Return to Ravnica is looking like an amazing set. Most of the cards have given me that wow-I-don’t-believe-they-printed-that feeling, which is always a good sign with a new set. I’d love to pick through a few of my favorites, but I’ll hold off until the entire set has officially spoiled. I’d hate to talk about one card only to see another one the next day that completely changes my opinion or to find out the spoiled card isn’t totally accurate. Check back next week.

This week, I thought we could return to Ravnica (small-“r” return) block and look at a few of the cards there that were good to me—or good to those around me! Ravnica is a big plane, and it is unlikely you ended up going down all of the same back alleys I did. I’ve tried to avoid some of the more obvious cards (looking at you, Doubling Season), so if you don’t see your favorite, either it did not explode in my playgroup, I thought it was too obvious, or I just straight-up forgot. Feel free to add your stories in the replies below.

A quick note: As I was putting the finishing touches on my article, Abe Sargent’s article came out, doing much the same thing as mine. I guess great minds think alike! If you haven’t already, check out his article for other great cards from the original Ravnica block.

Blazing Archon

When I saw this, I expected that players would be able to use all those creatures that had been held back to block as an invading horde, knowing that as long as the Blazing Archon stayed in play, creature combat was not a worry for them. My ability to predict my playgroup was not very good.

The first time I saw the Archon in play in our group, he was the insurance in a combo deck. The deck was a little slow to combo out, so the Archon was there to protect the player against combat damage while he assembled the combo. At 9 mana, this meant a ton of mana-ramping and rituals to put the Archon into play in a reasonable period of time. Once he hit play, nothing would happen for several turns, while the player slowly attempted to put together the combo. This was annoying, but the combo was very slow to come together, and when someone is actually hard-casting Blazing Archon, it is pretty hard to call foul when that person gets the win. If you can’t stop someone from hard-casting a 9-mana creature that is only part of a win condition, you probably deserve to lose.

The next time I saw the Archon was in a reanimator deck. This was completely miserable. Archons on turn two and three! Even after you kill it, he would find another one, and you were stuck again. It took weeks to convince some people that attacking other players was the worst thing you could do. It was only helping the Blazing Archon player! Just miserable.

Ink-Treader Nephilim

While this is a great move, it paled in comparison to the truly epic play John made that I described in the article:

Celestial Ancient

Long before Ravnica block, I had a G/W deck that just seemed to be missing something. The deck would either take out a single opponent or do nothing for most of the game right until the end, when it would suddenly go off and win the game. The deck used Auratog and Rancor. It was straightforward enough: With an Auratog in play, cast the Rancor, then sacrifice the Rancor to give the Auratog the +2/+2 bonus. The Rancor hits the graveyard and goes back to your hand, ready to be cast again. The Auratog would become huge, then get the trample from Rancor and run people over. Unfortunately, the defense in the deck was pretty weak, so you rarely managed to take out more than one person. Celestial Ancient changed that.

Not only did the Auratog become bigger, but it stayed really big on my opponents’ turns. The Celestial Ancient and the handful of mana creatures in the deck all became huge with all the +1/+1 counters the Ancient would give out when Rancor was being cast repeatedly. The extra firepower pushed the deck among the top decks in my playgroup at the time. Celestial Ancient made things interesting.

Spawnbroker

I know this card can work, but it just never seemed to get the job done in my decks. Any suggestions from the readers for how to make this work in multiplayer games would be greatly appreciated.

Ghostway

My Allies deck did not run Ghostway. I hadn’t seen the card and had long forgotten that it existed. What I did have was Cauldron of Souls. I would put a bunch of Allies out and play some mass-destruction spell to wipe out the board. I would give all my Allies persist with the Cauldron and watch them all come back into play, giving me Allies loaded with +1/+1 counters, life, and a bevy of other benefits.

When I read The Stybs’s article about his Ally deck, I discovered the joy of Ghostway. Using Ghostway requires far less mana. Cauldron of Souls sits on the battlefield, waiting to be destroyed at your opponent’s leisure. Most importantly to me was the surprise factor Ghostway offered. When Cauldron of Souls was sitting there, everyone knew what was going to happen if they used their mass removal, so I’d be forced to use my own. With Ghostway, others will cast their Day of Judgment and save me the trouble! In those situations, I have less control and a little more difficulty optimizing when the effect hits, but the benefits outweigh the negatives. The hoops are so much easier to jump through. I am sold and haven’t gone back.

Cytoplast Manipulator

I initially ran this card as a throw-in with a Simic deck that ran Seedborn Muse and Dragon Blood. While perhaps not the most elegant or efficient pairing, it allowed me to control most of the creatures on the board that I could target. Eventually, I just started throwing the Manipulator in any blue deck and letting my opponents do the work for me!

Followed Footsteps

Let’s start with the obvious here: This is not a good card.

• It is a 5-mana Aura.
• It does nothing until your next turn.
• It requires you to target a creature.
• It dies to pretty much everything.

If you choose to play this card, you are probably thinking of many copies of a creature you already control and how awesome it would be to have several of them. Multiple copies of Primeval Titan does sound pretty good, doesn’t it? The problem, though, relates to everything I’ve already mentioned above. Your opponents were already considering killing the Titan, and now you’ve given them another reason. To effectively use this, you want to use it on your creatures with hexproof. It is slow and clunky, but at least it is less likely to die immediately. Populate allows you to take advantage of Followed Footsteps a little faster as well. No promises, but populate improves Followed Footsteps at least a little bit!

The third and most effective option is to attach it to a creature that most people don’t particularly care about. Multiple copies of Birds of Paradise is a wonderful thing! It always amazes me how many players will let you gather more and more mana!

My personal favorite target so far was Acidic Slime. I only got to make a couple of copies, but regular land destruction was very handy!

Vulturous Zombie

The only real deck limitation to Vulturous Zombie is the color requirement, and in multiplayer, making is not much of a limitation at all. This guy is simply a house.

Now, if you are reading this while watching an infomercial, you are probably saying to yourself, “But Bruce, a 3/3 flyer for 5 mana that grows bigger pretty much every time I blink is great, but I think you can do better.” We’ll throw in Corpsejack Menace from Return to Ravnica! This fellow doubles the +1/+1 counters placed on your creatures. If you don’t think Vulturous Zombies is growing fast enough, we just doubled it!

Wrapping Up

I hope you have discovered some new friends or even a few ways to use some old friends. We’ll see how Ravnica has changed next week, when we take a look at a few of the new cards that look bring insanity to your kitchen table.

Bruce Richard