Design
Ravnica was conceived following the success of Invasion. Invasion, released in 2000, emphasized interactions between the colors, and it was one of Magic's most popular releases ever. Magic's lead designer, Mark Rosewater, wanted to expand on the multicolor theme in a new way. Therefore, the design of Ravnica is based around ten two-color pairs, including cards in which those pairs of colors work in concert.
The Ravnica block is functionally different from Invasion block due to the interaction of the multi-colored theme. In the Invasion block, for example, the first two sets (Invasion and Planeshift) centered around friendly colors and the harmony they create when put together. The last set, Apocalypse, emphasized enemy colors and areas where the colors contrast and possibly create powerful effects. However, the Ravnica block features a limited number of color combinations (some friendly, some enemy) in every set based on what guilds are present. All the multicolor cards in Ravnica block (and many other cards) are associated with one of the ten guilds.
Each guild has the following cards:
- A legendary leader, whose mana cost includes two mana of each of the guild's colors.
- A legendary champion, whose abilities encourage players to play with cards of both of the guild's colors. The champion includes one mana of each of the guild's colors in its cost.
- Note: The aforementioned definition of guild leader and guild champion is solely based on game mechanics, not the story. Some guilds have the properties of their champions and leaders swapped around.
- A signet, a common artifact which produces one mana of each of the guild's colors.
- A common "karoo" or "bounce" land, which returns a land to hand when it comes into play (tapped), but produces 2 mana of the guild's colors.
- An uncommon "guildhome" land, which produces colorless mana but has a special ability.
- A rare "shock" land that has two basic land types (even though it is non-basic), which can be tapped for one of two possible colors of mana.
- A rare guild-affiliated artifact.
- Three hybrid mana cards, one per rarity level; the uncommon one is always a "guildmage" which costs two hybrid mana to play, has a power/toughness of 2/2, and has two activated abilities (one associated with each of its colors).
The appearance of a guild symbol in the background of a card's text box identifies that card's guild affiliation. For example, the symbol of the green-white Selesnya guild appears on green-white cards, cards with the convoke mechanic, lands that produce green and white mana, and so on. The guild symbols have no effect on game play.
Read more about this topic: Ravnica: City Of Guilds
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