Hammer Update 8/4/202

Hello everyone, and happy August! This is the first full month that we have Edge of Eternities available. For my initial thoughts on EOE, you can take a look here. Tl;dr, I think Tezzeret is fantastic, and I’ve continued to work on the list that I streamed at the end of July (YouTube vid here).

The meta is largely similar to pre-EOE. While that may change a bit as new cards are integrated into existing decks, here is where we are at: 

Boros has the biggest meta share by far, with Domain Zoo, Esper Blink, Amulet, and Dimir Frog with 5% meta share. After that, we can see Belcher, Ruby, Prowess, Neoform, Goryo’s, and Broodscale at 3% each, with Living End, Affinity, and Big Eldrazi lagging behind. Looking at that meta, there are (as usual) only 2 decks that I’m actively unhappy to face: Blink and Amulet. Every other deck listed here is something I believe we are either even or favored against, which means I think the deck is in a good spot, especially with the upgrades we just got.

Without further ado, here is the current list I’m happy to present:

Deck 

SB Guide

Notes on Current Configuration

First things first, the elephant in the room: We cut longtime staple Stoneforge Mystic for 2025 mythic Tezzeret, Cruel Captain. For more details on this, take a peek at my writeup on Tezzeret in the EOE set review, but here are the broad strokes:

• He finds key targets for our proactive plan in Hammer and Spear, and even Ornithopter/Sentinel.

• He finds mana in Mox and Mantle.

• He finds high-impact hate pieces in Needle, Cage, Vexing Bauble, and Tormod’s Crypt.

• He finds removal (mostly) in the form of Portable Hole.

• Finding additional spells means that while he can’t find Cutter, he is excellent at helping you keep triggering it.

• His only big downsides compared to SFM are that he can’t find Cori-Steel Cutter, and that he costs 3-mana to SFM’s 2.

While those are meaningful downsides, the value of all the benefits really can’t be overstated.
Oh, and Tezz doesn’t get hit by Wrath of the Skies. Having a powerful card that doesn’t get Wrath’ed is a meaningful benefit to the 3-mana planeswalker.

Okay, but why cut blue to go strictly Boros?

• Splashing an additional color, especially in an Urza’s Saga deck, is a real cost. Not only does it limit the number of red sources, it can lead to a higher chance of having unkeepable hands. With that in mind, let’s look at what splashing blue actually gets us. 

• Blue predominantly benefits us with access to Consign to Memory, as well as countermagic like Spell Pierce. 

• While Consign is a strong card, evaluating how much we actually need it is another story. It’s at its very best against Eldrazi shells and Cascade decks like Living End, and has some good utility against Blink, Amulet, and Belcher. Spell pierce largely helps against Belcher and Control shells with Wrath of the Skies. Now, do we need the extra oomph against these decks, or do we have the tools without splashing a third color?

  • We are already structurally favored against Eldrazi shells thanks to the speed of our deck and ability to go both tall (hammer) and wide (cutter), so those are not really a concern. While Broodscale can be close, access to Lightning Bolts, Wear//Tear, Portable Holes, and Needle does a lot of work.

  • Living End is quite soft to hate pieces like Vexing Bauble and Tormod’s Crypt.

  • Blink is somewhat soft to Torpor orb effects like Hushbringer, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines, and single-use interaction like Consign can be fought through.

  • Amulet is a beating, and really requires highly specific tools like Magus of the Moon.

  • Belcher is already a favored matchup largely due to our fast clock combined with lock pieces like Needle and Vexing Bauble. 

• A key thing to note is that all of these decks can be attacked without the blue cards, especially with the addition of Tezz. Because Tezz can grab hate pieces like Needle as well as grab spot removal like Hole, it means we can be a bit lighter on the countermagic. Additionally, by cutting Consign/PIerce, it makes room for us to play haymakers like Elesh Norn for Blink, and Magus of the Moon for Amulet. 

• Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that we likely don’t need blue cards, at least not in the current meta.

Tezz being in the deck ultimately means that we have 4-8 flex “Tezz Slots”. These will be the cards you will most commonly swap in and out of the maindeck and into the sideboard. Right now I’m on 2 Hole, Needle, Crypt in the main, with Vexing Bauble and Grafdigger’s Cage in the sideboard. You can and should swap Vexing Bauble and Cage in as your expected meta demands. While I would always play a Needle and the first Hole in the main, the additional slots can be any of the other options. Alternatively, if you’ve got extra sideboard space you can fit more copies of Ornithopters back in. 

**Note that if you are keeping Tezz in post-board, you almost always want to keep at least 1 creature that you can tutor with his -3**

Where is Tezz good, and where is he lackluster?

Tezzeret really shines when: 

• The bullets he can grab are high impact.

• When you need to grind, especially against Wrath of the Skies.

Tezz struggles when:

• You are racing against “normal” decks; Prowess and Zoo are great examples of this.

• When the tutor targets are lower impact.

Maindeck
-Manabase - In case you missed it, last month I cut Inkmoths from the deck. Losing out on potential infect 1-hit kills is a downside, but since effectively every deck has a way to deal with a 1/1 flying artifact creature, it has a lot less appeal than it used to since it’s incredibly difficult to go for unless you have it backed up by Surge. This means that cutting Inkmoths also allows us to move Surge to the board and make room for other utility pieces. Finally, having the additional colored land in your deck leads to more keepable hands… which is a nice change of pace. You may note that I have also added a second surveil land to the deck. While in the past it was much harder to find windows to grab/play a tapped land, the Cutter builds have made it much easier to find that window. When you are playing 1-drop, 2-drop, 3-drop it’s hard to find an extra mana. When you are often playing nothing on 1 and then Cutter + 0-drop on 2, having the option to surveil is a big upgrade.

-4 Tezzeret, Cruel Captain - At this point I’ve written literally thousands of words on this card, and I have been quite impressed with how he has played out. If you want more insights on him I would point you back to my analysis on it here

-4 Mishra’s Bauble - The ability to cheaply trigger cutter while also aiding in fast metalcraft and also cash it in for another card to potentially keep triggering Cutter means I’m quite happy to have the Baubles.

-4 Steelshaper’s Gift - It is absolutely wild to me that this card is now the better SFM, but here we are. You can blame the power of “Turn 1 Gift, Turn 2 Cutter + 0-drop trigger”. I don’t think it’s even very close which one you should play. 

-Only… 6 Creatures?? - The increased density of Cutters in the deck means that you simply don’t run out of creatures nearly as often as in previous configurations. Pair that with Saga and Tezz being able to generate threats and it becomes much more sane than on first glance.

-Paradise Mantle - While I had initially cut it due to how few “creatures” we play, access to the card in a Paladin + Cutter deck still gives you a lot of power for minimal slots. I think it’s worth the spot, but you could choose to play a different Tezz target in its place.

-2 Portable Hole - Highly flexible interaction game 1 that is rarely dead. Hole being an artifact means it helps you build metalcraft and pump your constructs, and Tezz can even grab it. Since it can tag non-creature permanents and larger creatures like Goblin Bombardment, Psychic Frog, Static Prison, Amulet of Vigor, Blade of the Bloodchief, Cutter, and Ruby Medallion (the list goes on and on), it’s a card I’m happy to always have at least 1 maindeck copy of nowadays. 

-Pithing Needle - Needle is a flexible tool against many decks, is tutorable, and contributes to metalcraft for Opal, Paladin, and grows constructs. While you can certainly swap it out for a different bullet, I think Needle will generally be the one you are happiest to have access to game 1.

-Tormod’s Crypt - While I’ve reached for other graveyard hate in the past such as Soul-Guide Lantern or Relic of Progenitus, Crypt costing 0 means that it can both help contribute to your fast Mox Opal starts, and that you can immediately play it off of Tezzeret on turn 3 with no ramp. You can certainly play another hate piece in this slot, but I’ll be using ol’ reliable here.

-0 Lavaspur Boots - Due to the abundance of haste we have with Cutters, and the less reliant we are on the Saga Construct beatdown plan, I don’t believe Boots quite makes the cut. This is definitely a reasonable option to keep in the deck especially with Tezz, but I don’t think it’s a necessary inclusion.

Sideboard

-3 Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines - Elesh, Mommy, or Big Momma is an absolute beating against both Blink and Titan. For 5 mana, you get a big creature that shuts off all of the enter triggers. Against Blink, they have no realistic way to kill her outside of the occasional SB vindicates and I guess a gigantic Wrath of the Skies which would nuke their board as well. Against Titan, Amulet will no longer untap their lands, Titan will no longer grab lands on the way down, and she even shuts off the ability to bounce an Otawara/Tolaria West to their hand.
Magus is certainly more impactful against Titan, but having both means you have a real plan.

The biggest downside to Elesh is her whopping 5-mana cost. How does our deck get to the spot to cast it in a reasonable time frame? Mox Opal obviously does quite a bit to help us get there, but the real shift is Tezzeret’s 0 ability. Not only can he come down early to grab a Mox Opal if you don’t already have one, but he can untap your Opal the following turn to ramp you up to this 5-mana lock piece. She is certainly the most experimental card I’m playing, but for right now I’m inclined to believe in her.

-3 Magus of the Moon - You should basically only ever bring in Magus when it wrecks your opponent. Specifically against Titan and maybe colorless Eldrazi Tron. While it is narrow, I think having 3 copies gives you a real plan against one of our worst matchups, Amulet Titan.

-3 Lightning Bolt - Bolt continues to be our best removal spell right now. While basically everything kills Ajani, Guide, Pride, Phelia, Collector Ouphe, and the slew of other little critters, Bolt cleanly kills Clarion Conqueror. I considered Dispatch, Galvanic, and even Path, but ultimately felt that ol’ reliable was the best option.

-2 Surge of Salvation - I have had this in the list for as long as it’s existed, and I don’t intend to stop yet. It acts as a solid catch-all against a wide range of spot removal and protects both our creatures and our noncreatures (Saga, lock pieces, equipment, etc). Few feelings match countering a Force of Vigor with a Surge.

-2 Wear//Tear - As a highly flexible and efficient option, I like bringing it in against Boros, E Tron, Amulet, Domain Zoo, Affinity, Broodscale and Blink. Being able to efficiently answer a Bombardment, Chalice, Amulet/Saga, Leyline/Binding/Scion, or Blade are all good. Tear being able to destroy High Noon as well as Overlord means that it can steal some games for you, while still being incredibly flexible.

-Grafdigger’s Cage - Cage does a ton of work against a wide range of decks, including most Storm configurations, Birthing Ritual, Goryo’s Vengeance, Green Sun’s Zenith, and even Abhorrent Oculus. Note that against the eyeball, it turns the trigger from a “make a 2/2” into “mill 2 cards, you get nothing else”.

-Vexing Bauble - Bauble is a nice Tezz/Saga target to have against decks like Belcher, Neoform, Cascade, Goryo’s, and even Storm (for the Ral ultimate). Note that it can create a bit of awkwardness with our own 0’s but that’s a price worth paying.

All in all, I hope everyone enjoys the list and sees the impact that our Cruel Captain has on our games!