Revolution, April 2024

The first tournament of Revolution’s eleventh rotation concluded this past month at Grand Prix Teqien! With this new rotation comes a new set: Splitmoon's Cybaros! Set on a distant planet on the eve during an invasion by creatures from the stars and beyond, Cybaros's unique take on a two-faction set and inclusion of colorless as a sixth color brings a unique texture to the format, and it's been fascinating to see how the meta has shifted and adapted!

Twenty players brought a total of fifteen unique decks to the arena, showcasing new cards like Marilye, Dreaming Big or Ruin, the First Shard. The most popular decks were GB Devotion, which used the newcomer Skittertiller in combination with Skola Nyxweaver to generate oodles of value without taking time off from beating down, and Naya Tokens, an aggressive deck making use of a plethora of creature types to support the Solidarity mechanic, with hard-hitting Ardor as a four-mana top-end.

However, neither of these decks ultimately made it to the final round. Instead, our last match featured one spicy new list and an old classic. Coming in undefeated as the top seed, Kayiu came to the tourney bringing Sultai Ramp/Midrange. What this pile of delightful designs lacks for in synergy, it makes up for in pure value: using cards like Marilye to steal his opponent's artifacts and Vibrant Vengeance to wipe the board to stabilize and recover tempo, while ramping into huge threats like Hoarding Culebre and Tenacious Snapvines. But the real strength of this deck comes from how well it was tuned to the meta: each card choice Kayiu made after careful and laborious playtesting, and into the aggro-dominated field, playing nine maindeck boardwipes and eight two-drop deathtouchers helped catapult Kayiu to an early lead.

In the other corner, RickyRister brought his personal favorite deck: 4-Color Consonance. The deck makes use of a plethora of different card types to ramp to 7 and stabilize the board, then maximizes the value off of a Grand Consonance to win the game. And while a number of pieces from previous iterations of the deck rotated out this past month, Ricky supplemented them with new role-players like Leyline Channelers and Vasilisa.

While Kayiu chose novelty and meta knowledge as his weapons, Ricky opted for experience and greed: Ricky has piloted a version of consonance every rotation since the card was printed, and a number of these decks resulted in high-placing finishes! And while both Ricky and Kayiu's decks aim to play the long game, few cards generate so much value so quickly as a well-timed grand consonance. Ultimately, although Kayiu put up a good fight (and had a couple unlucky draws), Ricky emerged victorious after two games, bringing the revamped Grand Consonance to its first post-rotation tournament win!

Congratulations to Ricky, well-fought to Kayiu, and remember: if you want to see what colorless-white advisors looks like, or brew an anti-typal deck with Solidarity, or just want to play with some cool designs in a unique standard-like environment: the best time to join the Revolution is now!