MTG RAVNICA: CITY OF GUILDS REGULAR MOL FACTORY SET

Ravnica: City of Guilds contained 306 black-bordered cards (88 rare, 88 uncommon, 110 common, and 20 basic lands). "Ravnica" is a multicolor oriented set. The design is based around four two-color pairs, including cards in which those pairs of colors work in concert. All the multicolor cards in the set Ravnica block are associated with one of the four guilds. As a consequence of multicolor cards and an unbalanced color distribution, there are fewer red and blue cards. The appearance of a guild symbol in the background of a card's text box identifies that card's guild affiliation. The guild symbols have no effect on game play. Ravnica: City of Guilds also introduced the hybrid mana system used throughout the Ravnica block. The expansion symbol of the set is a tower, which stands for the overdeveloped cityscape of the plane of Ravnica.

The expansion set was well-received, particularly because of its innovative "guild model", and won the 2005 Origin Awards for Best Collectible Card Game or Expansion.

Themes and mechanics

Ravnica introduced hybrid cards with entirely new mana symbols ("Guild mana"). Each symbol is a circle halved diagonally, in which the top left half is one color and the bottom right half another. A smaller version of the color's icon (sun for white, skull for black, etc.) appears in the corresponding half. These mana symbols mean that mana of either color may be used to pay it. The cards with these mana symbols have a colored border that fades from left to right, out of one color and into the other.

Ravnica also introduced a heavy "auras matter" theme, being the second block (after Urza's Saga) to place any sort of mechanical focus on the enchantment subtype. Although there are no mechanics directly related to auras, cards like Gatherer of Graces, Bramble Elemental, and the Magemark cycle encouraged the use of the local enchantments.

Ravnica: City of Guilds introduced four of the ten Ravnica block bicolored guilds, each of which with its own keyword or ability word:

House Dimir {U/B} 
A player may pay a certain amount of mana and discard a card with Transmute that's in their hand. Doing this allows the player to find a card with the same converted mana cost from their library and put it into their hand.
Selesnya Conclave {G/W} 
A player playing a spell with Convoke can tap their creatures to pay part or all of its mana cost. Each creature tapped reduces the cost by one mana of that creature's color, or by one colorless mana.
Golgari Swarm {B/G} 
Cards with dredge may be returned from a graveyard to their owner's hand, provided that they opt to skip drawing a card and instead put several cards from the top of their library into their graveyard.
Boros Legion {R/W}
Radiance is an ability word that appears on spells and abilities that affect every creature that shares a color with a targeted creature. When that creature is more than one color, the effect spreads to all that card's colors.

Notable cards

• Ravnica Dual lands (henceforth termed shock lands) which would be the beginning of the Ravnica dual lands mega cycle: Overgrown Tomb, Sacred Foundry, Temple Garden and Watery Grave.
• Another cycle of dual lands from the block, the bounce lands, have seen a great deal of play in Pauper as one of the best cycles of common dual lands, but also form the backbone of the Amulet Titan deck in Modern where they can be combined to great effect with Amulet of Vigor.
  • Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion is used as a finisher in Amulet Titan decks, which can fetch the land with the eponymous Primeval Titan and use it to easily deal lethal damage.
• Dark Confidant, Bob Mahers's invitational card, became a powerful draw engine in Extended, Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. The flavor text is also considered the iconic black philosophy.
• Dredge as a whole, with the standouts being Life from the Loam, Golgari Grave-Troll, Stinkweed Imp, Golgari Thug became the core of Dredge-based decks, including Legacy and Vintage Ichorid.
  • Life from the Loam was a very powerful card drawing engine, particularly in combination with fetch lands and cycling lands. It was one of the only Dredge spells that was cast rather than abused for Dredge.
  • Golgari Grave-Troll has the dubious honor of being the only card that was banned twice in a sanctioned format. It was unbanned in Modern from January 2015 to January 2017, before being banned again.
• Lightning Helix remains a very powerful removal spell, making it hard for aggressive decks to race.
• Chord of Calling is a popular creature tutor used in Modern after the ban of Birthing Pod and remains useful.
• Flame Fusillade once had an interaction with Time Vault that was abused in Vintage before the undone errata restored Time Vault's functionality.
• Loxodon Hierarch was a former aggro-control staple providing a large creature for a decent price, offsetting life loss from aggressive decks, and with a good, though seldom used, ability.
• Watchwolf was once common in Zoo decks of many formats, now somewhat obsoleted by more efficient cards like Wild Nacatl and Tarmogoyf.
• Blazing Archon was once a premium target for Reanimator decks, now obsoleted by more impactful cards like Iona, Shield of Emeria and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.
• Helldozer had its flavor text, written by Mark Rosewater, as the top rated from the set.
• Remand has seen heavy play in Modern, most notably in Storm decks, where it functions both as a way to stop disruption without using up a card in hand and as a way to return Storm cards to hand to cast them again.