Have we found the missing piece for a Tier 1 Uterra-Tempys archetype?

In Set 3 we got Dozer, the Dormant, and to be honest, he’s has been dormant ever since. He’s been hibernating till the recent World Championship Qualifier where two of the Top 16 decklists featured our cuddly, sometimes angry friend. His alternate form, Dozer, the Awakened, needs to be triggered by absorbing some damage, or what I like to call, “pissing him off”.

Now, with Set 4, we get Brimstone Tyrant featuring the new mechanic, Upgrade, which means you’ll need to overwrite a creature to get the effect. With Upgrade, Tyrant is a high powered Firestorm on a significant body!

Think about that board-wide burn effect for a moment. Tyrant scales 4/6/8 damage to each other creature while Firestorm levels 3/5/8 damage. The drawback is that we need enablers to trigger the ability. Ensuring the Tyrant’s Upgrade effect is achieved reliably gives us some significant deck building hurdles to overcome. And if it’s all for Dozer, we have to ask ourselves, “Is it worth the trouble or are we falling into a trap?”

Lets take a look at the U/T list that just broke out in the recent World Championship Qualifier:

StillHadAllDeez – UT Dozer

3 Ashurian Flamesculptor

3 Dozer, the Dormant

3 Everflame Phoenix

3 Frostmane Dragon

3 Thundersaur

3 Lightning Spark

3 Rage of Kadras

3 Static Shock

2 Burnout

2 Firestorm

2 Flame Lance

What’s interesting about this list is the sheer complexity of leveling priority. For those who have been playing Dysian Broodqueen for a while, I’m sure you’ve found out it’s fairly linear, meaning you play most match-ups the same way. Let me point out some of the “traps” of this U/T deck.

Fifteen spells with no Flamebreak Invoker means no persistent value. Static Shock, Firestorm, or combat damage are the only ways to turn on Dozer. If you’re aggressive with Shocking your own Dozer, that means you are leveling spells. When you level spells early, you decrease your chance for Flamesculptor to return good value in PL2. Flamesculptor needs underlevel Tempys spells.

You need to draw your combos in order. You have to maintain board presence to get value from your Rage of Kadras (RoK), and your RoK needs to be with Tempy creatures. Getting the Brimstone Tyrant Upgrade can be tricky, but adding solid Tempys creatures and cutting sub-optimal spells will get us there.

Luckily we’re in a faction combination which makes this relatively easy to do. Scatterspore Eidolon is a big body that spits out seedlings for your Brimstone to squash and then spit fire. But wait! he’s spitting hot fire at the whole board. What’s up with that!? Well that’s part of the building hurdle this deck addresses, and Brimstone is worded so that it doesn’t target itself. Your Thundersaurs and Dozers will tank the burn happily. So without further ado, I give you my take on Uttera/Tempys Brimstone Rage. Think about it:

Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan

3 Borean Windweaver

3 Brimstone Tyrant

3 Dozer, the Dormant

3 Frostmane Dragon

3 Thundersaur

2 Ashurian Flamesculptor

2 Lavafused Asir

3 Flame Lance

3 Rage of Kadras

3 Static Shock

2 Lightning Spark



SolForge needs a “Wrath” effect, a window of circumstances that let’s us clear the board with spell or ability.

Brimstone Tyrant gets us closer, for example, with my good old buddy Glaceus, Tundra Tyrant. I haven’t done the math, but I can tell you already I am not feeling good about having to land a rank-up effect and follow-up with an Upgrade in order to “Wrath” the board.

“But you’re saying there’s a chance?!” Yes, yes there is.

Follow twitch.tv/teamghoxssocks for more from me – I’ll be brewing with Imprisoned Heralds in the weeks ahead.