Because maybe a lot of these topics won’t be covered in my set skeleton reviews in a good while.
One of the specific places in question is EDHREC’s Bluesky page and the specific people in question is those followed that page for some reason, or the Discord friends of them who got sent there for brigading probably. So probably not the kind of target audience of a certain kind of Magic, at least.
Also this page list things in descending (score) order which you would be foolish to replicate in any longer format than an image of text of dubious quality, so I’ll right that wrong.
We can use the guilds’ scores to maybe have an educated guess for this list, mostly for the sets that only have some of the guilds.
For the Karlov Manor and story arc concluding set, unfortunately you can’t use this to predict their placements.
And it just so turns out it doesn’t align basically whatsoever. Maybe it’s the fact that the average guild score I tallied is 80.1% while the actual votes for these guild sets are 80%. Maybe it’s the fact that I included Dragon’s Maze thinking it’s gonna be the standard for the guild scores. Maybe it’s the fact that the probability column is calculated like this:
$$ \mathrm{RidicilousFactor}\ =\ 0.5-\left|\Phi\left(\frac{Real\ -\ E\left(P\right)}{sig\left(P\right)}\right)-0.5\right| $$
Which gives a huge advantage for sets hitting 0% over sets that absolutely soared over what they were supposed to be, hence why I used scientific numbers for that column. Maybe going for magnitude would have been more helpful, but you can’t get a logarithmic value of 0 (well it’s negative infinite, but who counts that?).
Also should we also try to guess these rankings based on the sets’ keywords, given that those actually change between the sets?
https://bsky.app/profile/edhrec.com/post/3m3aqmqcqsl27
| Set | E(R) | sig(R) | E(P) | sig(P) | Real | Prob |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RAV | 6.00 | 2.74 | 9.9% | 3.9% | 22% | 8.96E-04 |
| GPT | 2.67 | 1.25 | 13.8% | 2.9% | 0% | 9.75E-07 |
| DIS | 7.67 | 1.70 | 6.3% | 2.4% | 1% | 1.36E-02 |
| RTR | 5.80 | 3.66 | 10.2% | 5.6% | 35% | 4.29E-06 |
| GTC | 5.20 | 1.72 | 9.9% | 2.5% | 11% | 3.25E-01 |
| DGM | 5.50 | 2.87 | 10.0% | 4.3% | 0% | 1.04E-02 |
| GRN | 5.00 | 3.16 | 11.3% | 4.5% | 7% | 1.67E-01 |
| RNA | 6.00 | 2.45 | 8.7% | 3.7% | 4% | 1.05E-01 |
I have explained below in the worst sets section.
The biggest genius of original Ravnica block was that the way the guilds were divided made the block so cohesive and every set essentially matters the same, where you want to look forward to the next set just as much as you have looked forward to the previous ones.
The biggest downside to that approach however is that we’re in Magic the Gathering, where small sets can’t be drafted alone, they always need the large set to be there beforehand or you get a barely functional format because small sets can’t do better (cough cough spoderman). And for that, it’s surely going to be difficult remembering the name of these two sets.
Guildpact’s most infamous claim to fame is its cycle of Nephilims, which to this day still can’t be your commander because smh functional errata. Dissension meanwhile has split cards which divides rarities by ally and enemy pairs, I swear I don’t think Ravnica is supposed to do that.
Another one I’ve also explained.
Actually I can do an addendum on a few things I missed somehow. The first two are about commnader. One is the Naya Voja which raised people’s awareness of how broken Ward is, even at what would seem like an innocent number like 3. The other is the whole plagiarist debacle, I think the remastered set before this also has like AI generated promo image and that must have risen some alarm. One more is about the surveil lands. By being the only good cards in this set (Ravnica has this dilemma before), they may end up being quite pricey because people don’t feel excited enough to crack packs to get more of these in circulation. If this sends the wrong signal of “full dual land cycle = people buy set less”, oh god.
One more is just about the keywords overall, which doesn’t help in the slightest. The two derivatives of morph points to the aforementioned ward problem, suspect were literally a wonkier menace counter and cases… exists.
The first card I remember from this RNA is Prime Speaker Vannifar, guess why. Second is tied between Judith and Teysa. You don’t know those? I guess you do recognize the Smothering Tithe, Growth Spiral and Wilderness Reclaimation from this set, all turned out to be broken ramp (or straight up mana cheating) pieces from this one set. Something more elegant come in the form of Light Up the Stage and honorable mention to Skewer the Critics, a sorcery burn spell isn’t great anymore my hand feels.
For GRN, Queen Vraska is peak Vraska, also her trophy is very good of a removal. Through nowadays this set should be known just as much for its magecraft phoenix, whose deck I can’t play well in Pioneer. Drafters will known this set best however, for the Healer’s Hawk that while can’t beat a Storm Crow in combat, at least gave some life. Frankly just thank this set for making the first days of open beta Arena as playable as it is.
Ultimately, what do I have to say about this pair of Ravnica sets? It’s a pretty small iteration from RTR, given that all they had to do is to cram the guild champions and split cards and second guildgate arts in because there ain’t that third set anymore, and then modernize it by just having late 2010s Magic designers’ eyes on it. Also remember the Mythic Edition?
Keywords wise, you can definitely feel the late Gatewatch era Magic design safety, as in everything tends to work and you’re happy that they work, just that you never jump at the chance to play with them. The biggest example is Surveil I feel, should it have been called Millscry?