MTG Salvation

No, seriously, what is up with Hour of Promise? Its baseline fail-case in a deck with 20x Forest (or whatever, it doesn't matter) and 4x Cloudpost (or Temple of the False God or UrzaTron or whatever) is a 5 mana ramp 4 that's immune to board wipes. That's your nightmare scenario. Every game where you naturally draw (and/or tutor for) a Cloudpost or Glimmerpost it's a ramp 6-8 (or better) that only loses out to mass land destruction. Since that tends to be banned in most casual metas regardless how the Hell is anyone going to be able to compete with this monstrosity on a "fair" playing field? What is anyone supposed to do when you're literally slamming 10 drops on turn 4 while tutoring out uninteractive card advantage engines? For those wondering about the math assuming 4x Cloudpost and 4x Glimmerpost and no card draw, no tutors, etc. you still have an ~85% probability of drawing one or more by turn 5. Since your probability of drawing one or more Hours by turn 5 is ~60% that means that in ~50% of games this monstrosity is going to ramp you straight to 10-12 mana on turn 6. The hard math would generally say slightly less than that but remember that this is multiplayer and we get a free mulligan to play with.

Want to win games? Grab Thespian's Stage + Dark Depths. Need action? Grab a Sea Gate Wreckage and/or Eye of Ugin and put that 16+ colorless mana to use. Need reach? Grab Cinder Glade + Kessig Wolf Run. Want to Exsanguinate for millions? Grab Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Hmmm? You're not playing Black? It doesn't matter my friends! It's still good even if you're just using for colorless mana. Gaea's Cradle + Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx for "Elf" decks, 2x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacles for combo decks, there's literally something for everyone. The number of 2 card land-based combos is staggering and that fact that this card gets online a full turn faster than Primetime seems utterly absurd to me. Not to say that Primetime is weak mind you, that card is just as unfair as it's ever been, but the last thing that we needed to see was a newer, cheaper version of it floating around. Why only play 4 when you can now play 8 and easily locate 4x Cloudpost, Eye of Ugin and Sea Gate Wreckage to bury your adversaries under a sea of mana and threats? That seems like a sweet gig to me.

Just stop and think about how this card plays out. Assuming that you cast Hour of Promise on turn 5 (i.e. you've played no other ramp) you can then untap, play a land and hardcast a 10 CMC threat such as Ulamog or Kozilek. That's a turn 6 Eldrazi in a scenario where no other ramp was played. Heaven forbid if you opened with Wild Growth into Cultivate because now we're slamming 9-10 drops on turn 4 and that's not remotely fair. Do you know what it's like to face down a turn 4 Void Winnower? It's not fun. I can't stress how stupidly powerful that this card is even when you're not going HAM on things like Crop Rotation, Expedition Map, Sylvan Scrying, Tempt with Discovery, Primeval Titan, Ulvenwald Hydra, Realm Seekers, etc. You don't need to do jack squat for it to be an utterly bonkers 5 drop for any deck of any strategy and every game where you naturally draw (and/or tutor for) a Cloudpost beforehand is going to feel like childs play. You'll have all of the mana in the world to enact whatever gameplan you desire.

Buy your 4x Cloudpost and 4x Hour of Promise and jam them in every Green deck that you ever build from now until the end of time. Hooray!

Yup. And here was I not far off attempting a mono-green 8-Post, aiming to Gelatinous Genesis for a bazillion.
This is totally in the list.
If only Hashep Oasis had been any good... I guess there's always Desert of the Indomitable. Probably not worth the effort just for the Zombies, though.

I saw this and immediately thought of the old Seasons Past + Dark Petition combo. Use Hour of Promise to grab Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and then suddenly you don't care about all the mana it takes to keep re-buying your graveyard every turn. There's a bit of a nonbo with Hour of Promise and Dark Petition both having 5 CMC for Seasons Past, but with all that mana you can just run something lame like Diabolic Tutor and probably still do ok. Keep re-buying Hour of Promise for Posts or more Coffers. Enjoy infinite value. Seems like a deck.

Every edh deck with green ramp should be using it, too, whether for simple ramp/color fixing, or the abuse of things like Glacial Chasm/Maze of Ith. All three of my edh will use this, to be sure. Akroma and Reya three to four turns faster? (Yes please...) Battlecruiser EDH is gonna love this and may force a ban hammer quickly after.

Quote from Xyx »

Desert is best desert. But it doesn't fit with the ramp plan.

The colorless-producing deserts in HoD are decent. Ramunap Excavator makes them (and, say, Crop Rotation) kind of stupid.

Are we still due a couple more deserts in Hour? I think the number floating around was 15, but that may have been deserts and "cares about deserts" cards combined. Or I may just be going senile.

Friends, the Desert text is a trap. Deserts are utter trash and you need 3 of them by turn 5 which isn't going to happen unless you fill your deck with them. You don't want to do that. You want those slots to be things like Glimmerposts, Sea Gate Wreckage and Kessig Wolf run that will provide you with a significantly greater return on your investment. Just ignore that sentence altogether because building around it won't improve your overall win %.

Prid3,

I think you're right on the money with this one.

I'm thinking a generic shell for these G/x decks would look something like...



So, for example:



So something like that, or would you play even greedier?

Hour of Promise looks good to me. Sign me up for a set.
I'm looking at my sets of Gelatinous Genesis, posts, Primetime & ramp....
I don't own many of the large Eldrazi, like Emrakul, so I'm looking at alternatives.

I tend to agree about the *desert* bit. There's no way I'd field a single desert in the same deck as this unless they're going to start printing desert's worth playing.

Quote from Prid3 »

Friends, the Desert text is a trap. Deserts are utter trash and you need 3 of them by turn 5 which isn't going to happen unless you fill your deck with them. You don't want to do that. You want those slots to be things like Glimmerposts, Sea Gate Wreckage and Kessig Wolf run that will provide you with a significantly greater return on your investment. Just ignore that sentence altogether because building around it won't improve your overall win %.

Survivors' Encampment is a Springleaf Drum for 0. Plenty good if you're already building in that direction.

Edit: "That direction" referring to decks that like Springleaf Drum, not deserts.

This is straight busted, and I know I'm gonna be sick of it because that Dark Depths/Thespian's Stage combo is already clogging up my meta.

Quote from Xyx »

Quote from mitch1238 »

Survivors' Encampment is a Springleaf Drum for 0.

It's just Holdout Settlement. It's a land, which means it doesn't ramp. It's terrible.

^ what he said.

Quote from stylianos »

So... Assuming HoP will be played in a mono-green deck, lets say with the goal to pull out 2 cloudposts. What other ramp spells would you use?
In the past, I was always trying to aim for 6 mana in turn 3. elf + wild growth or utopia sprawl, 12 cards in total.
I cant reach 5 mana in turn 2 (I guess?), so how would you ramp? I am not too sure if having 4 elves and 4 wild growths will make me hit 5 mana constantly in turn 3.

If you're playing monogreen Cloudpost you may as well go all-out on on things like Crop Rotation, Expedition Map, Sylvan Scrying, Tempt with Discovery, etc. and ignore traditional ramp altogether.

Quote from stylianos »

At the moment, I am playing a monogreen nykthos deck, thats ramps with arbor elf, utopia sprawl and wild growth. There is no land-hate in my meta, so the deck is performing very well.

So you would suggest to then skip on the ramp package as I play it now and go for the things you mentioned?

I am always looking for options to improve my deck or build new decks, mainly with the goal to have enough mana for expensive spells, I am not that midrange type of guy. I always wanted to build me some big mana GB, UG or RG decks - so I am wondering to which type of decks HoP will bring significant improvements.

That deck is fantastic but it's a different deck entirely. Arbor Elf can't untap Posts and Nykthos doesn't play nice with land-based ramp. Keep that deck as is and build a second one with all of the traditional forms of Post ramp. It's not like they're expensive and you can always shuffle your fatties between them as needed.

I know that Pride has multiple lists in his color guides, but since Cloudpost and other forms of broken acceleration seem to be the focus of this thread, what are the best things to ramp out in each of the different colors?

In Green it's worth noting that Duskwatch Recruiter enables you to draw + cast your entire deck while still being a reasonable turn 2 play.

Is it really that big of a deal? It's a worse Prime Time for G less. Is that one mana so significant? You could drop it turn 3 more consistently with Joraga Treespeaker, but that's about the only benefit I see. I guess you could run both?

Quote from CoolLink19 »

Is it really that big of a deal?

Yes.

Quote from CoolLink19 »

It's a worse Prime Time for G less.

Yes, it's a cheaper version of a card that's banned in EDH and that's gotten multiple cards banned in Modern.

Quote from CoolLink19 »

Is that one mana so significant? You could drop it turn 3 more consistently with Joraga Treespeaker, but that's about the only benefit I see.

Primetime requires GG and 6 mana total which isn't free when you're playing things like Crop Rotation. Hour of Promise is castable off of Cloudpost, Cloudpost, Forest which is an extremely common set of lands to control when your build has 4x Crop Rotation, 4x Expedition Map, 4x Sylvan Scrying, etc. No, that second Forest isn't free. Your deck often only has 12-14 total and when you're tossing them away via Crop Rotation you don't always have a ton of them laying around. This card converts a hand of Post, land, land, Crop Rotation into Eldrazi mana without needing to draw/tutor for additional colored mana and that's definitely valuable.

Quote from CoolLink19 »

I guess you could run both?

Yes, you definitely want to play both.