Philippe Saner doubles down at Grand Prix Petrasia!

Written by Platypeople

Revolution Balance Changes: April 2025

Written by PTM

The final patch notes before World Championship IV kicks off in April—we’re coming off of the back of Grand Prix Petrasia, in which BGx decks continued their dominant performances.

This is a shorter changelog, with some targeted amendments to cards which have been overperforming.

Balance Changes

• Cryptolabe

• Chronicle of Awakening

• Sifting Through Soot

• Skotha, Titan of Eternal Dark (& Phlage, Titan of Burning Wind)

• The Aqua Crew

• Welding Rig

Black-Green Ramp

• Cryptolabe

• Chronicle of Awakening

• Skotha, Titan of Eternal Dark

Black-green ramp is, at the time of writing this, the consensus best deck in the format. It’s built to accrue mana, and then just throw haymakers at its opponents until they die (those haymakers being Skotha, Chronicle of Awakening, and Chronicle of Extinction—with honourable mention Vorpal Titan).

The format is currently low on graveyard interaction, which has let this deck thrive. After dominating two Grands Prix in a row, the time has come for Skotha to get a bit of a hit.

Cryptolabe

Cryptolabe as a mana rock has a massive impact on the game—opening your hand up to be ramped out, on top of the top card of your deck. This is very powerful, but a good chunk of its power lives in its ability to power out flashback and surface spells.

To reduce the card’s up-front value, Cryptolabe no longer ramps your entire hand, and instead you select a card from among your hand and the top of your library. It still ramps spells from places other than your hand, and we’ll be keeping an eye on the card to monitor the efficacy of this change.

Chronicle of Awakening

Previously, Chronicle of Awakening was adjusted up to mana value 6 due to its ability to drop 10 mana worth of creature onto the battlefield.

In the period since, Chronicle has been used to devastating effect to destroy lands and finish the game, frequently ending an opponent’s participation by destroying 6-8 lands. Because the destruction of basic lands being a major strategy is not somewhere we’re comfortable with the format moving, Chronicle’s third mode now targets only nonbasic noncreature permanents.

Skotha, Titan of Eternal Dark

The undisputed most powerful (nonland) card in the format, Skotha has enabled some very potent play patterns: stop for a moment and consider how good the second copy is at ramping you after you take advantage of the legend rule. Also that’s 3 to 4 discards that turn.

Being a 6/6 with an extremely fun set of abilities: replicating the classic Sword of Feast and Famine. Unfortunately this proved to be too much, and necessitated some changes.

Skotha still causes opponents to discard, but you no longer untap all lands you control. Instead, you return a permanent card with mana value 3 or less from your graveyard to the battlefield, which is still a large amount of value, but no longer enables relatively trivial chains of spells. This has the benefit of being slightly more vulnerable to graveyard interaction.

Finally, its “escape” ability has been changed to cost BBGG, so that it is less easy to splash the card

Phlage, Titan of Burning Winds 

Phlage’s only crime was being part of a cycle–and so, with changes to Skotha, Phlage too received adjustment.

With how much less played (due to a margin of power level) Phlage was than Skotha, it actually received a minor improvement—with the damage-dealing triggered ability becoming a Forked Bolt instead of a Shock.

Phlage’s “escape” ability has also been changed.

Sifting Through Soot

Sifting was a very efficient card on multiple axes: as an engine, a win condition, and an excellent sideboard piece against aggressive decks, frequently gaining 10 or more life over the course of a game.

To slightly reduce its efficacy at all of these things, the card no longer triggers when it enters—only upon landfall.

The Aqua Crew

The Aqua Crew is a fantastic control finisher—being a 4/4 with flash makes it a great anti-aggro card, and that’s before you consider its enter trigger gaining you 4-6 life, or drawing you multiple cards as you (in an ideal world) mill flashback or surface cards.

Also it could kill anything, multiple times a turn cycle.

The exact play pattern involved getting a Crew on deck at the end of an opponent’s turn, followed by using a cheap (1-3 mana) flashback or surface spell out of your yard on your turn, then again on an opponent’s, essentially demanding that an opponent present three meaningful threats each turn or lose.

This was stronger than it was originally intended. In fact, Crew got a late buff during the set workshopping before Chikyu: Chaos Rains fully hit the format. What was intended to be a Commander card first and foremost, as they occasionally do, became a constructed all-star, and needed an adjustment.

Now, it’s a flavour slam-dunk, with the Crew only realising their true power to flood the world when they harness the power of the Warden of Depths.

At some point there will be an adjustment to The Magma Council to partially mirror this one, but there was no time pressure to make the change for this patch.

Welding Rig

Welding Rig went under the RADAR during set review. As you may have seen in Modern Horizons 2, Wizards has learned from the years of Liquimetal Coating—with Liquimetal Torque now being unable to target lands.

Notable combo brewer Lih put together a deck starring Welding Rig and Planned Obsolescence (with ways to recur and tutor them both) to repeatedly exile their opponents’ lands.

Welding Rig has been adjusted to target only your own permanents, as it was intended to help protect your own permanents in its home limited environment, while working with various artifact themes.

Closing Out

And that’s it for this patch, folks!

We’re about to hit the Revolution World Championship, and with the depowering of BG ramp the big question is: what next for the metagame? Is traditional control going to make a comeback, or is green aggro going to take the trophy? Someone at Worlds always brews something anti-meta, and I’m super excited to see where we land.

Remember: you can participate, even if you aren’t qualified!

The Worlds Fantasy Bracket is open, and if you pick the player who goes on to win the whole thing, you’ll also get to design an invitational card for Revolution.

See you in League, everyone!