The most notable thing about Radiant’s Revenge is that it doesn’t include a copy of Radiant, Archangel.
Rare from Urza’s Legacy? Check.
Big splashy card that casual fans would dig? Check.
Fits the vibe the deck was designed around? Check.
Helps give the deck a well defined identity? Check.
Inspires players to make their own upgrades? Check.
It doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I suspect that what has happened is that it was originally meant to have been included, but pulled at the last minute for balance reasons. But why? You’d need one other flying creature out for it to become Serra Angel, or two to make it better. If you had enough other flying creatures to make it truly massive then you’ve got enough to win the game without it. Plus, it still dies to Doom Blade Terror.
There’s a few other Theme/Intro Decks where you have a clear case for a last minute change, too. The other example which instantly springs to mind is Ravenous Baboons and Exodus’s Groundbreaker. That one was even on the box art! Speaking of, Opal Champion on this one? Sustainer of the Realm would have been my pick, maybe even Erase or Radiant’s Judgment.
So what we got in the end is arguably the most forgettable of the Urza’s Block decks. While certainly not the worst, I think that honour would fall to Tombstone, without having a lynchpin like Radiant it does end up as a bit of a pile of cards. Compare this to the WU deck from Destiny. This shares the same colours, many cards, but has a clearer Aura theme which is nicely anchored by Rayne.
Actually: I’d not really made a connection about the blue precons from this block. Tombstone is blue and black, with a small white splash. There are these two which are both white blue. I do like Battle Surge (blue / red) but it doesn’t quite come together. Though in that case the blue spells do a lot of the heavy lifting: the aggressive red creatures didn’t really pack enough of a punch. And certainly look quaint by today’s standards! I’d probably put those 4 decks within the lower half of the block’s offerings. That leaves only the blue/green Time Drain… a pretty solid deck in my opinion. But wondering how that compares to the stock The Plague or Special Delivery isn’t really what we’re doing here. This is about the Enhanced decks!
There’s likely a quite elegant way to segueing into looking at the basic Radiant’s Revenge decklist here. “To examine the enhanced version we need to understand the…” But instead I’m going meta. Here’s the list:
Radiant’s Revenge
Basic Deck List
Lands (26)
11 Plains*
12 Island*
1 Drifting Meadow* — C
2 Remote Isle* — C
Creatures (19)
1 Mother of Runes W U
2 Opal Champion 2W C
3 Radiant’s Judgement 2W C
2 Sanctum Custodian* 2W C
1 Radiant's Dragoons 3W U
2 Sustainer of the Realm 2WW U
1 Fog Bank* 1U U
1 Raven Familiar 2U U
1 Thornwind Faeries 1UU C
2 Vigilant Drake 4U C
2 Ticking Gnomes 3 U
1 Mobile Fort* 4 U
Other (15)
1 Erase W C
1 Disenchant* 1W C
1 Pacifism* 1W C
2 Path of Peace* 3W C
2 Miscalculation 1U C
1 Catalog* 2U C
1 Power Sink* XU C
2 Opportunity 4UU U
2 Dragon Blood* 3 U
1 Ring of Glx 3 R
1 Urza's Blueprints 6 R
So the only truly terrible card is Radiant’s Dragoons, which might be passable at 4 mana if only it didn’t have echo. But it’s just a weird mix of stuff, all pretty disjointed from each other. Taking a look at the creatures: there’s a few creatures with flying, but it’s not a skies deck. All it’d have taken was having a second Raven Familiar instead of the second Ticking Gnomes. Potentially finding space for something along the lines of a Pendrell Drake or two: easy. Obviously Radiant, too.
Then if you were going to have two of any of the uncommons… Mother of Runes?
In terms of spells, for what is supposedly a control deck there’s one Catalog for card selection and a total three counterspells. Two of those are the soft cycling Mana Leak, the third the X cost Power Sink. Granted that the classic UU Counterspell didn’t get a print in Urza’s Saga, but there were others in the block which could have been chosen.
Let’s see how the guide sold it:
The Basic Deck
The play strategy for "Radiant's Revenge" is simple: be patient. Your deck contains three artifacts that, if the game lasts long enough, are likely to win it for you: Urza's Blueprints and two Dragon Bloods. The deck also contains Opportunity, which can give you card advantage late in the game.
The rest of the deck is designed to help you survive long enough for your clutch cards to materialise. Your spells and creatures are generally defensive: you have several creatures with high toughness (Mobile Fort, Radiant's Dragoons, and Sustainer of the Realm) and others with useful defensive abilities (Fog Bank, Mother of Runes, and Sanctum Custodian).
Ideally your creatures will stop several of your opponent's creatures from attacking effectively. In fact, the two Thornwind Faeries may keep your opponent's small creatures off the table altogether. Save your creature removal, spells such as Pacifism for getting rid of creatures you can't handle in other ways. You may be able to neutralise a creature by tapping it each turn with Ring of Gix, for example. You also have a Disenchant and an Erase to deal with threatening artifacts and enchantments. Don't use these removal spells frivolously-before you destroy a permanent, ask yourself if you can handle it any other way.
With careful defensive play, try to stalemate the game until one of your endgame cards comes into play. Eventually you'll draw an extra card every turn with Urza's Blueprints, or you'll use Dragon Blood to make a creature bigger each turn. Either artifact can put you in a position to start attacking and deal enough damage to win.
Is Dragon Blood a “clutch card”? I can certainly respect what it does, but also at the same time if you’ve managed to survive to the point where you can sink the mana into it then you’d probably be fine without it. The card draw is certainly nice, too, but the whole thing is too little reward. Where’s the big finisher or that card that really rewards you in the late game?
Full disclosure: I’m not someone who is usually drawn to playing full control decks. I prefer and aggro or tempo (even in blue, being quite liberal with using permission) type strategies. White and blue is probably my least played two colour combination. So maybe this is just me not really getting it? We’ll see how much of a fool I look when trying to interpret the Enhanced list, then, huh?
Radiant’s Revenge
Enhanced Deck List
Lands (26)
3 Plains — —
7 Island — —
4 Adarkar Wastes — 5E
2 Drifting Meadow — UZ
1 Faerie Conclave — UL
2 Reflecting Pool — TE
2 Remote Isle — UZ
2 Forbidding Watchtower — UL
3 Thalakos Lowlands — TE
Creatures (2)
2 Palinchron 5UU UL
Other (32)
2 Clear 1W UZ
3 Disenchant 1W 5E/TE/UZ
1 Pacifism TE/UZ
2 Cessation 2W UL
4 Wrath of God 2WW 5E
1 Force Spike U 5E
1 Portent U 5E
2 Whispers of the Muse U TE
1 Mana Leak 1U ST
2 Miscalculation 2 UL
4 Counterspell UU 5E/TE
1 Catalog 2U UZ
2 Dream Cache 2U TE
2 Dismiss 2UU TE
2 Opportunity 4UU UL
1 Power Sink XU 5E
1 Fountain of Youth 0 5E
Sideboard (15)
1 Clear W UZ
1 Disenchant 1W 5E
2 Pacifism 1W TE
4 Hydroblast U 5E
1 Mana Leak 1U ST
4 Dandân 1U 5E
2 Dismiss 2UU TE
See, this is better. Can definitely appreciate this. There’s still a lot of singletons but if you look closer then many of theme are things like Fountain of Youth which you only want the one copy of anyway. You also have the one Mana Leak which should be grouped with the Miscalculations: I don’t think there is a definitive answer if the upside of cycling is worth the downside of the “tax” being one less, so having 3 slots split between the two is totally fine.
Also: Dandân.
When someone asks you for your favourite card ever included in a precon list then you can now genuinely answer the forgetful fish itself. Thank you, Enhanced Radiant’s Judgment. You have done us a great service.
The Enhanced Deck
The enhanced deck is a nearly creatureless blue white control deck — a type very common in the early days of Magic and still viable today. The blue part of the deck controls what spells the opponent successfully casts, and white spells remove permanents that make it to the table.
Your goal for the first several turns is simply to survive, using Wrath of God, Pacifism. Cessation, Forbidding Watchtower, and the deck's numerous counterspells, Unless you draw a lot of counterspells, avoid playing them frivolously — save them for the spells you really need to stop.
In the midgame, you'll find yourself drawing lots of cards with Opportunity and Whispers of the Muse. As you draw more, your position in the game will get stronger and stronger, to the point where you'll have little concern that your opponent can hurt you. In the end you should have almost complete control, mostly because you'll have drawn many more cards than your opponent. At this point, just attack several times with a Palinchron for the win.
I mean, happy with all that. Very easy to understand what this deck wants to do. Understanding how to pilot it successfully is undoubtedly a different matter. Nothing really to add here, so to the board:
The Sideboard
Use Dismiss, Mana Leak, and the Dandans against other blue or partly blue control decks.
This will beef up your counterspelling (thereby neutralising creature removal spells) as well as providing a major offensive threat with the Dandâns. The Dandâns can win you games quickly against blue decks.
Against a fast creature deck, put in extra Pacifisms for additional defence against creatures, and take out either Disenchants or an Opportunity and one of your counterspells depending on whether you think the Disenchants are needed. Against a fast red deck put in the four Hydroblasts and remove some counterspells.
Your sideboard contains a fourth Disenchant and an extra Clear in case your opponent is making heavy use of annoying artifacts or enchantments such as Winter Orb or Oaths.
I was a bit flippant about Dandan before but that’s actually a pretty amazing game plan. I don’t think I’d have considered it. Everything else makes sense too. I’m not sure if it’s just that the Enhanced deck is much better structured, or if whoever supplied the breakdown just did really good job at it. Probably both. Not really anything of any substance I can comment on here either. A pretty solid 75.
I’m feeling that I’m going to rate this one fairly highly. Of course there’s still going to be Deep Freeze and the other blue Tempest decks which I suspect will be pretty formidable, but we’ll get to those. Pretty curious to deep dive into Tidal Mastery, too, actually as there’s most definitely a redemption arc for that. If there’s any justice in the world. Only 27 more reviews to go after this one, so we’ll see I guess.
I’m going to go into detailing what overlap there is between Basic and Advanced next, so probably a good spot to go into my review mythology. This is very unscientific and my rating system is ranking the decks on a list based on how likely it is that I’ll want to grab the singles to put them together. One consideration is how well the Enhanced deck builds off the strategy of the off-the-shelf deck. Or redeems it, which is more of the case with this one in particular. Then there is power, fun, uniqueness… all sorts of other stuff.
Similarities
Plains: 11 copies, reduced to 3
Island: 12 copies, reduced to 7
Drifting Meadow: 1 copy, increased to 2
Remote Isle: 2 copies in both decks
Erase: 1 copy, increased to 3 (2 main, 1 side)
Disenchant: 1 copy, increased to 4 (3 main, 1 side)
Pacifism: 1 copy, increased to 3 (1 main, 2 side)
Miscalculation: 2 copies in both decks
Catalog: 1 copy in both decks
Power Sink: 1 copy in both decks
Opportunity: 2 copies in both decks
If you had brought a copy of this deck, and wanted to build the enhanced version, then you’d have 9/34 non-land cards you’d need. Or 12/37 of the non-basics and 22/60 total.
Looking at it the other way: how many cards in the Enhanced deck were also in the basic version? This is 16/75 non-land, 20/75 non-basic and 30/75 of the total.
A few different numbers there, but I put most weight on the non-basic stats personally. These come out to be roughly a third, which seems to be the standard for the decks I’ve done so far.
My biggest issue with this selection? I’d say this is Catalog and Power Sink which probably should be another copy of Portent and Mana Leak respectively. They seem like they’re just there to make up the minimum numbers, to provide that continuity. The other thing is that most of the cards that have carried through are staples: the most distinctive card from the original deck is Opportunity. Everything else could potentially be added into a sideboard or any other type of deck.
Conclusion
Ultimately, even though I do quite like the Enhanced decklist, it fails for me on a pretty important metric. It just doesn’t feel like an obvious evolution or upgrade to the stock deck. I went on a bit about flying creatures in the review so I guess that’s an indication that I’d have probably preferred to see more of a skies deck with a good control package in support of that. Instead it comes across like a completely different deck which just happens to share some of the same cards. Even if they’d included Palinchron as one of the two rares maybe? That connection would have made a lot of difference I think.
Do I want to build it?
Yeah. It still looks like it’d be an interesting experience to play. Maybe I need to get behind the reins of a proper WU Control deck and get a proper appreciation for them. This could be a good baby step for me on that journey.
Would I make changes if I did?
Maybe I’d consider consolidating the counterspells and the draw/filtering. That sole Force Spike is the most jarring thing for me I think. So there’s a slight chance I might tweak, but I’d probably be happy enough playing it as published.
How I rank this is a bit tricky. It’s sitting around Deepwood Menace, but if it’s higher or lower is the question. My gut feeling is to place it behind, but then I’m definitely changing cards for that deck and how much should that count for the final position? I might just call it even at the moment, but reserve the right to switch things around a bit as I go.
Ranking 6/9
1: Assassin
2: Migraine
3= Deepwood Menace
3= Radiant’s Revenge
5: Breakdown
Next in this series I’ll be hitting Rath again. Most likely The Flames of Rath, in fact. Still working on all that stuff I mentioned in that previous post too!
Edit 13/11/23: changed post title to new “series” name. Also I built WU “Landstill” in Premodern — which has a lot of similarities to this — as my mate said he’d help me test Sligh if I had a deck with counterspells in it he could use. Let me tell you… when you draw three cards of a Standstill… it feels good. I might be a blue player now. Yikes.
Beats and Skies 
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