Hydro Hurricane: Evacuation Is Imminent

11.15.04  There are few guarantees in life and one of them is that everything changes. It’s only natural that when a new set releases you quickly size up the offerings and start testing cards that fit into your current decks. You have to adapt with the evolution of the metagame if you don’t want to go the way of the Dodo. Unfortunately for me, since I’m an avid Water/Nature/Terror Pit player, Shadowclash’s Water and Nature choices are tuned towards aiding Darkness and Light rather than creating synergy with each other. Just about the only test subjects for my current deck are Torcon, Aqua Jolter, Aqua Guard, and Chains of Sacrifice. My favorite deck may have reached a plateau for the moment. It’s time to bake something from scratch.

The Eye Of The Storm

While cruising over the cards from Shadowclash in preparation for this weekend’s release event more cards grabbed my attention than before simply because I’m no longer just examining cards for my current deck. I’m thinking outside the box—at what could be a potential oddball surprise in my metagame or a build we’ll have to contend with on a regular basis that’s annoying to break. I finally became interested in Hydro Hurricane, a spell that begs for decks to be built around it. You’ve probably heard plenty about this spell by now. Just in case you haven’t, here’s the 411: For 6 mana you have a Water spell that bounces 1 of your opponent’s mana to his hand for each Light creature that you have in your battle zone and that bounces 1 of your opponent’s creatures to his hand for every Darkness creature that you have in your battle zone. The bonus is that you choose the cards that bounce to your opponent’s hands. That’s some versatility packed into one spell, and it’s made the evil deck builder in me start tossing out malicious ideas (some ideas discussed may prove non-viable thru testing and once the meta settles, but at the planning stages you should feel free to try anything). A storm is coming and it aims to whisk you out to sea.

Hurricanes Destroy Property

Mana is the heart and soul of the game. Without it you can’t bring anything to the table or remove anything for that matter. Mana Destruction decks take that fact to the summation of their very existence—they try to deny you mana in order to make your hand as effective as an empty one. That’s the gist of Hydro Hurricane’s courtship with Light. The mana doesn’t get destroyed with Hydro Hurricane, but you can only drop one mana at a time save with mana acceleration cards like Poisonous Mushroom and Ultimate Force. If you have 6 creatures out when Hydro hits at its earliest chance appearance—any opponent who hasn’t run some early mana gain has just been robbed blind of casting potential. Your opponent had better hope something cheap is in his hand and that his battle zone has a competent creature presence if you’re able to send a Hurricane toward his mana zone.

The truly evil—some say cheap—aspect about Light is the civilization’s spell searching and recursion on top of its massive tapping and competent blockers. You can set up your hand for Hydro and recover that spell to cast it again. Sometimes when playing Diamond Cutter I was able to fill my hand with at least 2 copies of the deck’s signature spells Holy Awe and Diamond Cutter and just play them out over 4 turns. It became totally wicked with the addition of Terror Pit and Lost Soul. It’s just wrong to be able to keeping using the same old nasty spell back-to-back; well it’s right from your perspective if you’re the one doing the recycling. Creatures like Phal Eega, Rayla, Laguna, Lena, Mist Rias, and spells like Logic Cube, Boomerang Comet and Logic Sphere can help you rinse, wash and repeat the process much like players did with Diamond Cutter.

An interesting thing is that Hydro Hurricane and Diamond Cutter might end up in the same deck. So, while you step up your field to do D-Cut runs, you also have turn six plays where you’re either tapping guys to hit them or hopping over blockers with Holy Awe or you’re bouncing mana to short change your opponent in the late game with Hydro Hurricane. Add massive tapping and untapping into the mix with choices like Screaming Sunburst, Miele, Fonch, Kolon (a shield trigger creature), Solar Ray, Whisking Whirlwind, Toel and you can have a deck with many options. Depending on how much Water support you run in the deck you could add Shtra to the mix for more mana bounce—and to bounce something to your hand that’s useful after you’ve dropped Hydro Hurricane (if you cast Shtra before you‘ll set Hydro back a turn). If you’re very adventurous you may even try out the weird but very high priced Aqua Deformer & Smile Angler for more mana bounce. You might also add Water’s creature bounce like Spiral Gate, draw, or searching with Memory if you have a creature you’d like to see hit the zone as much as a spell. It would be fairly important not to ‘water’ the deck down too much if you aim to hit a lot of mana with Hydro. There’s plenty to work with here for Hydro Hurricane, so take your time and hammer out a Light based build that cripples your opponent.

Hurricanes Devastate Lives

Denial is the modus operandi of Darkness whether it’s in the form of creature destruction or hand discard. Up until this point creature removal involving Darkness has been one of a permanent flavor. But Darkness is no stranger to pairing with Water to take that prospect into the temporary realm. A classic Control pairing is Water/Darkness and bounce has always been a component of the build’s strategy. If you choose to play Hydro Hurricane in a largely darkness build, then you have the chance at bouncing more critters than Gate or Teleportation, which is reminiscent of a Saucer-Head drop Base Set.

Just getting things off the field is the aim of Hydro within a Darkness deck. You could pack early drops like Marrow Ooze, Bone Piercer, Bloody Squito, Wailing Shadow, Bone Spider—a host of critters to slap your opponent with creature bounce and hit away with the little guys you’ve collected. Next turn you could follow up with Terror Pit or Death Smoke to nail the biggest threat they’ve re-cast, drop a fattie, or drop multiple hitters. Hydro in a Darkness deck already packing a lot of creature removal could make the battle zone pretty lopsided in your favor if you’re able to set things up properly. If you want to secure a way to lessen the blow of spells like Searing Wave or Burst Shot to your dark Hydro crew, then you could run Shadow Moon, Cursed Shade for the chance to pump some of your Darkness hitters above 3000 (be mindful that this creature pumps both players Darkness creatures). What’s really lacking with Darkness is the ability to set the hand up with spells (and that’s with good reason). You could slap in Crystal Memory to fish Hydro Hurricane out of the deck or pack Brain Serum to draw into your deck even more if you already have Mongrel Man. If you pack more Water offerings into the build, some solid choices would be yet more creature bounce like Teleportation & Spiral Gate.

One thing that I see as potentially crazy with Hydro Hurricane and Darkness is coupling it with hand discard. Bounce a bunch of guys to your opponent’s hand and then hit him next turn with a Lost Soul or Trox General of Destruction. That’s a chance to bury multiple hitters without losing your own in the process. That could work wonders provided an opponent is not able to re-cast the majority of his hand or destroy a sizable amount of your field. You could explore more hand rob options like Ghost Touch, Locomotiver, Dark Titan Maginn, Horrid Worm, or Masked Horror. Like it’s inclusion in a Light build, Hydro presents Darkness based decks with another neat—and evil--option to run.

Hurricanes Cause Millions of Dollars of Damage

With both civilizations in one deck, you can have the best of both worlds with Hydro Hurricane. That makes for a potentially crowded deck, but one that could do enough disruption to seriously peeve your opponent. In this build you’d have the potential to search out any card from your deck (if you ran Crystal Memory), have massive draw with cards like Hulcus, Serum, Mist, Mongrel, Marinomancer, be able to retrieve any card form the graveyard (with the addition of cards like Dark Reversal with Phal Eega), and be able to retrieve any card from your mana zone (if you ran Bone Piercer, Lena or Shtra). Then there’s the aspect of running kill, blocker hate, and tons of weenies. You might be able to put your opponent’s mana zone, his battle zone and his hand out of commission with the simple inclusion of Hurricane. It could possibly be a “jack-of-all-trades” deck, but as such it certainly can’t do all those things as well as the decks that specialize in a few of those things.

You’ll Need Hurricane Insurance

There’s something very sinister going on with this spell (thank goodness it’s 6 mana and not a shield trigger)…but luckily it’s not unstoppable. Decks packing weenie kill have a good shot at neutralizing a Hurricane--most notably cards like Searing Wave, Galklife Dragon (for Light based Hydro decks), maybe even Burst Shot and early kill like Crimson Hammer--because many builds will have weenie drops to maximize the chances of filling the battle zone with creatures for a turn 6 Hydro drop. Hand rob could also be effective for snapping away Hydro—especially if you know that they’ve just been plucked out of the deck. If your Hydro opponent has been draw-happy with creatures like Hulcus, Mist, Astral Warper and Mongrel or spells, then slapping him with mundo hand rob like Lost Soul or Trox could be nice. Versus a Light Hydro deck you could turn the field against a player by playing Soul Gulp (though the spell isn’t versatile discard). Even a drop like Crystal Paladin can swipe those little blockers off the field if your Light Hydro opponent has heavy early game stall (which is likely). Snagging some early beats could also prove effective. It’s also important to remember that your opponent is giving you options in hand when he bounces your cards. If he can’t translate that bouncing into massive shield, mana, creature or hand loss for you, then you have chances to recuperate provided not too much of your mana has been bounced. So, don’t count yourself out of the game until that direct hit. Hydro Hurricane is good when the bounce is hard to overcome, like when your field is bounced and then your hand is robbed. The point is to be prepared for a Hydro Hurricane deck approaching a store near you. You don’t want to be left with a pile of rumble that used to be your killer deck when the spell hits. While avoiding some natural disasters may be hard in other aspects of your life, it doesn’t have to be when it comes to Hydro Hurricane.

At this time I don’t have builds to share with you. I’ve tossed out many card ideas so you have plenty to work with when building your Hurricane deck. It’s a good idea to run the full gamut of Hydro pairings to see which one is more viable in your meta. My playgroup is in the process of testing out several Hydro Hurricane builds, and if any perform well in tournaments then I may swing a report your way. If you make one that sets people sailing, then drop Pojo a line for the Tourney Reports section. Until then, good luck at your Shadowclash release event. Ciao!

If you have any questions, want to see something covered in an article, or just want to chat, then drop me a line at kaiserpso@hotmail.com.