Guilds of Ravnica
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The ten Guilds of Ravnica have ruled the plane for ten thousand years, since the signing of the Guildpact. Each guild has specific responsibilities outlined by that ancient and magical document though each tries to find loopholes in the document in order to increase their own power.
Each guild has borrowed something from each of its colors, and is given a specific game-play focus to deal with. In general, they are as follows:
- green - creatures/mana acceleration
- blue - control
- black - drawing power from a specific area at any cost (i.e. deck for spells, creatures; hand for power)
- red - impulses/destructiveness
- white - equalizing
The guild's breakdown are:
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Azorius Senate
Logic & Power (Blue), and/or Law & Order (White) What other being would be interested in law and order than those interested in logic and power? This decks philosophy is, at its core, a permission deck. It shuts down your opponents tactics and allows your creatures to march right through any defenses your opponent might be cooking up. This deck usually results in slow wins and very pissed off opponents.
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Orzhov Syndicate
So, what do you get when you combine the equalizers (white) and those who want power at any cost (black)? You get the Orzhov, and to show this all you need is to look at its abilities and strategies. Ability-wise: Haunt is perfect for either, because it takes black's ability to manipulate the game from the graveyard. Strategy-wise: Bleeding to death; slowly and painfully. The Orzhov takes white's ability to slow down the entire game and let the opponent be chiseled away, bit by bit. Plus you probably owe them money.
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House Dimir
Dimir has domain over the deck and hand whether it's blue's drawing, searching or reorganizing; or black's milling and discarding: The house is where it's at. They are crafty and cunning, with a love of versatility and wide-open resources. Transmute is a perfect fit for them, sacrificing one spell for the one you want.
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Izzet League
The Izzet are the main researchers in Ravnica. Science, engineering, and other similar topics fall to them. They even have exclusive dominion over something called Meta-magic (or the study of magic itself). Through this, they have the ability called replicate, which allows a spell on the stack to be copied over as many times a player wishes. This combines blue's lust of power and red's love for instant gratification. In addition, many members of the guild have a combination of something for red and something from blue. This is best showed by: Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind.
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Cult of Rakdos
Like red-based guilds, the cult loves doing things fast and violent. Like black, it prefers disabling the opponent, or powering up an ally, at any cost. For example: Hellhole Rats. From black, you are forcing the opponent to discard a card with a 2/2. Then throw in burn and haste from red, and you got a nice creature for only 4 mana. Hellbent is their specialty: power through insanity.
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Golgari Swarm
The Swarm combine green's love of life and strength, with black's lust for death and power. Thus, they have mastered the life-death cycle of Ravinca. Similar to Orzhov, the dead come back to life, but as zombies (or as they were) and not ghosts. The potential a library has for library is nothing when compared to the power the graveyard holds for this guild. Thus, they have the don't mind milling their own library in order to get something into and/or out of the graveyard (See Dredge).
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Gruul Clans
The Gruul are the in between of red (irrational, instant gratification) and green (life, strength). To be in the clan is best exemplified through the guild's ability: Bloodthirst. This ability allows something to come into play more powerful if the opponent has been hurt this turn. Thus, it is a combination of green's respect for strength and red's love to hurt things.
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Boros Legion
The Boros are the higher up law enforcers of the land (White's love for order). But at the same time, they are trigger-happy (Red's lust of instant gratification). Being of the law, they have to go by the rule "if it affects one, it affects all". And so, like modern law, they will arrest and execute anything they see as a danger, and empower anything they see as helpful (irregardless of what that being is fighting for). This is reflected in their ability known as: Radiance. Through it, the guild can affect everyone/everything that shares a color with the target. These appear in red's useful instant & sorcery cards, and white's creatures (and to an extent, vice-versa).
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Selesnya Conclave
The Conclave loves to help one another. They all have the ability convoke; which uses green's mana acceleration and white's equalizing. With that, a spell can be played much cheaper at the cost of tapping a few creatures.
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Simic Combine
The Simic Combine blue's lust for control and green's love of life. Like other green-based guilds, they focus on creatures more than anything else. Their ability, Graft, allows strength and life to be moved to any incoming creature. Once a creature is complete, they are sellable to the mass market. But, like the Izzet, they aren't satisfied with just one; or rather with just one type. So, they continue to create new and "improved" versions of nature.
| Guilds of Ravnica | ||||||||||||
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| Ravnica: City of Guilds | Guildpact | Dissension | ||||||||||
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