Hazoret Indestructible Burn

Commander / EDH shixzo

SCORE: 43 | 13 COMMENTS | 5192 VIEWS | IN 16 FOLDERS

July 28, 2019

The last few sets have brought some big changes to the deck, although currently untested. The most recent version sacrifices a bit of ramp to focus even more on copying, draw/discard and recursion. I've also made a concerted effort to bring down the average converted mana cost, which has led to some controversial swaps. I like how the deck goldfishes, but I might have to re-balance on further testing.

Some of the more direct swaps:

• Ugin, the Spirit Dragon => Ugin, the Ineffable: Both are obviously very good, but new Ugin is cheaper, helps me cast my artifact ramp and creates blockers which synergise with my board-clearing.

• Vandalblast => Shenanigans: Again, I would ideally play both, but Shenanigans is a card I'm happy to discard or wheel away when I need to.

• Wild Guess => Pirate's Pillage: I'm hoping the bonus ramp will outweigh the extra cost, particularly when copied, but I'm not sure. I think I probably want Wild Guess anyway - I'll see how Bolt Bend performs.

• Reverberate => Repeated Reverberation: Less interactive, but more focused on the deck's strengths. Also pre-copies, so works better against counter-magic.

Bag of Holding is a fun new card with Hazoret, which plays well into the increased emphasis on discard-to-draw effects. I've also upped the instant/sorcery recursion, with Shreds of Sanity and Chandra, Acolyte of Flame, which work for both our win conditions and draw effects (although the latter makes the above Wild Guess and Reverberate swaps a bit awkward).

A weird inclusion is Howl of the Horde (another pre-copy effect). The raid effect is obviously useful, but difficult when your commander can't attack until it's the only card in your hand. However, the new Ugin and Chandra double as support cards for this, as do the otherwise head-scratching inclusions of Blinkmoth Nexus and Inkmoth Nexus, which also make good emergency blockers and can pilot Smuggler's Copter in a pinch. I don't know whether it will all actually work, but I love the increasingly complex web of synergies.

As for cards removed, I was never very happy with the card-drawing lands that helped everyone else too. Hanweir Battlements  ^Meld so rarely lined up with Heartless Hidetsugu that it was pointless. Not sure about removing Myriad Landscape but Emergence Zone and Blast Zone will hopefully have more utility - we'll see. Chandra Ablaze, Reforge the Soul and Sunbird's Invocation were all great but expensive, and I'm hoping the focus on cheap sorcery draw and recursion will mostly fill the gap while being more flexible.