These creatures arent used in the decks of players when playing Ravnica: Clue Edition, but are pieces of information that players hold, with the culprit of the murder hiding in the case file envelope
Paper How many unique card names are there in paper
I think this is exactly what WotC set out to do, and they succeeded
Gnarled Sage is almost definitely the weaker card, since extra toughness sometimes is generally worse than reach always (on a 4/4, anyway)
While the fully upgraded list probably isn't ultra-competitive, it should be pretty decent, based mostly on the power of Kadena, Slinking Sorcerer as a commander and a play style that lets you take advantage of powerful (and cheap) instants like Counterspell by leaving up mana each turn
Where as black will generally change other resources for cards, red has a very different approach