Modern Musings: Hour of Devastation Cards of Interest

Hey everyone, welcome to another Modern Musings, this week I’m going to take a look at all the juicy cards that Hour of Devastation has to offer modern.  Then after I’ve gone through all the cards, I’m going to let you know which ones are in my top 5 most influential cards out of this set.  Before we get into it though, I wanted to take a moment to note that from a design perspective, there are a ton of cool things going on here.  If it weren’t for Eldrich Moon and my love of lovecraft inspired horror stories, a Nicol Bolas themed set (or as close to one as we’ll probably get) would probably have been my favorite flavor-wise.  Anyway, that brings us to our first card:

This card seems especially relevant right now in modern with all the  Death’s Shadows, Gurmag Anglers, and Tasigur, the Golden Fangs lurking about.   As a bonus it can also kill Grim Flayer, Dark Confidant, and Liliana of the Veil.  This is pretty solid sideboard tech if your deck needs a little help against decks that run the aforementioned creatures.  I don’t expect to see a full playset in sideboards, but I could definitely see people putting 2-3 in their sideboard.

This card is pretty interesting in that it allows you to have a more versatile, albeit a more expensive, Stifle effect.  We already know that a 3/1 flier with flash can be a playable card in modern, but unlike Vendilion Clique, you don’t get to have your cake and eat it too.  It’s either a 3/1 flier with flash or a stifle with draw a card stapled to it.  I can definitely see the more tempo driven blue decks playing a card like this to help disrupt their opponent’s plans or be a flying beater.  I definitely like this guy, but I’m not sure he has a home right now.

First off, this card is sick.  A one-sided humility? I’m in.  Realistically though, eight mana is a ton for this effect, and the only place I can see this card is a lonely copy in an enduring ideal deck.  Other than that deck though I can’t see it being played so its splendor may not be so overwhelming.

Probably one of my favourite cards from the entire set.  I’m a huge fan of Crucible of Worlds, and this guy is crucible on a stick.  For the first time, a deck can run up to 8 crucible effects.  While that probably won’t really be necessary, it opens some possibilities for brewing.  If you’re wondering why Crucible of Worlds is even good, then imagine getting to Ghost Quarter tron every turn, or really any deck that only runs two basic lands.  I can see it most readily fitting into a G/W Emeria deck or a G/B pox deck.  I’m excited to see what people do with this card in both standard and modern.

I’m unsure of how good this card is to be honest.  Certainly it’s worse than Serum Visions on the front side, but it has the bonus of potentially being a bomb in the late game.  Most likely this card (if it sees play) will be run side by side with Serum Visions, giving players the ability to control the top of their deck very well.  However, I’m not sure what deck would even run this at the moment.  It’s possible that we might see some kind of bant combo deck come out of this card.  Regardless, the power level of this card is high enough to warrant investigation.

I think that this is probably the next great hate card in modern, also coincidentally a pretty good combo card as well.  This card does so many things, that it’s hard to know where to start.  One of the first places my mind (and apparently a lot of other people’s minds as well) was using this card with Phyrexian Unlife, which prevents you from losing the game since you can’t get poison counters.  It also stops many of affinity’s shenanigans as well, though definitely not all of them.  Some other combos involve Dark Depths (though it’s not legal in modern), and persist/undying creatures.  It’s hard to gauge exactly the effect that this card will have on modern since there are so many cards in magic’s history that use counters of some kind.  My guess is that in terms of combo potential, Phyrexian Unlife is probably not even the best use of this card.

Next up, Claim to Fame is another potential all star in modern.  This card just oozes value.  The three targets that seem most likely for this to hit are Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, Snapcaster Mage, and Death’s Shadow.  But also has reasonable targets in cards like Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant.  The Fame side of the card is not to be underestimated either, getting a huge Death’s Shadow or Tarmogoyf hit in seems like pretty big game.

This set is just stuffed to the brim with combo cards.  Leave to Chance is another such card.  What makes this card so interesting is that it’s an instant.  It’s very reminiscent of Retract  and in fact, might even go into the modern cheerios deck to make it more consistent.  Another use for this card is sideboard tech in creature decks against sweeper effects.  It can also serve some added functionality by allowing you to redraw the worst cards in your hand.

I have a feeling that some of you might be scratching your heads at this one.  I feel that this is probably one of the more underrated cards in the set for modern consideration.  The way I like to look at this card is that it’s a 2 mana spell that gives you three clues.  I think that this is definitely a card that eldrazi tron should at the very least should test.  This has the added bonus of also being able to scry after you’ve drawn all the cards off of it.  All in all, seems like a great card for the slower, grindier decks.

I’ve never been much interested in milling strategies outside of limited, but there’s no denying this card could speed up mill’s clock by a full turn.  Suddenly your tome scours become glimpses and your glimpses do pretty a good impression of traumatizes.  Needless to say, this is probably one of those cards that if your opponent gets to untap with, you’re most likely dead on the spot.

This card probably won’t see any play, but it would be super sweet if it did, and I fully intend to brew with it.  I’ve always had a soft spot for sick X spells, and this definitely qualifies.  So what would you need to do to make this card work?  The first thing is a ton of mana.  I think the break point for this cards is probably around X=4 or greater.  The old G/B Death Cloud shells would probably work pretty well for this card, so if you’re like me and want to play with it, then that’s pretty good place to start.

I was very hot on this card when it was spoiled, but as time goes on and I think about it more, it seems less and less good.  I originally though about putting this card into elves, but realized that most realistically I could probably just kill my opponent any time I wanted to cast this card.  I’d actually be much more interested to see this card in some kind of tokens build or even maybe affinity.

My Top 5 Modern Cards for Hour of Devastation

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That’s all for this week, do you think I missed anything? Disagree with my top 5? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to tune in next week.

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