The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

From the legalistic Azorius Senate, the zealous Boros Legion and the scheming House Dimir to … our first bunch of weird little guys, the Golgari Swarm. Azorius, Boros and Dimir go about easily understood human goals in easily understood human ways. The Golgari, on the other hand, share a mentality from another phylum of life altogether, if not another kingdom. When they say “I hope you rot,” they mean that in the best possible way.

The Golgari rank and file comprises drow, fungus zombies, vegepygmies and kraul warriors. Kraul are a eusocial insectoid folk with an instinct for teamwork; their warriors have hard exoskeletons and wield spears. With high Strength and above-average Constitution and Dexterity, they have a slight bias toward toe-to-toe melee engagement but aren’t averse to the occasional hit-and-run maneuver. Some possess wings and act as “scouts and shock troops,” but a unit including scouts comprises only scouts; a unit of shock troops comprises only shock troops.

Kraul have 60 feet of darkvision and thus prefer to engage at night or underground, but there’s nothing stopping them from engaging in daylight beyond this preference and the fact that they have no particular skill at stealth. When they attack, it’s a direct, open assault. They do, however, have the Spider Climb trait, so if clinging to the ceiling confers any kind of advantage upon them, that’s what they’ll do. But it’s probably of greater concern that high walls and towers constructed to keep others out are no obstacle to them: They can walk right up the side.

The Boros Legion consists of zealous warriors devoted to “justice, not merely law enforcement” (emphasis mine), meaning that they’re not going to concern themselves with victimless crimes—and they’re also not going to let themselves be hemmed in by legal constraints when dealing with the real bad ’uns. They’re basically good, and they’re basically lawful … but if there’s a conflict between them, “good” takes precedence over “lawful” every time.

Thus, the Boros soldier, while their stats are identical to those of an Azorius soldier, functions slightly differently. They still carry shields and wield their swords one-handed. They still move in close ranks to take advantage of Formation Tactics. However, they don’t always attack to subdue rather than kill. If they’re merely helping to apprehend someone deemed to have broken the law by the Azorius Senate or the Selesnya Conclave, then sure, Boros will deliver them to the defendant’s box in one piece (in some cases eagerly, in others begrudgingly). But if they’re independently pursuing a foe they consider an incorrigible threat to justice and wholesomeness, one that in their eyes has already established its own guilt in plain sight of everybody—perhaps one affiliated with House Dimir, the Golgari Swarm or, especially, the Cult of Rakdos—they don’t hold back.

The Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica (I’ve been miswriting “Guildmaster” in the title as singular; it’s actually plural) is rich in monster and nonplayer character stat blocks. It’s also divided up by guild, making it unreasonable to go through them by creature type as I usually do these days. Instead, I’m going to look at them guild by guild and consider their tactics not just individually but also in combinations in which they might appear, at tier 1 (first missions and neighborhood-level conflicts), tier 2 (strife engulfing whole districts) and tier 3 (struggles for dominance over the entire known world). As a self-contained setting, Ravnica doesn’t lend itself naturally to the interplanar lunacy of tier 4 play.

Ravnica’s 10 guilds are the Azorius Senate (the formal government of Ravnica), the Boros Legion (zealous warriors devoted to “justice, not merely law enforcement”—emphasis mine), House Dimir (spies and shadowy information brokers), the Golgari Swarm (the decomposers in the world-city’s food chain), the Gruul Clans (a confederation of folks who aren’t on board with the whole “civilization” concept), the Izzet League (buncha mad technomancers), the Orzhov Syndicate (loan sharks in ecclesiastical clothing), the Cult of Rakdos (dionysian nutballs with a wide destructive streak), the Selesnya Conclave (environmentalists seeking “to bring nature and the city into balance,” so basically the Ravnica Park District) and the Simic Combine (another buncha mad technomancers, but taking biology instead of chem-phys).

I’ll start off with the Azorius Senate, which is both first alphabetically and the guild I’m most drawn to personally.