Philippe Saner Awakens Titans at Grand Prix Whitecliff!

Written by Platypeople

Revolution Balance Changes: March 2024

Written by PTM

You may recall that last month’s patch notes article was extensive—focused squarely on the power outliers in Chikyu: Chaos Rains. This month, we’re a lot happier with where the new cards are in terms of the format’s overall power level, though there are a small number of changes still to discuss.

In addition, this month we’re announcing a very exciting change to the format’s calendar. The third month of every season, there will be buffs to cards.

Typically, our job as Curators is to address the power level outliers to ensure that no strategy over-centralizes the format. However, there are cards which are frequently targeted at constructed play by their designers that never quite make it. In canon Magic, during the play design phase there would be time to correct this—but for Revolution, this only becomes apparent when a set has been in the format for some time.

In addition to the buffs to cards which were constructed whiffs, we asked the set designers to consider shoring up the format’s sideboard options, based on the emergent knowledge of sets that entered the format after theirs. After all, how would they know what sideboard hate to plan ahead for, when the set that will join after them won’t be decided until 4 months after their designs are finished?

Buffs will go live after a given set has been in-format for one year. Because three sets are late to the party on this, this season’s buff patch is larger than normal, and concerns Hyperpop, Theros: Age of Trax, and Awakening in Oldun.

What follows are our considerations on changes to the following cards. First, we’ll cover the balance changes, then we’ll explore the buffs:

Balance changes

• Benthalos of Land and Sea

• Chronicle of Awakening

• Extraction Ritual

• General Diadem, Usurper

• Illustrious Sheng Fa

• Leystone of Ruin

• Relentless Bats

• Sifting Through Soot

• The Founding of the Twelve

Buffs

• Alrantan Eagle-Eye -> Alrantan Archon

• Army of Trax

• Blade of Bright Futures & Blade of Clouded Pasts

• Bring Down the Sky

• Callaphe the Mariner

• Canopy of the Winter Nexus

• Charging Brightmare

• Cliffside Linedancers -> Cliffside Scrappers

• Elektes’s Charge & A God Divided

• Flame Lash -> Flame Whip & Life Begins Anew

• Furies of the Natural Order // Tether to Reality

• Galvanized Gargantuan

• Gelthis, Unspeakable Maw

• Glitch, Chaos Redeemed

• Haubay’s Familiar

• Heartbonder

• Iroas’s Judgment

• King of the Wilderness

• Lightvein Purifier

• Mammoth Undertaking

• Menelaia, Beloved Lyrist

• Nurture the Future

• Permafrost Sentry

• Recurring Visions

• Rib Collector

• Sashanki, Destiny’s Chosen

• Shredding Dragon

• Snoring Stone -> Pest Problem

• Sphinx of the Soundveins

For information on any card not pictured, refer to Manifesto, Revolution’s Scryfall-alike. 

UB Bats

• Leystone of Ruin

• Relentless Bats

Every so often a cool (insane) buildaround will get printed into the format that we’re fairly convinced will be, y’know, fine and excite the Jxnnies in the crowd, only for it to turn out that the deck or combo it enables is horrifying.

So: Relentless Bats. It’s a fun riff on Relentless Rats from Chikyu: Chaos Rains that can be free-cast from the graveyard with shocking velocity—particularly when partnered with Leystone of Ruin, the other card in this conversation.

Leystone of Ruin

Leystone of Ruin is part of Cybaros’s Leystone cycle and is—arguably—a mill card, but coupled with a mountain of cards that operate better from the graveyard, a turn 1 Leystone of Ruin can operate as a 1-mana card that draws 4+ cards, then another 2 every turn thereafter. This was warping games significantly, as it became almost always correct to mulligan until you had a turn 1 Leystone.

With this change, it operates more as-intended without enabling graveyard shenanigans more cheaply and efficiently than we—or its designer—intended.

Relentless Bats

You remember the experience of walking through Mt Moon as a kid? Maybe you’re too young for that. Uh… what’s a cave from a more recent—Connecting Cave? Sure. Whatever. There’s a lot of bats. They’re annoying. Relentless, even. You get the point: this card is a flavour home run because the bats just keep coming.

Unfortunately, the bats just keep coming.

The hoop to re-cast them from the graveyard proved to be too easy to jump, and flooding the board with 30-ish power worth of bats was too much. With this slight adjustment, we’re hopeful that it will keep them playable, but less overwhelming.

Benthalos of Land and Sea

Benthalos is a staple of controlling strategies in Revolution when coupled with effects like Omen of Deception and Gone Pickin’, effectively doubling the number of these effects in the deck and making them available at instant speed—assuming you’re ready to pay 2 more mana for them.

While this change was submitted alongside the buffs for consideration, realistically it’s a slight power-down, as it makes the copying effect more vulnerable to disruption via counterspells in a way that still forces your opponent to invest mana in copying the enchantments. That said: it does mean that the deck works much better with Ephara, Hero-Maker now…

Chronicle of Awakening

A simple adjustment to another member of the Chronicle cycle from Awakening in Oldun, this card going from 5 to 6 is intended to better-insulate players from the threat of a turn 4 Vorpal Titan wiping out a chunk of their lands, acknowledging that this sort of effect typically costs more than 5 in canon Standard.

Extraction Ritual

Part of the Berries list we discussed last month, Extraction Ritual flew under the radar due to the power level of the deck’s other synergies. This month, it very quickly became apparent that Extraction Ritual was too explosive. The absolute fail case being card filtering plus a 1/1 put the card on par with previously standard (and modern) staple cards like Insolent Neonate—with its ceiling being enormous when coupled with cards like Devoted Lackies and Pathetic Coccoon.

We were unfortunately not able to reach an agreement with the designer on how to adjust the card, and so it has been banned. At present, there is no plan to develop an alternate version to seek an unban.

General Diadem, Usurper

You may recall from last month that General Diadem enabled an infinite combo with The Berry Master.

After discussion with the designer, we’ve agreed that she will have a cost of 1 mana attached to her sacrifice ability, in exchange for being able to sacrifice any other nonland permanent instead of only artifacts.

Illustrious Sheng Fa

A marquee planeswalker in our control decks (and also Grand Consonance), Sheng Fa is the bane of creature-based strategies all across the format. Unfortunately, his triggered ability could be missed—prompting a Judge call at our most recent Revolution Grand Prix.

In discussing this, we began to consider the play patterns that Sheng Fa causes, agreeing that the combination of his cast trigger and the wrath rendering entire board states unusable for a turn cycle—and punishing you for investing—was not healthy. Summarily, the card has been reworked.

While the +1 is unchanged, he now starts on 5 loyalty to compensate for a change to his non-loyalty ability. In-flavour for Sheng Fa, it still implies people being awestruck, but slows opponents in a different way.

The -X from 0 is less free, but more immediate, with much the same being true for his -4. A wipe to the board of up to three permanent types, but that has a deckbuilding cost. We’re much happier with where Sheng Fa is now, and the designer is also excited about him.

Sifting Through Soot

Sifting Through Soot is partly an engine, partly a win condition, and partly a sideboard lifegain card. However, the reanimation mode was both instant speed and—if the game went particularly long—repeatable, neither of which were intuitive or particularly healthy.

Both of these have been adjusted, which should leave the card playable but fair.

The Founding of the Twelve

Formerly a popular piece in UB mill strategies, The Founding of the Twelve has been through several iterations. This change is not being made for balance reasons, but rather because it was intended to be a mirrored pair with The Burning of Pidae—and through its iterations, it stopped being mirrored. This change restores that.

Alrantan Archon (from Alrantan Eagle-Eye)

Alrantan Eagle-Eye saw, essentially, no play. Simply undertuned. There were discussions about whether to adjust it so that the card saw play in a heroic archetype, but as we furthered discussions about sideboard cards for artifacts, the designer suggested the changes seen here. We expect Archon to be a solid hate piece that slows down opponents significantly.

Army of Trax

A short-lived combo-reanimator card, Army of Trax ultimately has not shown up anywhere meaningful. With this change, it’s a significantly more appealing reanimation target, generating three 3/3s rather than two 2/2s. Time will tell if it results in the kind of game-ending threat that reanimation strategies look for.

Blade of Bright Futures & Blade of Clouded Pasts

These paired Equipment as-written were theoretically great ways to have an assertive early game while investing in later bursts of card advantage, but ultimately didn’t get there.

Without truly great 1-mana Equipment cards, the theoretical archetype never got off the ground—but with these two pieces being made much more efficient, we’re interested to see if it takes off.

Bring Down the Sky

The theoretical UR flashback deck from Awakening in Oldun never materialised in the way the designer intended—a grindier, midrange-to-controlling list that made full use of its resources (in fact the only flashback-focused UR list so far has been a burn deck).

Bring Down the Sky’s alternate casting cost was described by the designer as “flavour text”, and so the hope is that the new version of the card, which empowers a controlling strategy to go very long, will provide a powerful enough payoff to incentivise some red in the format’s control decks.

Callaphe the Mariner

What was intended as a passable evasion ability has ultimately not hit the mark—between tokens and the format’s general focus on more assertive early drops, Callaphe has not been able to connect with opponents.  With improvements to her evasion, we hope that actually landing a Blessing of the Sea will be achievable by the truly dedicated.

Canopy of the Winter Nexus

Intended to enable a niche archetype, Canopy didn’t quite pull together an Auras deck. It also didn’t pay off one of the most exciting mechanics from Theros: Age of Trax—that being Aura Blessings.

With this change, it means that not only can you rebuy your expended Blessings, you can turn dead creatures with Blessings into flashed back Auras—something really exciting for the right deck.

Chamille, AAA-Lister

Designed as an exciting midrange threat, Chamille never quite made as big a splash as she was intended to in constructed play.

Souping up both triggered abilities, rather than acting as a standalone midrange piece, Chamille becomes more of an engine, hopefully tempting players into building 3-colour assertive decks that can leverage her threat level, board presence, and ramp power.

Charging Brightmare

Speaking of cards with Blessings, Charging Brightmare was built with limited in mind. However, due to player interest and excitement about a white-red or white-green Blessing deck in Revolution, the designer proposed a change to make the recursion ability actually achievable in those aggressive strategies.

Cliffside Scrappers (from Cliffside Linedancers)

After the call went up for artifact-oriented sideboard cards, Dodger—the designer of Awakening in Oldun—proposed this change. We’re not convinced it’ll see meaningful constructed play, but it’s theoretically a positive limited adjustment as well as being a fringe sideboard piece.

Elektes’s Charge & A God Divided

During discussions of artifact-focused sideboard cards, slots in set skeletons where such an effect might be viable were topics of some discussion. Shuffling cards around rarity, mana value, and so on—and close attention was paid to cards which had seen little to no play in the format, as candidates to be turned into great sideboard options.

Enter A God Divided. A Saga that didn’t have a significant impact on the format, A God Divided was something that was considered as Sagas are great sideboard cards—being able not only to do the sideboard thing you need, but to provide further value on future turns. Something of an artifact ‘wipe’ in red, we’re very excited to have A God Divided in the format.

The Saga’s original Chapter I, which damaged non-enchanted and non-enchantment creatures, was instead shifted onto Elektes’s Charge, which is a more natural home for it in both TRX limited and in the possible WR enchantment aggressive list that might be better supported by the change to Charging Brightmare.

Flame Whip (from Flame Lash) & Life Begins Anew

With the loss of Braise during Duelists of Vereaux’s rotation out of the format, red’s removal became a lot more complicated—and more vulnerable to midrange threats. After consideration, Flame Lash (which wasn’t expected to see a great deal of play in constructed) was replaced with the cheaper Flame Whip.

As such an efficient removal spell may have unbalanced Theros: Age of Trax’s limited environment, it was shifted up to uncommon—with Life Begins Anew taking its place as a common.

Furies of the Natural Order // Tether to Reality

Designed as topend for a theoretical lifegain deck in constructed, Furies of the Natural Order—and its Blessing—weren’t constructed hits. The other lifegain buildarounds simply didn’t work alongside it.

Instead, its Blessing has been converted to be an interesting sideboard card targeting lifegain-heavy strategies—while also acting as a reasonable midrange threat on its other side if flickered.

Galvanized Gargantuan

Another card designed to pay off spell-heavy strategies, but one that does so in a way that better-enables spellcharge (or Abominable Avalanche), Galvanized Gargantuan hasn’t generated sufficient interest to see real constructed play. This small boost to its P/T will hopefully shore up that playability somewhat.

Gelthis, Unspeakable Maw

With previous changes to Tyrant’s Remnants meaning that Gelthis is not at risk of attacking for 5 if it spellcharges on curve, we’re interested in trying out a version which can animate the turn that it’s played—though its P/T has been slightly reduced to compensate.

Glitch, Chaos Redeemed

A 3-coloured planeswalker, Glitch would theoretically have a home as a significant investment for a midrange deck. However, she has simply not been appealing enough as a card that requires s good amount to go right to be fantastic proactively.

With this change, her +2 is souped up a bit—and can even provide you with actual card advantage if the creature is not blocked.

Haubay’s Familiar

An incredibly minor buff, the designer reported that part of the reason for this change is that the text box was too cluttered. Now it gets flavour text—hooray!

Heartbonder

A smaller creature that didn’t get there in constructed. The aggressive green list has a wealth of powerful 1-drops to pick from, which has meant Heartbonder has struggled to be relevant. With this slight tweak, we’re hopeful it gets somewhere.

Iroas’s Judgment

Intended to be a topend card for an aggressive go-wide deck, Iroas’s Judgement missed the mark and was left behind at 5 mana. With the adjustment to 4 mana, and three tokens rather than four, we’re hopeful that this ends up being an exciting riff on Heroic Reinforcements.

King of the Wilderness

King of the Wilderness was an extremely cool and efficient creature that was somehow overshadowed by another creature with the same mana cost from the same set: Skola Nyxweaver. There’s definitely room for another high-pip-density green threat in the format, and this began as a discussion of making King a 4/4 for GGG—but ended up boosting it up much higher as a 5/4 for GGGGG with some fantastic keywords and a brutal ward cost. We’re really interested to see where it goes from here.

Lightvein Purifier

This is less a buff and more a reversion of a prior nerf. Lightvein Purifier now reflects the version of the card that was originally submitted to Revolution in 2023. We expect this exciting midrangey card to excite some players who enjoy decks that eke out lots of value whether or not they play lots of creatures.

Mammoth Undertaking

The green-red heroic deck never really took off—and the green-white variant had an incredibly brief run at the tail end of the last season before Duelists of Vereaux left the format. Mammoth Undertaking at 2 mana was never in consideration. A shift to 1 mana for Mammoth Undertaking, alongside the addition of Primal Fissure as a fetchland to the format, might mean that this card makes it into a list somewhere.

Menelaia, Beloved Lyrist

Menelaia was aimed at constructed play, but never quite landed due to being lower power than the other available options—and not having a real home for what it was doing. A shift down the mana curve (partly in response to King of the Wilderness moving up) is targeted at finding Menelaia a home in an assertive strategy.

Nurture the Future

Theoretically a fun payoff for the devotion archetype, the flash ultimately did not wind up mattering in the deck—leading to the card to not actually show up when players built it. The change to powerful cost reduction aims to better-reward the archetype and players for investing in their devotion to black.

Permafrost Sentry

Originally costed very conservatively, Sentry is now aimed at slotting into a Ruin deck as a good defensive option for a deck that struggles against other assertive decks, while giving the archetype an additional copy of a good Ruin on the field.

Pest Problem (from Snoring Stone)

While Chikyu: Chaos Rains was not technically invited to participate in the buff patch, the conversations around artifact-focused sideboard cards prompted a contribution from the set’s designer.

Snoring Stone was a fun—though not particularly powerful—build-around card that was not expected to make a significant splash in constructed play. The change to Pest Problem is delightfully flavourful, and offers a highly effective way to manage large numbers of both artifacts and enchantments out of the sideboard.

Recurring Visions

As I’ve repeatedly discussed—the blue-red flashback deck never got going—and Visions was intended to be a way to enable it. Large surveil numbers mean that in a flashback-heavy deck, even surveiling something to the yard will frequently be adjacent to drawing a card.

Rib Collector

Literally while discussing changes to this card, I saw several users engaged in brewing a deck involving it, only to conclude that the deck almost gets there. This change to Rib Collector is designed to make the design a little more interesting, as—right now—it’s functionally just a 1-drop with an activated ability.

Sashanki, Destiny’s Chosen

Sashanki asks a good amount of you in order to cast her, but is largely just a 3/3 for all that. This buff rewards you a little more for casting a 3-colour 3-drop creature, while making her more resilient against removal. I’m not sure that there’s a ready-made deck waiting for her to be added to it right now, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the incentives prompt people to brew something!

Shredding Dragon

An exciting midrange payoff with a powerful triggered ability and a punishing ward cost, Shredding Dragon at 6 mana was simply too much investment to be worth it. With the reduction in mana cost, the hope is that Shredding Dragon will start showing up somewhere that can capitalise on its obvious synergies and make paying that ward cost even harder.

Sphinx of the Soundveins

A powerful tempo or combo piece, Sphinx never quite landed its real home in constructed. With a minor buff for Revolution Standard (and possibly an even bigger one for Eternal, given Fatal Flaw’s role in the format) it’s hoped that the card’s last hurrah before Hyperpop rotates will be a success.

Closing Out

With that, we’re probably settled for the rest of this season. The Revolution World Championship is scheduled to commence early April, and we won’t be making any significant changes between now and the end of the tournament.

Future buff patches will be significantly smaller—with the next one to focus solely on Cybaros in July.

Until next time, I hope that you found this useful and interesting, and if you want to get into the format and brew, you can join us on the Custom Magic Discord.