If more proof was needed that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alrund's Epiphany is causing major problems in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic the Gathering's Standard format, the newly-released World Champi𝔍onship XXVII decklists should be enough.
Following , Wizards of the Coast has released all 16 competitors' Standard decklists ahead of the event on October 8-10. Out of the top 16, over 50 percent of them run four copies of the extra turn spell Alrund's Epiphany. Out of all of the decks to run blue cards, only one of them, Jean-Emmanuel Depraz's Temur Treasures, forgoes Alrund's Epiphany.
Alrund's Epiphany isn't the only currently problematic card in Standard to see widespread usage in the , as the green artifact Esika's Chariot appears in four decks. However, the argument could be made that Esika's Chariot is simply a good card, producing lots of tokens with relative ease, while Alrund's Epiphany is a problematic card that promotes unfun extra turn gameplay that Wizards tends to shy away from in the Standard format.
Of the top sixteen decks, there are only two that aren't running either Esika's Chariot or Alrund's Epiphany, and both of those are 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:mono-White aggro from Yoshihiko Ikawa and Rei Sato. It is a slight shame that Noriyuki Mori's Azorius Tempo felt the need to pack a single Alrund's Epiphany just in case (with one more in the sideboard), as otherwise it could have provided an interesting, non-Epiphany look at where blue is going in the current Standard.
On its own, Alrund's Epiphany isn't a massive problem. Combined with cards like Galvanic Iteration and Expressive Iteration, it leads to a player being able to chain multiple extra turns one after the other, effectively locking their opponent out of the game. It's come under fire recently, as pro and Star City Games columnist Brad Nelson said it had the potential to the Standard format. He was then later joined in this by fellow SCG writer Ross Merriam, who it's driving the format towards a "narrow, stagnant metagame".
Such a dire deck list at the World Championships tends to be the kind of fire that pushed Wizards of the Coast to act. If a Pauper tournament thrown of Chatterstorm was enough to get it and Sojourner's Companion banned in that format, lots of pro players playing 'unfun' extra turns decks in a highly-watched Standard tournament should be more than enough for there to be some action on Alrund's Epiphany not too long after.
