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Hey guys, in anticipation of the really cool Display of Instinct, and the rest of the as-of-yet-unseen FTP support coming in set 5, I decided to throw FTP moment back together again and see how it felt.



I went with the Almost philosophy of interaction--diversify the crap out of it. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, 4 of no reactive card aside from 3+1 torch. In fact, you might even diversify further with a lightning strike over a hailstorm or purify if you so wished.



Clan standard allows us to get some more oomph from our power base as well, allowing us to run 27 + 4 + 1, though obviously, influence is always going to nag for a deck hoping to cast HotV and Molot, though set 5 support might change that.



Went with a fire market because bore and cookbook are awesome, and when you have a high-curve deck with lots of crests, you can really smooth out your draws.



As usual, your answer to fatties is to get enough power searches, card draw spells, and maybe 2 for 1 yourself and get 2 more spells in the void to make your moments large enough to dissuade any attacks from their larger units. Against this deck, Telut is even scarier than 7-cost Icaria was.



But generally a similar idea to what we've seen--when two of the top decks in the format are somewhat slower (Feln and FJS), a deck packing haymaker finishers on the top end seems reasonably well-positioned.



Of course, the deck definitely lost quite a bit of a step compared to its set 3 ETS incarnation where sideboarding would really allow it to shine, since 5 card markets just feel too small, but I'll take what I can get.



If you want to switch up the merchants, here are a couple of ideas to get you started:



Primal: permafrost, kaleb's choice, hailstorm/cirso's choice, mirror image, molot

Time: purify, disjunction, wasp, devoted theurge/lumen defender/carnosaur, moment



Ultimately, the deck feels functional, but as with any high-curve deck, a lot rides on how well the interaction lines up with the metagame, and FTP doesn't really have terrific answers to high-cost haymakers (equivocate gives them another non-negligible threat, wasp can get torched or annihilated, permafrost looks silly against value-generators like Telut or Azindel, and is cold against Icaria) besides try to beat them on board. Titan, HotV, and your finishers may do the trick, but if you don't find them in time, well, things can get a bit dicey.



In any case, if anyone wants to give this HotV control archetype one more whirl before we get some more support in set 5, here it is.