Steve Guillerm
9/14/2012 9:10:00 AM
Ravnica, both the set and the block, is remembered as one of Magic's highlights. Why shouldn't it be? After Mirrodin unleashed Affinity to ravage Standard, and Kamigawa unleashed Umezawa's Jitte and a bunch of forgettable cards, expectations were low. That said, everyone's socks were knocked off. Memorable, fleshed out, distinct guilds. Awesome multi-color cards. A great draft format.


So we Return to Ravnica now, seven years later, and it ought to be an obvious hit. The expectations are certainly higher though. Scars of Mirrodin brought powerful, but balanced cards. Marquee cards like Sword of Feast and Famine or Batterskull were brutal with Stoneforge Mystic, but we haven't seen them much in Standard recently. Unlike Affinity, the Tempered Steel block deck did not dominate Standard.

Innistrad was every bit the hit that Kamigawa was not. I've joked that Innistrad was “Return to Kamigawa” in disguise, with the Spirit theme, humans versus the supernatural, important legends, and anthropomorphic animals (werewolves in Innistrad, snakes/rats/etc in Kamigawa). We know better, though. Innistrad was Wizards of the Coast proving that they can take a concept that's well-worn, and integrate it into Magic without making it seem stale. The “horror” genre set was a home run, and their most popular set to boot.

Expectations can be tough to meet or exceed when you're improving every year. Avacyn Restored was a bit of a hiccup, but they recovered with Magic 2013, the best core set yet. It's so good, that people are still interested in drafting it. In my experience, I've seen a steep fall-off of interest in core set draft after about a month or so. M13's a deep enough format that people are still figuring it out.

So, on to Return to Ravnica. Choose your guild (Izzet for me), salivate over the spoilers, everybody's happy. Except those who aren't. It's inevitable, of course. You can't please all the people all the time, and there are those who'll dislike something for no reason other than the fact that it's popular. There are the complaints about the set itself, and then the complaints about everything surrounding the set, which I will call “meta-complaints.”

One complaint I've heard about Return to Ravnica is that it's unoriginal. I can't really argue that one; after all, Wizards of the Coast has actually called the set “Return to Ravnica.” Unlike Scars of Mirrodin, which was supposed to be a very changed Mirrodin, Return to Ravnica is supposed to be “more of the same.” The problem I have with this complaint is that the spoiler always reveals the rares first, while the commons and uncommons shape how the set actually plays, especially in draft. While Return to Ravnica might look similar, it may actually play very differently.

Another complaint is about the power level of gold cards, and the flexibility of mana-bases. Mana costs are supposed to be a restriction; 4 is easier to pay than 2WW, and 2WW is easier than 1WWU. However, with the power of future Standard's lands, 1WWU will be quite easy to pay, and won't be such a barrier. Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius costs 2UURR, but may as well be 4UR, if they're to be believed. It's certainly true that you generally get more bang for your buck with a restrictive mana cost; 1G gets you Runeclaw Bear, WG gets you Watchwolf. Turning 1 into U makes your Day of Judgment into an uncounterable Supreme Verdict. Respectfully, though, I disagree with the part about the mana-bases.

For starters, if you want to play Supreme Verdict in Standard, you're locked into playing blue and white. Granted, those were the usual colors for control, and it's not such a huge deal. However, other decks did play Day of Judgment, such as token decks that might bring it in against the aggro matchup. Cast Day, then Rebuild quickly with a Lingering Souls. If you build BW Tokens in Standard (let's say post-Gatecrash, for access to Godless Shrine), splashing that blue has real costs. Let's build a quick Esper manabase:

4 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Godless Shrine
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Watery Grave

What a thing of beauty, right? Each shockland supports the Innistrad/M13 lands, so that they never come into play tapped. There are 16 sources of each color, so we can cast whatever we want! Want that Champion of the Parish into Gather the Townsfolk opening? Oh. Wait a minute. With only 8 turn one sources of W, you'd better have some great luck. Additionally, it's gonna cost you 2 life. Every time.

The problem we're likely to run into is that we're going to start shaving dual lands for basics pretty quickly, and it's going to be the blue duals. Godless Shrine and Isolated Chapels are needed to support Sorin, Lord of Innistrad and Lingering Souls, after all. How about:

6 Plains
3 Swamp
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Godless Shrine
4 Hallowed Fountain
3 Drowned Catacomb

Now we're not paying 6 life per game to our lands, and we've got 14 potential turn one sources of white. However, we're down to only 7 sources of blue. Note that the UW dual is Hallowed Fountain for turn 1 W, but the UB dual is Drowned Catacomb. Building mana bases in Standard is going to be a skill, I assure you.


Getting the right colors in a multi-color deck is hard! When we're brainstorming and imagining, we always think of the best-case scenario. It's human nature, really. In reality, we get color-screwed in two-color decks. Even in Legacy, with real dual lands and as many fetch-lands as you could want. Still don't believe me? Well, I watched Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa get stomped by Yuuya Watanabe two weeks ago at the Magic Players Championship. His four-color Zoo deck didn't serve up the right lands, and he was done. If a Modern deck hiccups on 4 colors, a Standard deck will not be able to consistently deliver 3 colors.

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Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius

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I've also heard complaints about Magic card names, primarily among the Izzet League cards. One big offender is the guild leader himself, Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius. Personally, I think it's a brilliant name. It perfectly captures the character: imagine a stereotypical out-of-touch genius. Card-carrying Mensa member, know-it-all, plus he's a dragon, more powerful and older than any other on the plane. Calls himself “dracogenius,” naturally. It's Latin for “smart dragon,” come on guys.

The best characters are the ones that are so perfectly characterized that their detestable qualities just shine right through. The members of Izzet are so very out-of-touch, so completely engaged in their Ivory Tower experiments that they don't know or care that their jargony terms and titles are laughable. They're the leet-speakers equivalent of Ravnica, and you might not like it, but I'm willing to forgive Wizards for the names. Except Hypersonic Dragon. That's just a name fail.

On to the meta-complaints! Outside of the set itself, there's been a lot of talk about hype. This set's hyped up, the set's overhyped, dealers are taking advantage of the hype, et cetera. Well, of course there's hype. That's pretty much all that Wizards of the Coast is supposed to do, right now. Overhyped? That's actually real fan interest. If you're seeing your Twitter feed and Facebook page flooded, that's because people are legitimately excited for the set.

So we're basically down to the dealers, and whether they're taking advantage. Four times a year, a new set comes out. Four times a year, cards get spoiled. Since roughly three years ago, four times a year, dealers start pre-selling cards. And of course, four times a year, the cynic squad busts out the arguments against pre-order prices.

Pre-sales allow the vendors to guarantee a certain amount of sales to offset the the massive cost of buying dozens of cases of Magic. The real benefit, though? It lets them figure out how to price cards in advance of the release. How much is Vraska worth? Well, list eight at a tentative price, say $20, and see if they sell. Oh, they sold in minutes? List eight more at $30. Oh, wow, they sold within the half-hour. Repeat process until a reasonable market price is determined.

I'm actually kind of amazed that this wasn't always done! I remember buying my local store out of Basilisk Collar upon release. This was before Naya Lightsaber, before Cunning Sparkmage plus Collar was a thing. Mostly, it was because they were only $1/each, and I had a good feeling. Maybe if the market had been established earlier, the manager wouldn't have had to just guess what the cards should be. Nowadays, the local store doesn't have any of these accidental bargains; in this way, the big guys are actually sort of helping the local stores.

One more point.

It's been a while since the last time we've seen a major Magic shortage, but they do happen. In 2009, they changed the way core sets were done. Up through Tenth Edition, they were effectively a list of Standard legal reprints. New players might buy and bust packs of Tenth, and the return of black borders was appealing, but sales were pretty low. M10 brought two changes: not only was the core set approximately 50% new cards, but it was designed to be draftable! Yeah, you could technically draft Tenth, but it was miserable.

Anticipating demand similar to previous core sets, Wizards under-printed M10, leading to massive shortages. Stores had trouble getting enough, and my local store actually refused to sell packs for about a week, saving them for FNM draft. Mythics had already existed, but Baneslayer Angel went on to become the first $50 Standard card. Supply and demand in action! Ramping up production of M10 to meet demand ended up causing a shortage of Zendikar. I imagine they were unsure of the appeal of a land block, but Zendikar's “adventure world” ended up being their best-selling set until Innistrad.

Worldwake didn't have quite the same supply shockwaves as M10 and Zendikar, but good luck trying to find packs today. Players played the “Jace lottery,” and Worldwake's supply was planned to be short from the get-go, being a small set that would only be drafted for 3 months. Rise of the Eldrazi was where they caught up, and I don't recall ever hearing of supply problems. Then again, I recently did a price check on a box of Rise, and it's roughly $160-180! It's my favorite-ever draft format, but at those prices, I just can't justify the purchase.

Magic's been more popular than ever, and Duels of the Planeswalkers has been a huge boon. At last weekend's Magic Celebration, my store had roughly 100 players, including a bunch of people I've never met before. They can always make more cards, but there's a lag between production and hitting the market. Boxes are pre-selling for over $100 instead of the typical $90, the demand's there, and the dealers aren't sure they'll be able to meet that demand.

Personally, my plan to get Standard cards is just to trade for them at the prerelease, or to open them as I draft. All the same, won't I just feel like an idiot if everything sells out, and I can't manage to get my hands on anything? My main priority today is just to pre-order a box for drafting; like I said above, unless I'm going to a big tournament, I don't desperately need singles for Standard right away, right?

Finally, let's discuss an actual card: Martial Law. For those of you who haven't seen it on the spoiler sites, it's an enchantment for 2WW that reads, “At the beginning of your upkeep, detain target creature an opponent controls.” It reminds me of Prison Term. Is this good? Is this bad? Maybe a little of both.

First, the bad. Four mana for creature control is very expensive. Even worse, it doesn't even do anything until your next turn. Ouch. However, there's a ton of upside to this card. At four mana, it does dodge Abrupt Decay, which will be roughly everywhere come October. It promises to lock down your opponent's best creature, every turn. Most importantly, it survives Wrath effects and tricks. Prison Term could jump around, but an Unsummon was a solution. Everything dies? So goes the Prison Term.

Control's strategy has often been to play efficient defensive measures to force the opponent to over-commit to the board. Aggro's got to drop extra dudes to swarm around Wall of Omens or Wall of Denial. Temporal Isolation stops Tarmogoyf cold, but all of these cards are stopgap measures that go away with the Wrath effect. Martial Law? The opponent had better have two creatures left in their grip, because the first one's going nowhere fast. Let me tell you, if blue-white can live to set it up, Martial Law plus Tamiyo, the Moon Sage is going to be absolutely brutal. We still need a few early defensive measures, but UW control could be quite powerful. Who needs Counterspells when you can just lock everything down?

Still, four mana. That's gonna be a lot of games where you're dropping Martial Law on your turn, and Zombies just plays a Falkenrath Aristocrat, and gnaws on the remainder of your brain for the win. We've still got over 100 cards left to be spoiled, but for now, as far as future Standard is concerned, my money's on black.

Steve Guillerm
@SteveExplosion on MTGO and Twitter