Ravnica: City of Guilds

About this set

Game

Magic: The Gathering

Released

October 2005

Size

A set built around ten guilds

Featured here

2 cards

Ravnica: City of Guilds is set on a city-wide plane where ten guilds each combine two colors. It made multicolor play the point of the whole set.

It also introduced the shock lands, ten dual lands that let players pay life for an untapped land. These lands remain popular and have been reprinted many times.

The set is often cited as an example of how a strong theme, a clear structure and good world-building can make an expansion memorable.

What to look for in this set

How to explore this set

Ravnica: City of Guilds is a set where the setting and the rules point in the same direction. The plane is one big city, and ten guilds each combine two colors. For a newcomer, that makes the set a friendly way to see how colors work together, after learning them one at a time.

Begin with Sacred Foundry. It is a land that taps for red or white mana, and it belongs to a group of ten dual lands called shock lands, one for each guild pair. Its guild is Boros. The land can enter untapped if you pay life, so it is a small lesson in trading something for flexibility.

Then open Dark Confidant, a black creature that gives extra cards at a cost in life. It teaches why mana value matters: how much it hurts depends on the cards in the deck. Two cards, one about colors and one about risk, give a good picture of the set.

Tip: pick one guild and follow its two colors across every card you meet.

What changed after it

Ravnica built a whole set around two-color guild identities, but it did not invent multicolor design. What it did was make pairs of colors the main idea of an entire expansion. The shock lands are the lasting piece. They have been reprinted many times, so you can find them in several frames and art styles.

The set arrived in October 2005, two years after Eighth Edition's new card frame and two years before planeswalker cards appeared in 2007. Mythic Rare followed in 2008. Magic kept returning to the idea of a theme shaping the rules, and Innistrad did it again in 2011 with a gothic-horror world.

Questions readers ask

Do I need to know all ten guilds?

No. Learn one pair and the others follow the same pattern.

Are shock lands easy to find?

They have been reprinted in several sets, so many versions exist. This site does not give prices, so check a marketplace if cost matters to you.

Is this a good first set to study?

It is a good second one. Read about the first colors in the Alpha page, then come here.

Mechanics you will see

• Mana & the Five Colors The resource system and the color pie behind every deck.