Gatecrash: A Retro Design Review

This week’s design-focused Cube review picks up the thread of Return to Ravnica with 2013’s Gatecrash, completing the cycle of the 10 color pair guilds of Ravnica.

Many of the praises I heaped on RTR apply here: the formula of symmetric, no-special-colors cycles build up a tactile model of Magic’s color pie for players new and old. Weirdo rares continue to spark inspiration at every mana cost. Gatecrash may be officially distinct from RTR, but they’re so similar it’s like seeing a reflection.

That makes Gatecrash’s few departures stand out even more. Gatecrash’s mechanics are overall less successful than RTR, and the common threats are anomalously unbalanced, adding up to a set with unique insights for Cube designers. Follow along using Scryfall:

set=Gatecrash

The combat phase is Limited Magic’s flop and its river, asking players to raise or fold. Without it, creature stats and costs begin to matter less than their text boxes, if creatures matter at all: hatebears versus hosers, or worse, eurogame engine-building purgatory.

In my experience, combat only shines when the format’s most common creature statlines make double-blocking a viable tactic without being oppressive. Too much double-blocking is poison to combat: if my team of 2/3s can profitably trade with an attacker as big as a 5/4, why risk any attack? On the other hand, if creatures are too small, then it’s hard to catch up by trading in combat – imagine the blowout-in-the-making of 2/2s and 1/1s blocking that 5/4!

Magic pro Ari Lax claims that the

If that piques your curiosity, you’ll have to read Lax’s blogpost, because Gatecrash is not one of those formats. It has 3/2s aplenty, but they’re at fire-sale prices that push aggression into the stratosphere:

Two snowballing faction mechanics, Evolve and Battalion, help to cement the aggro player’s position. Madcap Skills at Common ensures that, if Villain can block at all, your Foundry Street Denizen will be getting the better of the deal. Bloodrush lets you turn your creatures into surprise Lava Axes, bringing the Hatred/Berserk Experience to 2013.

Battalion’s implementation is especially bizarre to me. Its natural safety valve is that combat trades can reduce the size of your army, turning off Battalion and buying time for a struggling opponent. Well, when the third attacker is an Ember Beast reprint, and most Battalion payoffs offer absurd evasion, I am left to conclude that Gatecrash’s designers did not believe in safety valves, and what’s more, considered the “declare blockers” step deadweight, too. This is why Lax praises 3/2s for

Unlike the faction mechanics of RTR, which were all great-to-excellent, Gatecrash’s new mechanics are uneven. I already mentioned the snowball potential of Battalion, but at least it’s better than Boros' first mechanic. Dimir’s Cipher is likewise an improvement on RAV’s abysmal Transmute, but that’s not saying much. The result reads as half-baked, since Gatecrash commits just as many Dimir cards to plain ol’ mill. Bloodrush is also weird. Its “attacking creature” limitation allows Gruul to have some appealing rates (+3/+2 for

Luckily, the last two faction mechanics are all-stars. Simic’s Evolve is a build-your-own-monster experience – big number peanut butter and creature keywords chocolate – that appeals to nearly every demographic and skill level. (No disrespect to GTC, but my favorite implementation is MH1’s Gluttonous Slug, because Menace’s value changes drastically with each size increment.) Evolve even has some cross-appeal with RTR’s Scavenge, because the two sets were drafted together, but I wish more adjacent factions used or cared about these counters.

Finally, my favorite mechanic of Gatecrash is Extort. Mana sink mechanics are a requirement of Magic’s game engine, and this is a great one. All your spells have Kicker

The RTR block slowly builds up a Gates-matter subtheme, which was the first time that a (nonbasic) land subtype mattered so much. While RTR mostly paid off having one or two Gates, GTC has the first payoffs with unbounded scaling. It’s a cool way to provide common mana fixing to players, while also avoiding “strictly worse” shocklands. We’ll see Dragon’s Maze completing the payoffs with fireworks: a full cycle of “threshold 2” Gatekeepers and the unimpeachably swaggalicious Maze's End.

I can’t believe they printed a callback to Ravnica’s Zephyr Spirit. What have they done to us?

Staying in the realm of jokes at our expense: Totally Lost! How cute and wholesome! Just don’t think about how, twelve years later, Fblthp is an object lesson in beating a horse long after it stopped laughing:

fblthp or flavor:fblthp

Finally, for all my criticism of Battalion, I love Boros Elite, a one-drop that asks the aggro player to slow the game down a little, setting up dramatic tactical strikes instead of sending wave after wave of interchangeable dinks over the top.

The art of Gatecrash I find most striking is a curious mix of expressionism and serenity. The two moods are rarely featured on the same card, but the contrast is striking, like a set full of touristy wolf t-shirts. I also appreciate the “little guys for scale” on cards like Gridlock and Ruination Wurm, which effectively show the extent of the Ravnican metropolis.

In passing, one particular pairing cracks me up, that of Burning-Tree Emissary and Primal Visitation. Reading these flavor texts, we are to believe simultaneously that the Gruul shamans are not savage simpletons, but also that they think everyone has a savage soul. Cool. Surely the other guilds will be more thematically developed, and less cringe-worthy… right?

Ha. No, of course not. As we’ve seen repeatedly through this series of reviews, Magic’s tidy color pie and the reality of its cards often conflict. In Gatecrash, the Orzhov are a dark-mirror reflection of Christianity (specifically Catholicism). Borrowed ideas including tithing, ascension, angels, guilt and penance, alms, and confession, are mixed with financial language and imagery. The juxtaposition is one of salvation for sale, and a lust for political power over spiritual truth. It’s a valid historical critique (Martin Luther would likely agree, for one), but when Magic’s religious imagery is dominated by depictions like these, it begins to border on cartoonish cynicism.¹

Granted, communicating narrative through trading cards is like trying to communicate facial expression from the Greek stage. There’s a lot of over-acting in each, just to get the point across to the cheap seats at the back. I understand, therefore, why Magic’s creative chose to exaggerate the corrupt elements of Catholicism until the Orzhov are enslaving the dead for eternity… but also, to any character who lives on Ravnica, it sucks that their world is so full of moral monstrosity.

Speaking of which, GTC is as hostile to Ravnica’s military as RTR was towards its lawmakers and police. Arrows of Justice sees servicepeople maiming (at best) Ravnican citizens for misdemeanors. Elsewhere is depicted brutality against unarmed civilians, civil rights violations, and illegal occupation of public lands. The rot goes straight to the top: who the hell is Aurelia “calling for war” against? The whole Ravnican world is one big city! There’s nobody to fight except your own neighbors! The idea that a state’s military would be deployed against its own civilians is fascistic, very likely illegal, and a moral outrage.

Standing in subtle constrast to the corrupt and generally unlikeable guilds are a new faction introduced in Gatecrash, the Gateless. These are Ravnica’s downtrodden and forgotten, a glimpse into the 90% that don’t normally earn a spot on a Magic card. The politics of this group are very different: Boros jarheads may claim the Gateless are “rebels,” but Court Street Denizen is just a regular citizen like you or me, struggling to realize the justice that her goverment has denied. I imagine that rooftop runners like Spire Tracer are community couriers, warning innocents about impending Boros raids. And angels, the epitome of spiritual truth in Magic, are defecting from the Orzhov and Boros in droves. In the Gateless' angelic guardians we see a rare sight in Magic, religion as an epistemological framework for justice and liberation, ludic echoes of Óscar Romero, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. The Gateless are a reminder that, in these grassroots movements of active solidarity, moral conviction, and mutual aid, we ordinary citizens have the power to turn back the tides of fascism.

That about does it for today. Thanks for reading, defend your local Gateless community against your local Boros bootlickers, and remember: The Gateless have risen. The Ten shall fall.