Life in Ravnica; or, The Basics of Non-Basic Basics

There comes a time when every mage must refresh his or her mana-bonds. To return to the places that are meaningful around them and draw energy from the land. For some mages, this is as simple as a meditation on a mountain peak, or a hermitage in the deep forest, or any number of suitably unspoilt pastoral venues. But for others, it is not so simple. What do you do when none of the land around you is "basic"?

There's been a lot of talk lately about a return to Ravnica. And why not? It landed squarely in the sweet spot of great design and gameplay tied to a very evocative creative premise. But that key creative conceit poses a striking problem: How do you have plains, islands, swamps, mountains, or forests when the entire plane is a city? The fact that Ravnica is one of the most beloved planes in Magic is very telling of how successful the creative team was solving this problem, hmm?


Personally, I love the way that the Ravnica lands all came out. The way that they are something completely different from any other set's basic lands and yet still are completely iconically and archetypically the various types of lands that they represent. And to be fair, this post is in no small way informed by this Jeremy Cranford article from back when Ravnica came out. The concept of finding ways to bring basic lands to the big city without compromising the setting is what is just perfect about the creative aspect of the Ravnica block.

Living in New York can sometimes feel like living in Ravnica. In a way, the creative world of Magic is like our world, only amplified. Where cities can sometimes seem to be your entire world, on Ravnica, it really, literally is. Everything is bigger, grander, and more expansive, but there is that nugget of understanding beneath it all. Lately, this feeling has been speaking to me, and I felt the yearning to "renew my mana-bonds" and re-energize myself in a sort of pseudo-magical, spiritual sense.

So I went to my favorite place in the city, and thought about Magic and worlds and cities and how they are all interwoven.

The Highline Park is an old elevated rail line, now converted to a walking park spanning some 15 blocks, with plans to expand further. Walking the park gives you a great sense of the changing landscapes of the city across a huge span of its history. And in its way, it gives a glimpse of how the artists of Ravnica weren't so far off in turning a city's landscapes into "basic land"-scapes.

We begin in the plains...

We take in the swaying grasses of the Highline's gardens, but what about the landscape of the city? In Ravnica block, plains were the expanses of cityscape, the vast fields of rooftops reflecting the golden sunlight. We don't have that kind of perspective from this viewpoint, but just over the edge of the park, we look out over similarly vast avenues. Expansive and flat, these are our plains of the city. They also represent white's ideals of civilization, development, and order (though, given New York drivers, that last one is arguable).

Islands are hard to come by, though if we're trying to get off on a technicality, we could invoke the island of Manhattan as one. But, sensing my search for water, nature obliges.

This....

...turns into this!

Islands in Ravnica are very much about flowing water - fountains and aqueducts. Turns out, not so easy to find around the Highline. Here in New York, apart from the occasional downpours, we are more limited in terms of scale. What we do have though, are piers...

...and bridges. Looking out on these, you can imagine rivers flowing beneath them or water rushing down them like sluices.

Bonus 'merika fact: waaaaay back, right in the center, barely visible in the distance is the Statue of Liberty

Or there is the one water feature of the Highline, a path with water flowing over it. If, as I mentioned before, Magic is our world but amplified, you can imagine a grander Ravnican instance of this, where water flows out of floodgates for a merfolk marketplace or simply as a vast fountain-like structure.

Swamps are difficult as well (though considering the rain, perhaps not) but in the original Ravnica, swamps were the undercity. Its sewers and gutters and catacombs, long forgotten. Unfortunately, there are no sewers or catacombs to explore around the Highline, but as they say, Fantasy takes over wehere Reality leaves off. The Highline passes under buildings, resulting in spaces that could inspire vast catacombs (complete with mood-setting lighting!)

And beneath the Highline, a completely different world. Letting your imagination run, it's easy to see how the artists of Ravnica could evnision a darker world of secrets just beneath the surface of the city.

From the murky depths of our "swamp," we look up to the towering peaks of mountains. It is not too much of a leap to look at city skylines and turn them into mountain ranges. And New York has some truly amazing skylines. And in Ravnica, when the whole world is a city, one can only imagine these skylines bigger, grander, and more impressive.

Ok, so I couldn't entirely resist taking an Empire State Building pic.

In Ravnica, mountains were great forges and furnaces, always bellowing smoke to keep the city functioning. But here in New York, these "mountains" of the city are more like vast ranges, shaping the horizon, stacking layer upon layer of scenery as your eyes seek farther into the distance.

Which brings us to our final stop on this basic land tour - forests. Ravnican forests are all about the meshing of nature and architecture. They are about how nature takes something made by man and makes it her own. If we can go back to the start of everything again...

This is what the Highline is all about. Nature in the city. Bringing the serenity of the forest to what once was a roaring train track. This is how forests, and really, all lands, bring themselves to life in the city. They form from structural archetypes as a framework and grow around them into something more.

So what was the point of all of this eponymous "Journey to Nowhere"? It's about worldbuilding, and about taking notice of the world you live it, and about understanding that the literal shape of things is not necessarily the same thing as the shape it can take on in context. Basic lands are often overlooked, but a lot of work goes into them before a set reaches print. By exploring this setting, we can gain an understanding of what the basic lands of Ravnica are trying to say. In a sense, we are immersing ourselves in Ravnica from the inside to try to see the constraints and boundaries that the artists of Ravnica had to work in.

So I hope that this has given some interesting insights into the world of Ravnica at an extremely coarse level. The real world contains the seeds of a fantasy world, and you just have to go looking for them. And hopefully, if we do end up going back to Ravnica, you'll understand the value of looking at things in perspective.


P.S. If you like these photos, feel free to check out the full set here.