Magic: The Gathering
Magical Thinking: Dissension
Welcome back to Magical Thinking: a look at the art and cards of Magic: the Gathering, set by set, from the beginning. All through the eyes of a casual fan. This week we conclude our look at the Ravnica block with the final expansion of that set: May 2006’s Dissension.
Things are pretty bad in Ravnica right now. The Nephilim are rampaging, the guilds are at war, and even in death police officer Agrus Kos has to deal with this mess, as his spirit gets press ganged into finding out who is behind the chaos tearing Ravnica apart, and putting a stop to it once and for all.
This expansion introduces us to the final three guilds of Ravnica: The Azorius Senate is the White and Blue guild, a huge political body dedicated to keeping the status quo by burying any attempt at change under masses of red tape and filibusters. If Mitch McConnell played Magic, he’d probably be Azorius.
The Cult of Rakdos is the Black/Red faction, and are a demonic cult of demons, devils, undead and other nastiness who serve as Ravnica’s entertainers. So if Violent Jay from the Insane Clown Posse played Magic, he’d probably be Rakdos.
Finally we have the Simic Combine, the Blue/Green faction. Similar to the Izzet League, the Simic Combine are interested in science. However their focus is more in biology and creating weird mutant hybrids and giant monsters. Imagine if the High Evolutionary from Marvel comics played Magic: the Gathering.
So without further ado, onto the cards!
So I guess Jacob Marley was from Remulak.
Remulak? The Coneheads? The old SNL sketch? Ah you damn kids and your music.
What’s a Carom?
Also, this card would be a lot more impressive if it deflected more than 1 point of damage at a time.
Seriously though, what’s a Carom? *Checks* Oh, it’s a billiard term. Okay, I guess that kinda makes sense?
This is more of what Carom should have been, since it protects you from all the damage, not just one point of damage. I hate White effects that only work on one point of damage. Have those ever been useful ever? Have they ever seen play? I’m legitimately curious.
And here we have an example of Forecast, the Azorius keyword for this set. Forecast basically gives your opponents a little preview of what’s coming for them by showing them a card from your hand, then activating a special ability. The only downside being you can only do it during your turn (The Azorius like to keep things neat and tidy don’t they?).
Forecast was a terrible ability, scoring an 8 on the Storm Scale, so don’t expect to ever see it come back. Also it was based on the Infernal Spawn of Evil from the first Unglued set, so take away from that what you may.
See? The political jokes write themselves. Also, I take it back; they’re not Coneheads. It almost looks like they’re Elcor from Mass Effect.
And onto Blue with our first Simic card and the Simic keyword Graft. See, Simic are all about sharing their body parts and evolving and stuff, so when someone else shows up they just graft part of themselves onto them. In this case though the Cytoplast manipulator is shooting their mind control goo onto everything and then mind controlling anyone they get their goo on (Which sounds a lot dirtier than the writers probably meant it to be, but hey, I call em like I see em).
Graft was unpopular with players, and had some problems which limited its use, so it’s an 8 on the storm scale, unlikely to come back. Luckily Simic has better mechanics coming in the future.
Wow that’s horrible. Imagine being the guy on guard duty you have those creepy things floating around you. Forget being able to pee. I also bet they let your boss monitor you and get you in trouble for slacking off and sitting down. It’s not just me, right? The Azorius are the worst.
Well no, the Orzhov are the worst but the Azorius aren’t much better.
The fun thing about Ravnica is all the different ways they come up with to implement the multicolor theme. Like here we have a card that works like an instant with a body attached to it, but unless you spend Green mana on it you don’t get the body. So it’s best used in a Blue/Green deck, but it’s not completely useless if you don’t have any green mana.
Hey, another Vedalken. And this one looking much more like the ones from Mirrodin, what with the four arms. I wonder if that means the Mirrodin Vedalken are descended from Simic Vedalken? Well no, if they were they would have Green affinity….Hmmmm.
I really like this card. You can either use it to draw a card, or to make an opponent discard a card, based on if you know what’s in their hand. It also just occurs to me this is a hard counter to forecast isn’t it. Probably why Rakdos is one of my favorite factions.
Oof, now that’s a winning smile right there.
And here we have the Rakdos keyword: Hellbent. It does extra stuff when you have no cards in hand. This keyword is perfect for me because I’m super impulsive and always playing cards so I usually end up playing out my hand pretty quickly and get reduced to top decking, and now I have a mechanic that rewards it. Hellbent is only a five on the Storm Scale, so it’s better than the other keywords introduced in this set (or at least more balanced), but it seems unlikely we will see Hellbent ever again.
I was going to make a Robbie Williams joke, but maybe I should be making a Tool joke instead.
…Robbie Williams? From that one video where he rips his skin off? Nobody gets me.
Ah, Nihilistic Glee. Pretty much the default mode of millennials everywhere. If I ever made a custom version of this card, I’d use this as the art.
Now that is some nihilistic glee right there.
We have slaughterhouse bouncers in the real world too. They’re called health inspectors. Of course, I think this guy is less concerned with tainted meat and more concerned with properly tenderizing the meat beforehand. And by meat I mean people.
I love how it comes out in a big smile. Maybe I’m biased but I love the Rakdos so much. Also, this is a great finisher because if it’s your last card there’s Jack all your opponent can do to stop it; no counters, no damage prevention, Carom won’t save you from this bad boy. We’ll carve a burning smile right across this nation (Doctor Steel reference for the win!).
This card seems really familiar to me. Wasn’t there a card similar to this in Kamigawa block? Or am I misremembering? Ah well.
They say you should dress for the job you want and not the job you have. This goblin really takes that to heart, because he dressed for the job he wants, and that job is to murder the world. If nothing else you have to admire that determination.
Hey, a devil! We haven’t seen devils as a creature in a long time. Way back in Arabian Nights (A card which was removed, and rightfully so, for being racist). This also marks a transition for devils to make them a red aligned creature and making them smaller, gremlin like mischief makers, as opposed to the bigger, more fearsome and Black-aligned demons.
I wonder where Stormscale Anarch lies on the Storm Scale. But to contemplate such things would be to invite madness.
That is a weird looking lizard. Also, I do love the addition of the goblins to help give it some scale.
Hey look, another card that punishes the use of Forecast. No wonder Forecast wasn’t well received as a mechanic, with cards like this running up against it.
Loaming Shaman. I’ve encountered this card before from when he was in Standard during Core 2020. The bane of mill decks everywhere.
Okay, this one is worth it for the flavor text. You gotta love Borb’s enthusiasm. I think he’s my favorite guild leader now. He’s definitely better than his successor, that little turd Domri (But more on him later).
As long as you have one of these out you will always have at least one chump blocker to keep you safe, since every time it’s damaged it makes another one (And now I want to make a DJ Khaled themed deck: “Another one….Another one….Another one).
Yes, after years we are finally safe from the tyranny of landwalker cards. I just checked and they were making landwalk cards up until 2015 when the mechanic was declared obsolete. I can’t believe it was that recent.
So whose gonna play the Rakdos Anthem? Insane Clown Posse? Lordi? GWAR? Party Cannon? I may have to make a Spotify list for this (Although, to be fair one, probably already exists).
I think this card embodies what Simic would become later on: creatures with a ton of different creature types to signify how the Simic like to play mix-and-match with genetics.
And here we have the leader of the Azorius Senate and, in a twist that should surprise no one, he’s one of the major villains of the block, wanting to take over Ravnica and turn it into a police state under his control. Fortunately, his plan fails and he ends up getting his soul eaten by a ghost vampire (It makes sense in context) and nothing of value was lost.
This guy is just plain fun. Not only does he help you reach hellbent, but you can potentially nuke your opponents entire hand by running straight into them.
Here’s a shocking twist: When this frog kisses you it turns you into a frog. We need more frogs in Magic. There, I said it and I’ll say it again if I have to.
Thank you.
And it’s not just a frog, it’s a frog with a built-in laser cannon. That’s a game changer right there. If I were gonna rank the guilds this expansion, it’s Rakdos at the top, with Simic second and Azorious third.
I was gonna say that four mana seems a little pricey for a single 1/1 flyer. But then it occurred to me that you don’t actually expend anything making a bird token aside from mana, so you can just keep making birds every turn and your opponent has to expend resources dealing with them or risk being overwhelmed, so I guess it’s a fair cost after all.
And here’s the big man himself, Rakdos, the guy the cult of Rakdos worships. He’s pretty much the Balrog, isn’t he? Like if after fighting Gandalf the Balrog went and started his own record company, but he’s still a Balrog, so you got this fiery belching monster signing bands and also eating people…. probably like real record executives now that I think of it.
Living in Simic neighborhoods must be wild. I mean, you can be walking along and then you see a giant flying manta ray dog just float by. I’d love to go to a Simic pet show.
Wait, no, scratch that. I wouldn’t go near a Simic pet show for fear of being eaten. I’d watch it on TV though.
I CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BAAAAAAAALLLLL!
Sorry, I had to do it. But you know Miley Cyrus would be in the Cult of Rakdos too. They do run the entertainment industry after all.
….The guild of Mitch McConnell. I don’t I need to say anything else.
Guess what else is back! The split cards. There are cards like this for each guild. They’re always fun.
I’m including this because I was spelling Azorius wrong the entire time (And I almost just did it again) and so this card made me go back and check and make sure I spelled them all right. So thanks Azorius Senate, I hope you collectively step on a Lego brick in the middle of the night.
Evolution vats. When your Cytoplast Manipulator needs to load up on more goo to keep mind controlling people.
I think this is how they make those multicolored Mountain Dew flavors that all the young people like to drink.
Maybe it’s me, but I really love golems that are just collections of innocuous objects formed into a humanoid body. So I am 100% behind giant humanoid-shaped pile of scrolls.
And I can’t think of a better card for us to end on: A land card which can only be tapped for mana for multicolored spells. I mean, is that not the most Ravnica thing ever? Because that’s what Ravnica is all about at the end of the day, all the colors coming together to form something better than colors could be on their own. It’s really no wonder Ravnica was so popular, and why Wizards of the Coast keep coming back to the plane.
But, alas, our time on Ravnica has come to a close. And before we move on to the future of Magic, we’ve got to go back to the past. Back to a dark time in Magic’s history, when the sun did not shine, and the cold winds blew through the lands. Yes friends, pack your parka and burn your unopened Homelands boosters for warmth. It’s time to go back to the Ice Age for Coldsnap. But until then, stay warm, and also Stay Magical.
