Revolution, July 2024

Cybaros, the format's newest set, continues to make a sizeable impact in tournament play. This month in Grand Prix Tugae, 20 players brought a variety of strategies, including several players piloting an Advisor typal tempo deck that has dominated pickup league play this season. The Advisor deck, formulated by user Abstrusity, buries the opponent in bureaucratic taxes via Wistful Delegate & Ozzen Enquirer before turning up the pressure with Prime Consuls. The strategy is also perfectly suited for Heroes Never Die as a way to accelerate and recur its most powerful creatures into play. Two out of the top seven players from Swiss rounds were piloting a version of this list, demonstrating its viability against the stiff competition in Revolution tournaments.

The rest of the top cut was made up of players implementing tried & true cards with new twists afforded by tools from Cybaros, including classic strategies like White-Blue Enchantments, White Weenie splashing red, and Grand Consonance. The gold-medal match was between Drake piloting a Sultai control deck and Anarchist bringing a Jund midrange deck. Drake's list combines mainstay control win conditions in Feast of Whispered Knives and Keening Belltower with the land-untapping interaction-enabling of Leystone of Growth. Anarchist's Jund list skews heavily towards an overpowering late game with a plethora of X spells to play alongside Vibrant Vengeance and other early-game stabilization tools.

In the finals, the generalist flexibility of the Jund list won Anarchist the day and the tournament. The various spot removal and board sweepers got them into a winning position against the field of Advisor typal, but the value-generating threats like Forgotten Cultivator and Wildcourt Seeker shined in the matchup against control. Terminal Impact also got to play double-duty as an interactive spell that dodges Advisor typal's litany of taxes while also threatening a sudden unstoppable kill in long games with the deck's various ramp effects. Mark this down as yet another win for ramp-forward midrange decks this tournament season.

Congratulations to Anarchist, well fought to Drake, and if any of the cards or gameplay described above caught your eye, the best time to join the Revolution is now!

And don't forget to check out this month's Revolution Roundup podcast, going into more detail on coverage for this month's tournament and some sneak peaks on things to come!

Amazon Music           Apple Podcasts           iHeart Radio

                   Pocket Casts                   Spotify