Gatecrash Legendaries

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

We hope all of our American readers had a great Thanksgiving long weekend and were able to get in some Magic: the Gathering games.  We did not get out to our regular Friday Night Magic Event at OMG! Games here in Barrie, Ontario on Friday but chose rather to take in a movie.  We went to the Uptown Theatre which is actually downtown Barrie and watched the weird but wonderful Cloud Atlas.  The Uptown Theatre is now licensed (for grown-up beverages) and all the old seats replaced by comfy La-Z-Boy recliners. 

In MTG related news, we are hard at work tweaking our standard strategies, and developing a new EDH / Commander build as well as getting some last minute additions from MTG Mint Card for a modern deck.  We'll yatter about these things latter but for today, we wanted to cover off the 5 legendary guild leaders expected in the next Return to Ravnica set, Gatecrash.  The guilds are Boros (red / white), Dimir (black / blue), Gruul (Red / Green) Orzhov (black / white) and Simic (blue / green).

This post is meant as more of a review of known flavour on these leaders and the unofficial Gatecrash spoiler of two of the leaders in which to extrapolate and speculate as to what the remaning three Legendary cards may deliver.  Let's go . . .

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Aurelia: the Belligerence behind the Boros. The current guild leader is Aurelia, a ferocious archangel who ascended through the Boros ranks. After the death of Razia, founder of the Boros, and the disgrace of Feather, the previous angel guildmaster, the warleader Aurelia challenged Feather’s ascendancy. Aurelia argued that a disgraced angel couldn’t command authority or respect, and many agreed. Aurelia quickly shamed into silence those who didn’t support her, and she soon took command of the guild. While Razia was more of a figurehead, aloof and untouchable, Aurelia is an active, forceful leader who is directly involved with her underlings. She has urged the Boros to adopt her impassioned ideals and to take action to enforce them.
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Lazav, the Dimir Mastermind. Lazav is a shapeshifting mage who serves as the nexus of telepathic impressions of the entire Dimir network. He (or she, or it) shapeshifts into a variety of guises as his needs and plans require; he may step out into the Ravnican streets as an elderly widow to eavesdrop at the bazaar, become a vedalken hussar to sidestep a checkpoint, or transform into a Tin Street merchant to deceive a passing noble. Some Dimir agents believe that Lazav plots against Niv-Mizzet to discern the dragon’s hidden endgame and twist it for his own purposes.
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Borborygmos, Alpha of the Clans. Though no Gruul clan leader has ever managed to dominate or unify all the clans, one is spoken of in reverential tones: Borborygmos. An unusually massive cyclops and the savage leader of the Burning-Tree Clan, Borborygmos “smashes his enemies into paste, then uses that paste to polish his boots,” as the saying goes. Borborygmos has defended his position as the Gruul’s mightiest clan leader for several decades now and has killed many upstarts. But though he’s still an extraordinary warrior, Borborygmos is beginning to show his age. The challenges to his leadership have become more frequent and his victories more narrow.
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Obzedat, the Ghost Council. The Orzhov guild is ruled by the Obzedat, a council of ghostly autocrats who have maintained their wealth and power even as they’ve shed their mortal forms. Members of the Obzedat have managed to cheat mortality, maintaining their consciousness (and their greed) beyond the threshold of death. They are paranoid and spiteful dictators, often going out of their way to thwart ambitious underlings, crush rumormongers, and spy on potential enemies. The Obzedat rarely speak directly with those outside the guild; instead they communicate through their official envoy, Teysa Karlov.
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Prime Speaker Zegana. The regal and reticent merfolk called Zegana is the current guildmaster of the Simic Combine. She is the Speaker for Zonot One, the first of the mysterious sinkholes to emerge on Ravnica, and she delivered the Fathom Edict that declared a new beginning for the Combine. Zegana is quick to point out, however, that she speaks at the discretion of the Speakers’ Chamber, a secretive body of all nine of the zonots’ speakers. She claims that the Chamber can revoke that status, at which time another Speaker would replace her as the guildmaster. Many outside the Simic believe this is false modesty, however, and that Zegana controls the Chamber—if it actually meets at all.
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