My HOU Prerelease Weekend Recap


Last weekend was the Prerelease for the MtG Hour of Devastation set and it was the first time that I signed up for two events on both days (Saturday & Sunday). Players old and new gathered to open and play the fresh new cards from the set and it was the Saturday event at Rob Jaro that was almost jam-packed. We expected 36 players to attend but only 28 signed up as heavy rains hit around lunch time just before the start of the event.

Anyhow, the PR started past 1 pm and I opened my kit with a Mirage Mirror promo foil. The rest of the six boosters after sorting the colors offered that Red will be my primary color due to efficient spot removals like Open Fire and the sweep card Hour of Devastation. The second color was Black with the additional removals with a splash of Blue for a 5/5 Hexproof creature. The final deck setup was somewhat midrange. Here below is a picture of the deck I played.

I initially lost to a Temur midrange with large creatures’ deck but managed to win the rest of the rounds. The MVP card was the mirror as I just copy my own creatures for additional attack damage or copy that of the opponents’ if it was bigger and just kill them with my spot removals. I finished 3-1 and won 3 HOU booster packs. I opened the packs and the relevant money card is only Solemnity.

The next day’s PR event was at Critical Hit: Comics and Games. Registration was scheduled around 12 noon and I arrived just ten minutes past that hour. About only three to four players were there and I was thinking like I was too early. I then learned that only a few preregistered and I was hoping that more players will drop by and play on the spot. It was past 1pm already and Johann decided to start the event despite having only 8 players.

I opened my kit and was surprised to see the same Mirage Mirror as my promo foil. What could this artifact copy this time? After sorting out the cards by color and checking each of the possible synergy and power-level, I came up with the deck below.

The build is Red Green based with Black as the splash color for the two spot removals. Green was used here to lower the curve because of a number of three-mana creatures and also access for a few combat tricks. Relevant cards include Chaos Maw was the bomb and of course, the mirror was added again for a few copy effect plan that I did yesterday. I went 2-1 and lost to a better RG build with Glorybringer and Rhonas.

Overall it was a fun weekend playing Hour of Devastation cards. The new set gave a huge support to Amonkhet and with the newer card interactions, I am pretty excited to try drafting these two expansions in the upcoming weeks. That might also be in time for us to practice for Nationals.

That is a wrap for this tourney report. Until the next post.