Spoiler season is not just exciting but revealing: what type of card grabs your eye? Are you drawn to the brutal efficiency of Earthshaker Khenra or splashy finishers like Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh? Are you looking for minor upgrades to proven decks, or trying to find something completely new? Do you want to play conventional Magic or go off the deep end with Hollow One?

Unless you opened a Camel in an Arabian Nights pack twenty years ago and fell in love with it, your answer probably wasn’t “I want more Deserts!”. This block’s group of gimmicky lands looks at first glance like limited fodder with one or two maybe sneaking their way into Standard decks. With four sets due to rotate in the autumn and the old rotation schedule in effect, Standard is as large as it will be for a long time. With so much competition the barrier to entry for new cards is very high. Can your cute Desert synergies really stand up to Gideon, Ally of Zendikar or Torrential Gearhulk? It makes sense that the best ‘Deserts matter’ card is one that gets better in a larger format:

It isn’t as flashy as the rest of the Hour cycle but Hour of Promise has the most room for exploration – and maybe the highest ceiling. The older sets in Standard offer natural comparisons:

Traditional ramp decks used cheap acceleration such as Rampant Growth or Sphere of the Suns to jump to powerful high-end threats like Titans. Recent blocks offered few strong finishers in that range – Dragonlord Atarka is the only memorable exception – and the Eldrazi gave ramp decks a great reason to think even bigger. Those mid-high spots on the curve have been filled by ‘super-ramp’ spells that bring you in range of Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and friends. Ulvenwald Hydra into Shrine of the Forsaken Gods, a key innovation in the Marvel decks in their dying days, does a passable imitation of Primeval Titan into Eldrazi Temple or Eye of Ugin, a common sequence in ramp decks the first time Eldrazi ran over Standard.

Hour of Promise into two Shrines puts you to seven lands, ‘activating’ both of the Shrines, and only one mana away from casting Ulamog. Hour of Promise into anything is enough to cast World Breaker or other threats in that range. It’s no Turn 4 Ulamog but Turn 6 Ulamog with the right support is still very tough for most decks to beat. Note that both Nissa’s Renewal and Ulvenwald Hydra leave something behind – enough life to blunt an attack or a large body – which is necessary if you want to spend a turn on an expensive ramp spell. Hour of Promise does a similar thing for one fewer mana – a crucial difference in a ramp deck (especially if you want to cast World Breaker early).

Let’s start with a rather ambitious list:

This deck is certainly trying to do too much but it shows off what’s possible. A weakness for ramp decks in this format is the lack of cards like Nissa’s Pilgrimage to bridge the gap between the early and middle stages of the game. Relying on creatures like Channeler Initiate or Hedron Crawler lets the villain pick your draw apart with otherwise dead removal. This list aims to avoid that using delirium enablers like Vessel and Grapple to power Drownyard Temple and Corrupted Grafstone and make the deck more consistent.

I’d expect certain features of this list to be shared by any successful version of this deck. Spatial Contortion is a valuable asset in a format defined by 2-mana creatures: killing a Servant of the Conduit that was going to ramp into Chandra or Bristling Hydra is the difference between winning and losing a game. The ‘painland’ Deserts tap for green on turn 1 and give you free sources of colourless mana making Spatial Contortion and Sideboard Thought-Knot Seer possible. Hedron Archive remains a top-shelf option for ramp decks and Archive into Spatial Contortion is a very appealing sequence.

Dissenter’s Deliverance shoots down some of the scarier threats – Heart of Kiran early against Vehicles, Torrential Gearhulk late against control – while never being truly dead (it also plays well with Grafstone here).

A more conservative list:

Cutting Drownyard Temple frees up room for more Deserts (…or other lands, if you prefer). Kozilek’s Return adds a unique effect that this deck uses well, but the lack of early red sources is a big problem: if you have to use Beneath the Sands to fetch a red source, it often comes too late. A deck with this many non-basics can’t support Cinder Glade or Sheltered Thicket well either. It may be that ignoring Deserts + Hour of Promise in favour of a heavier red splash is better, but this is worth exploring for now.

The structure of ramp decks makes them prone to inconsistent draws: you need enough ramp to cast your threats in time but this leaves your deck full of air when you begin to topdeck. Between Hedron Archive and 13 cyclers, this list’s topdecks better than most normal decks!

Hour of Promise has other good targets if you can find room:

Sea Gate Wreckage/Geier Reach Sanitarium – lets you dig for your payoff cards

Mirrorpool – colourless is free and Mirrorpool has very high upside

Spawning Bed – ramp, Fog, and a creature land in one card

Hanweir Battlements – you’re not Melding this any time soon but giving Eldrazi or Ulvenwald Hydra haste is all you need

Westvale Abbey – Hour gets you halfway there and a more creature-heavy deck could have interest in this; it’s not too bad as an impersonator of Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree either

This isn’t an exhaustive list: there are many strange lands that are perfect for corner-case situations.

Hour of Devastation is an odd set – there are few obvious format-defining cards, but many that make you think. Hopefully this article has you excited about a card that I believe shows a lot of promise. If you have any questions, or perhaps your own take on how to use Hour of Promise, let me know in the comments.