Mere moments ago, I wrote on War of the Spark's basic lands back in 2019. Nearly five years later, we are returning again to Ravnica, the Czech inspired plane.

As a reminder, I'm Vorthos Mike, I write on Magic's art. You might've been to one of my art shows. I've done a few.

CoolStuffInc called me up to preview the basic lands of the brand new upcoming set, Murders at Karlov Manor.

Enough chit chat, let's talk art.

For a set based on the Czech area, having a Boros themed Plains that feels like Eastern European block housing, down to the brutalist concrete and fresh trees is spot on.

The Boros are the military, making their plains often a city square where you do drills and formations. These aren't city squares to converse as a third space. No.

Note how low the buildings are? We are probably on a square *atop* another building. We are likely dozens of stories up here.

This is where things get interesting.

This is a fully cleared square and manicured.

Your options on who this aligns to:

Selesnya with Green.

Azorius with Blue.

Orzhov with Black.

Can't be Boros because we already saw theirs.

It's a bit too lush for Orzhov, though I love the idea that this was an old cemetery that they covered with a park.

As we don't see any indicators on Blue or Green directionally, since we see Green, it's Selesnya.

Frankly the slight prayer labyrinth in the circle would lend me believe it's Selesnya because it's effectively a religion for Ravnica. Everyone is welcome, we accept all - the boot fits.

While I would love if the onion domes were of one guild, sadly, they don't align. Like the architectural element itself and The Hagia Sophia, iconographic elements change depending on who holds the area.

This is for the Simic and like the Plains above, it feels both remote in appearance, yet it has very slight indicators to tell you that it's still in the city proper.

The curves lines and roughly merfolk appearance was redefined in Return to Ravnica for the guild.

The stones of the waterfall in front tell us there's a whole scene below us that the card frame is hiding.

Lily pads are normally the Simic Combine's thing. But the harmony and stone order of this architecture is notably the Azorius.

Titus Lunter graciously made this jpg available to see a little more detail.

How can one tell if a basic land is Orzhov, Dimir, or Golgari? They all align to dead people.

Mushrooms.

The death, decay, and life through death is a mushroom. The recycling element is Golgari.

Plus, I think they pick the mushrooms in the crypts of the others.

Underground and standing water? We should be looking at the Dimir. But it's always strange that they still carry some of their sinister origins. This image brings us back to their earlier, work of not existing and hiding underground in ruins.

Dimir, in a more contemporary sense on Ravnica, are guild members working in information technology. Well they don't have computers as technology, the vision you have of an IT worker is who they are.

They are the post office and also FedEx.

They are librarians.

They are the IT workers with good cable management and make fun of you for not turning your computer off then on again to fix a problem.

If you want to share a recipe with a minor spell and copy text quickly, that is all this guild.

Any schooling required especially primary school, Dimir writes curriculum and explains how knowledge is power. They're not kidding about that either.

If you ever been to a falling apart junior high or middle school, compared to the kindergarten and high school that have been more recently updated, you can understand Dimir.

We get to have a Rakdos building that isn't a performance stage or demon lair?

There could still be a large stage inside the structure, but if you're a more common person on Ravnica, this is how you'd interact with them. Outside of holidays and large celebrations, you would see buildings like this with fire on the outside and that's about it. It's their version of the suburban, heat pump and solar panel.

Most people wouldn't be going to their shows, and losing an arm, or being able to afford their other services like assassination.

You know when cities pay for fireworks like twice a year, and the rest of the time they do super boring policy work and cover up graffiti? That's Ravnica as government. They only let the Rakdos run wild in small doses. The Martyred Rusalka incidents are quite rare.

As for the art here - note that the creatives of Rakdos have figured out how to make clear, tempered glass. When you have that much heat next to Glass bad things happen. If you find out a way to make it clear, and strong, all that light can't come out of the building. It was a pretty big technological feat when medieval artisans figured that out. It allowed for churches to be brighter, using less candles. Stained glass windows don't bring in a ton of light and they're comically expensive. I would think for performances that might have a splatter or two, having good windows to see in especially clear and strong would be a higher priority for them. You can learn a lot more about glass in an old article I wrote.

Izzet checking in and we finally get to see guild working near their buildings. It was always tough to see scale of how big the pipes and tubes and lines of crackling energy were. Here we get to see exactly how big those spires are.

Svetlin Hooked us up with some images for details, because I know that the guild is the most popular with Magic players.

Letting nature reclaim buildings in dedicated areas is representation of the Gruul Clans.

As a reminder, they are the forest rangers, the game wardens. The problem is they don't have wilderness anymore on Ravnica. They lost the battle to set aside some areas for dedicated wilderness. The United States had the wilderness act in the mid-60s and started to designate areas on purpose. On a plane with runaway population growth, they never got to pause and level an area.

There's plenty to dive into the clan in not being simply stupid, but rather their purpose no longer is necessary. In a massive metropolis, having areas to reflect, and reconnect with nature and restore some sanity is paramount. That's why we have parks, but you often need a larger area too, that requires need to travel to. That's what they should be doing. But as they cannot, you can see their rage. They are Smokey Bear, big mad.

Perhaps this image is allowing some areas to get overgrown, allowing animals a little refuge in areas that they designate, that one of the clans would oversee. Normally you call that a forest management plan with designated controlled burns or assisted migration of plants. It's a little more boring than burning down buildings, but they need day jobs too.

This Forest feels more like that the Gruul see themselves as. They oversee the evergreens.

Due to the stream though, this is Simic. In between growing limbs and being the doctors of Ravnica, they work on the ecosystem of living beings. Tagging animals and researching them, that's where the Simic and Gruul overlap duties. Studying a bird flu is why the guilds would meet in a forest, like professors having a meet up in the field.

The little bridges here don't seem created for a lot of foot traffic. If a stream was really inaccessible to another area, there would be one large bridge rather than little ones. You have to plan for flooding, of course. I think this area is small. We are in a park. It's maybe a central park that's large, but it's still a park. This is for walking by foot from just nearby, as we can see the large structure in the background.

The basic lens here, give us a little different perspective of the plane of Ravnica. With every revisit, there's always a little pivot, giving us a little more of a glimpse of daily life. These lands are the ones that have shown it the most.

-Vorthos Mike