Hour of Devastation [HOU]

[MorphBerlin]

The new wrath looks good, In my opinion its power level is close to deluge and damnation.

I would disagree, a wrath that basically gives you op a free turn to rebuild seems bad when you have the mentioned alternatives. It will only be played in standard or in a deck dthat can midigate the drawback somehow

[Crimhead]

Nice if we could get a straight-up (not conditional) power creeped Wrath. :(

[Dice_Box]

Nice if we could get a straight-up (not conditional) power creeped Wrath. :(

I don't think that's likely to happen. I understand the desire, the power level of creatures now compared to when Wrath appeared in Alpha is night and day different. But I see it like the Counterspells of today. You might get a Spell Pierce as a cheaper counter to the original, but you won't get a strict upgrade today. Not like Mana Drain was years past.

[Megadeus]

I don't think that's likely to happen. I understand the desire, the power level of creatures now compared to when Wrath appeared in Alpha is night and day different. But I see it like the Counterspells of today. You might get a Spell Pierce as a cheaper counter to the original, but you won't get a strict upgrade today. Not like Mana Drain was years past.

A spell Pierce for creatures would be kind of nice honestly. But blue already has the best 3 drop creatures so maybe it's too much

[Scott]

A spell Pierce for creatures would be kind of nice honestly. But blue already has the best 3 drop creatures so maybe it's too much

Could power creep Withering Boon.

[tescrin]

A spell Pierce for creatures would be kind of nice honestly. But blue already has the best 3 drop creatures so maybe it's too much

Honestly I was looking for a "Fair" mental misstep in gatherer and realized they never printed such a thing. A spell that said "Counter target spell 1 CMC or less" at 1 mana would be pretty handy. There's not even a 1-mana "Counter target Instant" which I also found obnoxious. They have loads of "Counter target sorcery" or "if no mana was spent to cast this" or things like that. Sad times.

In my brewing I've been playing Spellstutter Sprite and Spell Queller (actually going 3-1 and 3-0 over the last week) just because they hit *anything* (usually. Terminus/Gurmag/etc.. is a funny problem) and that's a great feeling.


EDIT: I should mention that I was Supreme Verdict'd a couple times by Topless the other day, and it's pretty good. I think I was even Snap-Verdict'd hah. MFW am i right?
A wrath that pitches to force, can't be forced, can be played on curve, and has no downsides other than color reqs... pretty alright. Compare to this where you will either play it into Daze/Spierce or have way more mana up just to make sure or jam it and cross your fingers.. it has some issues.

[Dice_Box]

Honestly I was looking for a "Fair" mental misstep in gatherer and realized they never printed such a thing. A spell that said "Counter target spell 1 CMC or less" at 1 mana would be pretty handy. There's not even a 1-mana "Counter target Instant" which I also found obnoxious. They have loads of "Counter target sorcery" or "if no mana was spent to cast this" or things like that. Sad times.

Dispel.

I think Verdict seeing play is good for the format. That's a card that I feel should have seen play but was held back by other forces. It's a good thing that it's back. It's a measure of change.

[mgrinshpon]

There's not even a 1-mana "Counter target Instant" which I also found obnoxious.

Dispel

[Bosque]

Dispel

For that matter Force Spike or Disrupt, sorta.

[MaximumC]

Oh gosh, people freaking out in spoiler season again... What I read in this threat of what will take over legacy is so funny^^

Wann take a bet on this? Seems totally great when you play this on t3 and get time walked while your opponent rebuilds his board

A bet on what, exactly? I didn't say it was going to see X amount of play or anything. I'm not in tune with the Legacy competitive meta-game to know that. I also am not sure if there's a control list deep enough in black to make this possible. Not every good card sees play. I just said it's a good card, and I stand by that.

The power of a Wrath effect is sometimes in tempo, but not always. The power often comes from just being able to hit your opponent with a 2-for-1 or better, and undo likely several turn's worth of development. Four-mana Wraths were a mainstay of control decks in the game for a long time, and for good reason. Turn 4 is exactly when a slower deck really needs to wipe away the faster deck's first three turns of development. Slower than that and the slower deck probably has lost already.

The risk of Wraths also changes how your opponent has to play even if you don't cast it. Aggro opponents have to be very careful how they commit to the board if they are concerned about a wrath effect. The net effect is to slow them down even when you're not actually casting the spell.

I think people lose sight of how Wraths used to function in light of how Terminus is used. Miracles has Wrath effects on tap at only one mana, and so it can afford to use Terminus as generic removal rather than holding it back for a blowout. That is, Miracles is perfectly happy to pop Terminus for W just to remove a single threat if it needs to. But, it has to jump through some hoops to get there. Not enormous ones, no, but you can't really take Terminus out of a shell with lots of top deck manipulation and hope for it to go that way. Other Wraths do not play so quickly.

Which brings me to what I like about this card. It's a 3-mana unconditional wrath. Now, I completely agree that I would reach for Toxic Deluge before this card. It's easier to cast, it deals with Blightsteel Colossus (less of an issue in Legacy than Vintage, of course) and can be one-sided if your creatures have bigger butts than your opponent. Nevertheless, Deluge costs you life. If you are dealing with Elves or Goblins or whatever, no big deal. But, what about Eldrazi? Shops? Merfolk with a handful of lords out there? Suddenly, you're paying a significant amount of life which, between beats and fetches, you may not comfortably be able to spend.

Bontu's Big Day Out does not suffer from this problem and, assuming you're heavy enough in black to make the BB a non-issue, it solves all the problems you want a Wrath to solve. It does not cost you life as a resource. Instead, it costs you tempo. If you're in a tempo deck, like BUG Delver or whatever the cool kids are playing, this is probably not acceptable. Fine. But, what if you're in a control deck? What if you are in a value deck like Jund? If your goal is just to accumulate 2-for-1s in a control role, this card seems quite good for what it does.

To be more precise, let's look at how this plays at various turns of the game:

Turn 1 - You're realistically only casting this off of a Dark Ritual, and only if your opponent went SERIOUSLY CRAZY on their turn. Next turn, you'll be down 1 mana.

Turn 2 - You can be casting this off of a few lands and an artifact like Mox Opal or Mox Diamond. This is a realistic window to cast this card if you are facing something that has deployed critical early game creatures, like Elves. Next turn, you'll be down 2 mana. That's a serious tempo blow.

Turn 3 - The natural turn to cast this guy is turn 3, and I think it's actually at its worst here. The tempo loss is at its maximum, you're most likely to be totally tapped out the turn after you play it, and if you got to this turn against a deck where you really need this effect, you might be hard pressed to make up that tempo. Elves, for example, can barf literally it's whole hand once we're at turn 3 or 4.

Turn 4+ - As the game goes on, Bontu gets better and better. The more mana you have in play that you do NOT have to dedicate to Bontu, the more irrelevant the drawback becomes. Indeed, whereas a late game Deluge can be unplayable, a late game Bontu is better than an early game Bontu.

That's why I think this is a good card.

[MorphBerlin]

I said its defentily worse then deluge, you disagreed.

You created some fringe situation where it might be better.

I say it's worse 90+% of the time, you disagree, if you are right this is bound to see legacy play isn't it? (I am not including vintage) I say it won't see paly aside from somebody testing it. That's what I wanted to bet

[Kanti]

Honestly I was looking for a "Fair" mental misstep in gatherer and realized they never printed such a thing. A spell that said "Counter target spell 1 CMC or less" at 1 mana would be pretty handy. There's not even a 1-mana "Counter target Instant" which I also found obnoxious. They have loads of "Counter target sorcery" or "if no mana was spent to cast this" or things like that. Sad times.

In my brewing I've been playing Spellstutter Sprite and Spell Queller (actually going 3-1 and 3-0 over the last week) just because they hit *anything* (usually. Terminus/Gurmag/etc.. is a funny problem) and that's a great feeling.


EDIT: I should mention that I was Supreme Verdict'd a couple times by Topless the other day, and it's pretty good. I think I was even Snap-Verdict'd hah. MFW am i right?
A wrath that pitches to force, can't be forced, can be played on curve, and has no downsides other than color reqs... pretty alright. Compare to this where you will either play it into Daze/Spierce or have way more mana up just to make sure or jam it and cross your fingers.. it has some issues.

Um, there is a fair Mental Misstep. It's called Force Spike.

[MaximumC]

I said its defentily worse then deluge, you disagreed.

You created some fringe situation where it might be better.

I say it's worse 90+% of the time, you disagree, if you are right this is bound to see legacy play isn't it? (I am not including vintage) I say it won't see paly aside from somebody testing it. That's what I wanted to bet

I know people who have their finger on the heartbeat of formats take bets like that. Steve Menedian and Kevin Chron always make concrete predictions on new cards in Vintage, for example, and God bless' em for putting their neck out there.

Basically, you hit the nail on the head in your post - Deluge is better in more situations, and the times when Bontu's Birthday is preferable are probably in the minority. In a format as diverse as Legacy, the big unknown factor is whether a deck exists that caters to that minority. Is B/U control a thing? It sure doesn't appear to be at the moment, and the closest we have (BUG) is a tempo strategy that probably can't run Bontu Busts Out.

So, the card could be quite good, but never make any significant waves because the situation / deck that makes it good either doesn't exist or is not a good fit for the metagame.

Still, if I was pressed to put a figure on the number of top 8 appearances of this card between it's release and the release of the next set after HOD, I think I'd say... 3. I think people will try it, and some of them will even have moderate success with it. But it won't go anywhere without infrastructure to support it. I am making a wild guess in putting that figure out there, though!

[rufus]

...
I say it's worse 90+% of the time, you disagree, if you are right this is bound to see legacy play isn't it? (I am not including vintage) I say it won't see paly aside from somebody testing it. That's what I wanted to bet

Right, but it's not 90% of the time for every deck. Maybe this wrath finds a sideboard slot in Ad Nauseam decks or something else that burns life as a resource.

I do think it will be much more of a player in modern where deluge is not available.

Edit: I also think that the drawback isn't as drastic as people seem to think it is, though we'll just see how things turn out.

[MaximumC]

Edit: I also think that the drawback isn't as drastic as people seem to think it is, though we'll just see how things turn out.

It's really hard to say, and it's intensely context-dependent. If you're just racking up 2-for-1s, then maybe the drawback doesn't matter. If it's the late game or if you Dark Ritual'd this out, probably doesn't matter either.

The reason why I agree with the naysayers that Deluge wins out most of the time is that when you're using this for the traditional wrath window of turn 3 or so, that's exactly when the drawback hits you the hardest. It maximizes the tempo loss and the chance that you're just plain naked on the following turn.

[ReAnimator]

Ramunap Excavator
2G
Naga Cleric
2/3
You may play lands from your graveyard.


Sooooooo crucible with legs for a reasonable cost, is this a game changer?

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/m...-and-new-cards

[maharis]

OMG is this real? GSZable crucible, holy shit

[LOLWut]

wtf am I even looking at with this cat art?

[MaximumC]

Ramunap Excavator
2G
Naga Cleric
2/3
You may play lands from your graveyard.


Sooooooo crucible with legs for a reasonable cost, is this a game changer?

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/m...-and-new-cards

Yes. I think this card, all by itself, makes decks that want to run GSZ and Wasteland tremendously deadly. Maverick, Noble Fish, and others can take advantage of this.

[Cire]

Ramunap Excavator looks awesome.

Wildfire Eternal also looks interesting . . . it's a punisher mechanic so I doubt it would have legacy applications - but it would be fun to combine with 1 mana cards that make it unblockable and then you cast a big spell (yeah yeah, terrible 3 card combo, but whatever its fun :) )