https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_qvw0JrswA



We're headed back to Ravnica for three whole sets. There will be a few design changes in some of the guilds and we'll be visiting Ravnica during their rainy Fall season so all the plants are going to be turning golden brown and the skies will be pretty dreary as we close in on Bolas' plan to....do something?

Well, the autumn look is really cool, I've always wanted to see them experiment with different seasons in their settings. I doubt I'll be around for any Magic set after Dominaria for quite some time (it's not like I'll have much of a Magic budget left right after they released Shut Up And Take My Money: The Set anyway), but I might try to get my hands on some of the new Ravnica basic lands (that and the obligatory Feather card). Ravnica in autumn sounds like it'll be pretty Gothic.

But boy do those new costume designs look bad. Why do the guilds need a radical redesign every time we visit Ravnica anyway? The visuals have been going downhill ever since the first block. Besides, they've fudged the story way too much for me to give a damn about Ravnica in the foreseeable future. At least it looks like things are going to wrap up...

I may end up on a 3-season hiatus from Magic, but then my spite towards Ravnica is something of a known factor. If I could believe for a moment that we'd actually tear it down, that would be one thing, but it's a pretty status-quo-is-god setting, except for the fresh paint on the guilds which... I'm torn. I like the Rakdos Clowns and Gruul Mad Max types but the Dimir and to a lesser extent Simic designs seem pretty bad and I don't think it was needed. I hate the world for the same reason I do Kaladesh, not with the totality of hatred I have for Otaria. The visuals were nice last time.

...Do you have to put the video up? I don't mind Magic the Amateuring as background noise occasionally, but besides the rare moral grandstanding moments (which is more cringey because of how they want to deal with issues as opposed to the actual morals), that was the most painful thing they've ever done together.

I don't really know or care too much about the moral grandstanding moments, and I see no point in getting involved with that whole Magic Youtube drama behind it, but I can't stand Bartoldi and whatshername in general. They're just pretty cringey to watch.

Amounts of cringe in that video...

The forced puns...

I nostalgia hard for the first Ravnica block. Fun novels, fun standard environment. I hope this one lives up to it.

Art dump from the video:

The costume changes don't look that radical; they are still pretty recognizable as that guild. The new Golgari outfits look like dialed back versions of the RTR outfits. There was a bigger change (so far) from OG Ravnica to Return to Ravnica, but there were also more intervening years. Fashion changes pretty quickly.

I can see Rakdos being especially prone to flashy trends. Like some ogre got blasted into a wrought iron chandelier and started dancing, and everyone starts impaling themselves on the nearest iron to jump on the fun.

Three sets?
Did we not just go over that they couldn't sustain a story that long?

I'm also in something of the same boost as Szat simply because this is a case of status quo being painfully powerful in this setting. Ravnica was one of my favorite blocks. RtR was one of the ones I thought the WORST.

It seems like it is more like "two Ravnica sets so we don't have to cram all the guilds into one large set and one Epic Battle Set that happens to take place on Ravnica, but that doesn't matter much because the setting is more or less window dressing."

Why does ravnica get three and not dominaria

Does the Dimir spy attire seem too obvious? Or is it just obvious to us since we know they're Dimir spies? Original Ravnica you had Dimir Guildmage and his ilk that, it seemed to imply, worked through illusion and stealth. And then there were zombies, spirits and shapeshifters that did a lot of work for the guild; all things that can go about on their missions without being detected versus the spies in their flat-out Dimirish uniforms.

I did like in RTR how the Dimir had their look hidden in jewelry and fringes and whatever else they could subtlety wear to get that spider look. These outfits are just about too on the nose.

I would laugh quite hard if the new new Dimir has garnered an in-universe reputation for tryhard ow-the-edge types, but I don't think they'd do that.

Very much love the Rakdos and Golgari looks, and its nice to see some Simic who look like actual scientists for a change. The Dimir...I'll wait and see but for one thing that is just too many buckles. (Cue sudden 90's comics art flashback.) It's nice that they keep updating the looks, because Ravnica does have a huge problem with thematic and social/political stagnation. Glad they refuse to let that slip into visual stagnation as well.

I find this all very hard to get excited about. I was thinking yesterday that most of the things I liked most about Ravnica have been retconned out or pushed into the background, and that it's a place that feels like it gets hollower rather than richer each time we return to it. It'd be cool if it had organically grown into its own weird thing by this point, but instead it just feels more focus-grouped to me.

I don't really identify with any of the guilds, so that doesn't help. According to a test I took I am red/blue aligned, but it's hard to look at the Izzet and think "what a flattering representation of me."

That's what I'm saying, a lot of dinguses would've signed up after it went public hoping to be badass super-spies who secretly run the world and wear lots of leather but not in a Rakdos way, then they're shackled to a desk making spreadsheets of Golgari sorghum yields because that info's gotta be worth money to someone

The C O O L thing is that some of those dinguses actually became badass super-spies who secretly run the world.
Because Dimir.

I'm not an expert on how spies are recruited but I imagine most of them would at least start as people in other guilds the Dimir bribe/extort for info?