MTG Arena just got an absurd new spoiler that threatens to end the game immediately. A two-card combo has already been discovered with a new Legendary Elephant that creates a game-ending board presence.
The good news, or bad news depending on how you feel about combo decks, is that this is a digital exclusive. Hamza, Might of the Yathan is the first spoiler for the new Alchemy: Tarkir expansion. 30 new digital-exclusive cards will be revealed between now and April 27 – the release date for Alchemy: Tarkir.
Alchemy players will be experimenting with a new incredible Alchemy combo that, essentially, Manifests as many creatures in your library as you have Basic Lands. This can occur as soon as you trigger Hamza, Might of the Yathan’s ability.
Manifesting Your Dreams
Hamza, Might of the Yathan looks like a decent payoff at first glance. This creature cares a lot about face-down permanents. If you flip them up, Hamza can double their size. If you need a bigger board presence, you can choose to Endure a Spirit token instead.
While this is interesting, it doesn’t amount to much without Hamza’s Landfall ability. This seeks a creature from your library and Manifests it whenever a land enters play. This ability is incredibly scary, and leads to combos galore.
Seek means that you have no way of controlling what creatures Hamza finds outside of careful deckbuilding. There is, however, every possibility of filling your deck with massive creatures like Progenitus that can be cheated out with Hamza. From there, using an effect like Hauntwoods Shrieker to flip it can cheat in a Progenitus way ahead of schedule.
That’s not the most potent combo available with Hamza, however. One Duskmourn uncommon allows this card to pull every single basic land out of your deck, and Manifest a gigantic board as soon as you play a land.
Hamza and Threats Around Every Corner
Hamza, Might of the Yathan creates a positive feedback loop when partnered with Threats Around Every Corner. Hamza cares about lands entering play, and Threats cares about face-down permanents. Combine these two cards, and you essentially pull cards out of your deck until the loop fails to find something. Until then, the combo is infinite. Here’s how it works.
- A land enters play – perhaps as your land for turn, or from Threats Around Every Corner’s entry ability.
- Hamza triggers. You Seek a creature and Manifest it.
- Threats Around Every Corner triggers from the face-down Manifest entering. You search for a basic land and put it into play.
- The basic land entering triggers Hamza. Rinse and repeat until you’ve played all of your basic lands, or you’ve run out of creatures to Manifest.
This, essentially, creates a massive flood of Manifest creatures and ramps you a ludicrous amount. There’s even a way to give everything Haste. Yarus, Roar of the Old Gods synergizes perfectly with this deck. Not only will your army have Haste, but if something takes out your Manifested creatures, Yarus will return them to play, even flipping them face-up!
Should these three cards ever be assembled, the game is as good as over, but there are some weaknesses to this combo that should be discussed.
Weaknesses
This Hamza combo feels quite powerful. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to avoid getting completely crushed as soon as the feedback loop between Hamza and Threats starts.
Firstly, you can simply take out one of the combo pieces with spot removal. Your opponent will still get some value out of the interaction, moreso if they trigger Hamza’s Landfall ability first, but this will prevent your opponent from emptying the contents of your library.
Perhaps the larger weakness of this combo is that it requires a lot of basic lands to work properly. Considering that Hamza, Might of the Yathan is a three-colored card, this could cause some mana troubles. Things get worse when you consider that Yarus, as well as all the other Haste enablers in Alchemy, are red. This puts a severe strain on deckbuilding, which could seriously impact the lethality of this combo.
Otherwise, you need a Haste enabler to ensure this combo ends the game on the spot. A lack of one means that your entire combo can be stopped with a board wipe. To circumvent this, players could use a plan B that wins the game with the massive influx of mana that this combo grants.
This Combo is Too Obvious… And That’s a Good Thing
The two-card combo between Hamza and Threats Around Every Corner isn’t difficult to find. It’s like Hamza was specifically created to interact with Threats in this way. If any Alchemy playtesting is done during these cards’ design, it means that designers were likely aware of this combo and are not concerned that it will impact the health of the Alchemy format negatively.
Whether it’s the deckbuilding restrictions or the overall power level of the Alchemy format, this will likely be a new archetype for players to explore, but it will not dominate the format. That said, there’s still a non-zero chance that someone breaks this interaction. If they do, Alchemy will probably be a place to be avoided for the coming months.
As for other digital-only formats, this combo appears to be too slow. Four and five mana is a big ask for Historic. There are far easier, and more deadly, combos to utilize in Timeless. As a result, we don’t expect Hamza, Might of the Yathan to take over other digital constructed formats, if it takes over any at all.
There’s an Alchemy Qualifier for the Arena Championship right after Tarkir: Dragonstorm’s Alchemy expansion drops, which will give us a good idea of whether this combo is broken or not. Alchemy: Tarkir releases April 29, and play-ins for the Alchemy Qualifier weekend begin on May 3rd.
