Hello folks and welcome to everything Hour of Devastation here.

I noticed a card spoiled that I think has a lot of cool options, knobs, and such that I think could be a good addition to a lot of decks at casual tables all over. Imminent Doom. I think it can make an impact in both Commander and 60 card decks, as well as duels and multiplayer. There’s a lot under the hood.

As a certified Johnny, the card also plays into my “This Plays Well With Others” core identity, so it tweaked my radar for that as well.

So I wanted to write up ten cool ways to use and abuse Imminent Doom, some of which are pretty old, while others are Standard legal. I’ll even throw in a couple of decklists. Are you ready?

First let’s look at the card.

Note that Imminent Doom works for anything that is cast, not just spells or sorceries. It’ll work for a lot of options. It also requires a cast to trigger. Because you are dealing damage to a player, you can off one of their Planeswalkers instead. And the benefit of dealing damage for free is pretty cool as well. You are not spending any more mana or losing any more resources.

All right, here we go.

Honorable Mention — X Creatures

I think the first place a lot of folks will thinks to run is your normal X spell like Fireball, Mind Spring, and Mind Burst. You can play it at whatever the counter is on ID and get some damage in on the side. Nicely done. But another way to use it are the X creatures, like Shifting Wall and Endless One, or Hydras like Apocalypse Hydra.

10. Aluren

With an Aluren out on the battlefield, as soon as you drop Imminent Doom, you can play, for free, three creatures with casing cost 1, 2, and 3 to rack up three triggers just as fast as you can drop them. And then you are ready to dole out damage normally, starting at four.

9. Tallowisp

Take a look at Tallowisp for a moment. Did you play a Spirit? An Arcane spell? Great! Now search your library for an aura that enchants creatures and put it into your hand. Make sure that it has the right casting cost. Cast it and get some Imminent Doom going. What would a deck like that look like?

Wisping for Love ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 1 Custodi Squire
• 1 Karmic Guide
• 1 Kitsune Mystic
• 1 Windborn Muse
• 2 Dreampod Druid
• 2 Mesa Enchantress
• 2 Phantom Centaur
• 4 Eidolon of Blossoms
• 4 Tallowisp

• Instants (2)
• 2 Wear Away

• Sorceries (7)
• 3 Imminent Doom
• 4 Kodama's Reach

• Enchantments (12)
• 1 Ancestral Mask
• 1 Angelic Destiny
• 1 Armadillo Cloak
• 1 Cartouche of Strength
• 1 Daybreak Coronet
• 1 Desert's Hold
• 1 Ethereal Armor
• 1 Flickerform
• 1 Flickering Ward
• 1 Rancor
• 1 Reins of the Vinesteed
• 1 Temporal Isolation

• Lands (24)
• 2 Mountain
• 5 Forest
• 5 Plains
• 1 Desert of the Indomitable
• 1 Desert of the True
• 1 Needle Spires
• 1 Raging Ravine
• 2 Selesnya Sanctuary
• 2 Stirring Wildwood
• 4 Jungle Shrine

Buy This Deck

Now this deck only runs up to four casting cost auras. I didn’t want to overegg the aura pudding, but we could add in stuff like Spectra Ward. I worked to make this deck function, because you need enough Spirit / Arcane synergies to make Tallowisp work. And Tallowisp clearly works best in a deck with some auras and loving. So I made this a different looking Selesnya enchantment build.

All of my non-enchantment, non-creatures in this deck are Arcane – Kodama's Reach and Wear Away. You could certainly add in cards that are Arcane in White or Red too, or other Green stuff, but these work.

Then I added in some more synergies.

Inter-deck synergies include Eidolon of Blossoms, which is a Spirit, Enchantment, and a way to draw more cards as well as one of my Aura targets with Phantom Centaur. It’s a great creature to enchant with bonuses, as even after it takes enough damage to pull off the +1/+1 counters, it will stick around if you slap something like an Armadillo Cloak on it. Meanwhile Custodi Squire can return anything from my graveyard like an aura (in duels, since it’s ability gives you all of the cards that tied in the vote, since you go first, your opponent always chooses the same card, so you are guaranteed to get what you want) and you have Karmic Guide as well for a little long game.

We have Dreampod Druid that acts like a Verdant Force when enchanted. You can drop a cheap Rancor or Flickering Ward on it to start the 1/1 token production early. And then we have the expected aura-suite. I did add in a few unusual choices. Cartouche of Strength can be great removal. Don’t forget that you can use Flickering Ward to give the Strength’ed creature protection from the color it is about to fight to make sure it survives. You can see Temporal Isolation or Desert's Hold in here helping out.

Also, check out Reins of the Vinesteed. Enchant any of your Spirits with it to give them a cool +2/+2 bonus, and when it dies, put it back into play on another Spirit. All but four of your creatures are Spirits. The rest are the Dreampod Druid and Mesa Enchantress. You can easily slide the thing around.

This deck features 19 Arcane spells and Spirit creatures, as well as a suite of 12 auras. That’s a lot of trigger options for a Tallowisp, as well as the ID trigger for playing the fun stuff! And the ID will help here as well getting in damage as well as triggered pro-enchantment stuff. I even added in a few man-lands to deal some damage in case your smaller creature suite needs a little fluffing up in numbers. This is a fun deck, right?

Don’t sleep on the value of Tallowisp at a table. I could write an entire article of Tallowisp decks with each one being very different.

8. Fanning the Flames / Wurmcalling

Can you see why Fanning the Flames is here? You can cast it for at least 2 mana () and then pay its buyback cost. Trigger ID for 2 damage. Then pay 3 mana for your Fanning, and do 3 damage from the ID and 1 from your Flames. Flames for just 4 mana is dealing 6 total damage, and it scales up from there. This is a very powerful tool alongside Imminent Doom! And Wurmcalling is much the same, getting you token creatures and damage triggers for ID at the same time.

7. As Foretold

I don’t know if you noticed, but As Foretold works with Imminent Doom. As you get more and more time counters on As Foretold you can cast, for free, a card with that, or fewer, time counters. Just play something that’s the same casting cost as ID’s doom counters. You get a free spell, some free damage, and then you can continue to take your turn like normal (or even use your mana to cast another spell, getting another Doom counter activation for more damage.) Yay you!

6.Fuse Cards

Cards with different converted casting costs in the fuse set of cards have a lot of offer. Take Wear // Tear as a good example. You can set it at one, two, or three so no matter where your Imminent Doom is, you can get that trigger.

Aftermath Cards — In a similar way, Aftermath cards can get you two triggers if they have different costs as well. Flashback won’t, as the casting cost doesn’t change with the zone-shift. Cards like Never // Return, Cut // Ribbons, or Spring // Mind make sense.

Oh, and on that note, Fierce Empath gets you three now and at least six later. Maybe things like Imperial Recruiter or Recruiter of the Guard would inspire your deck-building triggers as well. You could even get a lot of 4-drops. For example, get Nekrataal and then there’s two triggers of Imminent Doom in a row for you from one card.

5. Birthing Pod / Yisan, the Wanderer Bard / Hibernation’s End

There are a number of Green cards out there that care about having different casting costs in their creatures so they can ramp up over time. They tend to want different options at each cost, so they may run one each of Reclamation Sage, Mold Shambler, and Acidic Slime. These decks are very sensitive to creature casting cost, and could easily be a nice shell to add Imminent Doom into.

4. Cost Reduction Spells

After the first few triggers come quickly enough, what works next? I like cards that feature cost-reduction triggers, like Avatar of Woe (or Avatar of Fury) which cost just two mana to play but will get you a nasty doom counter trigger if you’ve gotten it to eight. Other options include affinity, like Myr Enforcer, convoke like Chord of Calling, delve like Treasure Cruise, evoke like Mulldrifter, Blasphemous Act, Cryptic Serpent, and so much more.

Take a look at Stone Calendar, Memory Crystal and other things too. I would consider Pearl Medallion, Planar Gate, or Bontu's Monument as well as interesting examples in this genre that drop the cost of cards enabling you to play bigger spells more cheaply and thus continue to trigger Imminent Doom even when you don’t have enough mana to keep going.

3. Citanul Flute

Cast something to trigger the Imminent Doom. Throw a Doom counter right up on that thang. Then tap this and tutor up a creature with the right casting cost. Cast it. And keep on going! This will let you tutor your library for the right casting cost over and over again, netting serious damage doling capabilities while you are.

#2. Howling Mine / Font of Mythos / Dictate of Kruphix . . . 

One of the best ways to make Imminent Doom work is to ensure that you are drawing a ton of cards in order to guarantee that you will have the next converted casting cost available to play. You can run these cards that glut up everyone’s hands, and then get free ID damage triggers as you cast these cards to get back down to under 7 (Or run cards like Reliquary Tower). Make sure you stack these cards to overlap different casting costs as well. You could have a 2-drop Kami of the Crescent Moon, the 3-drop Temple Bell, and the 4-drop Font of Mythos. Then you can layer in a bunch of awesome tech. Add in some cards from #4 above with cost reduction, like Avatar of Fury that you can play cheaply and thus multiple cards a turn while getting one or more triggers from ID. If you are getting multiple triggers a turn, you are likely winning that game quickly.

In this shell, you could even run something like Force of Will or other pitch spells. Can you imagine being tapped out, having Imminent Doom on five Doom counters and then someone casts a nasty spell, and you Force of Will it and then get five damage to their face too? That is living the dream, right? I mean I wouldn’t normally suggest Force of Will for casual Magic, but it works naturally in a heavy Howling Mine deck as you need mana for threats and answers, and you have cards to spare.

1. Boros Aggro

If all you do is drop it, and then use it to trigger a bunch of cheap aggro creatures and support, then you have done a lot. The three mana that this card costs will give you an almost guaranteed 1, 2, and 3 damage split among creatures or your opponent for at least 6 damage. I’ve put a few examples up top, like Figure of Destiny and Boros Reckoner. Here’s a quick decklist as a good example:

Imminent Doom ? Modern| Abe Sargent

• Creatures (20)
• 1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
• 1 Zurgo Bellstriker
• 2 Figure of Destiny
• 2 Kytheon, Hero of Akros
• 2 Magus of the Moon
• 4 Abbot of Keral Keep
• 4 Boros Reckoner
• 4 Monastery Swiftspear

• Planeswalkers (3)
• 1 Ajani Vengeant
• 2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance

• Instants (13)
• 2 Path to Exile
• 3 Boros Charm
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Lightning Helix

• Enchantments (2)
• 2 Imminent Doom

• Lands (22)
• 5 Mountain
• 5 Plains
• 4 Battlefield Forge
• 4 Clifftop Retreat
• 4 Sacred Foundry

Buy This Deck

This is a quick Modern legal deck I just hacked together. I doubt it would dominate Modern tournaments or anything, but I just wanted to show how the shell would work in theory. This deck has a bunch of 1-drops to trigger the ID first, including Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, and creatures. Then you have a variety of 2-drops, including Lightning Helix, Abbot and Boros Charm. You move to 3-drops, with a smaller array of those, but there are here. And don’t sleep on Chandra, Torch of Defiance or Ajani Vengeant either.

You can easily replace these cards for the kitchen table with what you have, like Swords to Plowshares, Spear of Heliod, Chandra, Pyromaster, Savannah Lions, Goblin Legionnaire, and so forth. This deck-builds itself, right?

And again, I hope you can see the value of the Doom in this shell. An aggro deck with this level of cheap casting cost redundancy is hot.

If you liked this, then don’t sleep on something else like Goblins or something that would play similarly to this. How about Goblin Warchief? You’ve got this!

And that concludes our Top Ten! Was there anything in there resonated with you? Anything to inspire your own Imminent Doom? I’d love to hear what you think!