August 11th, 2022 Banned and Restricted Announcement: Cabaretti Revels and Racketeer Boss Changed, Limited Overhauls
Alchemy is seeing some big changes with changes to Cabaretti Revels, Racketeer Boss, and 27 card changes for Limited! Find out those exact changes here!
With Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate out for some time, we’re seeing the first changes happen with the released cards. While this patch is mostly centered around Limited, we are seeing two large ramifications in Alchemy/Historic as well.
One of the breakout cards from Alchemy Horizons, Cabaretti Revels is an extremely powerful engine card that can quickly overwhelm a board state with a multitude of threats. While many were quickly calling for a nerf to this card, most players were noting that you can keep triggering it in a single turn making for extremely explosive turns that were hard to come back from. This was especially true in the Naya Revels Lifegain deck that could frequently play this on turn 3, then play two “Pridemate” creatures – creatures that get a +1/+1 counter with each point of life gained – and seek out two life gain creatures for an immediately obscene board state.
While that change is what I would’ve gone for as well, changing the casting cost to RRG makes this substantially harder to cast in any interested strategy. This seems like a reasonable change as well since you’ll need to be dedicated Gruul to make this card viable which it ironically has yet to see play in as it getting deferred to powerful three color strategies like Naya and Jund instead. While this card remains very powerful, this will heavily limit the amount of play it’ll see.
This is no surprise at all as Racketeer Boss has been the center of many loops in Alchemy and Historic since it’s inception. There was no good way to change this card beyond limiting the number of Treasures the effected cards could generate. Now, Racketeer Boss is a pseudo Burning-Tree Emissary that is a much fairer application and likely more in line with the spirit of the design.
Sweeping Limited Changes to Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate
While many players have decried that they don’t like how Wizards have utilized balance changes, one of the most interesting applications of this tool is actively changing a Limited format! While I’ve heard predominately good things about the format, there were cards that were overshot in power level and large swaths of cards that were in desperate need of a buff. More specifically, Blue was considered near unplayable in the format as the cards were so weak and aggressive creatures were much better than their defensive counterparts.
Now that we can have an updated Limited format, players can play with the same card pool, but with the card power levels changed, they have a functional new format to explore. Rather than go over all 27 Limited changes individually here (as most of them are small P/T changes), they’ll be outlined below.
You Come to a River now costs 2U from 1U, but the first effect lets the owner of the chosen nonland permanent put it on the top or bottom of their library rather than returning it to hand.
On Thursday, August 11, the next game update brings several adjustments to cards in Alchemy and Historic, as well as changes to rebalance support for Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate Draft.
Constructed Changes
Cabaretti Revels Costs RRG (from 1RG)
Decks were too easily able to splash Cabaretti Revels, strengthening decks that were already powerful. We are adjusting the mana cost to increase the color requirements to cast Cabaretti Revels to make it more difficult to splash and increase its deck-building requirement.
Racketeer Boss Cards now lose ability once cast
Like the combo with Grinning Ignus, Racketeer Boss was still enabling combo decks using Acererak the Archlich and Ominous Traveler. We are removing the ability to repeatedly generate treasure to close out the combos while keeping its strength and functionality in fair decks.
Draft Changes
We are aiming to make underperforming strategies and archetypes stronger in Alchemy Horizons: Baldur’s Gate Draft. Most of the changes aim to make blocking and other defensive strategies stronger. We are increasing the toughness of five blue creatures, allowing Young Red Dragon to block, and changing a few other cards like Manticore, Circle of the Land Druid and Eyes of the Beholder to make it easier to defend against aggressive decks.
We are also reducing the efficiency of Steadfast Unicorn, Blessed Hippogriff, and Guildsworn Prowlers. These were some of the strongest commons in Draft that made blocking too difficult. It was too easy to use Steadfast Unicorn’s ability and Blessed Hippogriff’s adventure while casting other spells in the same turn. Reducing Guildsworn Prowler’s power will shift it from a strong attacker to a defensive and synergistic card.
We’re also making additional adjustments to ensure blue is a more viable draft color choice. Charmed Sleep was poorly positioned against this format’s sacrifice and blink effects, so we redesigned You Come to a River to give the color a more consistent removal spell. This redesign and the defensive buffs to blue creatures should make the color stronger overall, with additional indirect help coming from buffs to Dragon deck archetypes.
Dragonborn Looter Costs U (from 1U)
Pseudodragon Familiar Now 2/2 (from 2/1)
Water Weird Gains “1U: Water Weird gets +1/-1 until end of turn.”
Young Blue Dragon Now 3/4 (from 3/3)
You Come to a River Redesigned:
You Come to a River 2U Sorcery Choose one —
Fight the Current — The owner of target nonland permanent puts it on the top or bottom of their library.
Find a Crossing — Target creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn and can’t be blocked this turn.
Kenku Artificer Now 1/3 (from 1/1)
Vhal, Eager Scholar (and each specialize face) Now 2/2 (from 2/1); specialize faces now 4/4 (from 4/3)
Alora, Rogue Companion (and each specialize face) Now 3/3 (from 3/2); specialize faces now 4/4 (from 4/3)
Goggles of Night Now equip 1 (from equip 2)
Guildsworn Prowler Now 1/1 (from 2/1)
Manticore Now 3/1 (from 2/1)
Baleful Beholder Now 7/5 (from 6/5)
Eyes of the Beholder Costs 3BB (from 4BB)
Sigil of Mykrul Costs 1B (from 2B)
Young Red Dragon Now 3/1 (from 3/2); loses “Young Red Dragon can’t block.”
Robert "DoggertQBones" Lee is the content manager of MTGAZone and a high ranked Arena player. He has one GP Top 8 and pioneered popular archetypes like UB 8 Shark, UB Yorion, and GW Company in Historic. Beyond Magic, his passions are writing and coaching! Join our community on Twitch and Discord.
