(Note: the cover image for this post was illustrated by Caio Santos and be found here.)
Hi everyone! This is Kayiu, and today I’m going to be doing a retrospective on Ghariv: The Quaking City and its impact on the Revolution format.
Ghariv, a custom Magic: the Gathering set designed by CanterburyEgg, was once of the six inaugural sets that were present when the Revolution format was first created, and as a result it has laid the groundwork for the format’s landscape and provided consistent access to tools that have underpinned many of the format’s best decks. That being said, like the lifespan of any set in a custom card format, Ghariv’s tenure saw it undergo various periods of discovery, where cards that were previously overlooked suddenly got chance to shine, either through interactions with cards that just rotated in, or sometimes just because they were underrated in the first place! In this article, I’m going to start by giving a brief flavor and mechanical overview of the set in general, and then I’m going to go into a historical review of the cards and archetypes from Ghariv that impacted Revolution during its time in the format.
Flavorfully, GQC follows the events of its predecessor, Ghariv, The Sacred City, which first introduced us to this setting. In it, we meet Jorah, high Priest of the directly named God.
He preaches the good word and gospel, and has founded the eponymous walled city of Ghariv to act as a safehaven from the growing Darkness ™ that threatens from the outside world. Through the events of the set, however, we find out that he's playing both sides; while he’s genuinely drunk his own Koolaid and believes he’s carrying out God’s word, this fanaticism also means that he believes his end justifies the means. In secret, Jorah’s true power comes from good old fashioned blood sacrifice - his own or his disciples, he aint picky. He consorts with and creates Demons, and in doing so kills two birds with one stone - he creates a credible threat that makes people flock to him and increases his influence, while also literally giving himself more magical power through the rituals he performs.
In GQC, we see this perverse balance upset by intruders from another world - the Eldrazi. For the first time, Jorah has found a foe that is not only stronger than him, but also cannot be reasoned with, cajoled, or threatened. Jorah creating Ghariv - and the events of his whole life - have been spent preparing for this moment, but as the war progresses, Jorah has to accept a grim fact - he is, for the first time in his life, losing. Faith in him in waning, and privately, so too is his faith in himself.
This conflict is represented in the mechanics of the set, with a “faction” mechanic for each of the Eldrazi and Jorah’s forces, and then one shared mechanic representing the inhuman, metaphysical nature of the paragons of both sides.
The first of these mechanics is Reverent. Reverent is a batching mechanic that lumps Angels, Clerics, and Demons together - a representation of the motley crew that follow Jorah in his fight to preserve Ghariv. This is the mechanic that saw the least competitive impact - while people did brew with it in white-black aggressive shells, both the nature of the mechanic - demons and angels generally being both high-cost and powerful on their own - and its payoffs being Fine to lackluster made it hard to find any footing in the format.
Next up is Propagate. This was essentially a sidegrade fabricate, where on ETB you could either put N +1/+1 counters on the creature or create that mana 0/1 Eldrazi Spawns with the ability to Sacrifice them for C. This mechanic obviously represented the Eldrazi faction, and similar to Reverent, didn’t have that much competitive impact. It did, however, spawn one deck that which we’ll be talking about later.
Finally we have Coalesce, a returning mechanic from CyberChronometer’s Rail War. This one is a doozy if you haven’t heard of it before, but it is effectively flashback, but you also get a creature. The text reads
as: You may cast this for its Coalesce cost from your graveyard. If you do, put it onto the battlefield as a [Type] Horror creature after it resolves. Exile it if it would leave the battlefield or not resolve. It goes on instants and sorceries, and essentially means that when you cast it from your graveyard, you get the spell effect, and then it resolves as a creature which potentially has its own abilities. Coalesce, unlike the other mechanics from this set, was an instant and enduring staple of the format; its natural 3-for-1 nature meant that any slower deck naturally wanted them, and its presence was one of the reasons that grave control and management was such an integral part of the format in the months following its inception.
Okay, with that initial context delivered, I’m gonna go through each of the cards from Ghariv that had a sizeable constructed impact, and explain how they shaped the format! This’ll be semi-chronological, but I’ll be hopping around based on relationships and throughlines between cards, and will be taking a scheduled break in the middle to talk about some of the more boring, but no less essential reprints and sideboard cards. With that said, let’s get into it!
One of the strongest decks in the early months of the format, and even well into later rotations, was Sultai Reanimator! While this deck was ultimately an exercise in emergence, with essential pieces coming from other sets like Monsters of Chikyu, Svergard, and Kuutalya, Ghariv also had an important role to play in the deck’s genesis, so we’re going to be talking about a few of those cards and their role in the deck. The first of
these was Arcane Strategist! Along with the Kuutalya surveil lands, this was one of the few ways the deck had to get cards into grave on turn 1, and was often part of the fastest starts, milling over a reanimation target and then scrying to help you dig for acceleration or the reanimation spell itself. It was also great for proactively advancing your gameplan while also doing a good job of styming aggro/trading with dangerous creatures like Veiltouched Soulbinder. In later iterations of the deck, it was replaced by Eavesdrop due to the need for additional card types for Thin the Veil, but Strategist’s impact on the structure and play patterns of the deck were felt throughout the rest of its versions. Speaking of needing types for Thin the Veil, one of the only other instants in the deck was Let the Truth In! This innocuous Thrill of Possibility variant was secretly one of the most important cards in the deck. Its most obvious strength was that it was both the only card in the deck that let you ditch reanimation targets that got stuck in hand, and could do so at instant speed, baiting opponents into going shields-down and then drop a reanimation target into grave on their end step into untapping and killing them. The option of saccing a
creature was also relevant; there were gamestates when you didn’t have a reanimation target in hand/wanted to keep everything there, so instead you just sacced your turn 1 Arcane Strategist instead. In terms of reanimation targets, the best ones overwhelmingly came from monsters of Chikyu, but Ghariv did provide one of the decent backup targets in Ashen Progenitor! It didn’t do the “board-in-a-box” trick quite as well as Chikyu Champion did, but it was still serviceable in that role and made it so that the deck could go up to a meaningful ratio of ten targets. For reanimation spells, Ghariv wasn’t a major contributor for the early days of the deck, but after the nerf to Unnatural Rebirth, its reprint of Rise Again became the backup reanimation spell of choice. Other versions of the deck and separate cheat-out shells also made good use out of Into the Breach. The last card that contributed to
reanimator’s success is also the one that had the most success outside of it as well, becoming a bedrock format staple for a variety of decks. The card in question is Grasp at Frail Dreams, and it is the first coalesce card we’re going to be talking about today. At its base, it's a Strategic Planning, which is far from a bad card in its own right; this is especially the case in thai grave focused format, where in reanimator decks it's dumping your big boys and digging for a reanimation spell, or in control where its binning even more Coalesce cards, and by taking a necessary smoothing/filler card and turning it into a wincon! This card was one of the big reasons that Reanimator had grind potential and didn’t just roll over to interaction, and why gravehate of some kind was necessary for any slow deck. It’s nothing crazy, nothing fancy - and yet with coalesce it absolutely is, and a staple card of the format to boot.
With all of this support, it may seem inconceivable that Reanimator didn’t just stomp all over the format - and while it was dominant, another linear threat was emerging as a contender to it. WR Aggro was devastatingly fast, and it had a tool that stopped
Reanimator cold in its tracks: Cybres-Clan Arbiter! This was one of the most centralising cards in the format in its first few months, and was still a respectable roleplayer in the rotations since. The ability to hand attack an opponent on turn two was devastatingly in general, but especially on the play, when it gave aggro’s one-drops time to eke in damage, and likely got under anything a non-aggro opponent was hoping to do. Delaying ramp and cantrips was annoying, removal worrying, and wipes game-losing. This card was also originally a 2/3, which along with vigilance made it a nightmare to face as a creature deck as well. It was nerfed to a 2/2 to mitigate this, but still remained devastating against combo and control decks, forcing them to always consider while mulliganing: if I keep this hand, do I just lose to a turn 2 Arbiter? Definitely in the running for the most impactful card to come out of this set.
While we’re talking about the most impactful cards to come out of this set, let's look at
Merciless Shieldbreaker. This card is a lot to parse at first, but once you understand it, it's terrifying; a 4 mana 4/4 that also each turns, turns one of your opponent’s permanents into a ticking time bomb, forcing them to scramble for an answer quickly or get their board - and life total - blown up. These made it a monster all on its own, but this power only spiked when paired with cards that could give it haste like Sermon of the Way, Elemental of Surprise, and Rage-Fueled Razorback, which then doubled its immediate rusting and swung for four on its own. It wasn’t all upside, though; we had plenty of spare tokens like Glyphs and Clues that decks could sac off before the rust counters caught up, and if you were planning on blocking anyways you could always trade or chump with the rusted creature. Still, these factors weren’t enough to hold it back from being a format all-star, even becoming one of the only two cards from Ghariv to have a champion promo, for being instrumental to a GP winner’s deck! AllWhoWander used it to good effect in their GR midrange list, having 12 two-mana ramps spells to guarantee landing Shieldbreaker or another 4-drop haymaker on turn three, and then carrying the game from there.
The only other card from Ghariv to have a champion promo is Rivha, Heiress of Pinions! We’ll talk about her winning tournament in a bit, but first lets talk about her
initial success in the format. In the first few months of the format, Rivha functioned as the topend for a potent WR tokens aggro list that threatened to end the game if it was allowed to untap with Rivha. Using both Rivha and Dramatic End as forms of reach, the deck converted its early board presence into a game-winning inferno before the opponent even had a chance to wipe! …It was still weak to spot removal on Rivha and other haymakers, though, and without support the tokens themselves could be dealt with at the opposing players' leisure. It eventually fell from favor as the premier aggro deck, and with it so too did Rivha. She was out of the meta for more than a year, outclassed and forgotten… until finally one day, the tournament organizers for Revolution decided to host a slightly different event for their monthly GP. To blow off some steam towards the end of the rotation, they decided to have a Brawl tourney! While everyone else scrambled to find what the best over-the-top value pile they could make was, delighting in helming their decks with planeswalkers and six-drop creatures, DrChillbrain had a different idea: what if I just curved out into a guaranteed Rivha? Turns out the answer to that question was “you win the game before most decks end up spinning their wheels -” Rivha just ran down (or should I say flew over?) the competition, creating early pressure that forced responsiveness rather than proactive gameplay from opposing decks, and then leveraging its “win board stalls” button in the command zone to end long games.
Despite Reanimator’s dominance during the early months of league, the actual first breakout combo deck success came from a different card: Angel of Remembrance! This card originally said “permanent” and not “creature,” and this allowed it to form a combo loop with Lunar Vigil. The actual specifics of the combo are long-winded enough for it to be outside of the scope of this already very long article, but the upshot of it was with these two cards, you could set up a loop that allowed you to draw your deck, make a lot of mana, and then point the draw at an opponent and force them to deck themselves. While the combo was something people were aware of at the inception of the format, it was originally thought to be a three card combo, and initial versions of the deck were all-in on the combo and much clunkier as a result. However, lines were discovered that allowed it to be a twin-esque two-card combo and that also made it far more resilient to interaction, and this freed up slots for hatebears like the aforementioned Cybres-Clan Arbiter, giving it a strong backup plan of just beating down the opponent while they struggled to stave off the combo. This one-two punch led to it winning the first ever Revolution GP! After the tournament, the A+B nature of the combo and lack of clean interaction points led to Angel of Remembrance being nerfed to only recur creatures, killing the combo. While it doesn’t have a Champion Promo, Angel of Remembrance played a major role in the first real competitive success the format saw, and deserves to be remembered for that.
Monoblue tempo was another deck to look out for during the early months of the format. While a majority of this was off the back of Tidepool Turtle, the format had a
legitimately impressive interaction suite, a decent chunk of which was provided by Ghariv. Cursory Glance was a potent piece of countermagic against low-curve decks, not losing any effectiveness against them in the mid to late game in the way that a taxing counterspell might, while Siphon Memory embodied the tempo mindset of “just one turn longer…”. It drawing you a card like Remand was also a not-insignificant part of its power, helping to maintain card advantage. Meanwhile, in terms of answering creatures and resolved threats, Embrace Unending Frost kept creatures locked down for long enough that they might as well not exist, as well as giving you a decent body to get beats in with. Much more effective at this role, however, was Persuasive Orator, who was attractive not only for being a massive board and tempo swing versus aggro decks but also because it was terrifyingly potent against some of the stronger threats in the format at the time, like the Experience transformers and Chikyu Champion’s tokens.
Monoblack or Bx midrange cropped up in the middle of the format’s lifespan as a meta deck, and since then has consistently maintained itself as one of the best decks in the format, if not the evergreen “you must be this tall” deck to beat in the format! There were a confluence of factors and inter-set interactions that led to this, but some of the deck’s most potent and straightforward tools came from GQC! The first of these is Suffer Vile Retribution. Trading Diabolic Edict’s instant speed for an extra cast and a whopping 5/5 body, SVR became an immediate staple of interactive decks. In a strange twist, though, SVR found itself out of favor in black midrange decks after a certain point, and truly only found its home in slow, big mana control decks. The reasons for this were simple; at seven mana to recast it, you really wanted some acceleration or other interaction to guarantee that you’d get to the point where recasting it was an option, whereas midrange decks had matchups where they wanted to be ending the game faster than that/be the beatdown. Additionally, lots of our aggro decks, especially if they’re on the play, demanded targeted interaction to deal with specific scaling threats. One of the targeted removal spells that helped with was Crucify! Crucify is pretty simple: what if Dismember, but you actually needed black mana to cast it and also couldn’t half-ass the life payment? Even with these constraints, Crucify proved itself to be one of the best removal spells in the format, being a staple throughout its tenure in the format. The life payment was a real cost and often led to nailbiter scenarios versus aggro decks, but often you saved more life in the long run by Killing the Threat than you lost from Crucify itself. Being active at instant speed on t1 was also crucial. Of course, Midrange decks can’t sustain themselves on interaction alone; unlike control decks they need wincons as well, and the best of the best was none other than Threzak, the
Heinous! Threzak really did do it all: he was a cheap, overstatted flying threat, he killed a thing, he refilled your hand… sometimes all at once! The life payment was a real cost, but the secret was the stabilization Threzak’s body, killing something, and drawing into more removal netted you was well worth it, because unless they had face burn, it would be an uphill battle to deal damage to you. And for true life total stabilisation, the deck had other tools available, such as Threzak’s partner in crime Myrkalt. It’s hard to overstate Threzak’s impact - he was one of the strongest cards in the format in his time, and could be argued to be the strongest card to come out of Ghariv as a whole. (Though as we've already seen and will continue to see, the race for that spot is a tight one!)
One of the cards whose constructed impact may be more surprising is Transcendent Effigy’s role in Esper Control. On its face, Effigy is a draft chaff common; it's a middling artifact creature with defender and a low-impact ability. This felt especially true in the era of experience-based aggro, where a fat butt alone wasn’t enough to stymie aggressive shells. No, what really made Transcendent Effigy a player was the presence of Thin the Veil in the format. All of a sudden, it didn’t matter if Transcendant Effigy was dying in a few turns; in fact, it was actively a good thing! It would block early aggression, gain some life to add to the bargain, and then die and provide two types for Thin the Veil! This is, of course, assuming that you didn’t just mill it off of Grasp at Frail Dreams. Speaking of Grasp at Frail Dreams, the presence of Thin the Veil was another reason that coalesce cards were so powerful; in addition to their inherent benefits, them being Tribal sorceries meant that they inherently provided two types for Thin the Veil, letting you hit up to six types in grave with some consistency!
This threshold is actually relevant, since it lets you grab one of Esper Control’s best wincons, His Holiness Jorah! Jorah does everything that you want a control wincon to do; he generates card advantage, he gains you life so you can stabilize, he kills nonland permanents, and exiles graveyards, which as I mentioned earlier was huge given coalesce and other value engines running around that could really ruin a control deck’s day. The ult, while rarely ever reached before a game’s end, was hilarious when it did go off in the few games where the opponent didn’t immediately scoop.
Moving on to some of the many ramp support cards Ghariv provided, Cobalt Basin was an interesting midrange and ramp piece for the early portion of the format. It functioned exactly as its canon counterpart did; along with our Green Sun’s Zenith variant, Search the Unknown, it made it so that the midrange toolbox tutor now also functioned as ramp on turn two, giving the deck a lot more flexibility. After Search the Unknown rotated, however, Cobalt Basin fell off sharply, and has been dormant ever since.
As anyone who has ever played with Recall Forgotten Eons in MSEM can attest to, Coalesce cards that ramp you themselves are some of the most satisfying self-enablers out there, and RFE’s baby cousin Flourish in Calamity is no exception. Alongside an Explore reprint from Svergard, Flourish allowed for some powerful and frankly underexplored 8Explore ramp shells - though some of that underexploration was likely due to the “basic” land rider on Flourish existing in a time where 3-color decks and utility lands were highly encouraged by sister set Kuutalya. Regardless, 8Explore decks got their time in the sun when Karslav added Scout Ahead and Rootsinger, making the deck 12Explore and giving it explosive ramp potential while maintaining card parity. Another example of the “ramp on coalesce is good” principle was Thrive in Exotic Chaos, which was less played than its cousin but still saw some reasonable success in ramp shells as a hybrid enabler/wincon.
Another wincon-stapled-to-a-ramp-piece was Jade Champion! The 5/5 trample statline made for a respectable beatstick, and the ETB allowed you to search for powerful manasink utility lands like Ascendant Peak that comboed well with the untap ability on champion. Jade Champion saw sporadic play, probably because five mana is the threshold at which a card really has to justify its inclusion in decks in Revolution, plus coalesce cards were already serving as respectable topend, but Jade Champion still made its mark on the trappings of early ramp decks.
An off-the-wall ramp deck that made an appearance at a GP was Propagate ramp! While
other ramp decks were exploitable thanks their lack of early board presence or having to choose between board presence and ramping, the Propagate deck got to have its cake and it too; between Nest Parasite and Permeating Maggot the deck could quickly gum up the board/trade off with aggro creatures. Then the Spawns could be traded in for traditional ramp payoffs, or turn into an army-in-a-can with baby craterhoof Overwhelming Grizzly. It also had options that let it be the beatdown in matchups that ramp wouldn’t otherwise be able to opt into that role in, thanks to two cards. The first of these Putrescent Carrier, who with Propagate backup could very quickly hit its threshold and turn into an unignorable clock - remember that its ability counts your lands as well, so you could easily have it start growing/be ready to attack on t4. The other was Ophidian Invader, which bridge the gap between your smalls propagators and your haymaker threats - it was a Permeating Maggot and an Overwhelming Grizzly all at once, and that flexibility at the midpoint of the curve really helped when you wanted to opt into laying the smackdown. Overall, the propagate deck, while never quite tier 1, was still a legitimate contender that brought in its deckbuilding a unique niche to the ramp decks of the format.
Another card that showed up here and there in ramp shells was a reprint of All is Dust! It turns out that the steep cost compared to regular wraths doesn’t matter if its one-sided, who knew. This scenario came up in three different decks; first was the Propagate deck we just talked about, where Devoid pulled a lot of weight in letting you keep your Propagators out and about to break parity. Next was an artifact-ramp based deck centered around Monument of the Thirty and Destructive Force, essentially functioning as a wildfire deck; All is Dust functioned as a backup wipe versus decks who got a lot of value out of noncreature permanents. Finally, the last deck that used All is Dust that we’re going to talk about was actually the first to make use of it. It was the final tournament of the first rotation of the format, and Vastuum, one of the other inaugural sets, was about to rotate out. Vastuum was notable for having a bunch of C mana cards and a supporting mechanic for them called “wastes,” where you would turn your lands into, well, Wastes as a cost. Some of these cards saw play in other shells, but surprisingly there had been little attempt to cross them over with the colorless cards from GQC…. until this final tournament, where the G/C ramp deck put up a terrifying and exhilarating show. It was a beautiful example of the emergence factor that makes custom formats so great, and its a shame it was discovered so late into the time the two sets shared.
Another card used by the aforementioned wildfire deck was The Chasmal Rift! An Immortal-Sun esque jack-of-all-trades artifact, Chasmal Rift does a few small things that add up to big impact. It effectively draw a card each turn, including the one you play it on, it cheapens all your spells, but most importantly it provides this utility while giving you a wincon toolbox, grabbing you an expensive haymaker! Of course,
in the wildfire deck, this was usually Destructive Force itself, but if you had already wildfired, you could grab one of your traditional ramp wincons to just end the game.
One of the best targets to grab with Chasmal Rift was Ghariv, the Quaking City! Spoilers, but yes, the story of this set ends with, in a desperate final attempt, Jorah igniting the spark of his entire city and it planeswalking across the multiverse to safety, beyond the clutches of the Eldrazi… for now! Mechanically, Ghariv has the appropriate oomph to represent this power; it draws you cards and gives you board presence, can kill any permanent (or force your opponents to run out of lands to try and stop that permanent from dying) and his ult is one of the splashiest in the game, allowing to win via various piles from the sideboard. It being an artifact was also relevant for cards like Thin the Veil and Experienced Armorsmith, giving it additional utility.
Of course, this wouldn’t be an Eldrazi set if it didn’t have big fuckoff oversized wriggle monsters, and the most notable of the
minicycle in this set was Orovus, the Worldcarver! Orovus was the topend for the GC ramp deck, instantly ending the game on untap by wishing for Chikyu Champion and Elemental of Surprise, but also had some neat pile options in the event that winning through combat wasn’t an option. Unfortunately his cousin, Azumoth, generally didn’t have a time to shine, but will forever be immortalised as the most expensive creature in the format and for his unique-in-canon-and-custom mana cost.
Another big mana Eldrazi, but in a completely different way, was Protoplasmera! In the early months of the format, it saw success in RGx midrange variants as a flexible threat that could also be cashed in for removal or card advantage in a pinch, sniping aggro dorks in the earlygame and then going on to completely dominate the lategame with its command over combat and greedy
manasinking. The main issue with Protoplasmera was that it really could not - and wasn’t meant to - compete with other threats on curve, and required an excess of mana to function, so it faded out from the meta for a bit as scrapier midrange decks dueled it out. Later into the format, however, as black midrange began to take over, people were looking for angles to answer it on, and the answer they landed on was simple: just go over it! RG Ramp just focused on powering out mana advantage as fast as possible, and Protoplasmera was the perfect card for that strategy, rewarding the all-in investment by converting that mana into cards and board control. Protoplasmera was a flexible and terrifying threat in the decks it was played in, but in my opinion was often underrated or overlooked in favor of coalesce cards, when more control decks, big mana or otherwise, should’ve had it on their radars.
All right, now that we've talked about the heaviest hitters in the format, we're going to discuss some of the important reprints and sideboard cards that gave texture o the format before getting back into some more Ghariv-specific nonsense!
Sanguine Proselyte was notable for, along with Tartok Wanderer, giving aristocrats strategies 8 copies of 1 mana black creatures that died into another creature, giving the deck terrifyingly consistent curves and sac fodder. While crats never quite made it to being a tier 1 deck after a breakout performance at the opening day tournament, it was still a solid performer/deck to be aware of, and Sanguine Proselyte played a respectable role in that. It also had the dubious distinction of sharing card art with two different cards from other sets during its tenure.
Stroke of Nescience was one of the most impactful sideboard cards to come out of GQC, and maybe one of the most
impactful sideboard cards the format has seen period. Effective against go-over-the-top slow decks and combo decks alike, Nescience takes a standard hand attack spell and tacks on two very important factors: exiling the card, which was very relevant given the recursive or graveyard-focused nature of lots of the format, and looking at the top card of their library, which adds a surprising amount of power to the card. Hand attack is strong because you know what they have and what they’re planning, but everyone who has ever played with Thoughtseize has had that horrible moment where you force them to discard a card, only for them to rip another copy off the top. The additional information Nescience gave you made it so that you didn’t have to deal with that.
Holtun-Clan Assailant was a sideboard option for Gx stompy or midrange decks that didn’t have access to better removal versus aggro decks, giving them a beefy blocker and also the opportunity to off some of their one-toughness early plays! It was also relevant for a a different, much funnier reason, but we'll get to that later.
Chamber of Penance wasn’t always a sideboard card, but the role it played in the format generally functioned as such - it was a catch-all removal spell that trades that flexibility for being slow and interactable itself. There were some relevant in-format interactions - such as the ability to be tutored by Experienced Armorsmith - but for the most part it was just a Banishing Light. Not to diss it, though! It filled an important staple niche in its time, but we ended up getting other Banishing Light imitators from future sets, at which point Chamber of Penance gracefully relinquished the stage to them.
Opt is a pretty unremarkable reprint on its own, but along with Eavesdrop formed a potent core of 1 mana cantrips. Along with fellow reprint Sprite Dragon, this made UR spells a terrifying aggro threat, capable of blitzing foes out of nowhere with a chain of cheap spells, carrying it to a GP win! While UR Sprite Dragon decks will still exist and perform after Ghariv’s rotation, the loss of Opt will be felt more than one would ever expect for such a humble reprint.
Another card that UR Sprite Dragon - and many other decks beside - will feel the loss of
is Realize the Delicate Ideal! Realize fell at an interesting midpoint between aggressive and grindy. For spellslinger and even aggro decks in general, it gave them actual grind potential versus slower decks, helping them draw for burn and giving them an actual lategame threat without having to compromise on the curve of their deck. In slower decks like Naya midrange, Realize shone as a potent smoothing tool for early hands, allowing the deck to keep low-land openers that would otherwise be untenable for decks of its speed. Realize was the card that was never flashy, never exceptional, and as a result I think it didn’t make its way into many lists it likely should’ve, but even still it was one of the foundational cards of several archetypes in the format, and we probably won’t get a card as flexible as it for a while.
One of the greatest ironies of GQC is that while it had an entire mechanic devoted to trying to make three types of tribal easier to achieve and playable, its biggest tribal success came from none of those. Instead, it came from an unlikely source: Centaurs! Centaurs were a resilient tribal aggro deck that found its niche by being able to outsize opposing aggro decks and having some tricky midrange-adjacent options that other
decks didn’t. The core of the deck were Cybres-Clan Squire and Greenglade Advocate, two simple bears who added a lot of chevalline to the board/whose utility grew substantially as the game went on. Another was Hero of the Lost War; on its base its a 4/4 indest when attacking for 3, which is a pretty decent rate, but being able to move the buff around meant you could turn some of your smaller, yet to grow creatures into legitimate threats. It and Greenglade Advocate granting indestructible also meant that it was difficult for other creature-based decks to win combats on the block. The deck also had game versus slower decks thanks to its value engines and hatebears. We talked about Cybres-Clan Arbiter before, but the deck also had another hatebear in Mother of Hooves, whose ability granted you value from everything from Coalesce creatures to MON Fossils to Reanimator to Unite the Clans - and that’s even before considering the true draw of the card, the Mother of Runes protection ability, making combat even more of a nightmare for your
opponents to navigate and giving control players the same headaches they usually give the rest of us. Speaking of Unite the Clans, centaurs have a CoCo of their own in Sound the Blauhorn, allowing some versions of the deck to be on 8 CoCo copies, drown their opponents in instant-speed value, and make creature and control decks alike cry. Finally, Sound the Blauhorn going up to 5MV of creatures as opposed to Unite’s 4 actually matters significantly because it lets you grab a copy of Michal, the Anointed! One of the two Baneslayer Angels this set gives us, Michal is one of the many midrangey insurance policies the deck has, flying over boardstalls, gaining life to stabilize, and generally being a nuisance. Overall, Centaurs were a tribal deck that found a legitimate niche in the format - all from a single set, no less!
The other Baneslayer Angel from the set was Baptize in His Brilliance! This card went underplayed for a large portion of the format’s lifespan, but late into Ghariv’s tenure was played in midrange and a few control shells as a cheap way to make a small utility creature into a legitimate stabilisation threat, and then obviously boom, Baneslayer Angel from the grave. Ironically, this not having the “Protection from Dragons and Demons” text as compared to Baneslayer Angel is a reasonably large nerf, given some of the other threats in the format, but its still a straightforwardly powerful beatstick regardless.
Speaking of cards that didn’t see play until late in Ghariv’s lifespan and also had canon inspirations, let's talk about Oko, Trickster of the Trade. Canon Oko is one of the most iconic magic cards of all time for his impact on every competitive format he was legal in, but comparatively Ghariv’s Oko went underappreciated for a long time. A big reason for this is how Fine to underwhelming his abilities look; unlike Canon Oko, Elking something means that it can immediately kill him on the backswing, his +1 is middling unless you have both good board presence and excess mana, both signs you’re winning the game already, and his 0, while the best of his basic abilities, generally requires there to be an existing permanent that generates value each turn, conditions that indicate that either you’re winning or your opponent is in a way that you probably can’t mitigate with just Oko. Where he first started to see play was in Sultai and Bant control decks which aimed to leverage his spot on the curve as a way to pod into haymaker walkers with Essence Remade, usually As’Ahai. Upon playing him, people realised something very important: most MTG players learn, something during their competitive lifespan, to ignore the ults of the walkers. “Eh, they’re strong, but if you get there you’re probably already winning the game anyways.” And while that’s true, on Oko it was the opposite - his basic abilities relied on some level of support, but his ult could be activated two turns after he dropped, and was a legitimate “you win the game” button against any decks without wipes. All of a sudden, his other abilities became recontextualized; If you had any sort of existing board presence, you’d +1 for the hills and try to ult as quickly as possible. Otherwise, use his 0 and -2 to be annoying and buy time to either draw or pod into an As’Ahai, who herself would clean up the game. Overall, while thankfully not as strong as his canon counterpart, Oko, Trickster of the Trade was an overlooked, potent wincon for midrange decks.
A card that had powerful play patterns at times, but in my opinion was one the most
notable underplayed cards from the set, is Play the Mortal Fool! Most Coalesce cards were obvious and immediate format staples, but PtMF lacking the flexible utility and cheap cost of some of the other coalesce cards put it under the radar for lots of its existence in the format. When it did show up, though, it was oodles of value, tripling your most powerful ETB and curving into its coalesce side deceptively fast. Of course, the issue was that generally, unlike the other Coalesce creatures, you needed some board presence already to make it worth it, but the ability to copy opponent’s creatures was also often underlooked when evaluating this card, in my opinion. Overall, I think this card could’ve seen success in shells that aimed to put out recursive, punishing ETBs, such as the aforementioned Merciless Shieldbreaker or Gray Merchant of Asphodel alikes like Unknowable Starspawn, and use them to stack ever-increasing, inexorable value and damage that opponents just couldn’t afford to ignore.
Of course, these weren’t the only cards that ever saw play - GQC is a large set, and as with any custom format, players are always brewing and trying new things. Despite that, I hope this gave you a fun snapshot into how the set changed the format, and hopefully motivates you to both A. Go draft the set on Planesculptors and B. Play more Revolution to plumb the depths of what each set has to offer!