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[Socat]

Kill off Gideon while they're at it. I've had enough of his persona.

right after Jace goes, Gideon can go

 

[WanderingWind]

I can't blame someone for trading up in value though. You could theoretically turn an expedition Misty Rainforest into multiple playsets of fetchlands, or into revised duals. Just make sure you trade it for something that has proven eternal playability and that you're trading up in value. Trading them for multiple sets of Khans fetches is actually a reasonable thing to do if you don't own the fetches, since the Khans fetches will keep appreciating in value.

I guess. But fetches will continue to reprinted. And they're still easily found. Expeditions won't be and aren't. Oh, and when I say expedition I mean the real ones, not the tangoland ones. Nobody currs about those.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Ravnica wasn't executed that well either imo.




Anyway had some discussion on Reddit with a guy claiming wrath effects don't fit white. When the cards are literally called Wrath of God and Armageddon. Heck the mirari elicited a wrath out of a purely white guy.

Thinking about that made me look up if there's a card called purgatory and I must say I'm disappointed by it. Such a missed opportunity.

Why would purgatory only affect 1 player?

 

[Firemind]

Nah, they can off Jace after they return to Ravnica. Ravnica is too rad of a plane and he is the living guildpact after all.

 

[aidan]

They had to return. It was hugely popular and they had to wrap the story up. I'm hoping they go the full way though and the Eldrazi destroy it. It would be more interesting than "winning".

I'd prefer to see it go in the other direction: tribes reemerging in Oath, colour returning to the world, etc.

 

[OnPoint]

I find Ravnica boring from a world standpoint. I like the cards that come out of it. But the society is boring as hell

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

I love Ravnica especially Boros and Izzet, I dislike all other factions.

 

[aidan]

Anyway had some discussion on Reddit with a guy claiming wrath effects don't fit white. When the cards are literally called Wrath of God and Armageddon. Heck the mirari elicited a wrath out of a purely white guy.

Somebody should give this guy a book about the Crusades.

 

[Firemind]

I find Ravnica boring from a world standpoint. I like the cards that come out of it. But the society is boring as hell

But what is Lazav up to?

 

[OnPoint]

I'd prefer to see it go in the other direction: tribes reemerging in Oath, colour returning to the world, etc.

But that's so safe. And kind of boring. I'd like to see them really drive home the Eldrazi as a threat and destroy it all. The closest they've come to that is New Phyrexia, but the plane still exists.

I bet they sacrifice the plane to kill Ulamog, as per Jace's plan. He's gonna show Ugin up.

 

[divisionbyzorro]

I guess. But fetches will continue to reprinted. And they're still easily found. Expeditions won't be and aren't. Oh, and when I say expedition I mean the real ones, not the tangoland ones. Nobody currs about those.

Sure. I know that I personally would hold onto an expedition shock or fetch until at least the next block started, possibly the following. I would definitely be holding with intent to sell. But an expedition tango? I'd sell that thing immediately.

 

[WanderingWind]

Sure. I know that I personally would hold onto an expedition shock or fetch until at least the next block started, possibly the following. I would definitely be holding with intent to sell. But an expedition tango? I'd sell that thing immediately.

Yeah, that's why I clarified. Nobody curr about those.

Also, they're never killing their Mickey Mouse, guys. Jace will outlive us all.

 

[The Technomancer]

But that's so safe. And kind of boring. I'd like to see them really drive home the Eldrazi as a threat and destroy it all. The closest they've come to that is New Phyrexia, but the plane still exists.

I bet they sacrifice the plane to kill Ulamog, as per Jace's plan. He's gonna show Ugin up.

Actually...I like that a lot, make it Jaces "villain" turn, or at least put Nissa and Gideon at his throat. Much better than everyone being somewhere between buds and sitcom rivals

 

[Socat]

I want to see more of the Garruk vs Liliana storyline, but that might be due to the fact I didnt play during Innistrad block

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

There's not much to say she fucked him over, he's primal and very angry

 

[Firemind]

None of the current planeswalkers are that interesting honestly. Not that Gerrard and co. were any better. I liked Crovax's descent into madness though. Much better executed than Ob 'cartoon villain' Nixilis.

 

[bigkrev]

I find Ravnica boring from a world standpoint. I like the cards that come out of it. But the society is boring as hell

This is all I needed to be sold on Ravnica, TBH.

 

[Yeef]

Oath is going to be about Kozilek. There's tons of hints at it in cards from BFZ and the Oath set symbol looks like a Kozilek drone.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

-snip ravnica Island-

This is all I needed to be sold on Ravnica, TBH.

I hate all the ravnica lands and the whole concept.
It works in a sci fi setting ala coruscant but in a high fantasy setting it's just stupid.

Do they have vertical farms, do they just eat fruits. How many people live in the buildings and how could a world w/o modern agriculture nor the room to have medieval agriculture feed them?
It just doesn't work.

 

[Firemind]

I hate all the ravnica lands and the whole concept.
It works in a sci fi setting ala coruscant but in a high fantasy setting it's just stupid.

Do they have vertical farms, do they just eat fruits. How many people live in the buildings and how could a world w/o modern agriculture nor the room to have medieval agriculture feed them?
It just doesn't work.

wat

oh you're actually serious

 

[Violet_0]

magic

 

[SigmasonicX]

I hate all the ravnica lands and the whole concept.
It works in a sci fi setting ala coruscant but in a high fantasy setting it's just stupid.

Do they have vertical farms, do they just eat fruits. How many people live in the buildings and how could a world w/o modern agriculture nor the room to have medieval agriculture feed them?
It just doesn't work.

Selesnya has gardens, and the Golgari provide food for the poor--it's grown from corpses, but it's nutritious.

 

[OnPoint]

This is all I needed to be sold on Ravnica, TBH.

Architecturally speaking? The plane is nifty. But what compelling characters and drama are there on Ravnica? Nothing. It's just a lot of bustle with no real anything. Give us a reason to care about the politics.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Ravnica rules you guys are nutso

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

wat

oh you're actually serious

absolutely

magic

doesn't magically elevate my suspension of disbelief

Selesnya has gardens, and the Golgari provide food for the poor--it's grown from corpses, but it's nutritious.

but that's disproportionate to the skyscrapers they have as buildings unless those are barren or hollow which begs the question why build them like this.

I know Rakdos are the cleanup crew, and the Gruul create building material, whether that's intentional or not I don't remember, but it's nicely handled.

 

[El Topo]

Screw Ravnica! Screw Mirrodin! Give us Shandalar!

 

[Firemind]

Architecturally speaking? The plane is nifty. But what compelling characters and drama are there on Ravnica? Nothing. It's just a lot of bustle with no real anything. Give us a reason to care about the politics.

But guild leaders and prominents were getting killed all the time? And we still don't know what Lazav's master plan is. The Dragon's Maze plotline was dumb though, that I agree with.

 

[SigmasonicX]

I wouldn't be surprised if many of the buildings were largely empty, tbh.

Anyway, it turns out Wizards messed up on MaRo's work anniversary

For those interested in the larger story, here it is. When I first got hired, it was very clear Wizards was eager to hire me, so I talked with a friend of the family who was in Human Resources and the advice they gave me was to negotiate not for money (as it’s hard to change starting salaries) but to ask for every benefit I could think of.

I came up with a whole bunch of things and Wizards basically accepted them all. One of the requests was to have an earlier start date (back to January 1, 2005) for all benefits - at the time thinking of things like vacation and sick days. I would later also get stock benefits based on that date so it ended up being a great ask.

In order for HR to accommodate this, the only way to do it was to put January 1 in the computer as my actual start date. Many years later what that means is no one save me knows my actual start date because the official one is January 1 (which incidentally on paper makes me the employee that’s been employed consecutively at Wizards the longest - Charlie Catino with a start date in February 1995 is the actual record holder).

The website wanted to surprise me so no one told me about the article. When I got online this morning, people started wishing me happy anniversary and I didn’t understand why. I asked in the Pit and they suggested I look at the website. The article was already public at that point, so there wasn’t anything to be done other than explain on social media that it was 10 days off.

So that is probably more than you need to know about my anniversary which I will be celebrating but not until October 30, 11 days from now.

 

[Toxi]

I hate all the ravnica lands and the whole concept.
It works in a sci fi setting ala coruscant but in a high fantasy setting it's just stupid.

Do they have vertical farms, do they just eat fruits. How many people live in the buildings and how could a world w/o modern agriculture nor the room to have medieval agriculture feed them?
It just doesn't work.

The Golgari guild is dedicated to agriculture and provides food for most of Ravnica with its rot farms, which also provide the service of recycling the plane's corpses and carrion.

And they are able to do it without modern agriculture because they use magic. They use Green magic, aka the color of growth and cultivation, and combine it with the resourcefulness of Black to maximize output by using the dead as fertilizer or outright feasting on corpses.

For a magical city covering an entire world, Ravnica's surprisingly well-thought-out from a world-building perspective.

 

[JulianImp]

Ravnica also had the simic combine, which grew hydropons and made a living by selling their biomantic inventions to the general population. I could easily see them reworking their Vigean Hydropons to grow food instead of plax in the form of +1/+1 counters.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Yeah like I'm saying unless the buildings are largely empty I just don't buy that that would suffice. It's not something that can be argued much about, Wizards says it does, I say it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

 

[SigmasonicX]

Life in Ravnica seems pretty shitty for the average person. You have to eat Golgari food, and though Rakdos is acknowledged as crazy, you still have people joining the cult and people willingly watching their performances.

 

[Firemind]

absolutely



doesn't magically elevate my suspension of disbelief



but that's disproportionate to the skyscrapers they have as buildings unless those are barren or hollow which begs the question why build them like this.

I know Rakdos are the cleanup crew, and the Gruul create building material, whether that's intentional or not I don't remember, but it's nicely handled.

You can't possibly believe there's nothing else on the plane but the city. Why do you think the Gruul are outcasts? If your complaint is the size of the city, well, look at Minas Tirith. How can human hands have built this shit? This isn't scifi, people.

 

[OnPoint]

But guild leaders and prominents were getting killed all the time? And we still don't know what Lazav's master plan is. The Dragon's Maze plotline was dumb though, that I agree with.

Maybe that will all be at the forefront with their newfound emphasis on story. As it stands I couldn't tell you what the story in RTR was besides Jace winning the Guildpact or something. And I follow the story.

 

[The Technomancer]

I mean...the big question for me is what everyone's jobs are. Food sure, how industry works makes sense but its not like a civilization at that level of technology has room for much white collar work unless being a clerk for the azorius or orzhov is like...30% of all employment. What are people doing with their time?

 

[The Technomancer]

You can't possibly believe there's nothing else on the plane but the city. Why do you think the Gruul are outcasts? If your complaint is the size of the city, well, look at Minas Tirith. How can human hands have built this shit? This isn't scifi, people.

Ravnica is explicitly entirely city. It's ridiculous but great, the plane has to have a population in the billions.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

You can't possibly believe there's nothing else on the plane but the city. Why do you think the Gruul are outcasts? If your complaint is the size of the city, well, look at Minas Tirith. How can human hands have built this shit? This isn't scifi, people.

Afaik it is just the city, there are parts that are less densely build upon but it's a plane consisting entirely of a city.
It weren't just humans that built Minas Tirith it were the exiled Numenor which millenia later still had Aragorn be 80+ years old by the time of LoTR.

As I mentioned before it's all about suspension of disbelief Tolkien made me believe humans that can get centuries old and are distinct offspring of elves and maiar can build something like Minas Tirith.
Look at what humans in ancient times were able to build with lots of cheap labor and time.

 

[cory64]

I hate all the ravnica lands and the whole concept.
It works in a sci fi setting ala coruscant but in a high fantasy setting it's just stupid.

Do they have vertical farms, do they just eat fruits. How many people live in the buildings and how could a world w/o modern agriculture nor the room to have medieval agriculture feed them?
It just doesn't work.

MTG has been fairly science-fantasy since the Weatherlight saga. Ravnica is plenty industrialized.

 

[JulianImp]

I mean...the big question for me is what everyone's jobs are. Food sure, how industry works makes sense but its not like a civilization at that level of technology has room for much white collar work unless being a clerk for the azorius or orzhov is like...30% of all employment. What are people doing with their time?

They can be guildless bazaar traders, Simic/Izzet test subjects, Boros legionnaires, Azorius bureaucrats, part of the Orzhov clergy, Dimir agents, anarchist Gruul warriors, BDSM Rakdos fanatics, Selesnya evangels or Golgari farmers/undead.

Edit: I bet Ravnica has no insurance policies on anything, though, since it's really easy to get caught by a malfunctioning Izzet device, a crazy plax-infused monster that goes on a rampage, a Rakdos/Gruul "party", also maybe getting killed in the crossfire between them and the Boros, learning something Dimir-related that you shouldn't have known and paying for it with your life, or ending up as food in a Golgari rot farm.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

MTG has been fairly science-fantasy since the Weatherlight saga. Ravnica is plenty industrialized.

Didn't they make a point of eradicating the same sci fi and go back to purely fantasy. They even created a faction hell bent on locking away any remnants of said sci fi phase.
They won't even add guns to a plane that looks like 19th century london

 

[Toxi]

You can't possibly believe there's nothing else on the plane but the city. Why do you think the Gruul are outcasts? If your complaint is the size of the city, well, look at Minas Tirith. How can human hands have built this shit? This isn't scifi, people.

There is nothing on Ravnica but city. That's why the Gruul are outcasts; their role was to protect the wild places of Ravnica and the wild places are all gone.

However, there are different kinds of city. Just like in a modern city. Ravnica is not all spires. The Gruul basically live in demolition areas or ruins. The Selesnya built large sweeping gardens. The Golgari and Dimir operate in the undercity, aka the ruins of previous generations that were built over. There are parks and other open spaces.

 

[Firemind]

Ravnica is explicitly entirely city. It's ridiculous but great, the plane has to have a population in the billions.

Doesn't look like much of a city to me.

Yes, I'm aware the guilds have urbanized the planet over the course of time. My point is not everything is like that Island where skyscrapers are filling every mile of the city. There are places where it's abandoned or destroyed by the Gruul.

 

[Toxi]

Didn't they make a point of eradicating the same sci fi and go back to purely fantasy. They even created a faction hell bent on locking away any remnants of said sci fi phase.

No? I don't think this has ever happened. Even after the Weatherlight saga ended, Mirrodin was still hella sci-fi. And now we have the Phyrexians back and the Lovecraft/Galactus-inspired Eldrazi.

I'm not sure which faction you're talking about. The Mirrans? They got absorbed by Phyrexia. Urza's coalition? They used tons of sci-fi stuff like genetic experimentation.

Doesn't look like much of a city to me.

Yes, I'm aware the guilds have urbanized the planet over the course of time. My point is not everything is like that Island where skyscrapers are filling every mile of the city. There are places where it's abandoned or destroyed by the Gruul.

It's city, it's just not skyscrapers everywhere city. But yeah, your point is correct: Ravnica is completely urbanized, but that doesn't mean it's all skyscrapers. There are dumps, canals, ruins, gardens, parks, demolished areas, etc.

 

[Angry Grimace]

They can be guildless bazaar traders, Simic/Izzet test subjects, Boros legionnaires, Azorius bureaucrats, part of the Orzhov clergy, Dimir agents, anarchist Gruul warriors, BDSM Rakdos fanatics, Selesnya evangels or Golgari farmers/undead.

Edit: I bet Ravnica has no insurance policies on anything, though, since it's really easy to get caught by a malfunctioning Izzet device, a crazy plax-infused monster that goes on a rampage, a Rakdos/Gruul "party", also maybe getting killed in the crossfire between them and the Boros, learning something Dimir-related that you shouldn't have known and paying for it with your life, or ending up as food in a Golgari rot farm.

The Izzet quickly suspended their policy of lifetime guarantees.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

No? I don't think this has ever happened. Even after the Weatherlight saga ended, Mirrodin was still hella sci-fi. And now we have the Phyrexians back and the Lovecraft/Galactus-inspired Eldrazi.

Well they did on Dominaria was my point. The white faction in Kamahl's saga tried getting their hands on any technological artifacts to lock them away forever.

For every nonbasic there's basics showing gigantic buildings practically everywhere

 

[Haly]

I'd imagine Ravnica is at least semi post-scarcity, in order for the guild system to be sustainable. Selesnya and Golgari likely fulfill the agricultural needs of the planet by making vertical farms.

You're born into a guild and the guild becomes your livelihood. Someone needs to clean up all those tanks for the Simic, sweep the stations for the Boros, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if Selesnya/Golgari are the largest guilds of Ravnica proper, since they both have a philosophy of numbers and are tied closely to population growth. Being Orzhov is like being a 1%er.

 

[JulianImp]

I'd imagine Ravnica is at least semi post-scarcity, in order for the guild system to be sustainable. Selesnya and Golgari likely fulfill the agricultural needs of the planet by making vertical farms.

You're born into a guild and the guild becomes your livelihood. Someone needs to clean up all those tanks for the Simic, sweep the stations for the Boros, etc.

Simic ragworms can take care of cleaning up stuff, including but not limited to vermin, dust, filth and the occasional random passerby. But that's not all! Call now and you'll get a shielding plax with your order at no extra charge!

 

[Violet_0]

lore question! Do the Golgari belong to the *evil* guilds? I don't really know what their agenda is supposed to be. Is it like this whole Pharika deal where they are simultaneously malevolent and benevolent?

Well, technically, I guess only 3 of the 4 white guilds can be counted as *good* though I'm not really sure what Selesnya is all about either aside from being some sort of hippie cult conclave that grows tree people which sounds rather sinister if you ask me, and Azorius seems to altogether rather indifferent about the whole morality question issue

 

[Toxi]

Well they did on Dominaria was my point.

For two blocks, sure. Not sure why you think that indicates an anti-sci-fi decision.

For every nonbasic there's basics showing gigantic buildings everywhere

The Swamps show the undercity, which isn't really heavily populated and is where the Golgari farm. Several of the Mountains are foundaries, aka places where people work and not places where they live. The Forests all show gardens.

And again, the Golgari farm with Green magic. Magic like Life from the Loam or Rampant Growth. Why is that not a good enough explanation?

 

[SigmasonicX]

lore question! Do the Golgari belong to the *evil* guilds? I don't really know what their agenda is supposed to be. Is it like this whole Pharika deal where they are simultaneously malevolent and benevolent?

Well, technically, I guess only 3 of the 4 white guilds can be counted as *good* though I'm not really sure what Selesnya is all about either aside from being some sort of hippie cult conclave that grows tree people which sounds rather sinister if you ask me, and Azorius seems to altogether rather indifferent about the whole morality question issue

The Golgari help the homeless and mostly keep to themselves, but they kill intruders to their territory and use the bodies in their farms. Overall, they're among the nicer guilds.