Return to Ravnica Multiplayer Set Review

The original Ravnica: City of Guilds set was released in year and introduced us to the vast city of Ravnica and its ten guilds. Operating like organised crime gangs, the guilds each represent one of magic ten colour pairs. Each guild plays very differently, with its own strengths and weaknesses. The Return to Ravnica set brings us back to the city and its guilds in a way that is both familiar and new.

The guilds are still there with their grip on the city, in game each guild plays differently to how it used to. Reprints from the original Ravnica set are few, helping the new themes come through. One notable set of reprints are the “shocklands” a set of dual lands with two basic land types that enter the battlefield tapped unless you choose to pay 2 life. Five of these dual lands are reprinted in Return to Ravnica, with the other five to follow.

As with other recent sets, this one provides a lot of new tools for the multiplayer table.
Five guilds are represented in detail in Return to Ravnica; Azorius (white/blue), Selesnya (white/ green), Izzet (blue/red), Rakdos (black/red), and Golgari (black/green). Each guild has its own mechanic to differentiate it from the others. These mechanics appear on mono-coloured, multi-coloured and hybrid cards.

Set Mechanics
Detain
This Azorius mechanic allows you to tap creatures your opponents control, until your next turn they cannot untap and their activated abilities cannot be used. At the multiplayer table this is a very useful ability that can allow you to control your area of influence quite ruthlessly if used correctly. Watch out for this one!

Populate
The Selesnya guild is all about the creation and multiplication of creature tokens. Populate allows you to put a token onto the battlefield that is a copy of a token you control. If you have no tokens, populate won’t do anything, so you’ll need to token creation spells to get you started. There are a number of spells for Selesnya that create a token and then let you populate, so if you have no tokens when you cast the spell, you’ll have two when the spell is finished.

Overload
This Izzet mechanic is very interesting. Overload is an alternative cost you can pay for instants and sorceries, and it changes every instance of the word ‘target’ in the original spell to ‘all.’ For example there is a spell that gives target creature you don’t control -4/-0 until the end of turn. Pay the overload cost and each creature you don’t control gets -4/-0 until the end of turn. Far more effective!

Unleash
The black/red Rakdos guild want to cast its creatures and then just attack with them. Unleash is a mechanic that lets you have a creature enter the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it. If it has a +1/+1 counter on it however, it can’t block. Do you want extra hitting power or defence? If you’re playing Rakdos that should be a very easy choice.

Scavenge
The Golgari mechanic is another useful one for multiplayer. You can exile a creature with Scavenge from your graveyard and in return you can put +1/+1 counters on a creature you control equal to the exiled card’s power. Exile a 3/3, and one of your creatures gets three +1/+1 counters, and so on.

Cards with multiplayer in mind are present at all rarities in this set. As well as the shocklands there is mana fixing at common in the form of the Guildgates that enter the battlefield tapped and produce either of the guild’s colours (so the Golgari Guildate taps for green or black mana). There are also Keyrunes for each guild, these are artifacts that tap for their guild’s mana and have an additional ability.

Ten Useful Cards:
1. Azorius Justiciar (U)
2. Eyes in the Skies (C)
3. Faerie Imposter (U)
4. Pack Rat (R)
5. Ash Zealot (R)
6. Worldspine Wurm (M)
7. Call of the Conclave (U)
8. Rakdos Cackler (U)
9. Rackdos, Lord of Riots (M)
10. Chromatic Lantern (R)

You will find something you like in this set, even if you just open a couple of random packs, or buy one of the five pre constructed decks (there is one for each guild).

See also: [Gatecrash] [Dragon’s Maze]