Mastering Hour of Devastation Limited

The time is nigh and the Hour of Devastation has come! 

Hour of Revelation Artwork by Raymond Swanland

Recently, I purchased a flight out this week for GP Toronto and wanted to get some practice in with the Hour of Devastation cards. My first impressions after doing my first Prerelease in over a year was: 'wow, this format is great!' Although I enjoyed Amonkhet Limited a lot, there were very serious balancing issues. Blue commons were awful and the aggressive decks had a lot of tools at 1-2 mana, almost too many, which made playing 7+ mana bombs like Cruel Reality and Sandwurm Convergence very difficult to justify. Now that I got my feet wet with a some of the new Hour of Devastation cards, I wanted to jot down some things I've noticed about the new cards and where I expect the metagame to be in the first few weeks. 

1) Blue Doesn't Suck Anymore! (Right?)

After Amonkhet's inability to deliver good incentives to draft Blue decks, HOU brings the punches with Unquenchable Thirst, Aerial Guide, and the long overdue return of Unsummon. These cards give Blue some flexibility to both be a tempo deck and apply a lot of early game pressure (U/R, U/W, U/B) while also having some tools to play a control strategy and delay the speed of the game so you can play your late-game spells (U/G and Grixis). Opening Amonkhet sealed pools felt very shallow when looking at Blue since your best common was Aven Initiate and Cartouche of Knowledge with not much else. Now you have the options of Cunning Survivor and Spellweaver Eternal to have aggressive two-drop creatures and Striped Riverwinder as a fine finisher in any control deck.

2) Gold and Synergistic Uncommons are still excellent.

In Amonhet, the gold uncommon cycle of cards were very powerful and often rewarded you for being in that archetype. With HOU Limited, the same still holds true. Unraveling Mummy, Resolute Survivors, Obelisk Spider, etc. are all great cards and work very well in their respective archetypes. Although these gold cards are not as powerful as their Amonkhet predecessors, there are additional pieces of mana fixing (Traveler's Amulet, Survivors' Encampment, and Crypt of the Eternals) in HOU that make splashing your 3rd color easier.

3) Removal spells and plenty of them

Beside all of Red's powerful removal at common: Open Fire, Blur of Blades, and Puncturing Blow, each color has an removal spell at common (most at instant speed). Green has Ambuscade, White has Sandblast, Black has Torment of Venom and Lethal Sting, while Blue has Unquenchable Thirst. Now that every color combination can interact with their opponent's creatures, this opens the doors for control decks as viable strategies as you have ways to slow the pace of the game down and stall until you play 6+ mana spells. Also, the sheer amount of additional wrath-effects at rare: Hour of Devastation, Hour of Revelation, Bontu's Last Reckoning, and Chaos Maw, aggro decks need to be more cautious when regurgitating all their creatures on the battlefield.

4) The mana cost of spells is higher... sort of

Looking at the premium removal spells in each color, the majority of them are around 3-5 mana, which is a huge increase from Amonkhet's Magma Spray and Gust Walker as premium commons. I have a few example decks that I've built below and the biggest difference you'll see between HOU and Amonkhet is a decreased emphasis in 2 drop creatures. Obviously, since Amonkhet is still a big part of HOU Limited, the aggressively costed spells and creatures are still available, so hyper-aggressive strategies are available but have slowed down since you won't often have access to as many copies of Slither Blade or Nef-Crop Entangler. In draft, I've noticed myself taking the best cards in my color and deserts while leaving the Amonkhet pack in P3 to fill up the curve if I'm missing 2 and 3 mana spells since they are so much better than the lower curve spells in HOU. 

5) Deserts matter

The payoffs for having deserts are very high. Sand Strangler and Desert's Hold being the premium uncommons to highlight the mechanic. HOU also has a large number of mediocre commons like Solitary Camel that become very powerful if you have access to Deserts in your deck. 

For the common cycle, they are very powerful and akin to the rare cycling land cycle in Amonkhet. You can play them when you need access to the land drop or color but cycle them away when you start flooding out AND they still provide the benefit to your Deserts-matter cards. In draft, I use them as metrics for identifying if a color is 'sort-of' open since someone who is drafting any particular strategy DOES want some amount of these in their deck to improve the overall consistency. Generally, I've been taking them around picks 5+ in draft, but I could see picking them sooner as correct. 

The uncommon cycle act like additional spells you can add to your deck for free while also providing the Desert subtext as a way to turn on other cards. Since they don't enter the battlefield tapped, they are also very good for curving out. So far, I've had very positive experiences playing with both the uncommon and common cycle and am always happy to sleeve up 3-4 deserts in each deck. 

HOU Sealed R/G Midrange (4-0)

In our first example, this is my HOU prerelease deck. It's a very stock example of R/G Deserts which is a midrange deck with good removal, a small handful of combat tricks and large creatures that want to punch in the red-zone. The 3 copies of Gilded Cerodons were very important in nullifying bockers and allowing my little guys to keep punching through. In this example, you'll notice only one Pride Sovereign as our rare. I feel that the rares in HOU are significantly less powerful the ones available in Amonkhet, so the incentive to 'reach' your deck to play them in terms of mana and curve is less enticing. I had access to a Bontu's Last Reckoning and Adorned Pouncer, both very good cards but the cost of forcing the fixing for both being Jund or Naya to splash either outweighted the benefit. In R4, I even got to play against my friend piloting his Grixis control deck featuring some real powerhouses.

Kevin Stoiber's HOU Prerelease Pool (WOW!)

Last week, I went to a draft FNM in a table of 10 people, so overall a lot of cards won't wheel and you'll end up seeing more cards, so I took the best card in each pack for the first 5 or so picks.

HOU Draft Pack 1 (Right to Left order)

Here's the final deck after 3 packs:

HOU Draft (R/W Aggro 5-0-2)

I thought this was one of the best draft decks I've ever drafted. It has all of the 2 drop creatures R/W is looking for including Gust Walker, Oketra's Avenger, and 2 copies of Earthshaker Khenra alongside handful of premium removal spells for any-sized creature. In P2, I made an error and took a Mummy Paramount over a Desert of the True thinking I could pick up a 3rd Desert in P3. Unfortunately, the Amonkhet Deserts are all pretty bad, so I didn't have an opportunity to pick one up that I'd be happy to play with. This choice left me with only 2 Deserts and it was difficult to 'active' my Desert matters cards in my matches. This mispick also cost me a color source in my mana base, so I could only sleeve up 7 Mountains instead of 8 which I wanted to reliably cast Puncturing Blow. Despite the misplay, the deck was a lot of fun to play and I feel I correctly identified White as the open color and was rewarded well in P3 with Amonkhet.

The next day, I battled in an HOU Sealed PPTQ at Campus Cards and Games and here's what I built.

HOU PPTQ Sealed (Jund 3-2)

The pool had some great Red cards, 3 copies of Frontline Devastator and 2 copies of Struggle // Survive, decent Green removal and creatures, alongside 3 great Black cards and not much else. Off the back of Evolving Wilds, Survivors' Encampment and a few cyclers, the splash into Black was doable to add some quality cards to the deck as spells 22-24. At one point, I got to cast Struggle on my opponent's Angel of Sanctions and then cast Survive to throw it back in their library. That was pretty sweet. I thought the deck performed well and I was able to sneak into 8th seed with a 3-2 record. Close one!

HOU PPTQ Draft (G/R Deserts 3-0)

Much of the same. Like my last HOU draft, I didn't prioritize Deserts heavily enough and was forced to play 2-off color Deserts to active my Hour of Promise. I started this draft with P1P1 Sand Strangler and picked a 2nd copy P2P2 with the person to my left also in Red taking an Hour of Devastation over it. Yikes. Shefet Monitor was also very impressive as it found Deserts to turn on my 3 copies of Sidewinder Naga.

G2 of PPTQ Finals

PPTQ Winner! About time

Now that I've talked about all my sweet Red-based decks in Hour of Devastation Limited, let's breakdown some P1P1 packs. Take a look at the image first, then pick the card you would take and afterwards, read my evaluation below! 

P1P1 #1 image courtesy of starcitygames.com

This pack is fairly weak with the best cards available to us Solitary Camel, Devotee of Strength, Accursed Horde, and Chaos Maw. First, we can identify that the two uncommons and our rare have a higher ceiling than the Solitary Camel since their effects are both unique and very powerful, so it's safe to rule out the common here. Devotee of Strength is a flexible creature with a 3/2 body which is a fine rate that maximizes itself in the mid-late game where you want to sink mana into it's ability to upgrade your creatures and attack/defend with them. We can see this being useful in R/G aggro, G/W aggro, G-based ramp, or B/G midrange. The Accursed Horde is very powerful and shines best in B/W Zombies or some U/B or R/B Afflict derivative where we want to be attacking often. Chaos Maw is an interesting card that is very powerful if we are able to cast it and hit our opponent's creatures. This type of card is very good in R/G ramp or Grixis control. I think the cards are close enough in power level that it's difficult to argue that any one is better than the other, but my pick here is Devotee of Strength. It is the most flexible card since it's ability is relevant for aggro decks and builds as the game progresses. This pick allows you to pivot the rest of your pack according to what's open and I'm happy to take it here.

P1P1 #2 image courtesy of starcitygames.com

Again, another fairly weak pack but we have an interesting choice to make. As we've looked in Pack 1, we have Devotee of Strength as a very powerful card with Sunset Pyramid and Sandblast being distant 2nd choices. I think the straightforward pick here is to take the Naga, but here I would take Sunset Pyramid as it is a way to stay open as a fine playable and a way to take whatever best cards in the 2nd or 3rd picks of this pack end up being. We also get to ship a pack that really only has one good card in it, so we can determine that the person to our left will absolutely take the Naga and the proceeding player will take Sandblast. I think this will put us in a good spot for P2. 

P1P1 #3 image courtesy of starcitygames.com

Here we have a lot of interesting choices. The two gold cards, Resolute Survivors and Unraveling Mummy are the two strongest cards in the pack with Wildfire Eternal, Feral Prowler, and Unsummon being fine playables. The problem with our common playables is that they are all pretty lower power level and we're not exactly thrilled to take any of them. Here, I take Unraveling Mummy. Although we don't know the odds that we get to sleeve it up in our deck, the ceiling if we do is very high, where turning all of our medium-sized zombies into Vampire Nighthawks is very, very powerful. Alternatively, we could take Resolute Survivors, but finding Exert creatures is sometimes difficult since the metagame bias is towards aggressive decks and a lot of players will want to take them. Furthermore, Resolute Survivors is a worse splash card than Unraveling Mummy, where our gold zombie is still very splashable if we end up being an off-color zombie deck (U/W or R/B) and the Resolute Survivors is really only playable in R/W Aggro.

Thanks so much for reading my thoughts on HOU Limited today. Let me know how your Prereleases and Draft weekends went and what cards really shined for you!

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-David J.

EDH Series: Emrakul, the Promised End

'Only one vault was great enough to hold Emrakul.'

Emrakul, the Promised End Artwork by Jaime Jones

Emrakul, the Promised End EDH Deck on tapped out.net

What inspired you to build this deck?

While playing in the 2HG Prerelease with my friend, Brandon, I was lucky enough to open this beautiful monster as my Prerelease promo card and new immediately I had to build a deck with it. Colorless EDH decks are very uncommon and most of them play Kozilek, Butcher of Truth or Kozilek, the Great Distortion as ways to refuel cards in the late game. Naturally, if I'm going to play sleeve up the Eldrazi Titans, I'm going to play the biggest titan possible as my commander. For this deck, I chose to run the new Titans (Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Kozilek, the Great Distortion) because the Annihilator ability on the older Titans makes what they do very linear and I didn't want the deck to be overshadowed by that.

A few things I want to note about this deck is a 39 land count. I typically start my decks off at 38 lands because I can consistently hit land 6-8, which I feel are the most important ones for the average deck. For Emrakul and her arsenal, the deck is very mana hungry and we often want to see lands 10+, so in addition to the artifact mana ramp like Thran Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, and Burnished Hart, we do often see opening hands with 3-5 lands and are happy to keep them. As I play the deck more, I can even see going to a 40th land at some point.

The next sweet thing about this deck is the Salvaging Station package that allows us to recur some interaction and advantage in the late game. We have access to Scrabbling Claws (fantastic card), Expedition Map (amazing card), Universal Solvent, and Codex Shredder as great targets to re-use over and over as the game drags on.

The last thing I wanted to touch on was Krark-Clan Ironworks and mention that it is the best card in the deck. Although my deck isn't built to do anything degenerate, the Krark-Clan Ironworks allows us to invest our cheap artifacts into a huge boost of mana and pump out a very early Emrakul, the Promised End that most opponent's are not able to defend against so early in the game. The artifact also has incredible synergy with the Salvaging Station package and loops using Scrap Trawler, Myr Retriever, and Junk Diver as ways to rebuy cards and generate a lot of advantage, while also producing mana.

Eldritch Moon Prerelease

What is your favorite part about playing this deck?

This deck has a lot of staying power and has the ability to survive some pretty hairy situations since so many of our spells are so powerful: Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, Perilous Vault, and Planar Portal to name a few. Even most of our lands have abilities, so we always have something to do with our mana at almost every point in the game. Consequentially, you often have a ton of different options every turn, which can make identifying the best line really difficult. Personally, I really enjoy the challenge of finding the best lines (or seemingly best) out of a sea of options. Naturally, you'll mistakes as you play, but having so many different abilities allows you to recover from mistakes which makes for great gameplay.

Emrakul, the Promised... quite frankly she's a HUGE beater in the air and terrifying to fight against. Watching opponent's try to play around her triggered ability is pretty amusing. For the table, it's so difficult for our opponents to create a reasonable board state, but not look too threatening that I would want to Mindslaver them. The deck creates some fantastic politics and it's very enjoyable to play.

Did Amonkhet bring any new cards for you to use?

Well, not quite. However, the Kaladesh block before it brought some sweet artifact support that I was eager to try out. Inventors' Fair being the best card printed, it's a land that gives you a small amount of life with each turn and allows you to tutor out an artifact from your library, which can help you find your Krark-Clan Ironworks in the midgame or find Mindslaver, Platinum Angel, or Oblivion Stone in the late game.

We also received Planar Bridge as an interesting addition. I don't believe it's as powerful as Planar Portal since you can find spells with Planar Portal and the activation of 6 mana is significantly easier to reach than 8, but the bridge puts any permanent from the deck in play, allowing it to be a very slow toolbox for your high-impact permanents.

Thanks for joining me for another Deck Tech of some of my EDH projects I've been working on it. Let me know if you've also made an Emrakul, the Promised deck and what cool deck designs you've done with her!

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-David J.