravnica: City of Guilds only had Boros (W/R) Dimir (U/B) Golgari (B/G) and Selesnya (W/G). The other Guilds would have to wait for later sets. This was probally great for marketing at the time because once people had a taste there was a great deal of anticipation to finding out what the U/R guildmage did and so on. So lets meet the guilds in detail

The Boros Legion

hope you like small creatures and burn spells

The Boros were the breakout hit of the set by a fair margin evidenced by how we still call decks with small white creatures and burn "Boros". Flavorwise the Boros were Ravnica's police force combining white-flavored morality with red-flavored passion. While White and Red are sort of an odd pair philosophially they share a love a small creatures and the paring was a match made in aggro heaven. Their guild mechanic Radiance(effect on target {thing} effects all {things} that share a color with it) was pants but the presence of shocklands+painlands completely changed what type of aggro deck you could play. Now you could essentially play white creatures in your red deck and still be consistent. The standout card that was specially Boros is certainly Lighting Helix

It's lighting Helix oh my god!
The Boros deck was near constant presence in Ravinca era standard as the Formats Sligh variant. It played efficient white creatures and burn spells and was generally the jack of all trades among aggro decks of the era.
House Dimir

hope you like mill
spoiler: you don't

Ravnica's knowledge brokers and spies House Dimir is so secretive that officially they do not exist. Dimir is defined by is love of mucking around with libraries. The Dimir mechanic Transmute was ballin' it let you discard the card to search your library for a card with the same converted mana cost.

Unfortunately the guild had a millstone around it's neck in the form of it trying to push decking out you opponent as a win condition. Much like Azorius the color combination of Blue Black control was intrinsically powerful so the R&D was unwilling to give it a killer app in constructed. The result was that blue decks didn't play watery grave and went looking for killer apps elsewhere. Though there was a scattering of U/B tempo decks it generally wouldn't be until Time Spiral block (and Mystical Teachings was printed) that U/B control would become a dominate force in the metagame.

this card is not as good as some people thought

The biggest impact the Dimir cards had on the meta-game immediately was the a deck the only played one swamp. Heartbeat Combo used Muddle the Mixture and Drift of Phantasms as tutors (and in the case of Muddle to get your combo past counters. It would be the last time a "mana engine" deck was able to see play in standard.

The Golgari Swarm

hope you like graveyard themes

The Golgari Swarm are a cabal on necromancers who also provide food for Ravinca's poor assumably through the most metal soup kitchens imaginable. The're big on the cycle of life and death and their mechanic un-lives on in eternal format infamy. Dredge asks "hey instead of drawing a card would you like to put the top X cards of your library into you graveyard and then put this one into your hand". The answer as it turned out in eternal formats was a: hell yes and the b: can you make X a large as possible please.

One of these saw very marginal standard play while the other two helped force every legacy into play 6-8 pieces of graveyard hate in their sideboard

Unlike Dimir the Golgari did have a Killer App for standard and it was Putrefy since it killed their creatures and it killed Umezawa's Jitte but dedicated B/G was rarer than decks that just splashed Black or Green for Putrefy

This card is sweet but you have forests in you deck and Sakura-Tribe Elder is a card why are you limiting yourself to two colors

The Selesnya Conclave

hope you like saprolings

For most of magics history the worst color has been White or Green and the second worst color has been whichever one of those colors wasn't the worst. So when a W/G deck won world championship just after the release of Ravinca city of Guilds you have to assume that something went unexpectedly right.

it turned out that these cards were very good against the metagame at 2005 Worlds

The Selesnya are a creepy nature cult that's into the greater good and hive-minds. Their mechanic is Convoke which let's all you creatures make like Llanowar Elves and tap to cast the spell in question. R&D had recently been burned by another cost reducing mechanic so the powerlevel of most convoke spells was low with the exception of Chord of Calling which eventually saw some play before seeing new life in modern. However of all the guilds Selesnya had some of the best multi-color cards printed for it. Loxodon Heirarch was above the curve at the time and just one of him threw a wrench in any aggro decks plan of attack (and the three elephant parade that Congregation tutored up on turn 2 was basically gg) Glare of Subdual was sweet tech against the blue control decks of the time because the usually couldn't stop and once it was in play and it shrekt their plan of killing you with Kamigawa legends. Watchwolf get's an honorable mention here for being way above the curve but not having much of a place in the metagame outside Zoo.

So Guild specific cards weren't all that good. Where did that awesome standard format come from? We'll find out next time.

[Red_Rob]

Ravnica was indeed awesome. We had kind of been off the boil with Magic for a while when the block came out. Ravnica was a great set to get back in with. The guilds were perfect for giving a framework to build around without simply giving you decks to play, and the fact they were all two colours gave you some leeway to splash other guilds cards if you wanted.

The power level was also set just right, so there were plenty of exciting and powerful cards but no one best deck that ran rampant over the field. The fact that pretty much every two colour deck is still referred to by it's guild name shows how well it was received.

[Ancient History]

Ravnica guildmages were interesting in part because they called back to the other guildmages - the ones in Mirage. But where those were weird one-offs designed to kinda-sorta encourage three-color decks, the Ravnica guilds were much more cohesive both on a setting and mechanics level.

[name_here]

I played Ravnica casually. I was actually pretty fond of Radiance because it fairly reliably let you hit {thing} a given player controlled, but I guess its tournament utility was severely hobbled by having a 50% chance of coming up against a deck that shared at least one color with you. The Convoke cards were pretty pricey, but the games I played in tended to last a while and let the Selesnya token generation get up to speed. Also, yeah, Watchwolf. The R&D preview went something like "We've never printed a 3/3 for 2 without a drawback. But fuck it, here's one." I mean, it's two colors, but in Ravnica that hardly counts.

[Lokathor]

GlimpseTheUnthinkable.jpg
there were good U/B decks but none of them played this card

Wait, what? Isn't this a cool card? Cause like, it's 10?

This is why I don't win at magic.

[name_here]

That one does strike me as a pretty nice chunk at the cost. But the rest of the Dimir milling machine was decidedly anemic; you were never going to actually run people out of cards that way. Not even in scrub casual play where Siege Wurm actually hits the table.

Also, it puts cards into your opponent's graveyard. I think Ravnica was relatively light on things you could do with that besides Dredge, but there were some.

[Prak]

That one does strike me as a pretty nice chunk at the cost. But the rest of the Dimir milling machine was decidedly anemic; you were never going to actually run people out of cards that way. Not even in scrub casual play where Siege Wurm actually hits the table.

Also, it puts cards into your opponent's graveyard. I think Ravnica was relatively light on things you could do with that besides Dredge, but there were some.

It's an amazing card for Golgari to splash Blue for, of course. Hell, a BUG Golgari/Dimir/Simic deck would be pretty awesome, at least in casual.

[Mistborn]

Ravnica guildmages were interesting in part because they called back to the other guildmages - the ones in Mirage. But where those were weird one-offs designed to kinda-sorta encourage three-color decks, the Ravnica guilds were much more cohesive both on a setting and mechanics level.

Izzet Guildmage was the one that I always had soft spot for because it probally responsible for both my best and worst constructed performances.

See back when Guildpact was first released people figured out that if you Spliced Desparate Ritual onto Lava spike and then Copyied it with Izzed Guildmage when the copy resolved you got your 3 mana back and you could just keep copying lava spike until they died.

So upon hear about this little Mistborn immediately tried to make Izzet Guildmage.deck. It was the worst deck I have ever played in serious magic. Every deck in the format could kill your Guildmage before you could combo off, kill you before you could combo or both. After getting crushed decisively at FNM I played Heartbeat only in standard until Kamigawa rotated.

Then later those Izzet Guildmages ended up in this janky U/R deck I played in Extended happend to crush the people at my local gaming shop.

Izzet Beats
22 lands
4 Shivan Reef
3 Steam Vents
9 Island
5 Mountain
1 Barbarian Ring

17 creatures
4 Grim Lavamancer
2 Frostling
3 Ceta Disciple
4 Izzet Guildmage
4 Hearth Kami
2 Voidmage Prodigy

21 Other Spells
4 Firebolt
3 Unsummon
4 Serum Visions
4 Remand
2 Mana Leak
4 Volcanic Hammer

Sideboard
1 Unsummon
4 Annul
4 Shattering Spree
4 Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Mana Leaks

Basically this deck was small creatures, counters and Burnspells the exact 75 got a little more tuned over time. I'm pretty sure this deck would never have enjoyed the win percentage it did if more people were playing real decks. But Izzet Guildmage and Grim Lavamancer let you play the long game against other aggressive decks and your Remands, Mana Leaks and Voidmages usually delayed the control decks sweepers long enough to get there. Also a lot of people played Psychatog/Wild mongrel and it turns out that Unsummon was a better than average answer to those cards

Wait, what? Isn't this a cool card? Cause like, it's 10?

This is why I don't win at magic.

Ok so think of it like this if you're milling them out their deck is like their life total. You not going to kill before turn 3 ever so since they draw cards naturally you have to mill through 50 cards. Imagine 50 cards is like 20 life. Every mill effect essentially deals 0.4 "damage" for every card it mills.

By this metric Glimpse the unthinkable is actually a pretty good "burn spell" It costs 2 mana and deals 4 "damage" which is in a vacuum very good. The problem was that no other good cards existed that burned their library. (This remains true to this day as far as I know Glimpse is the only mill spell printed that isn't strictly worse that burn spell to the face of the same mana cost.

[MGuy]

This actually was the time I'd started playing MAGIC. 'Technically' I still play MAGIC but after this and whatever the fuck the thing with the Changelings and shit that came right after this was called I stopped being an 'active' player.

[Username17]

Milling is a weird mechanic. It bypasses most defenses and when it works you win. But it also doesn't really interact with most other offenses or tax your opponent's defenses much at all while it's working. Some enemies have reanimation or delve effects and are actually benefited from you milling them along the way.

Mill basically either hits critical mass and is able to mill you fast enough to win the game, or it doesn't and it derdles around until it gets blown out hard by the opposition. Right now there's a Mill engine good enough to win tournaments:



But if the Mill engine isn't good enough to win by milling, then every mill card in the format is a coaster.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

When the mill engine doesn't kill, it sometimes gets used on yourself. When it can.


This is a card in Legacy

[vagrant]

Man Rav was my first success in MtG to the point were I stopped playing after it was rotated out. My W/B Orzov deck is still something that makes me smile to myself.

[Whipstitch]

But if the Mill engine isn't good enough to win by milling, then every mill card in the format is a coaster.

-Username17

Hell, even then it's debatable whether additional mill effects will do any good. Even the example Frank cited above mostly works because Tutelage converts draw into mill rather than rely on traditional mill cards. That's super handy because you get to put a clock on your opponent while tinkering with your hand quality, a feat which really helps you deal with the fact that milling alone isn't very good at stopping goblins from punching you right in the face until you die.

[Mistborn]

The Secret Sauce: Balance and Rarity Done extremely right
Ravnica Block had a lot of cards the at the "format staple" level and they printed a lot of those cards at common.


These were all tournament staples and you could afford them on a child's allowance.

More important than all the sweet staples Ravnica had was what it didn't have. There were no cards that were obviously pushed beyond what was a reasonable magic card. There was no Siege Rhino, no Jace the Mind Sculptor, no Bitterblossom or Archbound Ravager. With new duals to guarantee packs would sell (plus an awesome draft format) R&D felt free to put as many cards as possible exactly on the Jedi curve. In addition though likely by accident all the potenial things that could be problems in the format had solutions. Take Bob for instance


Bearing the likeness of magic invitational winner Bob Maher Dark Confidant is the most powerful card in the entire set and the one the currently fetches the highest price on the secondary market. But it barely saw play in standard until Guildpact gave it a deck it fit into well.

See in standard Bob gave you card advantage but he also asked you to keep the curve of you deck low and unlike eternal formats this actually mattered. See in the Ravica era the best creatures cost mostly 1-2 mana or 5-6 mana and you couldn't play the latter in your Dark Confidant if you wanted to win games vs. Boros. So your Bob had small creatures, removal, and hand disruption. That was a good deck too but people still had solid gameplan against you. Aggro could burn you out before Bob got you too far ahead and Control could just kill it immediately because it dies to everything.

That was another common them in Ravnica. The set had a lot of cards with "build around me" effects which made the set and format beloved by casual players and brewers alike. Since every card was pretty squarely on the curve and a bunch of them did weird things the format became all about synergy and attacking the game from oblique angles.

These cards never quite got there but by golly did people try.

And if you weird brew had blue mana in it Ravica gave you the best card for not getting run over by the more efficient decks.

Remand is one of the best counterspells ever printed and it's the best designed counterspells in the history of magic. The card still sees play in modern where it's the formats go to counterspell. It's one of those cards that's powerful but in a really subtle way. It rarely feels like Remand is blowing you out but it usually was (unless you tried to counter their spell and then they Remanded their own spell that always felt like a blowout). Not only that but Remand nudges blue decks in a much more fun direction.

If your on the classic draw-go plan of answering all their threats, drawing some cards, and then finally dropping the once creature you deck plays finsh them off if the don't scoop out of boredom first Remand isn't as good. The more active your plan is the better Remand is because it delays them one turn and then draws you closer to whatever that plan was. It's just exponentially better to Remand something when you have a clock on your opponent.

Sometimes that plan was "drop a Kamigawa legend on turn 5-6 then protect it". Sometimes it was "cast Enduring Ideal". Sometimes it was "make tons of mana with Heartbeat and Early harvest then Maga for 20" Later on it was "rituals into Dragonstorm for 4" or "lock down their entire board with Vesuvan Shapeshifter and Brine Elemental" Sometimes it was just "stop them from wrathing or playing a fatty long enough for my small creatures to get there". However it was that your blue deck planned on winning Remand would help you get there.

[maglag]

As with basically every set the guilds got some cards that rocked your socks and others that were turkeys but every Guild had one or more decks in it's colors that was viable which is a level of diversity rarely seen in standard.

Utter bullshit. There was no viable W/U deck, pretty much all of their cards gimped and aborted before seeing the light of day. The R/U deck was a combo deck that didn't care for their supposed guild at all. The B/U deck didn't exist at all either until the next set came. The illusion of "diversity" was only because it was extremely easy to splash a 3rd color, so nobody actually played any guild and they just cherry-picked the best cards from 3rd colors, 90% of the time one of those colors was green.

Also Ravnica meant that your mana base alone would now cost hundreds of bucks for any kind of tournament so fuck the whole block in the ass with a giga drill breaker.

[GâtFromKI]

Remand is one of the best counterspells ever printed and it's the best designed counterspells in the history of magic.

Isn't this a small modification of Memory lapse ? Well, Memory Lapse prevent your opponent to draw a new card, while remnant allows you to draw another card... But is the design of both cards that different ?

(and I see more possibilities with Memory Lapse, but maybe it is too powerful, I don't know)

[maglag]

Remand is one of the best counterspells ever printed and it's the best designed counterspells in the history of magic.

Isn't this a small modification of Memory lapse ? Well, Memory Lapse prevent your opponent to draw a new card, while remnant allows you to draw another card... But is the design of both cards that different ?

(and I see more possibilities with Memory Lapse, but maybe it is too powerful, I don't know)

As pointed out, Remand has two key advantages:
1-It refills the card in your hand, which is great when you're playing an agressive deck and just want to add presssure (aka every viable Ravnica constructed deck).
2-It can be used to "rescue" your own key spell in case your opponent tries to counter it, further kicking down U control decks on the balls and making them unplayable for years.

[Red_Rob]

Utter bullshit. There was no viable W/U deck, pretty much all of their cards gimped and aborted before seeing the light of day.

I distinctly remember facing Court Hussar > Windreaver decks on occasion. I seem to remember the Azorius Guildmage being decent too, although all the guildmages were pretty good.

[Mistborn]

Utter bullshit. There was no viable W/U deck, pretty much all of their cards gimped and aborted before seeing the light of day. The R/U deck was a combo deck that didn't care for their supposed guild at all. The B/U deck didn't exist at all either until the next set came. The illusion of "diversity" was only because it was extremely easy to splash a 3rd color, so nobody actually played any guild and they just cherry-picked the best cards from 3rd colors, 90% of the time one of those colors was green.

Also Ravnica meant that your mana base alone would now cost hundreds of bucks for any kind of tournament so fuck the whole block in the ass with a giga drill breaker.

There was totally were W/U decks. Even ones that played actually Azorius cards. It wasn't top tier but it totally was a thing where you sleeved up small white creatures and counterspells and then had a good matchup against control. Plus the versions of Tron that were blue white.

Also which U/R Deck? You had your Magnivore decks, you had the Owling Mine decks that splashed red, you had Izzzetron and then later you had Dragonstorm.

Also yes shocklands were a beating and the definitely effected what you could play if you were on a budget. That didn't lock you out of playing Torunament level decks. Obviously you couldn't play the various three color decks unless you were willing spend over $100 on shocks. However not every top tier had that many shocks, many of the best decks only had 4 or even 0. Heartbeat Combo never played duals at all and that deck was still sweet.

I distinctly remember facing Court Hussar > Windreaver decks on occasion. I seem to remember the Azorius Guildmage being decent too, although all the guildmages were pretty good.

Azorius Guildmage was good because the blue ability rekt Heartbeat decks by countering transmutes and the white ability was respectable in a world were people had kamigawa legends as their finishers of choice.

[Mistborn]

Final Thoughts: Context Matters

So Ravnica had a bunch of cards that we know are good because they stood the test of time. But the cards from a set that live on forever in eternal formats are the minority. Champions of Kamigawa had Gifts Ungiven, Sensei's Divining Top but it's still generally agreed that set was pants. The most played format in Magic is standard and we judge sets on the volume of cards that can vault of that lower bar than on the few that make the high jump. (which is often a mistake rather than design)

Champions of Kamigawa was not a good set but at the time it felt even worse because nothing in that set could survive when there were Mirrodin cards in format. In Mirroden standard the deck that cast Tooth and Nail on turn 4 needed control elements because Tooth and Nail on turn 4 was too slow. A lot of the Kamigawa legends were above the curve for their era but none of them could keep step with Arcbound Ravager and his homies.

I swing for everything lol

Ravnica on the other hand helped fill in all the gaps in the format that Kamigawa sets left open while still giving the good cards from those sets a chance to shine. The format had good threats already so Ravnica focused on giving the format the exact answers it needed. Kamigawa had already printed some nice aggressive creatures especially Isamaru at 1 and Ravncia planed to add even more good creatures at 2. So the format needed strong answers at 2 a need filled by Last Gasp, Remand, and Lighting Helix. It also provided answers to one of the formats big potential problems.

Go home R&D you are drunk

Jitte complete warped aggro mirrors and made any creature a must-answer threat for the control deck. But it didn't rek the format because almost every deck had answers that fit neatly into their main decks(plus this was when you could still stack damage so Jitte was less good). Most famosly Faith's Fetters stoped Jitte cold gained 4 life and if they drew another Jitte that wasn't a problem due the current legend rules.

This powerful removal both enabled the "kill your guys, maybe ramp some and then tap out for a fat legendary" plan that a lot of decks were rocking but also gave people tools to fight those decks.

Heck Ravnica even had a spirit subtheme to go better with all the janky spirtcraft cards from Kamigawa, which almost got to the top tables in the form of Ghost Dad.


They synergy between Ravnica block with Time Spiral was less sublime but Ravnica's fixing and efficient answers was a good straight man to Time Spiral block's crazyness.

[GâtFromKI]

As pointed out, Remand has two key advantages:
1-It refills the card in your hand, which is great when you're playing an agressive deck and just want to add presssure (aka every viable Ravnica constructed deck).

I don't know. In my experience, it's more efficient to slow down the opponent (what Memory Lapse do) than to speed up your own deck; in a control deck, you have to slow down the opponent until you have the control (and drawing more isn't helping since you need mana), and in an aggro deck, you counter at the end of the game to finish your opponent before he regains control (and drawing more isn't helping since at that point of the game, your cards are less efficient than your opponent's).

But I don't know the ravnica environment, therefore my opinion hasn't much value...

[Mistborn]

In Racnica Standard a lot of the control decks were more midrageny. They we're looking to control the game until the point when they would tap out for a Meloku/a spirit dragon or assemble Tron or some other huge haymaker. Remand went good with those plans because it drew you to your big spells or lands when it wasn't drawing more answers. Also pretty much every deck had 3 and 4 drops and getting one of those remanded was such a backbreaking loss of tempo which is why you played it in more aggressive decks. Even just remanding a 2 drop was pretty good because the format was fast, like what are they going do play their Watchwolf again on turn 3? That's not going to get there.

Ravnica Standard also had combo decks and most of them played blue. Any spell that slowed them down and then cantriped was great for combo. Plus there was Owling mine which wanted more cards in your hand because it killed you with Ebony Owl Netsuke and sometimes Sudden Impact. Heck Remand still goes in the more control oriented combo decks in modern like Scapeshift and Splinter Twin

[Mistborn]

I've been playing a lot of magic lately so you know what let's actually go card by card the way Frank and AH did for Ice age.
White (and Selesnya)

While often beautiful ranvic's basic land art often took some thematic liberties in order to fit the theme of a world completely covered by cityscape.

White has historically been a bit schizophrenic being both a color of small agressive creatures as well as life gain, damage prevention and general durdeling. Historically that has meant that fewer top decks have had white as their primary color with it more often seen a blue's partner in crime. Ravnica: City of Guilds splits the difference with more aggressive cards lower down on the curve and slower more defensive cards coming in as you go up the CMC scale. This doesn't really work and it leaves white with more than it's fair share of dross you don't really want to play even in draft.


In addition to durdeling white has historically been characterized as liking enchantments which fit quite well with Ravnica aura subtheme. Ravnica was the first set where local enchatments where "Enchantment - Aura" rather than Enchant______. In order to show it off R&D tried to print some Aura's that didn't suck to mixed success. Fatih's Fetters was part of a cycle of Aura's with come into play abilities. While FF was as previously mentioned a good removal spell the other EtB auras behaved more like sorceries and saw little play outside drafts. Of course the marquee "aura's matter" card has to be Auratouched Mage in addition to being a kitchen table favorite it was pretty cool in limited. The dream of course is to use Flickerform or Followed Footsteps to get a bunch of trigers and bury you opponent in value. In a more realistic limited scenario in you limited deck anyway you were getting you manas' worth with cards like Flight of Fancy or Moldervine Cloak.


White also prevents damage the ideal scenario with these sorts of effects is that the save a creature in combat and thus justify using a card. The are some cool cards in this archtype like Shining Shoal but not in this set. Only Fury Shield is a real card. Caregiver was better then than it is now because of damage stacking but it's still pretty much worthless even in a set with a lot of random 1/1 tokens.


If Ravnica shows it's age anywhere it the creatures at common and uncommon. They're fair for their day but there's a lot of dude's you only play if you absolutely have to. Veteran Armorer and Nightguard Patrol hold up pretty well but you also have Dromad Purebreed Sandsower and Conclave Phalanx look underwhelming a first glance but in the context of the Selesnyas love of random 1/1 token they're acceptable.

Selesnya
The Selesnya Conclave is primarily characterized by it's love of 1/1 sapproling tokens both as go wide swarm strategy but also as fuel for convoke. What you actually got from convoke was a little underwhelming though. With Afinity still fresh in Development's mind the cards where all pretty much 2 or so mana more that would be reasonable.

except for chord, chord is nice


While Watchwolf was a card most of Selesnya was pointing toward grindier more midrage sort of strategy where you built up an army through repeatable effects. Vitu-Ghazi especially was a house against slow blue based control because it so efficiently got around counterspells. The Guildmage splits the difference also being a decent agressive creature of the era. Evangel was just sort of there but it was a solid limited card a least


Of course if there was any card that was the face of Selesnya at the constructed tables it was the big stupid elephant. While not that impressive in our era of Siege Rino and Polukranos 4/4 for 4 remains respectable even today, and the field of creatures then was much weaker.


Of course this was still the era of spells and fortunately Selesnya got some sweet non-creature spells. Conergation is the sort of tutor that WotC just doesn't print anymore and nothing made agro players scoop like putting three Hierarchs on top. Glare of Subdual on the other hand had a deck named after it that won worlds. Glare let the Selesnya's army of 1/1 dorks but the board on lockdown.


In the limited world Polenbright Wings was pretty cool. You slapped it on your biggest guy sent him over the top and made a bunch of tokens. It's one of those cards that can take over games. Some times they had the answers but the times when they didn't made the card woth splashing for.


Selesnya also had fatties but they were so throughly outclassed by the Kamigawa legends that the never saw play. Not that they were all that good to begin with.

[Username17]

Glare is nearly Opposition, which is in turn insanely broken. Obviously you can rush the field before it happens, you can burn them out, and you can sweep the field. But a pile of mid range creatures just can't do anything at all against something like that. These days, when Magic prints something like that, they try to make it a little more fair:



Because Eliminate the Competition only happens once, you can potentially play more big creatures and fight your way out. With something like Glare, they can just reset which tokens are "trading" for your real creatures every turn. Which takes a huge amount of game time to resolve (especially online where you have to click every creature every turn), and means that any number of threats you ever play will be automagically answered forever until you can get out of the lock somehow.

-Username17

[Mistborn]

Glare is nearly Opposition, which is in turn insanely broken. Obviously you can rush the field before it happens, you can burn them out, and you can sweep the field. But a pile of mid range creatures just can't do anything at all against something like that.

Opposition is an entirely different sort magic card because it can hit lands and then you opponent doesn't get to play magic. Glare was pretty boss at Honolulu but it was pretty shocking how much ground it lost post-guildpact. The format had to much burn, combo decks, and random maindeck naturalize effects for it to run away with that many games.

It's not this was an era where you could jam a bunch of midrange creatures and expected thing to work out anyway. This was an era where the still printed good 2 mana counterspells after all. Speaking of which.

Blue (and Dimir)

While as Frank noted in his Ice age Review blue had a bit of an awkward transition in the early years it identity solidified fairly early. By Ravnica had already hit it's stride knowing exactly what it was trying to do. Blue draws cards counters spells and those effects go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Blue also steals and bounces permanents which slots neatly into blues more controlling game plan.


Blue card draw is is something that's probably been fiddled with more than most mechanics in magic. Ravnica's card draw is the sort of cards you could still see being printed today. Telling Time and Compulsive Research both saw massive amounts of standard play. Telling Time is the awkward middle child of Impulse/Anticipate family. Compulsive Research ended up being the go to early game card advantage enginge for most of the control decks. You could feel pretty good tapping out for it on 3 because you had wrath on 4. Flight of Fancy was a reasonable draft common, if you fetched it with Aura Touched mage you got a 3/3 mulldrifter and that was pretty nice. Flow of Ideas didn't get the partly beacause it was competing with the much more elegant Tidings.


I think I've already spent enough time praising Remand but still, Remand is love Remand is life. Convolute surprisingly saw some fringe play in Tron decks as well is being one of the go too counters of Rav block constructed. Hilariously Induce Paranoia actually saw results in a constructed tournament though in someones 246 card Battle of Witt monstrosity.


The bounce effects in Ravnica are all sort of janky and situational but they were interesting in draft mostly because you could often get value by bouncing your own stuff to reuse etb effects. Vedalkin Dismisser is below the curve but putting stuff on top of people libraries can be brutal. I won a couple draft games back in the day by endlessly recurring Dismisser with Mark of Eviction while my fliers pecked away.


Blue(along with white) is the principal color of fliers blues. In Ravnica blue fliers were reasonable draft creatures.

Taking peoples is another thing blue does. While Dream Leash was a fairly flexible card what it ended up doing the most was steal lands alongside Annex. If there was a dark side to this era of magic it was probably the amount blue/red based decks that stole/bounced/destroyed all your lands so you didn't get a chance to play magic. There's nothing in current magic nearly as soulcrushing as being on the draw and getting your first land bounced.

Eye of the Storm is a pretty crazy card, the kind that makes people thing "could this work". Unfortunately the answer was no. There were versions of Hearbeat with it but the heartbeat decks that didn't play it were better. When Time Spiral rolled around there were a couple brews with Teferi but that never went anywhere.

Dimir
House Dimir's theme was libraries which united their janky mill cards and their signature mechanic.

Now Transmute is the sort of crazy nonsense that wizards just doesn't print anymore and over the years these cards have greased the wheels for many a combo deck. Be it Drift of Phantasms in Hearbeat or Muddle the Mixture in Thopter Depths and later Infect Shoal. Muddle get's extra credit here for having it's other half being something that you would want in your combo deck anyway.


Dimir also got some other random constructed playable cards. Dimir Guildmage like most of Guildmages that saw constructed play lived on the fact that 2/2 for 2 was good enough for most colors back in the day. Cutpurse was a pretty big risk to sleeve up but if he got in the pay off was so good that his fragile body and lack of evasion was overlooked by many. Moroii is one of the few creatures that kind of still holds up it generally showed up as a curve topper in u/b Dark Confidant based tempo decks.