Where to start with adding Hour of Devastation to Standard? How about I start where I know: making tokens.
Hour of Devastation offers new opportunities and new potential challenges. Most of the new opportunities are centered around the eternalize mechanic, and the most threatening new challenge is Hour of Revelation, if it finds a home.
Beyond that, of course, we have to account for potential changes in the metagame that could threaten us, but that’s harder to predict.
The cards I’m most excited about attempt to serve the same role: attacking potential Hour of Revelation decks by threatening their hand to prevent them from casting Hour of Revelation. Those cards are Dreamstealer and Driven // Despair.
Dreamstealer still seems incredible against control to me. It’s a fairly cheap threat that they have to have a quick answer for, when I’m playing a deck where answers to single creatures are generally pretty bad, and when it comes back, a single hit is likely game-ending. Obviously, making two or more 4/4 Dreamstealers because of Anointed Procession should be a huge problem if they don’t have a sweeper ready.
Driven // Despair requires more to go right in terms of managing to stick a few creatures, but it’s more explosive and harder to answer with Magma Spray. I currently don’t think I want either of these cards in my maindeck, given the way I expect the metagame to look, but I’m pretty sure at least one of them is the right way to fight control decks in the sideboard.
Another long-shot option is Razaketh, the Foulblooded. For the most part, I think this asks too much: it doesn’t do anything unless you have Cryptolith Rite and a lot of creatures, but if you have that, it’s easy to have a board where you essentially get to immediately put whatever cards you want from your deck into your hand. That’s about as impressive as an effect can get. It’s probably too “win-more,” but it really does a lot of winning.
It should be expected that my starting point would be fairly close to where I was before, but with some simple additions:
Creatures (20)
- 4 Catacomb Sifter
- 4 Blisterpod
- 4 Thraben Inspector
- 4 Anointer Priest
- 3 Angel of Sanctions
- 1 Oketra the True
Lands (25)
Spells (15)
Sideboard
This is as simple as an update gets: cut three Tireless Trackers, a Tamiyo’s Journal, and a Gideon, Ally of Zendikar for four Dreamstealers and a Driven // Despair. Not much to see here, right?
Well, for that shell, yes. I know where I’m at and I need to try it to figure out what needs to change as I see how the metagame’s shaping up, but I have some other ideas about ways that Anointed Procession can be built:
Creatures (18)
Lands (23)
Spells (19)
As it turns out, this option already existed; the only new cards I’m playing here are Sunscourge Champions, and I have no idea if they’re any good. I thought of the deck because I wanted to use new eternalize creatures, but then I realized that I might be able to make the deck just G/W, and so I figured I’d start with the simplest base before getting into adding other colors.
Let’s look at what this deck is trying to do, and then we can talk about the other options which take advantage of Hour of Devastation.
The idea here is to use the Embalmer’s Tools cost reduction mechanic to deploy cheaper copies of Anointer Priest and Angel of Sanctions from your graveyard, while also using the Tools to find more of them.
The problem is that, unless you return a creature from your graveyard, you don’t actually have any Zombies in your deck. The solution is to use Vessel of Nascency and Crawling Sensation to find creatures to embalm and then use those with Embalmer’s Tools to keep finding more. Eventually, if you need to, you can switch to milling your opponent pretty quickly, but you’ll probably just attack them with Angel of Sanctions.
Playing only G/W limits our sideboard options considerably, which is why we have to use Heroic Intervention as an answer to opposing sweepers. Also, without cards like Hidden Stockpile and Ulvenwald Mysteries, we’re not quite as good at rebuilding. Ultimately, I think this shell isn’t as strong, but adding a color might fix that.
Creatures (17)
- 1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
- 4 Anointer Priest
- 4 Sacred Cat
- 3 Angel of Sanctions
- 4 Champion of Wits
- 1 Vizier of the Anointed
Lands (23)
Spells (20)
This deck adds Champion of Wits, an excellent creature to eternalize, but perhaps more importantly, the Faithless Looting when we cast it the first time allows us to discard our embalm creatures so that we can turn them into Zombies to start our engine without milling any creatures.
Further, I’ve added Grapple with the Past to support Ishkanah, Grafwidow by adding a card type and, of course, allowing us to return Ishkanah in the late-game if we’ve milled it with anything. I’ve been looking for a chance to use Ishkanah with Anointed Procession for a while.
Further, adding blue allows us to sideboard Negate, a far better option than Heroic Intervention, as well as Glyph Keeper, which seems like a great upgrade to Angel of Sanctions against decks with a lot of answers and few permanents.
I’ve lost Thraben Inspector, which makes Cryptolith Rite worse, but when I’ve built my deck around graveyard synergies, I’m just not sure it has enough synergies to justify the space.
Champion of Wits and Dreamstealer are both appealing, so I wonder if we actually need green. Obviously, without green our self-mill options are limited, and we lose Crypolith Rite, but if we play some creatures that are naturally Zombies, we can start our engine with Embalmer’s Tools.
Creatures (30)
- 4 Cryptbreaker
- 4 Anointer Priest
- 4 Sacred Cat
- 2 Angel of Sanctions
- 4 Dread Wanderer
- 4 Dreamstealer
- 4 Champion of Wits
- 4 Vizier of the Anointed
Lands (24)
Spells (6)
Sideboard
This is a bit more of a departure from where I’ve been, of course, but it’s doing some interesting things. You’ll note that I only have two Anointed Processions. When I’m in the business of making 1/1 tokens, doubling them is nice, but quadrupling them is where things really get interesting. When I’m making 4/4s, I think two is enough, and the second Anointed Procession is really overkill. Moreover, I’m very interested in Vizier of the Anointed, a toolbox/value engine all in itself, and I don’t want too many four-mana plays.
Cryptbreaker and Champion of Wits both allow me to discard Sacred Cats and Anointer Priests that I draw to functionally increase my reliable Zombie count to make Cryptbreaker and Embalmer’s Tools work as card draw engines, and here, drawing multiple Embalmer’s Tools is likely desirable, since I’m very interested in getting a discount on eternalize, embalm, and Dread Wanderers.
In the sideboard, Negate and Dark Salvation are the cards I’m most excited about. Negate is pretty obvious. Dark Salvation is an obvious card to play in a Zombie deck, and it might be weird not to have it in my maindeck, but I really want to maximize the value of putting a card in my graveyard, so I’m thinking it’s non-essential when I don’t need the removal, but if my opponent has important creatures, it should be great.
My sideboard has a lot of removal because I have a lot of tools for grinding and threatening control decks, and I’m most worried about getting run over by creatures that are much bigger than my creatures, which are all extremely small and bad at doing anything in combat other than chump blocking.
This deck as is isn’t using any aftermath cards, but that could be a mistake. Consign // Oblivion and Farm // Market are both pretty interesting. Consign doesn’t seem great, but rolling over Mind Rots might play well with my gameplan, and both sides of Farm // Market are appealing. Farm helps with the aforementioned problem dealing with creatures attacking me, and Market’s great for the same reason Champion of Wits is great: a lot of my cards are as good or better in the graveyard and this is a great way to smooth out my draws and find my important cards.
I do have concerns about this deck’s mana; it’s hard to build a three-color deck with two allied colors with a low curve without too many tapped lands in Standard, and I’m wondering if this deck is interested in drastic measures like using Survivor’s Encampment, since I have cheap white and black creatures and I’m not really concerned with being able to attack with them. I think it plays too badly with Port Town and Choked Estuary, and I think those are my best bets, but I’m not sure. It’s possible that it’s a better way to go than Evolving Wilds, especially if I’m concerned about milling too many of my basics. It might be best to play some of each. At first I was thinking I’d want Hidden Stockpile, but I actually don’t think it’s a good fit without Thraben Inspector and with only two Anointed Processions. I like scrying, but this deck uses card drawing and looting to accomplish a similar goal.
As you might imagine, I’m not expecting Embalmer’s Tools to blow up the Pro Tour, but it’s interesting to see how many options there are that make reasonable use of the card, which I think almost no one has had on their radar. More importantly, I’m just really looking forward to ruining some people’s days with Dreamstealer.