Three months ago, I talked about cards from the original Ravnica block that didn’t fit in but that might fare better today with new guild mechanics. This is me doing that for the five guilds of Gatecrash. The original guilds don’t evenly distribute hidden gems, but there’s still something for everyone.

Orzhov

What’s New – Extort: a triggered ability that kicks all your spells with Orzhova, the Church of Deals. This fits into many Orzhov decks I’ve seen with no trouble. Waiting an extra turn on later spells seems worth it in many cases.

What’s Old – Haunt: a triggered ability sort of like rebound. With only ten haunt cards, there’s not a lot to get into, but Belfry Spirit and Blind Hunter have their moments, while Exhumer Thrull is reasonable in Commander.

What Overlaps – Extort gives extra value to the cheap haunt spells, but I’m not certain that’s enough. Orzhov Pontiff might have the best overlap.

What Wins

Empty the Catacombs – For its giving more card advantage to your opponents than to you, Empty the Catacombs isn’t a staple. But extort ups the relative value of your creatures, and you might be able to win a drawn-out game just by turning those creatures into life drain. This line of play is probably best in Commander, such as with Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter—with enough, mana you can extort several times while your returned creatures can die to Vish Kal as removal for your opponents’ returnees. Orzhov doesn’t look for high-upside single plays, but this might be one.

Orzhov Euthanist – One of the odd haunters who’s better off the haunt than the casting (usually), the Euthanist always feels just shy of playable to me. I’m a lot more interested if it drains life, though. Orzhov tends to be a midrangy guild, with a glut of spells you want to cast at 4 and 5 mana. A good 3-drop leaves enough mana to extort late game while proving a surprise early. Maybe it’s still meh, but it’s worth reevaluating.

Dimir

What’s New – Cipher: a way to reuse noncreature spells on rogue-like creatures, by which I mean Invisible Stalker, not the @ from Angband or Moria, although I’ve attacked with @ much more than Invisible Stalker.

What’s Old – Transmute: a way to tutor spells from equivalent converted mana costs. Transmute’s been useful in most formats (except for Mindlock Orb Dragon Highlander, which also isn’t real). Drift of Phantasms and Clutch of the Undercity are casual gold, and Shred Memory has its uses. This is easily among the best Ravnica mechanics.

What Overlaps – You could transmute for a cipher card, though I’m not yet aware of a deck desiring it. To generate good cipher value, you’ll need a stable of evasion, and at that point, transmute seems hard to fit in apart from Dimir Infiltrator.

What Wins

Halcyon Glaze – I confirmed with Matt Tabak that encoded cards stay on a permanent regardless of whether the permanent remains a creature (eat your heart out, Dimir Keyrune). Halcyon Glaze is the best of the old Ravnica guard for a removal-dodging cipher target. It will be a creature most turns in the right deck, and increasing reliability of cipher seems worth the unreliability of the Glaze turning into a creature. This plan’s efficacy is relative to the curve of cipher spells—you’ll have to play a creature and a cipher spell on the same turn—but it looks worth it.

Hunted Phantasm – A favorite in Leyline of Singularity decks, the Phantasm’s large unblockable body promises a good creature to encode. That might offset the damage from the five Goblin tokens you gave an opponent by itself. If there’s a Nausea variant that ciphers (not that I expect one), Hunted Phantasm will own the faces. If you want an all-in cipher deck, you want creatures like this.

Boros

What’s New – Battalion: a benefit for at least three attacking creatures. How many non-battalion creatures will be worth running? Is the best battalion deck the one in which every creature has it? From the spoiled cards to date, battalion seems high-powered.

What’s Old – Radiance: a benefit for creatures of a certain color. The abilities are undercosted when hitting only your creatures, but game-to-game variance on your opponents’ creature colors makes radiance pretty miserable. Brightflame’s good, though.

What Overlaps – Well, battalion is useful, while radiance isn’t, so there’s not much overlap. You could have all-battalion creatures with all-radiance spells, but . . . meh.

What Wins

Rally the Righteous – An attacking bonus implies the Boros don’t have much defense outside vigilance. Rally the Righteous is among the best radiance spells. That’s not an ambitious statement, as the competition is low, but Rally the Righteous gives a surprise set of blockers while boosting their power to compensate for the lack of battalion bonuses. If the Gatecrash Boros have some choice double strikers, this card is worth even more.

Veteran Armorer – Other Soldiers have eclipsed this in a tribal deck—Precinct Captain and Veteran Armorsmith, for example—but the early toughness bonus should get you battalioning* safer and faster. Depending on how your colored mana requirements end up, the splashability’s also worthwhile; battalion decks want to hit all their creatures on time to attack on an emptier board, especially in multiplayer. Boros Elite’s tougher to double-block effectively if it’s a 3/4 post-battalion instead of a 3/3, and that difference seems crucial this early in spoiler season.

* Not a real word.

Gruul

What’s New – Bloodrush: or, as I’ve heard it, splice onto attacking creature. As bloodrush is only for attacking creatures, it’s a little limited, but it compensates by letting your deck run on a creature and three lands. If it looks as though you’ll be mana screwed for a while, just convert your creature cards into serious damage.

What’s Old – Bloodthirst: which rewarded you for dealing damage by giving you bigger creatures to deal more damage. The tension with Guildpact bloodthirst always was having enough damage sources to trigger it reliably (Viashino Fangtail? Rain of Embers??). Magic 2012’s Goblin Fireslinger fixed some of that issue, but while bloodthirst was among the best Ravnica block abilities, it was surprisingly finicky.

What Overlaps – Tramplers enjoy both abilities, although paying 3 mana for a bloodrush effect rarely leaves mana open for a useful bloodthirster. Still, a “Best of Gruul” deck could use bloodthirst and bloodrush together and be fine, which is more than can be said for Ravnica mechanics as a group.

What Wins

Gristleback – Bloodrush also has the drawback of going all-in. Not that I’ve seen a Gruul mage mind that, but it does leave you open to card disadvantage. Gristleback never worked out in Guildpact—why would you sacrifice one of your bloodthirst sources for some life?—but in Gatecrash, should someone point removal at your intended bloodrushee, you become double-sad. Gristleback at least lets you earn some benefit back in that case. Is that enough to include it in more decks? I don’t know, but the card definitely became better.

Recollect – Normally found in combo decks, Recollect in Gatecrash Gruul admits that bloodrush leans (or can lean) toward combo. Normally, you want bloodrush to be a surprise, but it also seems unpleasant for your opponents when they know you have your best bloodrusher back in your hand. I’ve argued that Devil's Play differs from other X burn spells because the flashback changes how opponents play. I see Recollect with bloodrush working similarly.

Simic

What’s New – Evolve: a way to scale the smallest creatures of your board as long as you’re playing creatures in their intended curve order. The spoiled evolve creatures look weak if you don’t cast them in the right order, but I’ll hold out hopes that this plays smoothly.

What’s Old – Graft: which more directly pumped your creatures but wasn’t as good as it looked. I’ve played a lot of Simic in my day, but I’ve rarely played graft apart from Plaxcaster Frogling in my Animar, Soul of Elements and The Mimeoplasm Commander decks. (Graft was new when I was playing Magic Online, and there wasn’t a way to say once for all, “No, I do not wish to graft onto any of my opponent’s fifty-seven new Saprolings.” This made it annoying.)

What Overlaps – They’re both about +1/+1 counters, and the overlap looks strong. A “Best of Simic” deck should do about as well as a “Best of Gruul” deck.

What Wins

Plaxmanta – Its enters-the-battlefield ability plus graft make a nasty combat trick as-is. Now, Plaxmanta can evolve your field mid-combat while giving shroud to said field. It’s difficult to beat that for a 2-drop. If you have Plaxmantas lying around and want to start building a Simic deck after you get home from the prerelease, put them in and see how you like it.

Vigean Hydropon – Affectionately known as The Pump in my circles, the Hydropon always has been a top-shelf grafter (and a blast to put Lignify on). As a 5/5, it’s large enough to evolve most of your creatures while being kind enough to graft onto future ones. Utility coming and going gives The Pump new life, and as one of the most fun Simic creatures, that’s nice to say.

Conclusion

Many of the cards on this list are formerly played cards that gained extra playability from Gatecrash mechanics. If some of the fifteen cards above have languished in your binders, give them the fresh air of new decks. The worst that could happen is style points; the best that could happen is being awesome. So you can’t go wrong there.