This week I have something a little bit different – rather than doing a mosaic from Magic: the Gathering cards, I’ve done a mosaic from scenes of the Dune miniseries. This was an interesting experiment for me, and exposed a bug in my dynamic binning preconditioner (which was rather nefarious, and took a bit to spot), so that was actually rather helpful. I also want to do some duplicate detection, as I think it will improve the image significantly, but it is going to take a different technique than what I did for the magic cards, so we’ll see. At any rate, here’s the Dune miniseries title screen as a mosaic.
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Mosaic-a-Week: Boros Keyrune, Boros Signet
I like the Boros guild. I think part of it is my lawful side, part of it is the soldier bent that I liked from white of days passed, and part of it is just that they are fun (and a good draft choice). So, even though they are the last of the guilds that I’m doing for my tour of Ravnica, know that they are right up there with Izzet and Azorius as my top three. Here’s the last keyrune and signet mosaic!
Mosaic-a-Week: Gruul Keyrune, Gruul Signet
When I sit back and thinking about the Gruul guild, it makes me think about how I never really got into competitive Magic. Those to things may seem a bit disconnected, but when I think of Gruul, I think of “Red/Green Aggro”, and the various meta-game conversations I have overhead from my friends who still play. While it may not be the case that Gruul epitomizes this concept, it’s still the thing that jumps to mind, and why I’m rushing two new mosaics to you today: Gruul Keyrune and Signet.
Mosaic-a-Week: Simic Keyrune, Simic Signet
Simic is an interesting guild, as I tend to think of it like the role that blue used to occupy in classical Magic: big complicated creatures, usually with counters. For me, the Simic took the counters bit a little too far, but I do really like the blue/green synergies. Also, their Keyrunes an Signets look cool as mosaics!
Mosaic-a-Week: Dimir Keyrune, Dimir Signet
When I started getting back into Magic: the Gathering, it was in the midst of the Ravnica block. However, I still brought with me all of my old preconceptions about what the color pie meant. For me, Black meant Evil, which was all fine and dandy – I didn’t play it that much anyway. Then I figured out that the Dimir was really good at hand manipulation, and I was intrigued. I found myself really liking their flavor, especially as it related to Izzet’s draw stuff – it was really hard to resist drawing a bunch of cards, then forcing my opponent to discard. I think the Dimir flavor is my favorite flavor of black, so, today, I bring you the Dimir Keyrune and Signet as your mosaics!
Mosaic-a-Week: Orzhov Keyrune, Orzhov Signet
This week, It’s time for Gatecrash, and the new round of Keyrunes and Signets. When I was thinking about the Orzhov Guild, I ended up thinking about the guilds in Ravnica that are an alliance of traditionally opposing colors: Simic, Orzhov, Izzet, Golgari, and Boros. Of those, I always found the balance of life and death in the Orzhov especially interesting, and found it was done incredibly well in the original set. That being said, in reading some of the backgrounds of the guilds, I rather liked the Orzhov as a syndicate, and their “extort” ability seemed quite fitting. Today, however, you won’t have to extort me to get a new mosaic, you’ve got two: Orzhov Keyrune and Orzhov Signet.
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Mosaic-a-Week: Selesnya Keyrune, Selesnya Signet
Way back when I first started getting into Magic: The Gathering, the hot new expansion on the shelf was Fallen Empires. I still remember it because it came in packs of eight (rather than fifteen), and had these quirky little creatures called Thallids. The creature generation concept and the opportunities of saprolings in particular, blew my mind, and I had a few decks based around the idea. When Ravnica: City of Guilds was released, and there were new exciting things to do with saprolings, this was an immediate draw. So, today, I bring you the Selesnya Keyrune and Signet.
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Mosaic-a-Week: Golgari Keyrune, Golgari Signet
Bugs have never really bothered me, but, as the Golgari go, I’ve never really played them. I think that’s mostly because I’ve never really been a fan of black, and haven’t really played green since I started playing Magic with Jessa (I’ll let you figure out why). That being said, while I can’t really see myself ever playing Golgari, I can still appreciate their place in the cycle, so, today, I bring you Golgari Keyrune and Golgari Signet.
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Mosaic-a-Week: Rakdos Keyrune, Rakdos Signet
One of my favorite parts of Ravnica, was how it drafted. In particular, there were a few interesting “paths” through the set that allowed you to draft one guild out of each path, and end up with a nice three-color deck. One such path was Boros-Orzhov-Rakdos, which provided a very impressive array of powers. While not something I would draft, except in a pinch (I typically left those to Ian), that won’t prevent me from bringing the Rakdos Keyrune and Rakdos signet to you today as mosaics!
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Mosaic-a-Week: Izzet Keyrune, Izzet Signet
I didn’t use to be a big fan of red, mostly as I started as a big fan of blue. I think, moreso in the early days of Magic, there was this ingrained hatred of one’s opposing colors, epitomized more by red and blue than many of the other colors. In more recent times, I’ve really come to like red as the counterpoint to blue, that’s why the Izzet guild is my favorite of Ravnica’s guilds, and why Izzet Keyrune and Izzet Signet are the next pair of mosaics.