[Standard] Understanding Son of Hermit
**While designer Gary Wise will handle the article on the history of Son of
Hermit, this is a strategy guide. Depending on reader demand, there may be a 'cheat sheet'
(aka a Matchup Guide) later on. [Interested? Make sure to email the editor at:
Son of Hermit
Designed by: Gary Wise
If you're considering maindeck changes, I would consider the Crop Rotation the only vulnerable card due to some subtle interactions after sideboarding. But if I were to play it again, I wouldn't change a card. The sideboard is more flexible, with good options against whatever local metagame you're up against. My worlds choice is a solid neutral board. Now for a card by card breakdown of the deck:
You want as many first turn green sources as possible because of the Birds and Elves, but you also want your lands to be useful later on because of this deck's large number of mana sources. It's a tough balance to strike, and ten Forests seems about right. They also let you play one Rofellos; with more Forests you could play two. Forests are also a subtle liability against blue, because they let Submerge be cast for free. On occasion you can avoid playing one for a while after sideboarding for that reason, and running fewer Forests makes that more likely. I'd stick with ten, but going up by one is certainly reasonable.
It's surprising how often the lost turn of mana doesn't hurt you. Your mana curve isn't quite as tight as some other decks, which is one of this deck's liabilities, but it helps support the idea of this card a lot. Also, there are a lot of openings where you get a chance to play this. In general, any opening without Rishadan Port or Yavimaya Elder will let you play this turn two, and of course any without a Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise lets you play it turn one if you don't mulligan. If you draw two mana creatures this can often come out turn three for free, et cetra. And having twenty-three other lands means that if playing it would hurt then often you can wait. While this comes out when the time comes, don't be tempted to attack with a Village at the cost of casting your spells without a very good reason.
Karpulsian Forest:
These are surprisingly painless. You sometimes take a few damage from them, and you'll take a point casting a significant portion of your red spells, but it almost never seems to matter. The Karpulsians are your best lands and they help make the deck possible, bringing the deck up to eight incidental red sources before you have to go for the Mountains themselves.
We had a lot of debates on how many of these we needed. In particular, I always wanted more. The deck doesn't start with too many red spells, but they're important, and after sideboarding you almost always have more. When you take out Earthquake and Arc Lightning you're putting in Tectonic Break and Boil. This was such a problem that for a while we had more Mountains in the sideboard. In the end, I settled on three of them plus a Crop Rotation, giving the deck 12 red sources plus three Yavimaya Elders. Some people may want to cut it a little closer, and I understand that.
Every now and then the Cradle will provide extra mana and it will prove invaluable. More often, it won't really matter. Between the need for colorless lands, first turn green mana, red mana, and Treetops, there's really only room for one. Without Crop Rotation I'm not sure if I'd have any; for a while I didn't have one and didn't miss it. When you do get it, make maximum use of it if you can. Sometimes your mana just explodes. But be careful not to overcommit just to power the Cradle; once you have enough to win against a deck with mass kill, stop.
I'm going to take my stand on this card right now: It should be banned in Standard as of the day Invasion is legal unless the set makes it significantly weaker. The card is in too many decks, but more importantly it has created a situation where mana screw rules the format to a large extent. When I played this deck at a Neutral Ground Grudge Match Qualifier, I made top eight only to lose out in the Quarterfinals to mana problems against Replenish. Ports make one of Magic's biggest problems even worse, and do it in non-counterable, random fashion. I don't think they should be banned before Invasion, however, because it would do too much to strengthen Replenish.
Anyway, that's over with, back to the deck. Rishadan Port is in many ways the reason this deck can exist. On turn two you can use Rishadan Port while continuing to put out mana creatures for your powerful spells, sealing games with Plow Under before your opponent can reach even two mana. It also lets your mana control approach critical mass and sets that option up for the sideboard. In general, Porting is a very good idea. For each deck there is generally a mana level you do not want them to have, and you should give up casting an unimportant spell to keep them from getting there. All the normal tricks involving Port should be employed here, only more so. Unless you're in mana trouble, you kill your opponent's Ports only to let you use yours; denying both sides mana through Port is fine when you don't need it. But in general, there isn't much that's new here.
You have Yavimaya Elder and the mana creatures to give you the edge on mana producers. If your opponent has a significant number of non-basics, you often want to just mow them down. While this wasn't in the original Angry Hermit due to justifiable mana concerns, those who didn't use Crop Rotation often ended up with two Dust Bowls, and I would recommend that if you take it out. Your opponent's Dust Bowls are often damn annoying as well, since they can be used in response to land destruction. If you seem to have too much land in a matchup and he has few targets, this is a reasonable card to sideboard out. The problem there is that you want your mana against decks with all basics to power Masticore, but going second and putting in the fourth Elder could be seen as making up for that.
When I first played against Mike Turian and an early version of Angry Hermit, I didn't understand what this card was doing in the deck. If it wasn't in red decks what was it doing here? But it fits right in. It is at its best against other weenie decks, in particular against other decks based on green mana creatures, and almost as good against WW and Stompy. The problem is that there are two important matchups where it's virtually dead, Accelerated Blue and Replenish. Against Magpile it happens to shine due to Magpie itself, which gives you the problem of wanting to put in everything you put in against Accelerated Blue and not having anything to take out. If nothing else, Arc can still do three to the head, making it very good at finishing off a player who's taken a Blastoderm hit with some help from an Elf or Elder. Sometimes this is a two or even three for one, and sometimes it doesn't do much and gets boarded out, but it's too important not to use four.
It's one of the quirks of this design that it's always had Avalanche Riders and never had Stone Rain. I'm not sure if this made sense back when the deck used Skyshroud Poachers, but it does now. That's because Blastoderm has this annoying tendency to do fifteen damage and then die, forcing you to do the last five points some other way. Especially with Arc Lightning in the deck, Riders help you do that. Echo as usual for this creature is almost never paid until the point where you have more mana than you know what to do with. This card stays in almost regardless of your matchup; it's almost never bad. When in doubt, lead with this over Blastoderm.
Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves:
These are so important to the deck that in many matchups (like Replenish) any hand without one is virtually an automatic mulligan. Birds are your best turn one play. While they can't attack, they're still generally better than Elves for you because they provide red mana and they fly, making them immune to Earthquake. Be careful not to overcommit these against the wrong deck if you draw a ton of them, with Arc Lightning, Perish, Massacre, Wrath of God and Powder Keg the most likely mass removal. Against decks with Earthquake be even more careful if none of your mana creatures are Birds. Of course, if your opponent can't do anything about it, dump them all. These creatures are the reason this deck exists. Without them, you couldn't get away with playing enough mana sources and you couldn't come out fast enough to stop other decks. The key thing to understand is that this deck is fair, while other decks in this format (like Tinker for example) try to be unfair. These let you have the mana to contain them fast enough by denying them resources before they cast their game winning spells. The better your opponent's deck, the more important they become.
It was the star of Trinity, it was still in Angry Hermit in multiples. Now, it's a sorry excuse for a mixture of a two drop and a ninth elf. You have enough Forests to support this card, but barely; if you start cutting into that much further, this should go. At times I looked at cutting him out entirely, but it fits in. Eight mana creatures is just shy of where you want to be, and you have a gigantic hole in your mana curve at two and three mana. Rishadan Port and the mana creatures are supposed to make up for that, but they only go so far. To balance things out the deck needs a two mana creature that can attack. Since the best other option was River Boa, the choice was clear. Rofellos is still a 2/1 if nothing else, and every so often he will be nothing else because you don't control a Forest. Don't forget he's a beatstick. That's the reason Vine Trellis is bad in the deck. The need to play too many mana sources puts you in danger of getting mana glutted, and that forces you to turn your mana into beatdown.
Blastoderm is the deck's new offense. It's the reason everyone plays green in MBC; it's untargetable, it's undercosted, and it swings for 15. The deck happens to be very good at getting those other five points in to back it up. If someone thinks they'll 'just take fifteen' they're fooling themselves. Still, don't rush into Blastoderm. It's generally better to start with the mana disruption, then put out the beatdown. The real issues come when Blastoderm isn't that good because your opponent has regenerators or something silly like Mother of Runes. Every now and then it can't attack, or if it did it wouldn't accomplish anything. Still, that doesn't mean the card is bad. It just means you need to use caution playing it. Blastoderm is an underappreciated defensive card, giving you the time to set up or find Masticore. And most of the time an Earthquake or even Arc Lightning would let you do five points to the head. Don't take these out just because your opponent has regenerators. (A Nether Spirit deck might be another matter if you have enough replacements.)
This is sort of the last card in the deck. It's definitely good in theory, giving you either red mana, a 3/3 trampling attacker, a Dust Bowl, a Rishadan Port or extra mana from a Cradle depending on the situation. Often the right land will wreck them, and this gives you a fifth shot at a second turn Port. In short, I like the card in the deck. The problem is I almost never seem to draw it, so I don't really have enough play data to draw a conclusion. For that reason I can't really argue with people who think the deck runs a little better without it. But given how cheap it is for you to sacrifice a land (and how good this is early) I think it belongs.
This is the complement to Blastoderm. Against a lot of decks this will remove multiple creatures. Sometimes you lose a Llanowar Elf in the process, but it doesn't often matter. Still, watch out for those rare occasions when you hold one so you can Earthquake. Don't be afraid to go one for one with this card, you have what it takes to beat beatdown players over the long term without this giving card advantage. But if you can wait for more stuff to hit without taking serious damage, let them keep their stuff for a turn or two, especially if you don't have any backup. Then there are the decks where there's nothing for this to kill, or almost nothing. In those cases, you're the beatdown and/or disruption deck in the matchup and this is used as a finisher, often going as high as seven or eight points to the head. You take the damage too, but it doesn't matter.
This is the great anti-beatdown machine. The key is knowing when to cast it and when to protect it. Against blue, you almost never cast it, but watch out for exceptions. The big one is if they couldn't pay for it and you don't have a board to wreck and have useless lands in your hand. At that point, there's no reason not to go for it. It also makes sense if you're sure they no longer could be holding Treachery and you have stuff to discard to it. In general, this is a much less dangerous card to be facing down than you'd think. The Birds and Elves die, but Yavimaya Elder was supposed to die, as was Avalanche Riders much of the time. After that, Masticore and Blastoderm are pretty safe. Once they get a Masticore you start putting pressure on their card count, the total amount of stuff they have in play and in their hand. Soon the Masticore will be running low on gas. In short, don't be afraid to play Masticore just because you're up against a blue deck. Gary Wise says that sometimes he'd leave some of them in against blue so they would be stolen and he could lock them with it, which is an interesting strategy against poor players but I wouldn't recommend it. Against decks with removal unique to Masticore like Seal of Cleansing (or Annul), don't play Masticore until you have no other play if tempo is at stake. You're not afraid to play it, you just don't want to waste time.
On the other side of the coin, in the other half of matches Masticore is amazing. It's not always the card you want right now, but you do want it soon. Don't play it prematurely. Decide how many lands you'll need in play and make sure you can have that many and still have multiple cards in hand. Of course, if you're in danger feel free to throw the rules out the window, but don't get into a locked situation that's impossible to win from no matter how long the odds are with another option. Some chance is always better than none at all. The next question is when you should wait until you can protect Masticore with a regeneration shield. The answer is as you would expect: You expose Masticore when your opponent can't kill it with a method you can regenerate from, when you can't afford to wait or when you don't need it. Often your opponent will be scrambling to kill a Masticore you don't even particularly want to keep around. Milk those situations for all they're worth. In general, when asking whether to protect a Masticore just ask yourself how you could lose this game. If the answer is 'by losing Masticore' protect it; if there are other likely ways, go ahead and expose it if that gets you a lot of time advantage. It's about making the right percentage play.
This is the only one of the five casting cost spells that survived into the new version, and it's by far the best one. Plow Under is great time advantage as well as card advantage. In the matchups where you're not facing beatdown, this card always leaves you in a much better position than you were in before if the game wasn't already lost. You take one turn to take away two land plays and their next two draw steps. If you're wondering what to do, this is generally the right move unless it might get countered. If you are worried about counters, this is the spell you want to push through unless your opponent is gaining card advantage already (say, thorough Magpie) at which point it may not have enough effect. There's a point where this goes from devastating to really annoying (when your opponent doesn't need the land plays), and then there's a point where it starts to become bad - when there's a clock of some kind generating cards. That's all the more reason to cast this early, to make sure that it comes in first. Many games come down to you casting Plow Under before they can generate card advantage. Against aggressive decks some of these often get sideboarded out, although you're never too happy about it. In general, that happens when you think your deck has enough of a power advantage that you win the long game without it, and/or don't have enough time to use it regardless. One last note is which lands to target. If you can take away their colored mana, that's generally what you do. If you can take Cradle control, do that too of course. In general, be careful using Plow Under on Rishadan Ports, since that will let them take back Port control by playing the land at the right time if you don't have Port advantage. If they already have Port control, then go right ahead. Also be careful about Daze (and even Gush) when targeting Islands. If you both have a ton of mana, it's a good idea not to target Islands.
What does Yavimaya Elder do? It 'provides synergy.' It took a long time for me to understand what the card was doing in this deck. When I played against Angry Hermit I always saw Yavimaya Elder and cheered: He'd wasted a turn. But I figured out what the card was about. First, it provides the obvious amazing synergy with Masticore. Second, it's great against land destruction, and because this deck uses Elves and Birds for mana against creature destruction. Most of the time, those two lands mean you'll never have to worry about having enough lands again. It's at its best in the mirror matchup, where it's the most important card, and against Ponza. Against beatdown, it gives you two extra lands to use and fuel Masticore while trading for a creature. The problem is Elder is slow. Against the control decks, it gives you two extra lands or some beatdown but in both modes it's sub-par. Even worse, if a blue deck gets control of an Elder it's generally a disaster, often so bad that you need to play around it. Nothing else is anywhere near as bad. In general, you sacrifice Yavimaya Elder only when you need the lands or you need a topdeck to win the game. Whenever possible, I like to keep it on the table.
The Sideboard:
I like the current sideboard a lot. The general plan is to transform the deck into one of two modes. There's the anti-beatdown mode, where you put in a fourth Yavimaya Elder, a fourth Earthquake, a fourth Masticore and sometimes Uktabi Orangutan and Splinter. You take out Plow Unders if your opponent is true beatdown and you don't need them, and go from there. In the other mode, you take out Masticore, some of the Yavimaya Elders, Arc Lightning and Earthquake to bring in Tectonic Break, Boil, and normally Uktabi and Splinter. There are variations on both themes, and there are rouge decks, but most of the time you're doing one or the other. (I can get more into the sideboard in a future article.)
Until then,
- Zvi Mowshowitz
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