Hazezon Tamar Primer

This past week I picked up Hazezon Tamar, a General from Legends that some people call, “the original Avenger of Zendikar“. Hazezon’s card text can be fairly hard to understand so for your sanity and mine here is the oracle text:

“When Hazezon Tamar enters the battlefield, put X 1/1 Sand Warrior creature tokens that are red, green, and white onto the battlefield at the beginning of your next upkeep, where X is the number of lands you control at that time. When Hazezon leaves the battlefield, exile all Sand Warriors.”

Using this data we can break down his ability into three exploitable items:

1. It’s a delayed trigger.

2. The number of tokens created are equal to the number of lands I control.

3. Hazezon exiles all Sand Warriors when he leaves the battlefield.

Understanding this, I wanted to put the most emphasis on the first item. Since this is a delayed trigger I wanted to create a situation where I can bounce Hazezon Tamar as many times as possible before the next upkeep creating multiple delayed triggers. This way I would generate a massive army at the start of my next upkeep. Cards like Conjurer’s Closet, Cloudshift, Flickerwisp and Galepowder Mage become crucial to create this situation.

To take advantage of so many Sand Warriors entering the battlefield adding cards like Purphoros, God of the Forge, Warstorm Surge, Pandemonium, Parallel Lives, Oran-Rief, the Vastwood and In the Web of War seemed to make good sense.

Because the number of tokens created are equal to the number of lands I control the deck also becomes a, “lands matter” deck. Land ramp becomes much more important than artifact ramp because of this. Cards like manabond, burgeoning, tempt with discovery and Boundless Realms should be considered.

Since lands matter I thought I would build around that fact, Emeria Angel, Lotus Cobra, Rampaging Baloths, Seer’s Sundial and Avenger of Zendikar are great ways to gain value from lands entering the battlefield.

Lastly, Hazezon Tamar is the deck’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness. If Hazezon Tamar is on the battlefield along side the Sand Warriors when he dies, so do they. Because of this I need to get Hazezon Tamar off the battlefield before the delayed trigger resolves. Ashnod’s Altar, Martyr’s Cause, Perilous Forays, Goblin Bombardment and City of Shadows are an awesome way to achieve this and create value from Hazezon Tamar‘s death.

Right now I think it would be irresponsible of me to post the entire deck as it is still very much a work in progress. I would love to hear from you as what I should toss in there and possibly any stories from playing with or against Hazezon Tamar.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to follow me on twitter @CMDTower.