Pattern Recognition #363 - Hazezon Deck Tech

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

10 April 2025

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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

Hello and welcome back! Today, I'm going to break down the Hazezon deck I ended up using, and then build up a new one for you all, from the ground up. Consider this a sort of epilogue to the Slow Grow, with one more thing to come after this. Hopefully.

Anyway, here is the deck as it stands after Week 6!

Hazezon, Slow Grower of Sands

Commander / EDH berryjon

30 VIEWS

Nothing spectacular here, but the deck is solid. I ran the deck as a mid-range deck, with buildup on the first couple turns, but the deck didn't really get started until turn 3 at the earliest, if only because of the lynch-pin nature of my Commander. In general though, the mana curve is very solid, with over a dozen drops and drops each, and curving down from there. But the nature of those drops also concerns me. A lot of it was buildup, or cards best cast later in the game rather than on curve, so I'm going to have to reexamine my priorities there.

There wasn't a lot of outright ramp in the deck either. Yes, there was Harrow and Map the Frontier and Hour of Revelation and Sand Scout. But this deck doesn't want regular lands, it wants Deserts, which means that those 18 lands need to come up more often than not. Yes, I recognize that fetching out non-deserts makes it slightly more likely to draw them in the future, but the odds are still low. Better to find a way to either roll more Deserts, or better ways to get them, even if it's just mass card draw.

I was confused at first about the presence of the Odyssey Dual lands, like Sunscorched Divide. These were later turned into artifacts, and you may know them better as the Ravnica Signets, in this case, Boros Signet. Then I double checked my lands and realized that a lot of Deserts only produced mana unless you paid life, or some other drawback, so these lands were meant to be paired up to produce colored mana! Well, that's me learning things by playing the game.

Another thing I was disappointing in was the lack of reliable card draw. I had one game where Embrace the Unknown did work, but it was just being Impulsive, not actual card draw. I have nothing against impulse work, but the deck has to be set up for it. Actual card draw sticks around and you don't have to worry about losing good cards because your casting of Escape the Wilds gave you all the good cards, and not enough mana. There's a time and a place for everything, and I really should talk about that at some point or another.

Landfall in general was also something of an issue. Between Avenger of Zendikar, Nesting Dragon and Scute Swarm (because I never saw Omnath), the only one that didn't get instantly hated off the table was the Dragon on the grounds that it was a multi-part process. I needed to cast the creature, play the land, make the Eggs, crack them, and then I could attack with the Dragon Whelp tokens. The landfall in this deck was secondary, but had an outsized effect on the deck, and when I rebuild it, I think I'll want to include other Landfall cards that synergize well with the deck, but aren't insta-kill lightning rods. But that will have to come later.

The rest of the deck was ... mediocre, as one would expect from this sort of deck. A lack of removal hurt, and the meta locally rewards more mass removal than targeted stuff. I would need to work on rebuilding that up. Including Hour of Reckoning was a good start, but I need to look at alternatives and redundancy.

Another thing to look at is to lower the mana curve a little. I did a bit of that in the latter half of the tournament, but it's still fairly top heavy. Even with higher mana ratios, the deck is expensive to push out the door. And recasting Hazezon can prove to be problematic. I'd want to focus on trimming that down a bit as well, even as my top cards are the ones with the best effects.

The deck works, it just isn't well focused because I was using a side Commander, and not the intended Commander. So a certain degree of latitude for the deck is to be expected. I respect it.

OK, so deck building time. Let me reiterate things over the past few weeks that I learned and experienced. First is that protection for Hazezon isn't that vital. Yes, the deck works best with him, but something I observed was outside one particularly smart opponent, no one saw him as the problem in the deck because all he does is make tokens. And Desertwalk never mattered. Replaying lands out of the Graveyard to make more tokens? Very few people saw the cause, and instead focused on the effect. Therefore the usual spate of 'protect the Commander!' cards don't need to be put in, like a good pair of boots. Rather, I need to focus on boardstate protection as sweepers are more lethal to me than precision wrecking.

First thing to look into adding and not just not-having is better Landfall outlets. Sure, it's nice having a Desertfall Commander, but I want a little more utility if I'm going to make lots of land drops very consistently. And while I'm at it, better outlets for creatures entering the battlefield.

Second is that I'm going to want a lot of mana acceleration. Not just from traditional sources, but also from rocks. I need to be able to cast my cards, activate the sac-abilities of my Deserts, and have mana to burn as I trim down the mana base in general. 39 is a little high, so I'm aiming for 36 here. And rocks don't hurt, while a few of them can be cracked for card draw.

Speaking of, this deck needs reliable card draw. Can't win if my had is on fumes, and while Cycling Desert of the True then playing from the graveyard is a legitimate tactic, it's not something I can depend on. As an aside, I need anti-graveyard hate, because a Rest in Peace or a Leyline of the Void or a Grafdigger's Cage - actually, that one doesn't affect me as it's Lands I'm looking at, not creatures or other spells. Still a good idea to roll defenses.

Fourth, Token support. It's not good enough to run out a bunch of 1/1's. They need to hit and they need to hit hard. I did a good job with the deck I was running in the tournament, but I could refine the deck's support a little more now that I'm building from the ground up. Coat of Arms is great, but there are other options as well. Also, Token multipliers and other things like that. 2 per turn is nice. 4 or 8 is better.

Fifth... I'm not sure yet. I'll see how the deck shakes out first before deciding what to do with my flex space.

LANDS, PART THE FIRST

Now, normally when I build my deck, I do my lands last to account for the mana distribution of my cards, but with this deck, I think I need to change it up a little. Because of the nature of a Hazaeon deck, I need to preemptively assign my Deserts to determine how many I have to work with in the future.

Now currently, there are twenty six Deserts that fit into . Of these, I intend to put as many in as I can, so I will go over the ones that I don't consider to be an auto-include. First is Bucolic Ranch. On the surface, it's passable, but it's also meant to work with the Set Mechanic of Mounts in Outlaws. Otherwise, it's basically a land that taps for no color of mana, but effectively reads : Scry 1.

Is that worth it? I mean... Maybe? In a way, it's Tocasia's Dig Site, but with the added benefit of being a Desert for Hazezon. You know what? That could work. You're in!

Endless Sands isn't so lucky. I'm not sure how many creatures are going in the deck at this time, but it's still a non-basic land in Commander. There is no guarantee that it won't be Moon'd into a Mountain, or hit with Field of Ruin, losing the creatures under it forever. So it's in the 'No' pile for now.

Hostile Desert is another bad pick. Turning this land into a generic 3/4 by exiling a land from the graveyard? No thanks.

And I don't have Lazotep Quarry. So it's not even an option.

And that leaves me with 22 Deserts to work with, a little high, but there's options to trim later if I have to. Which I will deal with now...

MANA ROCKS

I'll make this easy. I want 3 Signets, three Talismans, a Signet, and two rocks I can crack for card draw. Boros Signet, Gruul Signet, Selesnya Signet, Arcane Signet, Talisman of Conviction, Talisman of Impulse, Talisman of Unity, Mind Stone and Hedron Archive.

The importance about these choices is that with the exception of the Archive, they are all two-mana rocks, which means I can use them to get my Commander out on Turn 3, and still have a Land Drop to work with. The Signets are here, a blast from the past when they used to be in every Precon, but they, like the Signet Lands I talked about above, turn my colourless producing Deserts into two colours. Which is vital for mana fixing in this deck.

I will make a note that Sol Ring didn't make the cut at this point, not because it was bad, but because I'm not sure how well will work with the deck. I don't know what else I'm putting in, and I already have 36 lands and 9 rocks. 45 mana sources. That should be good enough for now.

LANDFALL PAYOFFS

With the importance of me playing lands each turn, finding ways to benefit are important. However, a lot of Landfall cards have similar problems. The first is that they are expensive to cast. Because of their ability to reliably have their effect trigger passively, Landfall cards do have to pay for that effect. Secondly, a lot of them only affect themselves. I need something that either does something for me, or something for the whole team.

Which means that after a search, it turns out that I still don't have a Courser of Kruphix, which would be great for the deck! I mean, it is cheap, so I might be able to grab it from my LGS. But without that, let's look at what I do have. Canyon Jeroba, Felidar Retreat and Retreat to Emeria all have the benefit of giving my board an additional +1/+1 per land drop, and that can mean a lot to me and my wide board of Sand Warriors.

Lotus Cobra I think needs no justification. Free mana on landfall means that even if I play a tapped land, I'm still getting something for it this turn. Druid Class is a nice card to give me life on land drop, and more importantly, the Level 2 allows me to play an additional land each turn, something which I can ply well with Deserts. I'll add more of those later.

Seer's Sundial may be an odd inclusion, but the way I see it, it's reliable card draw as I am planning on having a surplus of mana as it is, with 45 hard sources of it. That should enable the Sundial to fire without adversely affecting anything else. Or so I hope. We'll see.

Finally, Geode Rager. This card is a little out of place, but it does have a place. Namely acting as a way to get pesky blockers out of the way before I swing in for lethal with my Sand Warriors. It's also a decent blocker itself, a 4/3 with First Strike solves a few problems. Not all of them, but a few.

TOKEN GENERATION

I want more tokens. This is good. I don't just want any token, as I would prefer Warrior tokens for synergy, but I'll make do with general doublers and the like. Let's see here, what does Scryfall have to say...

OH DAMMIT! I'm too early for all the Tarkir Goodies with the Mobilize Mechanic from the Mardu Clan!

Looking at what is actually available.... oh my god how did I forget Desert Warfare!?!? I need to get this card for my deck, but I don't have it! No access to Hazezon Tamar either....

Ooooh! Maja, Bretagard Protector! I have her! She'll work out as an Anthem and a backup Commander. You're in! The same can't be said for Oketra the True, whom I don't have. Sand Scout is in, it's already in the precon so there's no reason to remove it. Secure the Wastes is not in my collection, but should be in my LGS's Bulk Bin. An easy include.

Rhys the Redeemed is a danger to my opponents, no matter how I slice it, and yet, it will draw hate as long as he exists, away from other things. But if he does stick the turn? Yeah, he's dangerous. So he's in.

But with that out of the way, let's look at token multipliers.

Anointed Procession, Doubling Season, Parallel Lives are in. I don't have Parallel Evolution, Second Harvest, Ojer Taq or Mondrak... WAIT! I DO HAVE Primal Vigor! Thank you Enchanted Tales!

Elspeth, Storm Slayer would go in, but she hasn't been released yet. Growing Ranks was fun, but it'll be too slow for this deck, I think.

Man, I really need to up my game here! I'm missing a few requirements, and it's not good for me at all!

... Buuuuuuuut... before I go, there is something I can add here. If I can't double tokens directly, I can look into making the triggers double, right? Cards like Ancient Greenwarden which is already in the deck, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines and even Annie Joins Up! I'm on the fence about Lithoform Engine, and Strionic Resonator would be in the same boat. Panharmonicon doesn't work here as it's just Artifacts or Creatures entering, not Lands.

But anyway, I've got my token multipliers set, let's see what to do with them....

COMING AND GOING

In this section, I'm going to cover some of the passive cards I wan tot include in the deck to deal with the amount of creatures I'm planning on making. One of my major goals is to keep the mana values here down as these are setup cards, and not payoffs for the most part. I've been keeping track of my cards so far, and they're pretty middle-of the road in terms of mana value, but those rocks are helping to bring that down.

First, I want to look into the Soul Warden ability where you gain life when a creature enters the battlefield. While life gain does not, in of itself, win the game, it can act as a buffer for people hitting me back. Thankfully, this is pretty easy as I can simply include Soul Warden, Essence Warden, Gala Greeters, Ajani's Welcome and Daxos, Blessed by the Sun. All cheap cards, all good for a side of life gain as well as early plays.

On the other side of the spectrum, being able to passively deal damage when stuff hits the table is equally good, especially if I haven't drawn into any of my creature boosters. Impact Tremors is the exemplar of this type of card, and including Warleader's Call, Purphoros, God of the Forge which I had put into the Slow Grow Deck already, I can include a few others.

Sadly, it seems that I only have Witty Roastmaster, as Warstorm Surge is too expensive for my tastes in this deck, and Agate Instigator is in a precon I didn't buy as my budget was thin at the time. Also, Shocking Sharpshooter hasn't been released yet.

I don't particularly like my lack of options here, but something is better than nothing at this point. And even a single source of damage like this can add up over time if my opponents can't properly respond to it.

CARD DRAW

Of course, getting to these cards is important. I've been keeping track of my deck list as I'm rebuilding it at this point, and right now I'm sitting at 72 cards. So 28 more to go with a couple of sections left. In this, I want to include cards that will let me draw more cards. Sadly, I'm in and , which aren't well known for their proper draw effects, while tries hard to carry the other two on the back.

Baylen, the Haymaker is a good backup Commander, and will provide card draw as well as the ability to slam damage home for sure. I also have a copy of Caretaker's Talent, which gives me both card draw when tokens enter and a boost to my Warrior tokens, so that's in.

But I do want more direct means of drawing cards. Reactive ones are fine, but sometimes I want to just play a card and get more cards in hand. Harmonize is a classic, MaRo Approved, Planar Chaos mistake. But will it really work for me?

I'm looking on Scryfall, and I want to remove Cantrips and Slowtrips, and that gives me 123 cards to work with And I just hope that link pareses. If it doesn't, head over to Scryfall, and search with this string: -otag:"cantrip" -otag:"delayed cantrip" oracle:draw (type:instant OR type:sorcery) commander:WRG (game:paper)

And there are a lot of options, especially in where you discard a card to draw more cards. And this is a deck that has zero problems tossing Deserts into the graveyard. But I don't want to depend completely on that color for card draw, yet it is probably the best choice overall for me. And I want to try and keep my MV down for this part so that I can play the cards I draw. Let's see here...

Thrill of Possibility, Tormenting Voice, Thrilling Discovery, Rite of Harmony, Faithless Looting, Magmatic Insight... and on the higher end, Camaraderie, and Shamanic Revelation. Pretty cheap for the most part, and two of them have flashback. The Rite scales with the amount of creatures that enter that turn, but this is a deck that can easily make that. A single land drop pays for the card and puts me up one at the same time, so I'm good with it. And in the late game, Revelation and Camaraderie scale with the number of creatures I have, which should hopefully be a lot.

Hopefully. I'm not that much of an idiot.

BIGGER TOKENS

At this point, I've got 82 cards in the deck, and I want a good selection of cards to make my tokens more viable. 1/1's are nice and all, but it's a death of a thousand cuts more than anything else. I want them to be bigger and scarier. Now, some of the cards I've included already do that, from Warstorm Surge to Caretaker's Talent, but it's not just them that I need to look at. Low mana value cards that can make my creatures go from a 1/1 to a 2/2 is a huge step up in terms of viable options and combat survivability. This is where Intangible Virtue comes into play, but I should also look into getting a Roar of Resistance as well as Inspiring Leader.

I have no idea where my Gaea's Anthem went, so that goes on the shopping list. But I do have Rally the Ranks and Honor of the Pure (as all my Sand Warriors are ), while Sylvan Anthem and Shared Triumph goes into the shopping list. Shared Animosity was a card I added to the Slow Grow deck for this purpose, so it will stay. And Glass of the Guildpact will work great as well! As long as I have lots of multi-colored creatures.

Of course, that's not all. Patchwork Banner is both a mana rock, and acts as an Anthem for the chosen creature type. There's no downside!

But there are bigger and better options. I don't have a Banner of Kinship, and Cathars' Crusade was causing issues with tracking. EXCELLENT card. Bad for recordkeeping. So that leaves Coat of Arms as my Warrior-booster that squares with the Warriors on the battlefield. And not much else. So let's toss in Radiant Destiny. The City's Blessing should be easy enough to get, and extra Vigilance can't go wrong.

Oh, yet before I go, I can't forget one of the great includes I had in the Slow Grow. I am not going forward without my party animal, Jetmir, Nexus of Revels.

MORE LANDS!

This, sadly, leaves me with 9 cards to go for the deck, and I my have to start considering cuts sooner or later. For you see, there are still two things I need to add. The first is cards that give me additional land drops, including searching out Deserts from the library, and the other is Protection/Removal And 9 cards isn't enough for that.

Dryad of the Ilysian Grove pulls double duty as a perfect mana fixer, as well as giving me an additional land drop. Explore is in the precon, which is good, as well as Oracle of Mul Daya. Rites of Flourishing is card draw and extra lands. Yes, it's symmetrical, but it could work well for me. Azusa, Lost but Seeking is a great backup for the Oracle and the Dryad. Scale the Heights is a more expensive Explore, but it does offer a shard of lifegain as well. Wayward Swordtooth serves this purpose as well, and dammit, Zel Dincht! I WANT YOU FOR THIS DECK!

Bouncing and playing Deserts again and again would be amazing!

But I also want to be able to pull Deserts out of the deck, so thankfully between Amonkhet and Outlaws, there's a couple of options. Colossal Rattlewurm can be exiled from the graveyard to get a Desert, and is still a 6/5 with Flash and Trample for . Dance of the Tumbleweeds isn't in the Slow Grow deck, and should have been. I need to include Dune Chanter as well to make everything Deserts, but this may be a cut as I'm not running fetches.

But that does mean that Hour of Promise, Map the Frontier, Outcaster Greenblade, Shefet Monitor, Silver Deputy, and Spinewoods Armadillo all let me get Deserts one way or another.

And of course, the hilarity option of Fall of the Thran to reset excessive board states, and give me more Desertfalls to work with. Because why not? It worked in the Slow Grow, and it'll work here!

PROTECTION AND REMOVAL

I'm already at 107 cards, so cuts are going to happen. But I do need some degree of protection. Cards like Boros Charm, Heroic Intervention, Flawless Maneuver, Join Shields works on the defense in combat as well. Make a Stand and Unbreakable Formation will work out nicely.

They might not solve all my problems, but they should be enough.

As for removal though, this is a bit more difficult. Hour of Reckoning works as it keeps all my Warrior Tokens in play. Austere Command is very good for customization, and can easily avoid hitting a lot of my rocks, as well my Commander and the tokens. Citywide Bust helps deal with larger creatures, keeping, again, my Commander and tokens intact. Split Up can be used to deal with tapped or untapped creatures, depending on my board state as well. Nothing else is jumping to mind, as I don't have a Crisis of Conscience.

Trimming.

I hate this part.

I'm sitting at 117 cards for the deck, and now it's time to trim and cut and reduce redundancy. I've been thinking about this part for a while once it became obvious that I wasn't going to be able to keep myself from going over. And there are some decisions that are easy, and others that are harder that I want them to be.

The first thing I've decided to cut is the "Coming and Going" section. Everything from Soul Warden to Witty Roastmaster gets cut. Even the Warleader's Call. This is 9 cards, and while losing out on the effects of Impact Tremors and the like will probably hurt, I think that I either go all-in on that, or all in on slamming face. And this deck was being build with the goal of slamming face directly.

Speaking of, because of cards with multiple effects, I have a lot of Anthem styled effects that, while all good, could do with a little less redundancy. As in 14 effects to make my creatures bigger, from Canyon Jeroba to Coat of Arms. I'm going to cut Coat of Arms and Glass of the Guildpact as the former is very expensive, and can backfire horribly on me if someone else is running a Typal deck and gets the numerical advantage over me. This brings me to 106 cards.

Not cutting lands. But with the inclusion of the patchwork Banner, I can remove one of the Talismans to keep me at 45 mana sources like that. Which one it will be will come after I've crunched mana numbers. Scale the Heights? Gone. It was an impulse inclusion here, and there are better options, I think. Along the same lines, Colossal Rattlewurm is going because it just feels like I'm jumping through too many hoops to make it worthwhile. Yes, I can discard it to one of my Draw spells, and as a creature, it doesn't synergize with my gameplan. The Armadillo stays because it self-discards, and I can use it as a 7/7 Reach blocker if I have to.

Card draw... This one is tough as you can't have enough, but in the end, I think I'm going to cut Camaradarie and Seer's Sundial. The former is expensive and I want to cut down my curve, and the other... it just feels bad when I put it in? Does that make sense to the rest of you?

And it turns out I don't have a Druid Class. That's off this deck list and put onto my shopping list. Dammit.

There we go. 100 cards. Now to crunch mana sources.

LANDS

I have 13 more spaces for lands, and my mana pips show 30 , 35 and 13 . I currently have 9 coloured lands, and 9 rocks. A quick run of math shows I want 5 Green sources, 6 White sources and 2 red sources of lands before I account for the rocks. This will actually be pretty easy.

First is to add one of each Basic Land. Plains, Mountains, Forest. Command Tower. Then fill in the rest with duals of one stripe or another. Karplusan Forest, Brushland, Battlefield Forge, Stomping grounds, Sacred Foundry, Temple Garden and.... might as well go for Commercial District, Lush Portico and Elegant Parlor to round things out.

And here it is! The deck!

Hazezon, Shaper of Deserts

Commander / EDH berryjon

SCORE: 2 | 2 COMMENTS | 25 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER

Tell me what you guys think of it, and I'll get back to you with a battle report when I take it out for a spin. I've been working on this for far too long, and I'm going to be glad to finally put a pin in this whole thing and call it done. But not yet!

Thank you all for reading! I'll see you next week when I talk about my Tarkir: Dragonstorm Prerelease! IT WAS FUN!

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!