Ravnica Allegiance Overview

Alright! The new set list is up. Let's talk about it.

First, the mechanical stuff.

UW's Addendum is something I'm not really high on, yet. Getting a bonus during your turn means that players will generally try to do just that-the surprise element of the instant is, from what I've seen, not something that outweighs the benefit of playing it during your main.

Now, I know it's a limited trick and that's fine but even there, I'm not sure there's enough tension between holding back or just being aggressive. Which makes UW play more aggressively than it does traditionally, and that does mean something more interesting. How interesting I can't tell yet but it's clear to me, from Addendum to Dovin, Grand Arbiter's +1 ability that WotC might be pushing a more midrange than control UW this time.

The Afterlife mechanic of BW though, I'm all for. I think this will easily slide into Constructed formats, because any non-exile removal means that your opponent is spinning their wheels.

There's also a taxation element running through BW, but it's a light touch. I'm glad to see it, since I liked that aspect of BW on Ravnica.

Adapt, the UG mechanic is, as everyone predicted, one based on counters. I'm a little disgruntled to see the ability only work once and only work if it doesn't have any +1 counters on it. I don't appreciate an ability that opponents can turn off with an Afiya Grove. I do appreciate that it's an ability that can be activated as an instant. But again, this is a limited trick and as always, it's cool to see everyone getting excited about bonkers creature types.

Next, we have Spectacle, the RB mechanic which is just Raid, but flavorful for the Ravnica guild. It's fine.

Finally, there is Riot, the RG mechanic and this is the one I have the most questions about. I think I'll need to see how it plays to really make a decision on it, since properly using each mode is situational. However, I don't know if it just looks situational, or if there is a clear choice, 98% of the time.

In White, the most interesting card to me is Smothering Tithe. The art is good, the effect is interesting, the name of the card spot on. I like it, though I don't know how far it will go.

Best art here is Twilight Panther, though. Whoa.

Blue is getting in on the 'run as many copies as you want' craze with Persistent Petitioners, which I like. (Also, there are a lot more Advisor creature types than I thought!) This is in addition to some neat enchantments, like Eyes Everywhere and Verity Circle, the card that I think helps push the UW aggressive side, Windstorm Drake, and the best Dimir card not explicitly associated with the guild, Mass Manipulation (which is probably my favorite art in the color, too). There's some interesting effects, along with what appears to be strong tempo manipulation.

My favorite card though is likely Sphinx of Foresight. It's both really interesting mechanically and quite strong.

Black looks to have a lot of low-to-the-ground things going on; solid role players at common and uncommon with weird build arounds like Font of Agonies, Priest of Forgotten Gods, or Awaken the Erstwhile. But with cards like Carrion Imp, Clear the Stage, Noxious Groodion, even Plague Wright, the tools are there to keep you in the game, I think.

Pestilent Spirit is a weird one and I'm not sure I'll know how to best use that.

I dig both Ill-Gotten Inheritance and Bloodmist Infilitrator for their art...can't really pick a side! They both tell interesting stories.

The Red stuff looks like it's pushing the aggressive creatures hard. Spells...not so much.

And Skarrgan Hellkite has to be one of the most disappointing mythics I've seen in awhile. Five mana for a 4/4 haste flyer is not a mythic. Five mana for a 5/5 flyer is not a mythic. The ability (which only works if it has a counter on it) is not a mythical one. Just because you smoosh them all together doesn't make that mythical.

I do like the art on the Rakdos cards though: really pushing the lethal carnival party makes for a cool visual theme.

As we get to Green; Guardian Project is the Commander gimmie in this set. I could almost see this as an argument for a ban: if you run green in Commander why wouldn't you run this? There's no reason to run other cards of a similar type, like Elemental Bond, since every creature you cast will give you a benefit. Wilderness Reclamation is the 'we really want to break this but we don't know how' card for me.

This is also where a lot of the flavor text pops, for me. In Simic, green tends to be just a little goofier.

The multicolored stuff- the first thing I'm noting is that there are some crazy enchantments here: Captive Audience and Ethereal Absolution are ways to flip losing gamestates to winning ones.

Domiri is a pretty awful planeswalker. That +1 is going to do nothing for you the turn you play it, and that sucks. I submit that there has not been a good GR planeswalker yet.

The new Kaya planeswalker isn't being talked about and I think it might be better than people let on.

But again; lots of solid cards, just not interesting or amazing.

Artifacts are remarkably restrained here, similarly lands also don't have a lot new to offer.

There's nothing wrong with any of this, I just find the set to be a little more interesting than Guilds. Not by much, admittedly but more interesting nevertheless. My overall impressions are that this is a competent set that is settling further into the expectations set by previous Ravnica sets but nothing here is going to shake the tree.

However, that's OK if this is laying that baseline for a really crazy War of the Spark.

Growth Spiral

Right now, I think this is the most important card in Ravnica Allegiance.

"That's a bold strategy, Cotton-"

It sure is. However, for two mana it effectively Time Walks you as an instant.

I am having difficulty thinking of another card that has that kind of power in Standard, or even Modern. Coiling Oracle comes close and has the bonus of being a body but I'm convinced that the ability to get ahead a card and a land on my opponent's turn is probably one of the best turn two plays I can make.

In addition, this effect has value even in the mid or late game, when building up resources is important and Growth Spiral gives you two of the big three resources in the game! (Land, Cards in hand, and Life total would be the three I'd identify).

This card is a big deal and I think it's going to have an impact across multiple formats. And if it doesn't make a big splash in Pauper, I will be stunned.

 

The (Unlikely) Hypothesis

We know that the next three blocks are all going to be about Ravnica and play out the storyline there, with many believing that this will mark the end of Nicol Bolas as one of the Big Bads of the Magic storyline and who knows what happens to the current crop of Planeswalkers.

Since Guilds has come out, we know what the color pairings are for Ravnica Alliance: GU, WB, UW, RB, and RG.

Here's where it gets interesting for me: RW (Boros) has a counter-based mechanic in Mentor. It's the first time that RW has had one of those that I'm aware of. There is one other guild that has always had counter based mechanics: GU (Simic). Curiously, in a block about the ten color pairings, this leaves Black out.

What if the mechanics in Guilds of Ravnica are somehow connected to the ones in Ravnica Allegiance in such a way that they help break down the "sides" that the guilds take, leaving us with four color pairings in the final Ravnica block?

In Guilds we have the following mechanical ideas:
RW counters/attacking
GB graveyard "awareness" (Golgari doesn't actually do much with the graveyard here)
UB top of library + graveyard awareness/ filtering
GW mass creatures/tokens
UR spells with a hint of graveyard awareness

That could lead to the following mechanical setups in Ravnica Allegiance:

GU counters
WB spells
UW ...
RB mass creature
GR card filter/top of library

WB caring about spells wouldn't be the first time: extort was a very popular mechanic that, while I understand won't get used again (it scales brutally in multiplayer), a variant could be used that would align it with the UR (Izzet) guild. Philosophically, it's weird but so is the mad scientist and soldier pairing of UG and WR. Besides, war makes for strange bedfellows.

So let's set aside the philosophy for a moment. With that pairing, Green is absent.

This suggests that RB (Rakdos) might align with GW for a "mob rules" effect. GW wants to overwhelm with bunches of creatures and RB is, at least on Ravnica, all about a chaotic party. This also cuts out Blue, which at its core wouldn't want anything to do with either of those guilds.

GR (Gruul) could then mesh with UB (Dimir). Philosophically, it would probably be more 'Dimir manipulates the Gruul' but if Gruul-who has never had a solid identity mechanic in my opinion-cared about what was on top of the library or top of the graveyard (library is more likely, given Red's randomness but Green does care about the graveyard so both is possible!) along the lines of Clash, that would align nicely with what Dimir is doing and leave White in the cold.

That leaves UW (Azorius) to pair with GB (Golgari) and this is the difficult one. I just don't see that guild caring about the graveyard for any reason, mechanically. Now, philosophy might be different? Azorius cares about order and the natural order of things is to die. The Golgari do not subvert the order, they are enforcers of that order.

There's one other cue and that is that Jace, a member (and possibly the leader of, now) the Azorius guild, partnered with Vraska in the Ixalan block. That is a storyline reason to match up, albeit a tenuous one on my part. I just don't know how you make it work mechanically.

But if this is accomplished, then it leaves out Red.

Here's where I'm going with all of this: I don't believe Wizards has ever done a 4 color block or set. They've done a Commander set with this-but that's it!

Woudn't this be a perfect time to do it? The mana is there, the guilds are there to support the color theme, the novelty would be epic. They haven't told us the name of the third set yet: why not? Could it give away key story or mechanical points? Maybe! It would be a good reason to hide that name.

Is this going to happen?

Oh, hell no.

But it's an interesting notion.