The Ravnica Block: The Best of Ravnica, Guildpact, and Dissension

The Ravnica Block of cards for the game of Magic the Gathering provided a breath of fresh air. Straying back to a more orthodox story format, the block revolves around different “guilds” struggling for power in a new city-covered plane. It’s “tribal” warfare doesn’t revolve around creature types like the Onslaught block though. Each “Guild” has its own 2 color theme. The Ravnica Block brought back multicolor and introduced many new concepts to the game…

Ravnica: City of Guilds – 2005

The first set in the trilogy, Ravnica provides some fresh creatures to the game. Powerful new abilities and unheard of concepts were brought to the game through unique, complex, and rather expensive creatures. Ravnica contains the card with the largest printed power or toughness in the game. With a converted mana cost of 15, Autochthon Wurm is a monster! Now, how do you pay 15 manafor 1 card? Each group (or “guild”) of cards has it’s ovn powerful ability. Autochthon Wurm happens to be in the guild of cards that utilizes White and Green. The white/green cards have a power that lowers mana costs, as the other 4 groups of cards have respective abilities. Each “guild” can be recognized by either their colors or a watermark under their card text. Ravnica also introduced split mana costs to the game. Some cards can be played with any combination of two mana. These cards are often quick casts and keys to winning with their color combinations. The concept of split mana costs has stuck with MTG and is seen in several other sets!

While the concepts of “Milling” and “Overrunning” never have been so prevalent, the best cards in this set really have nothing to do with them. Ravnica contains a cycle of “Shock lands” that provided necessary mana for each guild’s color combination but had a slight drawback. Other cards, such as “Glimpsethe Unthinkable” dump the top 10 cards off any library. End of story. The best card though, is one of the most useful in the vintage format. To people playing decks full off Hypnox and Scion of Darkness, I would advise against relying on this card, but for those who are playing low cost artifacts, this little guy provides a second draw every turn!…

Dark Confidant – Rare

Runners up -  The Shock Lands, Doubling Season, Glimpse the Unthinkable, & Birds of Paradise

Guildpact – 2006

Guildpact continued adding more and more complexity to the wars between the guilds. More color combinations were added. Enemy colors now teamed up and work better than ever before. Although not a standout set, guildpacthad a few interesting features. It contained a cycle of “Leyline” enchantments that started the game in play if you drew them in your opening hand. Guildpactalso established that black and white can work very well together, with many of the cards from the “Orzhov” guild seeing much play today.

Guildpact lacked the exciting rares that Ravnica was so famous for, and is truly an expansion to the Ravnicablock and nothing else. More “Shock lands” were printed to co-inside with the new color combos in the set. The strongest card is arguable. The one chosen here is versatile in many different ways and works well in long and multi-player games. Sticking with the new ideas from the Ravnica set, I present to you…

Debters’ Knell – Rare

Runners up : The Shock Lands, Leyline of the Void, & Niv-Mizzet

Dissension – 2006

Again, Dissension did not live up to the hype that came with it. While The Ravnicablock was great overall, the majority of the cards came from the first set. Dissension, none the less did showcase some very interesting cards. It debuted even more “guilds” and really got a lot of recognition for it’sstrong Green-Blue strategies. When used with the other sets, Dissension is amazing, but by itself it was very hard to use (minus the green-blue “simic” power). Many of the cards in this set utilized the use of +1/+1 counters to make the game even more interesting. The greatest thing about this block is that ot is a blast to draft and really brought magic back to what many players liked in the late 90’s and early 00’s.

As stated before, there are very few singularly outstanding cards in this set. The final cycle of “Shock Lands” was printed and it showcased some powerful split cards. The greatest card in this set is situational and can’t be used by all players easily. None the less it is powerful and underrated. It also has a name that reminds me of “Legends” in 1994…

Grand Arbiter Augustin IV – Rare

Runners Up : The Shock Lands, Protean Hulk, Spell Snare & Simic Sky Swallower

And thus concludes the end of a very exciting intricate block. The Ravnica Block is truly a powerful set of cards. It provided players with easy draft material and unique strategy that carried on to many sets to come.

The Ravnica block is followed by another very famous block, the Time Spiral Block…

(Pictures from www.magiccards.info)