CovetedPeacock Frolicks to Victory at Grand Prix Mirage Expo

Written by platypeople

Editor's note: Revolution's scryfall-like image database, Manifesto, is currently offline. We usually like to post relevant links to mentioned cards, but that is not possible at this time. The article is planned to be updated as soon as it returns. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Revolution Balance Changes: June 2025

Written by kayiu102

Hallo everyone! Kayiu here, and today I’m going to, in my position of one of the Revolution format’s curators, be giving you a rundown of the card changes the format’s going to be seeing going into June!

In general, we were very pleased with the first month of our ERR + KDT (Errors in the Weft and Kitsuo Dusk of Time) rotation. Every rotation breathes new life into a format, but May was especially notable for showing not only sparking new brews in all of the major archetypes—control, aggro, midrange, tempo, and even combo, which has had a sporadic presence in Rev—but also supporting unique decks within each of those archetype umbrellas. 

However, month one of any rotation also is usually host to a number of changes, as even with prior constructed testing through programs such as Field Test, a set’s first month in the format is usually its first time being seriously stress tested, having all of its tools and synergies pushed to their limits. ERR + KDT was no exception, so I’m excited to talk to you about some of the standout decks and wild emergent interactions that cropped up!

Athreos, Gold-Eyed

Athreos, Gold-Eyed now exiles creatures as a replacement effect rather than having the creature die first. The reasoning behind this was twofold; firstly, this was a minor QoL update. People were reading it as being a replacement effect and misplaying it, and since leaning into that player expectation both did not harm the card’s design seed or role in the format, it was felt that leaning into that assumption was the change with the least friction. As a bonus, we felt that this change gave it potential utility as a sideboard piece versus cards with impactful death triggers such as Kage’s Mercenary and Survivors of the New World. We don’t expect this to significantly increase its role in the format, but should make playing with it more intuitive and satisfying, especially in the WB Revolt at the Palace tapout control decks that were experimenting with it. 

Calamity Cat

In some ways, Calamity Cat is the ideal card for a constructed format; it has several synergy hooks that encourage varied deckbuilding around it, the drawback it offers for its upside are appropriate and skill-testing, and it’s cute as a button to boot. One thing we began to notice, however, was that Skitty’s haste was leading to non-ideal play patterns; it allowed the card to threaten fast, t3-4 kills with Scattering Swine, and made it too punishing to play around in the midgame with high-impact threats like Inner Ring Pupil. However, most of this was off of the back of its play in midrange decks, and we didn’t want to significantly impact its role in aggressive strategies; as a result, it’s getting a hefty compensation buff of an additional power. Now, the ideal play pattern of Skitty on one is even better than before, allowing it to be a threat in its own right—while still having the 1-2 punch of sending a friend straight into your opponent’s face!

Electronic Countermeasures

This is a pretty simple one - the question with Electronic Countermeasures was whether the Corrupt condition was enough justification to allow a Nahiri’s Warcrafting to draw multiple cards. In practice, the answer was a resounding No—Corrupt as a set mechanic was well supported in ERR with cards like PANIC(), and the breakpoint of 4 mana was helped by Shigane Manor Burns being the most-played cards in the format. As a result, variations on red midrange, from RG Ramprange to Big Red to RW Control were all making use of it to drown their opponents in CA. Now it's simply in line with its canon counterpart.

Emperor Tzuhan

This is another fairly straightforward change; Emperor Tzuhan created a nondeterministic combo deck with any creature that added 2 mana on ETB. As a result, he’s been moved to the more-conventionally-used-anyways slow flicker.

An aside here, on Rev’s philosophy towards combo decks. In the recent past, any combo decks that have cropped up have been swiftly cut down, usually rendered ineffective through nerfs and card changes. This might give the impression that combo decks in general are against Rev philosophy. This isn’t the case, but rather is a consequence of combo decks historically not meshing with Standard—a historical Standard that Rev has thus far been attempting to emulate. Depending on factors such as resilience, angles of interaction, and speed, Standard formats haven’t been able to handle dedicated combo decks when they arose, the cheapness and density of interaction they demand being antithetical to the board-based “fair and slower” ethos of standard. However, Standard has gradually been growing more powerful and seeing the reintroduction of combo decks, and Rev’s catching up. As the general speed of our removal and maindeckability of niche interaction increases in the coming rotations as we align our format principles with those of canon Standard, this could change! We’re already seeing promising knock-on effects of reintroducing longtime staples like Duress back into the format. However, we’re still looking at each combo in a vacuum to evaluate whether it’s a deck that the format can reasonably account for.

To help maintain this balance going forward, we’ve added Lih to the curator team! A longtime player of the format, Lih has gained notoriety in the past year for being a consummate combo brewer, able to identify niche interaction with alarming speed. They’re also a grinder, playing tons of league and iterating and improving their lists once they’ve brewed them, proving themselves a well-rounded player and a terrifying opponent to queue up against—only balanced by their friendly, upbeat disposition. Their inclusion on the team will help us catch potential combo decks early, and also get a better perspective on their play patterns and place in the format!

Frolicking Tatsuko

Frolicking Tatsuko was one of the central cards in the GP-winning RG Counters aggro list piloted by CovetedPeacock, which was able to blaze out to overwhelming starts with the Calamity Cat into Tatsuko curve, or play the long game with Fabricated Anomaly, Igneous Visions, and Spirit Realm Phoenix. Before that deck had even hit the top cut, however, Tatsuko had come up on our radar for its interaction with Cat. While you had removal options for it on the play—Plasma Strike, Shock, Downlink Overload—the pressure it put on having those relative to its average impact was disproportionate. Five hasty damage on t2 or getting a huge beater on 2 are both fine in a vacuum, but the combination of the two made it difficult for decks to recover before they were just run over. Now, without being able to double counters on itself, Tatsuko can still slap someone for 4 on t2 and still enables other creatures to scale rapidly, but ends up vulnerable to more removal and trades.

Harmony with Nature

Harmony with Nature has been on the watchlist for a while, but it’s finally getting tapped now as the team moves to curb one-mana noncreature engines. This was also why Earthly Penchants got hit last month, and why another card later on this list is getting changes. Having an answer to artifacts & enchantments or having a fast enough gameplan to be able to ignore them is an entirely fine benchmark for decks in constructed to have to abide by. We’ve gotten additional tools to supplement that plan this rotation, such as Forced Shutdown and Masksmith. One-mana noncreature engines, however, end up in a spot where it is infeasible to trade with them in a tempo-efficient manner, especially against a deck deploying threats of multiple types. Harmony decks exacerbates this by requiring interaction on two angles—both creature wipes and enchantment wipes, which Rev isn’t equipped to deal with thanks to its lack of Farewell.  The new variation still rewards you for going wide with enchantments, even giving you an additional threshold to strive for, but is no longer threatening to be online as early as turn 2. 

High Teqien

High Teqien is a card that’s served a valuable role as a way to combat impactful utility lands like the TRX creaturelands. However, it’s been serving in that role too well, proving to be a backbreaking swing relative to similar tools like Timeworn Crags. It’s also annoying as an on-board combat trick at instant speed with creaturelands that remain lands like ERR’s new level up cycle. Now that it allows the owner to retain a copy of the land thanks to the Emulation Expert tech, it allows for texture in utility land hate, without harming High Teqien’s in-set role as part of Cybaros’ “stealing opposing permanents” theme.

Kirin of Boons

This is just a simple quality of life update; while it might not seem like much, this change is instrumental in allowing Kirin to work with other combat triggers that modify power. This came up a bunch in the RG counters deck with Fabricated Anomaly, so we wanted to change the card to have it work in an intuitive and satisfying way with the cards that it’s played with. 

Masksmith

The award for “card I’ve mistaken as coming from the other set this rotation” goes to… Masksmith! Masksmith has filled the void left by Club Promoter’s rotation perfectly, functioning as a maindeck jack-of-all-trades headpiece for aggressive and midrange strategies alike. It exiling is also a notable upside while the Theros gods are in the format! It’s a card whose role in the meta we’re very satisfied with, and want to keep seeing play. However, it was previously simply Doing Too Much with the ability to also function as recursion. This was further exacerbated by its ability to recur itself—a play pattern that was initially dismissed as inefficient, but ended up making it far too resilient against interaction. Removing that clause leaves it as a cheap and fast clock, keeping it maindeckable, and also retains its role as flexible hate—both of the important design goals that helps it serve its role in the meta.

Rib Collector

Wander is an exciting mechanic, allowing you to take the up-front value that a creature gives you and overwhelm your opponent with it in the lategame by sinking your mana into it. However, when the Wander cost is cheap, its odd nature as an intersection of casting a spell in function and “activated ability” in design has led to potential for repetitive gamestates and combos. Rib Collector ticks both of those boxes. Its ability to functionally bounce a creature  repeatedly allows it to combo with creatures that generate mana on ETB or death—even with its own set with Audacious Roughrider. Additionally, its role as a “one-mana Gravedigger” gave those same combo decks immense resilience and a more than functional “fair” beatdown gameplan. With a much higher base and Wander cost, Rib Collector is now likely priced out of constructed, but retains its limited role, and allows you to still do the exciting loops Wander is known for—just at a more reasonable rate.

Spirit Realm Phoenix

We’ve talked about the GP-winning GR Counters list a few times now, but this is the first card change directly inspired by its role in that list. The bottom line is that this was another card that simply had one point too much of synergy with Calamity Cat, with Spirit Realm Phoenix negating Cat’s cost. Phoenix also generally just proved too free in the deck, recurring itself almost anytime the deck took a game action. Now, the same loops and grind potential exist, but can’t be pulled off for free on curve/require a bit more planning to effectively maneuver.

Stratostorm

I’m so sorry, Tomas. Stratostorm was part of a hybrid combo-midrange deck, that used Stratostorm and Dark Horse Victory to reanimate large planeswalkers and generate an overwhelming advantage before opponents could stabilize. With The Arbiter, Stratostorm could Mind Twist opponents as early as turn 3! This speed alone wouldn’t have been a problem, though—gravehate is something the format has plenty of, even in colorless—but its resilience to that same hate was. Even if you had gravehate, a 4/4 flying vigilance on its own presented a speedy clock that’s also hard to outrace yourself thanks to the vigilance. When it came off of a Shigane Manor Burns on t3, that left opposing decks with little recourse but to have countermagic. With a bump in cost, now aggressive decks can threaten to get under it, while midrange and control decks have more time to set up threats + interaction or dig for their interaction. 

Swift Reproach

Swift Reproach finally gave white a playable creature removal spell that didn’t rely on it being tapped or attacking! It was also huge as a removal spell slanted towards favoring aggressive strategies that were more likely to empty their hands early. However, in practice, the delta between drawing and not drawing a card was huge, and ended up much swingier than the consistent drawbacks on similar cards like Fateful Absence and Get Lost. Sometimes the cards-in-hand difference could be determined by factors outside of player control, like mulligans or even play-draw differential. Now, while Swift Reproach still rewards decks that want to empty their hand, the delta between modes is acceptably narrowed.

SYSCALL()

Remember me talking about one-mana noncreature engines before? Yeah, this is the other one that’s changing. In theory, SYSCALL() should be fine since you need to pump more mana into it before you can get the card advantage. In practice, being one mana makes it trivial to sequence between other plays. If your opponent tries to answer it before you’ve drawn cards off of it, they’re still down on tempo—or worse, if you play it turn 1, you can even protect it with countermagic. Meanwhile, by the time you’ve invested mana into it, it’s too late—you’ve already drawn a full second hand, and though your opponent can now answer it in a tempo-efficient manner, the damage is already done. At two mana. SYSCALL() is both easier to answer in a tempo-efficient manner and also requires control opponents to go shields-down if they want to play it in the early game. 

Teshima, Living Balance

Teshima is part of a cycle of 4c legends from KDT, each made to support their faction’s mechanical quirk. Teshima is obviously extremely powerful—however, we wanted to see how achievable 4c mana was with our current manabase. It had been done before, but under specific circumstances, and having your incentives to play multiple colors be strong and attractive was an important goal of both Provocative (the set’s designer) and the curation team. Unfortunately, Teshima overshot the mark. Not only does she immediately stabilize the board, with four bodies and a respectable 4 toughness stymieing any thought of outracing her, with just +1 power she swings back for a whopping 11 damage. And even if you take it on the chin, good luck alpha striking back when the tokens have vigilance! Now, Teshima is still potent, but one less token makes it worse both defensively and offensively. Teshima is another four-drop that’s had massive success off of Shigane Manor Burns. We’ll be keeping an eye on the efficiency of our four-drop threats, including Teshima, going forward.

Transgressive Trendsetter

You have to give it to her; she did live up to her name. Within the first week of the format, Transgressive Trendsetter was part of no less than three different combo decks, taking advantage of her being mana-neutral on entrance to generate infinite triggers in several flavors. Emperor Tzuhan? Yeah, that was her. Rib Collector? Got her name all over it. Over and above her combo potential, the respectable 2 power menace body lent itself to her combo decks also having solid beatdown gameplans. While her most egregious enablers have themself been tapped, she’s also been given a safety clause as a treat, just in case she decides to break parole. Take that bow, Trendsetter, you’ve earned it.

Weft Dancer

Similar to Stratostorm, Weft Dancer has caused issues as a reanimation spell that also resolved into a threat if you killed the grave. Unlike Stratostorm, however, Weft Dancer was tapped not for its speed, but for its resilience. Its unique Body Double style of reanimation leaves it immune to all of the format’s colorless removal sans Soul-Guide Lantern—and even if they do exile your grave, she comes down as a big evasive beater that two-for-ones you if you try to answer her. Now, thanks to losing Ward, she’s more reasonable to answer for interactive decks. 

Scorching Condemnation

I see you leaning over to your friend, whispering “Wait, I thought she rotated.” She did! This is a change to her in Rev Eternal, to maintain consistency with MSEM. Condemnation was recently added to MSEM through another Matt set, and is receiving a quality of life change to allow it to be hit by enchantment removal even if it's animated in response. If it does end up seeing play there, this will surely make it—say it with me now—more intuitive and satisfying to play with!

Conclusion

And that’s a wrap! Thanks to anyone who read this far; it’s a blast and an occasional headache managing this format, so it’s been fun to peel back the curtain a bit and explain the rationale and process of identifying and addressing balance and play pattern issues. Huge thanks to the other members of the curation team—Zangy, PTM, Scribbl, AWW, platypeople, and now Lih—for being great to work and discuss with. (and for being patient with me when I’m not 😛) Thanks to DrChipmunk and Provocative for designing ERR and KDT respectively, and giving us all these fun toys to play with and puzzle over. And most of all, thanks to the whopping 30 players who came out to this GP, and the several more who just showed up to jam some league. It’s been a great month of Rev, and I’m excited to see how this never-before-done double rotation develops in the months ahead!