# Hades — baseline design and narrative brief

Status: phase-one baseline, before any custom substitutions. Commander: **Hades, Host of Many**, exactly as printed in [the proposal](../../clash.md). His finality ability has no reminder text. The commander is separate from [baseline.txt](baseline.txt), which contains exactly **99 existing cards: 37 lands and 62 spells**. There are 89 distinct names and 28 creatures. The list is intended for the shared four-deck environment; its strength is not a claim of tested results against arbitrary Bracket 4 pods.

## The story being played

Hades is a sovereign whose realm grows even when other gods win their battles. The central conflict is between death's apparent permanence and a petition to recover one particular person. The return matters because the person can be lost again; this is not a story about an inexhaustible army of interchangeable sacrifice fodder.

Five beats guide the eventual ten-card package:

1. **Arrival and passage.** The dead must cross into another jurisdiction. Charon's transport and payment supply a concrete exchange: spend a finite resource to gain passage. The baseline's small creatures, Clues, and sacrificed Bauble establish the scale of individual lives and payments. The custom package should make an actual choice about passage rather than merely call a mana rock a boat. Ancient passages collected in [Charon, especially Aristophanes' Frogs](https://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Kharon.html).
2. **The host's kingdom grows.** Allies and enemies alike reach the underworld. Hades and Morbid Opportunist reward deaths across the table; removing an opponent's creature can expand one's own resources. This is the Host of Many's impartial jurisdiction, not an alignment with one army. The epithet is attested in the [Homeric Hymn to Demeter](https://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/HaidesPersephone1.html).
3. **Riches beneath the earth.** The realm contains abundance as well as darkness. Plato's *Cratylus* connects Plouton with wealth arising below the earth. Treasures and costly choices about cards turn that association into resources one can spend. [Cratylus 400d–404b and other collected ancient passages](https://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/HaidesGod.html). This is the clearest foundation for a signature resource engine.
4. **One impossible petition.** Orpheus descends for Eurydice and persuades the ruler to release her on a condition. Choosing a particular graveyard creature with Hades, Reanimate, or Victimize enacts the act of retrieval. The custom package should give the petitioner and the returned person distinct agency; its strongest resurrection effect need not simply be a larger generic reanimation spell. [Apollodorus, Library 1.3.2](https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html).
5. **The second chance is precarious.** Orpheus looks back and loses Eurydice. A finality counter translates conditional release into a visible mechanical risk, rather than literally equating dying with looking backward. Protecting the returned creature with Blacksmith's Skill is a meaningful card and mana commitment; sacrificing it throws away its future. Successful combat by the restored host is our game's invented aftermath, not an ancient episode of Hades raising an invading army. [The same Library passage](https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html).

The existing angels, vampires, and titans are mechanical scaffolding. Their Magic names and creature types remain intact. The custom replacements should tell the Greek story explicitly; no claim is made that these existing fantasy characters occur in the sources.

## How the baseline works

**Early development:** keep three lands, a two-mana accelerator, and either early draw or interaction. Sol Ring is the only premium fast start. Cheap creatures replace themselves, police graveyards, or find mana; do not spend all early cards on filling the graveyard while ignoring the battlefield. Entomb and Buried Alive select situational value bodies, such as Angel of the Ruins against engines or Grave Titan when an army is needed. There is no prescribed tutor pile that wins the game.

**Commander turn:** Hades ordinarily arrives on turns four through six. Prefer casting him with a creature already in a graveyard and, when practical, one white mana or Deadly Rollick available. His end-step trigger offers immediate value if he survives to its trigger. His death trigger is once each turn, not once per creature, and finality creatures that are exiled instead of dying do not feed it. Opponents' normal trading can fund the next turn without a sacrifice engine.

**When Hades is removed:** Esper Sentinel, Black Market Connections, Welcoming Vampire, Morbid Opportunist, and Necropotence maintain resources. The curve contains 41 spells costing three or less. Sun Titan and Sevinne's Reclamation recover small development pieces; Reanimate and Victimize recover an appropriate threat. Drana provides a combat-dependent return with an opponent choosing the nonlegendary creature. Grave Titan can win fair combat without the commander. Do not automatically spend eight mana on Hades if deploying two useful spells is better.

**Eventually winning:** accumulate a real board, remove the most important blockers, and attack through the air or with a growing ground army. Grave Titan produces bodies through attacks; Necropolis Regent makes successful hits escalate rather than remain chip damage. True Conviction converts an already established board into a fast clock. With True Conviction, an unblocked 6/6 Regent deals 6 first-strike damage, gains six counters, then deals 12 regular damage; each unblocked 2/2 Zombie deals 2 then 4. Regent and three such Zombies therefore deal 36 total, divided among the players they attacked. Opponents see the board and can remove the enchantment, block, exile the Regent, or sweep before the attack. This is pressure built in public over turns, not a table kill assembled from hand.

Hades's lifelink and Baneslayer/Nighthawk life gain fund black draw costs. Avoid merely preserving a safe life total forever: the flying creatures and double strike are there to advance the game. Sepulchral Primordial is a finite, seven-mana rebuilding swing. Its actual targets depend on opposing graveyards and normally cannot include gods moved to the command zone.

## Mana, curve, and primary roles

Each card is assigned **exactly one** primary role in [baseline-roles.json](baseline-roles.json). The 22-card thematic category includes setup and bodies, not 22 finishers.

| Primary role | Count | Main job |
| --- | ---: | --- |
| Lands | 37 | 12 basics; 25 nonbasics, including graveyard interaction and two colorless utility lands |
| Ramp | 10 | Sol Ring; five two-mana rocks; Bauble; two conditional land creatures; Smothering Tithe |
| Draw | 10 | Independent engines, instant-speed refills, and a powerful life-for-cards benchmark |
| Targeted interaction | 12 | Ten permanent answers plus two dedicated graveyard artifacts |
| Sweepers | 3 | Toxic Deluge, Austere Command, Vanquish the Horde |
| Protection/recovery | 5 | Two protection spells and three recovery spells |
| Thematic setup/engines/threats | 22 | 19 creatures, Entomb, Buried Alive, True Conviction |
| **Total** | **99** | Commander excluded |

Spell mana values: **1: 15; 2: 11; 3: 15; 4: 4; 5: 6; 6: 6; 7: 3; 8: 2.** Mean nonland mana value is **3.24**, treating X as zero and Vanquish the Horde by its printed eight. Hades costs six separately. The high-end creatures can be cast or returned; Angel of the Ruins also Plainscycles. Fetch lands can find either typed dual; they do not add colors to identity. Counting flexible lands as potential sources of either color gives **26 potential white and 28 potential black land sources**, before artifacts and search creatures; the Pathway cannot provide both simultaneously. Fabled Passage and conditional duals are not assumed untapped on every early turn. Triple-colored Necropotence/Cavalier/Regent/Conviction are real sequencing demands, supported by this mana base and candidates for attention in review.

Important overlaps, not additional primary counts:

- Solemn Simulacrum is an eleventh ramp effect counted among thematic creatures. Black Market Connections and Hades provide additional Treasure mana.
- Loran, Angel of the Ruins, Angel of Despair, Ashen Rider, and Archon of Justice are additional removal bodies. Thus the 12 interaction slots are not the whole answer budget.
- Mardu Woe-Reaper, Bojuka Bog, and Scavenger Grounds supplement Lantern and Spellbomb: five cards can contest graveyards. Preserve at least two in the finished deck.
- Sun Titan, Drana, Puppeteer Clique, and Sepulchral Primordial add recovery/theft beyond the five dedicated protection/recovery slots. They do not form a pair of mutually returning creatures.
- Loran, Dusk Legion Zealot, Inspector, Solemn, War Room, and Silent Clearing contribute cards outside the ten dedicated draw slots. Angel of Invention and Grave Titan supply bodies for combat or Skullclamp.

## Rules and prohibited-pattern checks

Skullclamp costs mana to equip; the deck contains no free creature-sacrifice engine. Plumb the Forbidden and Victimize are finite spells. Sacrificing a finality creature pays their costs/instructions but exiles it and does not trigger dies abilities. Hades cannot repeatedly farm that corpse. Persist on Puppeteer Clique does not trigger when a finality counter replaces its death with exile. A normal unmarked Clique can persist once; no counter-removal or blink engine resets it.

Necropotence's draw-step replacement and discard-exile trigger can work against graveyard setup. Its cards arrive at the beginning of the end step; it is still a strong independent engine, with exact timing and life costs. Do not describe its activated ability as drawing cards. Entomb and Buried Alive put cards directly into the graveyard and are not discards. Skeletal Scrying spends graveyard material, so prefer lands and expended spells over desired resurrection targets.

Sun Titan cannot return Hades or any of the large resurrection creatures. There is no Karmic Guide, Reveillark, Mikaeus/Triskelion, Exquisite Blood, Sanguine Bond, Grave Pact, free sacrifice outlet, repeated blink, counter removal, extra turn, extra combat, or mass-land-destruction package. Ashen Rider, Angel of Despair, and Generous Gift may target a land under their real rules, but nothing converts them into a mass destruction or repeatable land lock; finality limits Hades reuses. Effects stealing enemy creatures require set-wide review against the actual opposing lists before art.

Teferi's Protection phases out permanents, preserving finality counters. Blacksmith's Skill preserves an existing creature rather than resetting it. Exile answers intentionally forgo Hades's death payment to end an enemy engine. Scavenger Grounds also exiles our graveyard; use it when stopping another player is worth losing the planned return.

## Replacement benchmarks for phase two

These are candidates, not yet replacements or custom designs. The starting allocation is four answers, four resources, two threats, preserving all lands and dedicated graveyard answers.

| Existing benchmark | Role to inherit | Why it is a useful power reference |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Toxic Deluge | Answer/reversal | Cheap answer to a vastly larger board, with a life payment |
| Austere Command | Answer/reversal | Chooses what survives a major reset |
| Anguished Unmaking | Answer | Exiles almost any nonland engine at instant speed |
| Teferi's Protection | Protective answer | Converts a seemingly fatal turn into another chance |
| Smothering Tithe | Resources | Changes the scale of mana available over an entire table rotation |
| Necropotence | Resources | Trades a large amount of life for a planned new hand |
| Black Market Connections | Resources | Offers several different resources with a meaningful life bill |
| Sepulchral Primordial | Resources/army | Reclaims a table's casualties in one large finite action |
| Grave Titan | Threat | A threat that keeps building a visible army through combat |
| True Conviction | Closing pressure | Rewards an established army and substantially shortens its clock |

Smothering Tithe and Necropotence are especially useful benchmarks for the signature resource effect; the reset/protection group benchmarks the signature answer. The two required signature customs must be dramatically more mythic and surprising than merely copying these cards at a discount. Generic premium slots should leave the final list so its strongest moments belong to the Greek story.

## Verification and remaining uncertainty

[verified-cards.json](verified-cards.json) records current Scryfall Oracle card objects, retrieval time, mana costs, color identities, types, and Commander legality for every existing name. Automated count, uniqueness, W/B identity, and Commander-legality checks passed. The current [Wizards Commander banned list](https://magic.wizards.com/en/banned-restricted-list) was also inspected on 2026-09-24; no listed card is banned. Brightclimb Pathway is recorded under its exact double-face name.

This is a constructed baseline, not a playtest. Remaining questions for comparison are the number of overlapping removal creatures, whether the seven/eight-mana bodies create too many slow opening hands, and how quickly Tithe/Hades Treasure production outpaces the other gods. The design deliberately keeps real high-power engines here so replacements can be measured against a capable deck. Whole-set theft/recursion interactions and representative game sequences belong to the later review gate.

## Phase-two final configuration and illustrative sequences

The preceding sections preserve the original baseline analysis. The current playable list is [final.txt](final.txt), with its ten substitutions recorded in [replacements.md](replacements.md). The package follows revision **hades-design-v2** until cold review resolves material findings. These are desk checks of legal, plausible sequences, **not observed playtests**.

The final deck has **37 lands, 30 creatures, and 62 spells with mean mana value 3.13**. Its spell curve is **1: 15; 2: 14; 3: 12; 4: 4; 5: 9; 6: 4; 7: 2; 8: 2**. The detailed primary-role partition remains 37 land / 10 ramp / 10 draw / 12 targeted interaction / 3 sweepers / 5 protection-recovery / 22 thematic-threat slots, assigning each incoming card its outgoing card's structural slot. The custom schema's broader answer/resource/threat labels describe package function; they are not extra counts. Charon's mana is conditional on deaths, and the Saga's recovery is delayed; do not evaluate either as an unconditional turn-two mana rock or immediate reanimation.

**An ordinary opening.** Command Tower, Godless Shrine, Swamp, Arcane Signet, Thraben Inspector, Orpheus, and Swords to Plowshares is a keep. Turn one Inspector makes a Clue. Turn two Shrine plus Signet establishes acceleration. Turn three Swamp allows the pilot to cash the Clue while retaining white mana for Swords, instead of casting an empty Orpheus merely to fill the curve. Two subsequent land draws put Hades within reach on turn five; a dead Inspector or opposing creature gives his first end step a target. If lands do not arrive, the Clue and cheap curve provide plays without pretending the sample guarantees a turn-five god. A seven with two lands and three expensive resurrection targets is a mulligan even though those targets look attractive together.

**The commander turn.** With six mana, an Inspector in the graveyard, and Orpheus available later, cast Hades. If he reaches the end step, return Inspector with finality and make a Clue. That Inspector can later attack to trigger Orpheus's two-card draw and 1 life loss, or block, but its next death exiles it and cannot earn a second Hades payment. On another player's turn, destroying an enemy nontoken creature yields Hades one card and Treasure. Do not count the three other players as guaranteed income: they may avoid deaths or exile their targets. If Charon is also present, that first death earns two further Treasures, making removal spells unusually productive without making them free.

**The extraordinary resource turn.** An earlier Buried Alive stocks three creatures. Cast Plouton's Buried Riches for five mana and, at the end step, permanently spend those three cards for six cards and six tapped Treasures. That is the intended outrageous swing. Alternatively, spend only two and retain the third as Hades's resurrection target. With both triggers on the stack, their order matters: returning a desired creature before the Riches trigger resolves means it is no longer available to exile; exiling Hades's only target first makes his trigger fail. Opponents can answer the graveyard before either resolution. This decision is the difference between treating the underworld as a treasury and treating it as a place from which someone can return.

**Sweeper and rebuild.** Suppose an ordinary destroy-all-creatures spell resolves while unmarked Hades, unmarked Charon, and finality-marked Eurydice are on the battlefield. Hades and Charon die; Eurydice is exiled instead. Both death triggers can see the simultaneous nontoken deaths, yielding one card and three Treasures total. Hades can subsequently move to the command zone. Eurydice is not a recovery target. Cast The Descent for Eurydice on a later turn: chapter I mills six; chapter II on the next turn can return two eligible creatures with finality. If opponents allow them to remain through the following turn, chapter III draws four cards and loses 2 life from those two; five marked survivors would draw ten cards and lose 5 life. Hades's lifelink can replenish that life but does not erase the cost or make the life loss optional. The Saga's intervening turns are real opportunities to attack, exile targets, or remove its enchantment body; it is not an immediate three-chapter spell.

**A late attack that can end a game.** A surviving finality-marked Eurydice gives Hades +2/+2, makes an accompanying finality-marked Ashen Rider a 7/7 flyer, and raises Cerberus to 7/7 before its counters. Cerberus attacks and exiles three available creature cards, becoming 13/13 for this combat. If all four attack, the visible force is 13-power Cerberus, 7-power flying Rider, 6-power Hades, and 2-power Eurydice: 28 power. Cerberus, Rider, and Eurydice have menace; Hades has it only if he also has finality. A wounded opponent is in danger, but can double-block, bounce Cerberus, or remove Eurydice to shrink three of the attackers. The army was already in play before the attack. This example requires no haste, extra combat, or damage-from-hand finish. Elsewhere, Puppeteer Clique grants haste to its borrowed creature, and stealing Surrak and Goreclaw can grant other nontoken recruits haste; those earned interactions can produce same-turn attacks.

**A finality and theft reversal.** The Host's Welcome leaves each opponent their chosen creature and returns up to one chosen card per opposing graveyard while the spell is resolving. A sacrificed commander can be among those choices before its owner gets the state-based-action opportunity to move it; normally each owner can simply preserve their god as their survivor. A commander returned by Welcome stays under our control after resolution: because it is already on the battlefield at the next state-based check, its owner cannot automatically move it to the command zone. A later eligible zone change supplies the normal choice. If Poseidon later bounces a stolen marked creature, it returns to its owner's hand and loses finality; Hades's controller does not keep it. An opponent can therefore recover progress from this enormous reversal. Countering The Host's Welcome, phasing an army, or exiling a graveyard before it resolves is also meaningful; the new sorcery is intended to be a spectacular finite event rather than a repeatable prison.

**Review correction and remaining scaffold caveat.** Revision hades-design-v2 keeps all ten designs and all counts while adding the black life prices to Orpheus and Saga chapter III. Archon of Justice is an intentional retained baseline limitation: cast it or use unmarked Reanimate/Victimize/Drana to obtain its death-trigger removal. Under finality it is only a 4/4 flyer, and dying is replaced by exile, so neither its removal nor other death payoffs trigger. No finality reset was introduced to repair that inefficiency.