Ravnica Allegiance (RNA): Set Guide & Card Overview

Five guilds. One city. And a tension that's been building since Guilds of Ravnica dropped four months earlier. Ravnica Allegiance arrived on January 25, 2019 as Magic's eightieth expansion, and it brought the other half of Ravnica's iconic ten guilds to the table - Azorius, Rakdos, Gruul, Simic, and Orzhov each getting their moment in the spotlight.

What is Ravnica Allegiance?

Ravnica Allegiance (set code: RNA) is a 273-card expansion released on January 25, 2019. Officially it isn't part of a block - Wizards moved away from the block structure starting in 2018 - but it sits in the middle of an unofficial trilogy set on the plane of Ravnica, alongside Guilds of Ravnica (GRN, 2018) and War of the Spark (WAR, 2019).

Where Guilds of Ravnica spotlighted Dimir, Golgari, Izzet, Boros, and Selesnya, RNA hands the stage to the five remaining guilds. Together the two sets cover all ten of Ravnica's two-colour factions - a design ambition that had been gestating since the original Ravnica: City of Guilds block back in 2005.

Themes and mechanics

Each guild in RNA comes with its own mechanical identity, and the set introduced several new keywords alongside a returning favourite.

New mechanics

Spectacle is Rakdos's trick: spells with spectacle have an alternative cost you can pay if an opponent lost life this turn. It rewards aggression - deal even one point of damage and suddenly your cards get cheaper. It creates this lovely push-and-pull where the Rakdos player wants to poke through even token amounts of damage just to unlock better rates.

Adapt is how Simic grows its creatures. If a creature has no +1/+1 counters on it, you can pay the adapt cost to put a set number of counters on it. It only works once unless you find ways to remove the counters, so it rewards building around counter manipulation rather than just repeatedly pressing a button.

Afterlife is Orzhov's haunting keyword. When a creature with afterlife dies, it leaves behind that many 1/1 white and black Spirit tokens with flying. It's a mechanic that makes every creature trade feel slightly uncomfortable for your opponent - you're never quite getting a clean exchange.

Riot gives Gruul creatures a choice when they enter the battlefield: a +1/+1 counter or haste. It's a simple binary, but the decision is meaningful. Do you want this threat now, or do you want it to be a permanent threat? In practice, haste is often the right call against creature-light opponents, and the counter is right when you're in a longer game.

Addendum is Azorius's tempo mechanic. Spells with addendum give you a bonus effect if you cast them during your main phase. It's an elegant design that rewards Azorius for playing out of its natural instinct - holding up mana for interaction - and asks you to make a real decision each turn.

Returning mechanics

Jump-start from Guilds of Ravnica makes a brief appearance, but RNA's mechanical identity is largely defined by the five guild keywords above.

Limited and Draft

RNA Draft is generally regarded as one of the more guild-loyal Draft formats in recent memory. The mechanics reward you for committing to a single guild rather than splashing freely, since many of the payoffs only work within the two-colour identity.

Each of the five guilds plays a distinct role in Draft:

• Azorius ({W}{U}) is a tempo and control archetype, using addendum to stay ahead on cards and mana while building toward a skies-based beatdown plan.
• Rakdos ({B}{R}) is the aggro guild, using spectacle to push through early damage and then deploy cheaper threats as the game goes on.
• Gruul ({R}{G}) is a stompy midrange deck built around riot creatures and punishing opponents who stumble on blockers.
• Simic ({U}{G}) tends toward a midrange-to-ramp strategy, growing creatures with adapt and going over the top of other guilds in the late game.
• Orzhov ({W}{B}) is an attrition deck that generates value through afterlife, trading creatures and building an air force of Spirit tokens over time.

The format tends to be medium-speed - faster than a typical control format, but not as brutally aggressive as some all-in-red formats. Having a plan for evasion, specifically flying, matters a lot across most archetypes.

Lore and setting

Ravnica Allegiance is set on Ravnica, Magic's city-plane - an entire world covered by a single sprawling metropolis, governed (and frequently destabilised) by ten powerful guilds.

The story picks up during a period of escalating tension. Nicol Bolas, the ancient dragon Planeswalker and primary villain of the era, is maneuvering pieces into place ahead of the climax that arrives in War of the Spark. The five guilds featured in RNA - Azorius, Rakdos, Gruul, Simic, and Orzhov - are each grappling with internal and external pressures as Bolas's plan unfolds around them.

Ravnica as a setting is one of Magic's most beloved planes precisely because the guild structure gives players a strong identity hook. Picking your guild feels like picking a team, and RNA leans into that feeling hard, with flavour text and card design that give each faction a distinct personality.

Preconstructed products

RNA released with a full suite of preconstructed products.

Planeswalker decks

Two Planeswalker decks accompanied the set, each featuring an exclusive Planeswalker card not found in regular booster packs:

| Deck Name | Colors | Planeswalker | |---|---|---| | Dovin | {W}{U} | Dovin, Architect of Law | | Domri | {R}{G} | Domri, City Smasher |

The decks contain exclusive cards with collector numbers above 259, and the basic lands are numbered 260-264.

Guild Kits

Five Guild Kits were released alongside RNA, one for each of the set's featured guilds:

| Guild Kit | Colors | |---|---| | Azorius | {W}{U} | | Rakdos | {B}{R} | | Gruul | {R}{G} | | Simic | {U}{G} | | Orzhov | {W}{B} |

These preconstructed decks draw on cards from across Ravnica's history, not just RNA, making them a nice slice of each guild's identity over the years.

Set legacy

Ravnica Allegiance holds a solid place in players' memories as the satisfying second act of the Ravnica trilogy. It completed the guild circuit that GRN started and gave the five remaining factions their due - something fans who'd been waiting since Return to Ravnica (2012) appreciated.

As a Draft format, RNA is remembered fondly for its clarity of identity: you knew what each guild was trying to do, and the games played out distinctly depending on which factions sat across from each other. That kind of legibility is genuinely hard to design and easy to underappreciate.

The set also set the stage for War of the Spark, which released just four months later and delivered one of the most event-dense story moments in Magic's history. RNA is, in that sense, the deep breath before the plunge - and it's worth revisiting for the world-building and mechanical craftsmanship that made that payoff land.