Designing Suvnica, Week 13: Gangster's Paradise

Theros previews are right around the corner. I'm hoping to wrap up this stage of Suvnica design right around the time that the RtR block starts fading into the background. With that in mind, this week we're rolling right along with another guild keyword, as well as another cycle challenge.

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste

For the current creative vision of the Radkar, take a look at their Guild Profile Page

I tried to stay away from an overly spikey mechanic for the Radkar to distinguish them a little more from Rakdos, but I wasn't able to come up with much that felt right for the guild. Opportunistic was initially just a slightly modified Frenzy, but I wanted something a little more original. I ended up going with a keyworded version of a mechanic I submitted for the WAC a couple weeks ago. This is a little on the complex side for NWO, and may not be printable depending on the complexity of the mechanics of the guilds it shares a set with. It may also encourage some not especially {B}{R} plays, but that's not the worst of things.

Electronic Sheep in Wolf's Clothing

For the bonus challenge this week, we'll be taking a final crack at another cycle. This one is going to be a Suvnican take on one of my favorite cycles in the original Rav block (and one I was very disappointed they didn't do again in RtR block) - the guild artifact cycle.

Some of them were super fun, and others were duds, but the cycle still stands out as one of the highlights of the block to me. Their purpose was to be playable in theory even in decks that didn't have either of the given guild's colors, but be a lot more useful if backed by guild-mana.

My first stab at it was this:

I like this design, but it doesn't really deviate from the design of the original Ravnica artifacts in any way, so I tried a different route instead:

Instead of relying on the artifacticity of the card to make it available in non-guild decks, I decided twobrid can do the same trick. This card gave me conniptions, since I more or less kept designing artifacts and calling it an enchantment. I finally got to here, which was wordy, but felt much more enchanty than artifacty.

The Challenge

1. Radkar keyword. 
2. Pick 2 guilds and design rares that fit into a cycle of cards analogous to the guild artifact cycle in Rav.
   • The card should at the very least be able to be played even if you're running neither of that guild's colors
   • But it should be better if you are
   • The cards should be rare
   • Artifacts have been done, twobrid is weird. Bonus points for creative solutions around mana costs on non-artifacts.
   • NO MORE THAN 2 CARDS for this part of the challenge.

Good luck everyone. I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with.

-zeff