Ravnica Remastered is built around its ten guilds, but Wizards' own design team confirmed there are actually twelve defined archetypes in the set: the ten natural guilds, plus one hidden path for drafters who want to flex outside that framework.
That eleventh archetype is built around Gates, the land type shared by every guild's dedicated fixing land, and the handful of cards that specifically reward playing a lot of them.
Unlike a guild deck, this path isn't tied to any one mechanic or color pair; it's a five-color goodstuff plan that leans entirely on the set's unusually dense mana-fixing slot.
This guide covers what the Gates archetype actually needs to function, its key payoff cards, and how to recognize when a pod is pushing you toward it instead of a single guild.
Ravnica Remastered dedicates an entire booster slot to mana fixing, whether that's a Guildgate, a Signet, a shock land, or occasionally a Chromatic Lantern, specifically so a full ten-guild table has enough fixing to function.
That density has a side effect: with roughly two dozen pieces of fixing available at a typical table, a player willing to go five colors has a genuinely supportable path that wouldn't exist in a normal two-guild-focused set.
Gate Colossus is the archetype's clearest payoff, a large creature that gets bigger based on how many Gates you control, directly rewarding the exact cards this deck is already collecting.
Open the Gates searches your library for two Gate cards and puts them onto the battlefield tapped, functioning as both fixing and a small ramp effect in the same card.
Because every one of the ten Guildgates in the set enters tapped and produces two specific colors, a Gates deck can realistically support four or five colors just from the fixing slot alone, without needing many actual dual lands.
The tradeoff is tempo: a hand full of tapped lands is slow, so this archetype leans on cheap early plays or removal to survive the first few turns while its manabase comes online.
Rather than building around one guild's specific mechanic, a Gates deck prioritizes efficient removal, card draw, and any bomb rare regardless of color, picking the best card in the pack far more often than a guild-focused drafter would.
That flexibility is the whole appeal: a Gates drafter isn't punished for taking a strong off-color card, since the deck's fixing can usually support whatever shows up.
If your first several packs keep offering strong cards in colors that don't obviously pair together, or if Guildgates and Signets keep wheeling back unusually late, that's a signal the table isn't fighting you for fixing.
Pivoting into a Gates build mid-draft is more forgiving here than in most sets specifically because of how much fixing is guaranteed to be available regardless of what any one player takes.
Keep a five-color pool of Gates and splash cards organized in a set of premium card sleeves so nothing gets lost between rounds.
A five-color deck is rarely as fast or as focused as a well-supported two-color guild build, so Gates decks generally want to be the ones stabilizing and grinding rather than racing.
Passing up an on-color guild card for a marginally better off-color one is usually a mistake unless the fixing to support it is already secured.
A functional Gates build generally wants somewhere around eight to ten Gates and fixing pieces to reliably support four or five colors without stumbling on mana too often.
Falling short of that number usually means the deck is better off narrowing to three colors instead of forcing a full five-color build on insufficient fixing.
Outside of limited, the Gates theme has real support in Commander specifically, where cards that care about landfall or land types can turn a five-color Gates deck into a genuinely built-around strategy rather than just a draft fallback.
No, it's a separate, flexible eleventh path built around multicolor fixing rather than a single guild.
It's a large creature that grows based on how many Gates you control.
Generally yes, since tapped lands cost tempo, though the deck makes up for it with flexibility and card quality.
Roughly two dozen pieces of dedicated fixing across a standard eight-person pod.
The Gates archetype exists because Ravnica Remastered's fixing slot makes it possible, and a drafter willing to go wide on colors can turn that density into a real, playable deck.
Keep a full run of Guildgates and fixing pieces safe in a 9-pocket binder with elastic closure as your collection grows.
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