Return to Ravnica: A Retro Design Review

One of Magic’s core strengths is its color pie, the idea that different colors of Magic have differing strengths and weaknesses and philosophies of play. The original Ravnica: City of Guilds radically improved upon this strength by defining philosophical and mechanical overlaps between each combination of two colors. Ravnica also prioritized “enemy color pairs,” combinations whose disagreements had outweighed their similarities. Ravnica addressed this historical shortage by giving every guild a brand-new faction mechanic and equal numbers of symmetrically-designed cards, hammering home a new era of color pie philosophy.

Return to Ravnica followed the original seven years later, making many small improvements and ultimately bottling lightning into a timeless design. In revisiting RTR, my goal is to study its design successes and apply them to the Cube format. Follow along using Scryfall at home, paying special attention to low-rarity cards and debut mechanics:

set:RTR

A guild-focused set only works if players build two-color guild decks without spilling over to manycolored piles of rate. RTR achieves a paradigm of two-color decks using two competing incentives. First, rate and color requirements demand that players buy in to RTR’s premise. Because the gold cards offer the strongest rates and the most stringent costs, you have to play along to sequence

set:RTR r>u

A quick perusal through RTR’s rares is a sight to behold in 2025. The card frame may look contemporary, but the design sensibilities are anything but:

I have to admit to you that it’s taken me 13 years to read these cards – and counting, because today I still couldn’t be bothered. And there’s more where these peculiar paper puzzles came from! There’s 38 rares above

set:RTR r>u mv>3

Looking at that rogues’ gallery of rares… riffle my deck and call me Melvin, but I kinda dig it. RTR’s rares are so dazzlingly different than 2018-2025 designs! It’s not simply power level; we know 2012 was fully capable of all-timer rates because of how many RTR cards defined Constructed for months or years:

It was no accident, then, that Return to Ravnica printed weirdos when they could have kept pushing power. It takes guts to print a

CubeCobra displays RTR’s top contemporary cards in the Cube world, so rather than rehashing that, I’ll just sing the praises of one of my favorites.

Abrupt Decay is one of the healthiest removal spells I’m aware of. It’s very strong (especially in low-curving cubes that load up on 2020s Constructed hits), but its incentives are awesome. Step one: part of its power is derived from hating on the right people. “Can’t be countered” is a modest bump up in power, but it feels like a silver bullet against the “oops! all counterspells” control deck. And good riddance! Even if one kill spell isn’t truly backbreaking, the obvious counterplay feels good, and it allows weaker players to unambiguously win a skirmish against their most hated nemesis. Step two: if Abrupt Decay is used alongside 8 copies of Last Gasp towards evil ends (read: destroying every creatue that’s cast), the creature mage can simply play a

I also like that Abrupt Decay is a pull into

I haven’t yet discussed the faction mechanics of RTR, which imitate the structure of the original Ravnica. They may not look like overlapping synergies, but every RTR mechanic is intuitive and clean, and four of the five are vast improvement on their City of Guilds predecessors. These are all mechanics that make Magic more fun; it’s as simple as that.

Detain is a wonderful incentive for

RTR’s unnamed themes also emulate Ravnica: City of Guilds. I find it funny that the original Ravnica block, whose loudest legacy is its goldness, had such a commitment to Auras-matter. Return to Ravnica block enthusiastically doubles down on Auras, going so far as an “enchant-your-lands” theme deemed so dangerous that it needed dedicated six-mana counterplay: all hail Street Sweeper.

block:RTR o:'enchant land'

As silly as the land Auras may look now, this homage speaks to the no-cost-spared approach RTR took to recapture the magic of the original block. The return of shocklands and a returning emphasis on parallel cycles of similar cards add to this feeling of nostalgia.

RTR is the prototype of Magic’s art style in the era of the Mirrodin border. Above all else, this art is legible: the character design very clearly distinguishes between guilds, and every piece guides the eye to the action or subject. A good example is Zoltan Boros’ cycle of Charms, zoomed-in action shots with a prominint guild sigil where every character feels distinct. There’s maybe a couple “2003 Xbox game manual art” CGI-lookin’ images per color, which are an unfortunate side effect. But the rest of this modern Ravnica is vivid and virtuosic.

RTR’s Azorius are fascist cops. Let me explain. The American Constitution guarantees unalienable rights including free speech, the presumption of innocence, and the due process of law. Current events notwithstanding, America has always, regardless of which party holds power, extended these rights to citizens and non-citizens alike. The Azorius have clearly never heard of a Bill of Rights; most

There’s even an unspoken racialized element to the Azorius. Though Goblins, Faeries, Centaurs, and Elves are abundant on Ravnica and participate in other guilds, Azorius apparently only lets Humans and Sphinxes make Ravnica’s laws, the implied reason being that everyone else is too dumb… Yikes.

set:rtr (flavor:azorius OR wm:azorius OR azorius OR prahv)

Now, RTR’s writers aren’t particularly sympathetic to the Azorius, with flavor texts on Supreme Verdict and Tablet of the Guilds suggesting that corruption and cruelty are Azorius bywords. (We’ll see similar hostility towards the Orzhov in Gatecrash.) And it’s all make-believe, anyways… right? Yes, and no. Of course I am not really a Planeswalker whose sole purpose is killing my rival mage with an army of fantasy cops. But if I draft an RTR Azorius deck based around “the unlawful arrest set mechanic,” I do play-act that role, muddling together my player’s motives (to win, to feel smart or socially validated) with the Azorius’ (to conduct extrajudicial killings and childnappings).²

Contrast to how RTR treats The Cult of Rakdos.³ They are pure hedonism fueling institutionalized “riots, havoc, and slaughter.” The reactionary message: “don’t do anything hot or fun, or a demon will turn you into a psycho killer.” Unfortunately for the D.A.R.E. mom lobby, the innuendo-filled propaganda cards make the freaks look even more hot and fun, implicitly endorsing the very activities they condemn (in the tradition of all the best ’80s horror flicks). Sign me up! I’d rather be a freak than a fascist.

Return to Ravnica fits in a sweet spot on Magic’s historical power trends. Some rares can hang (and excel!) in contemporary high-power cubes, but the cards themselves are clean and elegant. On the other hand, some of the basement uncommons can go backwards in time to spice up an old-school set cube like Alara. If the power level is right, any RTR card can offer elegant appeal and good gameplay.

Return to Ravnica’s good design fundamentals can also map onto other environments. My takeaways: Use gold cards’ mana costs to tune player incentives. Allow high mana values to flourish by attenuating the power of the cheapest threats. And build up the courage to play some weirdo cards.

Thanks for reading, and remember: Life's too short not to do the things you love.