When do return to ravnica previews start

Both events will be available for the duration of the Return to Ravnica Prerelease. Please note, the Sealed Deck Queue will be a guild experience and requires players to purchase a Guild Mark to participate. Guild Marks are untradeable event entry objects that will be available in the Magic Online Store on Thursday, October 11, at AM until Monday, October 15, at AM and will determine what guild booster pack and prerelease promo card each player will get during deck building.

SIZE: 16 Players. Play in all four rounds, win or lose! Each match win awards 3 points and each match loss awards 0 points. SIZE: 8 Players. Play all three rounds, win or lose! All appropriate Daily Events, Scheduled Events, and Queues will have Return to Ravnica added to their prize structures after the scheduled maintenance on Wednesday, October SIZE: 8 players.

Prizes for Swiss pairing events are based on total Match Points at the end of the tournament. SIZE: 16 players. Magic Online will provide 3 Return to Ravnica booster packs for the Top 8 booster draft. SIZE: 64 Players. The Top 8 will consist of drafting and deck building time plus three rounds, single elimination. SIZE: Minimum 65 players, maximum players.

In the original Ravnica block, the mechanic was haunt—basically a weird sort of death trigger allowing you to reuse the ability on your creature once another creature died—while in Return to Ravnica , it was the drainy extort.

There's also a spirit sub-theme that runs through both sets and a propensity for self-sacrifice aristocrats-style synergies. What needs to go right for Elenda to become a chase card this winter? Most likely the development of some sort of Orzhov-based three- or four-color aristocrats deck. As a fair card, Elenda, the Dusk Rose is only passable.

However, in a dedicated self-sacrifice-style deck, Elenda, the Dusk Rose is one of the best combo pieces in Standard, since it essentially doubles up your sacrifice fodder. We've already have some pieces in the Standard format to support such a deck, like Hunted Witness , Martyr of Dusk , and perhaps even Pitiless Plunderer —the main thing we are missing is a good sacrifice outlet.

Thankfully, if history is to be our guide, Ravnica Allegiance should have us covered. In Return to Ravnica , Cartel Aristocrat was a key piece of the Pro Tour-winning Aristocrats build, while Undercity Informer and even Maw of the Obzedat were also fine sacrifice outlets in their own right.

All this is to say that finding a good sacrifice outlet from Orzhov in Ravnica Allegiance this winter seems like a pretty good bet. As such, while it's possible that Ravnica Allegiance will break the mold and the self-sacrifice aristocrat deck will never develop, odds seem in favor of it happening. If it does, there's a good chance that Elenda, the Dusk Rose will go from completely unplayed to the centerpiece of a competitive combo deck.

If that happens, the sky is the limit in terms of her potential price tag. Gruesome Menagerie , much like Elenda, the Dusk Rose , is another card that could benefit from Orzhov's love of sacrificing things for value. In the past, cards like Rally the Ancestors and Return to the Ranks have fueled self-sacrifice aristocrats decks, and unless we get something better in Ravnica Allegiance , Gruesome Menagerie might be the next closest thing in the format.

While getting back six mana worth of creatures for five mana is a good deal on its own, in a sacrifice deck, it's important to point out that Gruesome Menagerie would actually be returning five or six creatures worth of sacrifice fodder, assuming the creatures we're returning to the battlefield are cards like Hunted Witness , Martyr of Dusk , and Doomed Dissenter. At bulk rare prices, it's hard to go wrong with the reanimation spell.

Worst case, it will still be bulk six months or a year from now; best case, it breaks out, becomes a four-of in a tier Standard deck, and ends up being worth a few dollars. Finally, we have Mausoleum Secrets , which could be the card that holds together a death-heavy Orzhov deck. The challenge of building around Mausoleum Secrets is that you not only need to have a deck that can fill your graveyard with creatures to power it up but also a black card worth tutoring for.

Assuming Orzhov in Ravnica Allegiance is like Orzhov in the past, filling our graveyard shouldn't be a problem, as we'll be able to sacrifice our own creatures for value, and then many of the key combo pieces we've been talking about— Elenda, the Dusk Rose , Gruesome Menagerie , and even other options like Open the Grave and Midnight Reaper —happen to be black.

Mausoleum Secrets allows us to trim back on expensive but powerful combo pieces but still have access to them regularly for just two mana. When you combine this with some fringe Modern potential, it's hard to go wrong for just a dollar. Rakdos is perhaps the single hardest guild to figure out. The theme of the guild has traditional been power but with a drawback, with hellbent doing some crazy things in original Ravnica but only if you were empty-handed and unleash making your creatures bigger in Return to Ravnica but at the cost of making them unable to block.

I'd be surprised if either mechanic returned—hellbent isn't all that popular, and unleash seems to have limited design space—so it's really hard to even guess what mechanic will support Rakdos this winter. Angrath, the Flame-Chained is mostly on the list because it's the most exciting red-black card we have in our current Standard format, but there is some sneaky upside. One of the worries about Ravnica Allegiance Standard is just how powerful control decks will be once they get support from Azorius and Orzhov.

Teferi, Hero of Dominaria decks are already good, and they are essentially playing with one hand tied behind their back, since the guilds traditionally best at supporting UW Control haven't been featured yet in our third trip to Ravnica. Before rotation, it was sneaking into sideboards as part of RB Aggro's "go big" sideboard plan against control and midrange, and in the worst case, it could fill that role again, counteracting the drawing of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria by making the opponent discard a card each turn.

All in all, Angrath, the Flame-Chained feels like low-hanging fruit—as one of the only Rakdos cards currently in Standard, it seems likely that people will pick up copies once they start seeing sweet Rakdos cards during Ravnica Allegiance spoiler season, potentially driving up the price.

Worst case, it's hard to see the planeswalker dropping much over the next few months, so you may pay a bit in opportunity cost and sell or trade your copies for the same price that they are today. Azorius is pretty simple: it's the control guild. Considering that UWx decks are already doing pretty well even without support from our return to Ravnica, there might be less potential here than there is with the other guilds, which are more or less unplayable at the moment as they wait for more support this winter.

Return to Ravnica was sold in card boosters , 6-card boosters, five intro packs , two event decks and a fat pack. As a first for an expert-level set, it also featured a Booster Battle Pack. An early preview picture of the set showed Niv-Mizzet , the leader of the Izzet League , adjacent to planeswalker Jace Beleren.

In addition to interactive online activities and promotional cards, after widespread interest expressed on the part of the people on Twitter, Wizards of the Coast paired up with licensing partner Araca to produce guild t-shirts [27] and baseball caps. For the first time, there were five promotional prerelease cards , with the card received dependent on the guild chosen.

Another novel feature of the Return to Ravnica prerelease was the fact that the card could be played in decks at the prerelease itself, unlike previous promotional prerelease cards, [20] were:. These cards were also available in the intro packs as foils, albeit without the alternate art and prerelease date.

Other alternate-art promotional cards were: [30]. The sixteenth card in the boosters is a token creature card. The Return to Ravnica tokens, in the order in which they are listed, are: [32]. Return to Ravnica revisits five of the ten Ravnica block bicolored guilds , each of which with its own keyword or ability word that is similar but not identical to the original one.

No novel creature types were introduced in this expansion. Guild cycles in Return to Ravnica each comprise of five members, one for each guild featured in the expansion. Along with many of the Gatecrash guild cycles , many of the Return to Ravnica guild cycles form Return to Ravnica block mega cycles. Return to Ravnica has one mirrored pair and one matched pair. Although Rakdos's Return and Sphinx's Revelation are an apparent mirrored pair, with their similar, but opposite, effects and similar, but non-identical, casting costs, Mark Rosewater has stated they are not in fact a mirrored pair, neither intentionally nor unintentionally, on multiple occasions.

The following cards have been reprinted from previous sets and included in Return to Ravnica :. Return to Ravnica has five bicolored guild-centric intro packs.

Return to Ravnica has two bicolored event decks. A Return to Ravnica booster pack depicting Korozda Guildmage. MTG Wiki Explore. Main Page All Pages. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Return to Ravnica. Edit this Page. Edit source History Talk Event decks. Intro packs. For other uses, see Ravnica disambiguation.

Main article: Magic Story. For cycles that are part of the guild mega cycles, see Return to Ravnica block Mega cycles. Wizards of the Coast. July 16, MTG Salvation. Non-English Reprint sets.