Last Hurrah for the HOU Standard

This still current (for less than two weeks) Standard has been fun. Granted, I haven’t been able to do the usual attacking the meta from a different angle -thing that usually works for me the best, but the range of playable decks has been awesome and even though I don’t really like playing against decks like those revolving around [scryfall]Approach of the Second Sun[/scryfall], those feel like an important piece of the puzzle as they do keep certain decks from becoming prevalent.

Since this past Friday was the last opportunity for me to play a tournament, I made certain I would be able to participate in the FNM.

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Hour of Devastation Brews, pt. 4 – UR Flash

As usual, there are some potentially very impactful cards hidden in the final bunch of spoilers. One of them could very well be this one.

I didn’t really expect that to be back any time soon, as they have recently nerfed this ability somewhat, but it is a good answer to Eternalize. However, in Standard, just the tempo can also be important.

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Hour of Devastation Brews, pt. 3 – Monored Eldrazi

It might be subtle, but the most impactful cards in most sets are the rare lands. They are the piece of the puzzle that enable different builds. For example, right now because of the fast lands, wedges are faster than shards, which informs the way people design their decks. This time it might be different. It might be the uncommon lands. Like this one:

This cycle enables plenty of Eldrazi decks.

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Hour of Devastation Brews, pt. 2 – Abzan Hapatra

The reason I’m thinking about this is “Ammit Eternal”. Don’t know if that’s the real name, as it was spoiled in Japanese. The translation, via MythicSpoilers, reads like this:

“Ammit Eternal”
2B
Creature – Zombie Crocodile Demon
Afflict 3

Whenever an opponent casts a spell, put a -1/-1 counter on Ammit Eternal.

Whenever Ammit Eternal deals combat damage to a player, remove all -1/-1 counters from it.
5/5

That should work well with [scryfall]Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons[/scryfall]

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