First, though, let’s explore the set in a vacuum; while Blood Like Rivers is an evocative and metal as hell name, it doesn’t give us the full picture of what the set’s about. BLR is set on the plane of Eltensia, where things are going great if you’re undead and Pretty Fucking Awful if you aren’t. Liches run rampant, covering the world in a neverending darkness. While some settlements maintain a valiant defence against the forces of evil, hope is dwindling—leading others to bend the knee, hoping that subservience will at least allow them to deal with a devil they know.

However, unbeknownst to the plane’s inhabitants, salvation is on the horizon; Scratch, the Warden of Eltensia, He Who Speaks In Riddles And Falsehoods, The Lord of Death and What Lies Below, is returning from his long absence. And when he finds the mess his long sojourn has left behind, he’s going to take it upon himself to set things straight, and make death mean something again.

As we’re going to see going into the competitive history of BLR, its mechanics do have strong, pushed individual cards across the board, encouraging you to go deep on playing the set’s themes. However, it’s also mindful of needing safety valves for the type of greedy graveyard value it encourages, providing strong sideboard hate pieces like Leafshroud Hunter, Call of the Crypt, and even the colorless Solemn Graveyard. 

Before getting into individual decks and archetypes, I’ll be going over the most enduring and far-reaching impact that BLR had on the format; its lands! BLR profoundly changed the manabase options for the format starting with its painland cycle, which enabled aggressive decks to also play fast and loose with their color options. The ability to sac them for gas later in the game not only enabled Ancient, but also made them an attractive option for even slower decks that could afford more painless manabases.

One option BLR provided for those decks was the Waking lands, an enemy cycle of ETB tapped creaturelands. Waking Glen’s ability to be mana neutral or even positive if it could crack in made it the ideal pick for rampier lists, while the lean animation costs on Waking Vista and Waking Bog found them homes in a wider variety of control and midrange lists respectively. Bog in particular was an all-star in midrange mirrors, not only functioning as a wincons after threats were traded away, but also rebuying those same threats to definitively shut the door.

Another option for slower and greedier decks was Gilded Court. While it often played like an Evolving Wilds at first, it had several notable upsides, such as not actually having to run the basics, being able to tap for mana immediately, and being able to stock up on additional colors if you don’t need it on a turn. These all made it an ideal land for decks that were willing to take tempo as their manabase downside of choice—especially control decks, which could afford to use it to hold up interaction, then tap for an additional color on an opponent’s end step.

None of these, however, come even close to the last land we’re going to talk about. It’s not an exaggeration to say this was the single most impactful card from BLR, and arguably one of the most impactful cards from any set in the format’s history. Meet New Divide. This innocuous marriage of a shockfetch and an Evolving Wilds (or just a sidegrade-but-mostly-worse Prismatic Vista, if you want to be lame about) completely changed the texture of deckbuilding. All of a sudden, any deck could have easy early access to their colors, so long as they didn’t have sequencing requirements that required multiple pips early. 

Over and above this, it was obviously a great enabler for Ancient and other cards-in-grave payoffs, and even made cards that would otherwise have had difficulty seeing play, like Ulfarl, into format all-stars. Looking through League and GP decklists, you’d be far more likely to see a deck with New Divide than without. When BLR rotates out, remembering how to deckbuild without it will be like trying to start a campfire with just sticks - how did people ever live like this?

Ironically, the first deck that people started brewing BLR cards with only minimally cared about these manabase options. Bx and Monoblack midrange has been a staple archetype in Revolution from time immemorial, dominating across rotations. Coming off of a hot streak thanks to the tools from Viridian’s Last Mission and Karsus, it was front and center in everyone’s minds—and so brewers were eager to see if the new toys from BLR made the already potent deck even better. Reinstated Reaper gave the deck, typically full of 2/3s for 2, an actual aggressive option early on the curve, scaling and dodging past the 2-drops in the mirror. Despite having stiff competition in Myrkalt and Threzak, Necrotic Savant firmly established itself as a topend option to be respected, even picking up a Renegade promo in its first season legal.

BLR also spawned variants of the list. The first of these was a Jund-ier, Rock-ier BG version of the list, primarily off the back of Gift of Deadwoods and Old-Ways Advocate as a potent one-two punch of beaters that pushed the deck towards an Ancient focus. It also had Tugae Corpsemaker as another contender for the coveted four-drop slot, functioning as a Chupacabra in matchups without throwaway tokens - especially when you could drop it for the Multitude mode and casually 4-for-1 a hapless opponent.

The other list only needed a single card to encourage people to make it happen: Lucille, Ruthless Warlord hit like a whole convoy of trucks, turning any sort of board advantage into a threat of instant death. Of course, if you didn’t seal the deal that turn you risked suffering the same fate on the backswing, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Lucille was one of the big draws to play Reinstated Reaper and to generally go more aggressive than prior balanced versions of Monoblack, threatening kills as early as turn 4 alongside turn 3 treasure creatures like Conjoined Irradiant and Partners in Crime. There was even a devastating combo with format staple Ferocious Flame, turning the simple shock into 8 points of face damage out of nowhere! This version of the list was another immediate success, earning a 2nd place finish in the first tournament of the season in the hands of platypeople. While she eventually fell out of prominence as these same creatures rotated, leaving aggressive versions of the list unable to justify a 5-drop topend, she still remained the stuff of nightmares all through her rotation.

While Bx Midrange was the most immediate beneficiary of BLR, the archetype that had the widest breadth of different decks that BLR enabled throughout its tenure was unquestionably control.

The one generically applicable control tool in its arsenal was Wipe the World Clean, the format’s first four-mana hard wipe. In addition to filling that coveted role, it was also notable for killing planeswalkers as well—something that could nominally be a downside in some control decks, but in practice allowed control decks to combat token-making planeswalkers and midrange decks with varied threat suites, both of which had previously posed problems for the archetype. 

The first control archetype that BLR spawned was Approaching Vengeance—a tapout control deck in Abzan or Redless colors that used the Approaching Greatness to weather the earlygame against aggro, then wipe them with a Vibrant Vengeance and ride the ensuing mana advantage to overwhelm opponents before they could rally. This was especially effective with the Revelations from Ghariv: the Quaking City, which filled early ramp, removal, and card selection slots, then could be flashbacked as wincons with the mana from Vengeance. It was also the first list to leverage the canon reprint Harrow, though later different decks would leverage it not just for ramp, but also for its Instant speed and ability to fill the grave while ramping. Approaching Vengeance proved a potent strategy, going over the top of any deck incapable of running it down, and in the hands of Philippe Saner won the second GP of the BLR season.

That final season also gave another BLR card a chance to shine—Xirix, Chronic Mercenary! Xirix, despite being a solid card in a vacuum—being able to remove anything, even through hexproof, and pumping out card advantage like nobody’s business—had the unfortunate fate of sharing most of their time in the format overshadowed by As’Ahai, likely the strongest planeswalker the format has ever seen. Xirix simply couldn’t compete with her head-to-head, losing in the 1v1 to the tokens she left behind even if she was immediately removed, and being unable to provide board presence and life total pressure in the same way she could. 

Once she rotated, however, Xirix found a home in the meta, being the perfect tool in a world with varied types of threats and generally midrangey, resource trading gameplay. Xirix would become the backbone of Sultai Ramp, and even when Ramp decided to go Jund and forego Xirix, they still found their way to the finals in an innovative Sultai Control list. Xirix was a great reminder that even if a set’s been in a format for almost two years, it never hurts to go back and check what from it is still left to be explored.

Rolling back the clock to the third GP of BLR’s initial season finds us at the birth of the second control deck BLR seeded into the format, Primordial Dreams! This UBx combo-control deck centered around the titular Primordial of Emilia Glade.  With the ability to rebuy multiple spells on ETB and built-in cost reduction, it was already a potent wincon on its own—but also demanded to be broken. If you untapped with Dabbling Dangerously in hand and enough mana, you could use Primordial’s cost reduction to cast a mana neutral Dabbling, search for a flicker spell, cast the flicker spell getting back it and Dabbling, then cast Dabbling to find Captivating Dreams, take an extra turn, and thanks to Dreams’ self-shuffle clause you got to do it all over again on that extra turn, going infinite! The deck ended up winning the GP in platypeople’s hands, and while it never reached that same high again, it still remained a solid contender for the rest of BLR’s tenure.

If you wanted your control wincons to be a little more lean and quick, however, BLR still had you covered. Ella, Rose Court Queen and Eltensian Hospitality allowed you to take your burn-based interaction like Learning Fiendishly and copy them, absolutely nuking people once the board was stable enough that you could start throwing them at your opponent’s face. These lists built either Grixis or Jeskai depending on the meta and the pilot, but the Jeskai build in particular had a lot of success into creature-based midrange, copying their ETBs with Lichbane Wardwielder and just outright doubling their best threat with Wildkin Imposter. Wildkin’s promo may be from a Brawl GP, but don’t be fooled—that card still put in work in regular constructed, turning many a Furycall Hellion back on their caster’s own lands.

Meet Keening Belltower. 

There was little fanfare about it when BLR was added to the format—it seemed just too slow and clunky to be worth it over wincons that had immediate impact. Paying 4 mana upfront, then 2 mana each turn to drain your opponent for 2? Surely that couldn’t be good, right? Well, it turns out the answer was no, that’s pretty damn good, actually! The “each player draws a card” mode was mostly overlooked, because who wants to give your opponent cards, but when you had oodles of interaction and cantrips with card selection, you could ensure that whatever you were drawing lined up well into anything they could have. 

With any sort of cantrip support, Belltower could drain people out remarkably fast, and despite not doing anything the turn you played it, untapping with it could lead to quick stabilization thanks to the lifegain. Another factor in its strength was how its clock quadrupled with two copies—when you’re already drawing a bunch of cards, hitting a second copy was surprisingly common.

...Bind in Silence! For completely unbiased reasons, of course. Ignore the fact that it has my face on it. Bind in Silence was another card that found a new lease on life late into BLR’s stay in the format. While it was initially overshadowed as a sideboard hate piece by Blacklist and the later Crownguard Ban, the addition of Theros: Age of Trax to the format suddenly gave players compelling reasons to run it—even mainboard! As we’ve come to expect from Theros, Devotion and enchantments-matter were both supported themes, and Bind in Silence contributed to both. Two pips on a playable two-drop was huge for devotion payoffs like Ephara’s Judgement and Hundred-Handed Pillars, and when copied by Benthalos of Land and Sea or Stormscraper of Ketaphos it could just lock players out of the game! Ultimately, Bind found itself in a favorable spot thanks to meta factors, and was one of the key factors that helped me win the Revolution Worlds 3!

BLR’s other big contributions to GP winning success come from its role in the success of ramp decks. We’ve already talked about Vibrant Vengeance, which had its time in the sun at the start and end of BLR’s time in the format. Right in the middle, however, Hyperpop got added to the format, bringing with it a card called Grand Consonance. It immediately took the format by storm, giving ramp decks the opportunity to run solid midrange cards while still threatening to go over the top of any deck that let them count to seven. Despite being the bogeyman going into the first GP, it found its way into the finals in the hands of RickyRister, winning the first Hyperpop GP. However, the deck was still far from its final form. Players had been experimenting with Wildcourt Seeker, which at that time was a two-drop that recurred lands from grave on attack. People were aware it was good, certainly—but by the next GP, they’d come to realize it was more than good. It was out-and-out broken.

While Consonance did end up cutting Seeker next month, its winning streak didn’t stop there. New aggro builds and other meta adaptations made the road more difficult than before, with all of RickyRister’s top cut sets going to three games, but even then, he managed to clinch the win, securing Consonance an unprecedented hat trick of wins! The card Ricky ended up promoting was one that was integral to Consonance’s success—and that of many other decks beside. Honestly, it’s been tough holding back on talking about this card until now, given how foundational it was to the format! The card I’m talking about is Drift Off, a card that bravely asks “what if O-Ring…. But two?” 

Doubling as efficient catchall removal that could be grabbed by Consonance and a potent two-for-one, Consonance’s extremely free manabase allowed it to run the double-pipped card with little trouble, giving it access to good interaction in an archetype that typically relied on taking early turns off. Drift Off wasn’t just good in ramp, however; midrange, control, and any white deck that could six mana loved it, cementing its spot as staple removal. This only became more pronounced as enchantment control decks rose to prominence with Theros: Age of Trax, taking what was already a playable card and giving you additional reasons to sleeve it up.

Another important tool BLR gave ramp players was Scratch’s Horseman, aka the stuff of control players’ nightmares. While control at times had a favorable matchup against ramp decks, thanks to only needing to answer topend threats, Scratch’s Horseman out the side flipped the script and put time pressure on the control player, forcing them to assemble some form of engine or defense before it came down and demanded a wipe. 

While Ramp did cannibalize the meta share of traditional creature-based midrange for a while, BLR did provide some great buildarounds and tools that allowed non-MonoB versions of the archetype to flourish as well. The splashiest of these was The Herald of the Wildcourt, leaning into the set’s theme of permanent copying by doubling all of your spells if you took the cue to properly build around it. While it was hard to find a bad threat to copy with it, one of the favorite ones from BLR was Unknowable Starspawn—a prime example of “giving an opponent a choice is only a downside if it matters at all what they choose.” While control players could sometimes afford to pick the creature mode, that still meant they were facing down two 5/4s and either being drained a whopping 8 life or haemorrhaging cards!

Speaking of tempo, BLR also had tons of fun tools to support it. You wanted to lean more prowess-y, with only nominal interaction? Renegade Apprentice and Twincast Disciple were both excellent scaling one-drops, and with a well-timed Slayer’s Determination even they could shred through an unsuspecting opponent’s life total. Of course, if you wanted to play more interactive, there were options for that too—Silence of the Drowned filled the necessary Quench slot, but also in a pinch could be used to shore up the traditionally weak aggro matchup or to force lethal damage through blockers! If your opponent doesn’t drop anything worth countering, then simply slam a Rose Court Champion and let it carry you to victory. There was also support for a WU Fliers-y version of the deck, with Binding Whisper working as another hedge against aggressive lists and Vanity Haunt pumping out a steady stream of difficult-to-block tokens.

Of course, if at the end of the day you didn’t want to mess around with “engines,” “value,” or “interaction” and just wanted to run your opponent down, the set had cards for you too. Razelit Meditation was the Raise the Alarm of aggro’s dreams, putting down some early bodies and then getting cashed in later for that final bit of damage. Being self-saccable also synergized well with the constructed playable Revolt cards in the set, though nothing enabled them better than New Divide. With it, Assemble the Mob could threaten four hasty damage on turn 2 and then you could repeat that performance on turn 3 with Bloodfrenzied Vanguard!

For face burn enjoyers, Burning Wisdom took simple pingers like Leystone of Storms and turned them into card advantage machines, taking an archetype traditionally known for struggling with cardflow into one with deadly reach. Of course, if you just wanted to blow them up in a single turn instead of taking the death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach, Gravefire Arcanist was one of the key cards that made the terrifying MonoRed Devotion deck tick, copying already large Ignites for overkill amounts of damage.