Magic: The Gathering
Magical Thinking: Dragon’s Maze
Welcome back to Magical Thinking, a look at the cards and art of Magic: the Gathering, set by set, from the beginning. All through the eyes of a casual fan. This week, we conclude the Return to Ravnica block by looking at the final set of that block, May 2013’s Dragon’s Maze.
You know those leylines and stuff running through Ravnica? Well it turns out they are the map to the Implicit Maze, a huge labyrinth which appeared in the wake of the destruction of the Guildpact. Now, all the guilds have selected a champion to go into the maze and reach the center first. The prize? To become the Living Guildpact. Who will finish the Implicit Maze first? And what will become of Ravnica in the fallout? Let’s find out.
Okay, this looks like it’s gonna be a dungeon crawl themed set, kind of like Zendikar was. I am really down for that because I like the whole dungeon crawl aesthetic. It also seems like this set will have a multicolor love theme, because guilds.
I don’t blame anyone for looking at the guilds and being like “you know what, I think I’m better off by myself.” (Of course in real life you should always support Unions. They protect your job).
In case you were wondering, yes, House Dimir is still on their bullshit. Also, this set combines all the keywords from the last two sets.
Implicit Maze random encounter 2: Flying water snake. This is fun. I’m gonna keep it up. Let’s make a dungeon!
Oops. We just hit random encounter 3, the ever popular goo trap. You never want to see the goo trap. You can never scrape it all off. I may need to take notes on this set for my DnD games.
Zombie bookkeepers: more effective than you might think. Just make sure to check the receipts to make sure they aren’t embezzling funds to feed their brain habit.
Random encounter 4:…uh…that. Let’s move on, and hope it doesn’t see us OHGODNO.
When you’re a Barbarian in a dungeon, every problem is just a strength check away from being solved.
One thing that I like about Magic are the kind of enchantments that just radically change what kind of game you’re playing. And this is one of those. Because it makes every spell cast into “cast another random spell from your deck” instead.
Things to bring on your dungeon run: Magic weapons.
And the party healer. Also an essential for any dungeon crawl. Never piss off your white mage, people.
That’s not even a dungeon monster. That’s just something the Simic had laying around. It’s a cool creature, though.
You may notice I blasted through the colors pretty quickly. That’s because the vast majority of the cards in this set are multicolored.
In Ravnica, the early worm sometimes gets you.
Blast of Genius: When you want to blow something up, in a very intelligent manner.
Hey, before you laugh, look up the Great Emu War. You don’t mess with giant birds.
Yeah, one time they had GWAR perform live.
Here we have our first actual contestant in the Implicit Maze. And it occurs to me this is probably less like a DnD dungeon and more like The Running Man. Or maybe extreme physical challenges.
And here is runner number two, from the Cult of Rakdos. She’s a nice contrast from the sweet and wholesome elf lady before. Also, you may recognize her as the lady stuck in the goo trap earlier. To be fair, as a Rakdos cultist, she’s probably been covered in worse.
MTG Goblins: Just get out of the way and pray.
And here we have the Azorius runner, Lavinia. She is breaking records for arrests. Also, she becomes Jace’s second in command when he becomes the new Guildpact, so she is probably one of the few Azorius characters I don’t hate on principle.
Melek was supposed to be the Izzet runner, but he got replaced by Ral Zerek at the last second. Because apparently Ral just straight up killed Melek and took his place. That’s pretty harsh. What even the Hell?
Of course the Dimir runner has to be the biggest damn edgelord they could find. Seriously dude, Edward Cullen is telling you to dial it back.
One of the benefits of being friends with the ghost bank, you can always take out a loan…OF THE DEAD. MWAHAHAHAHA.
I actually forgot Ral was a planeswalker. Why didn’t the Izzet go with him as their main choice? Seems like a no-brainer to me. Still, not cool killing Melek.
And here is our Gruul clan rep. Two heads and not a brain between them. If I didn’t already know how this ended I’d be rooting for them.
Here is the Boros runner. He’s big, he’s bad, and he works best with an army (which seems counter intuitive since this is a solo run, but whatever).
Teysa Markov, the Orzhov runner. I mainly know her from her card in War of the Spark, so more on her later, but short version is I like her.
Representing the Golgari Swarm is Varolz, a troll who gives all your creatures scavenge and then lets you sacrifice them to keep him alive (which also gives you more to scavenge). He’s basically the ultimate triple threat (What’s his third threat? Never you mind).
And last but not least we have Vorel, the Simic’s runner. Vorel is interesting because, as his flavor text implies, he used to be in the Gruul clans, but they left him for dead and so he was made into a half-merfolk. He seems to like it.
Yeah, they learned how to create giant caterpillars.
I think the Dimir might be idiots.
Oh hey. double cards. Haven’t seen these in a while. And we also have the new mechanic of this set: Fuse lets you cast these spells together instead of just picking one half of them to play. So if you are running a Bant deck, you can unload both of these at once, get four birds and draw four cards. That’s a good deal.
These are always worth it just for the top notch wordplay in the titles.
And for the artifacts, we got these Cluestones, which make sense. It’s a dungeon after all. We need puzzles. Actually maybe this is more like a scavenger hunt? Maybe I should start reading the attached fiction of these stories. Anyway, the principle behind the cluestones is that they are mana rocks, and you can sacrifice them to draw a card.
Here we come to the end of the set, which is also the end of the maze. And the flavor is spot on: If you get through all ten of the guild gates, it means you finished the maze and got the prize. What slays me is this isn’t even a legendary land. You can have four out and use them to keep grabbing gates en masse to win. It’s pretty neat.
With the end of the maze so ends our time on Ravnica. It’s time to move on to greener pastures. Next time it’s a new block and a new plane. Tune up your lyre, stock up on your ambrosia, and don’t accept any giant wooden horses as gifts. Next week we head off to Theros. But until then, Stay Magical.
