Hour of Promise is one of my favorite cards to be printed in recent memory. Sure, we can all agree that Primeval Titan is way too good for most formats, but surely Hour of Promise is a fair compromise, right? While the card is certainly powerful, we actually haven't seen especially much of it since Shrine of the Forsaken Gods and Eldrazi rotated. Perhaps it's time for that to change:

Five-Color Ramp - Rivals of Ixalan Standard | Ali Aintrazi

• Creatures (3)
• 1 Tetzimoc, Primal Death
• 2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
• 1 Vraska, Relic Seeker

• Instants (10)
• 2 Moment of Craving
• 4 Fatal Push
• 4 Vraska's Contempt

• Sorceries (13)
• 1 Never // Return
• 2 Battle at the Bridge
• 2 Mastermind's Acquisition
• 4 Doomfall
• 4 Hour of Promise

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Arguel's Blood Fast
• 4 Gift of Paradise

• Artifacts (2)
• 2 Thaumatic Compass

• Lands (25)
• 1 Forest
• 3 Swamp
• 1 Arch of Orazca
• 1 Cascading Cataracts
• 1 Dragonskull Summit
• 1 Field of Ruin
• 1 Hashep Oasis
• 1 Scavenger Grounds
• 3 Canyon Slough
• 4 Blooming Marsh
• 4 Desert of the Glorified
• 4 Ifnir Deadlands

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Carnage Tyrant
• 1 Conqueror's Galleon
• 3 Duress
• 1 Lost Legacy
• 1 Moment of Craving
• 3 Naturalize
• 1 Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh
• 1 Silent Gravestone
• 1 Wildest Dreams
• 1 Yahenni's Expertise
• 1 Zacama, Primal Calamity

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The secondary color of this deck is Green in order to give you access to ramp spells, primarily Hour of Promise and Gift of Paradise. Hour of Promise is particularly powerful with the suite of deserts that this deck packs. Ifnir Deadlands and Scavenger Grounds are the ones you're more likely to tutor up, but Desert of the Glorified and Hashep Oasis are great incidental deserts. In addition to these lands, you have the ability to tutor up Arch of Orazca as a card advantage engine and other dual lands to fix your splash colors.

So what exactly does the end game of this deck look like? You have Gonti, Lord of Luxury as a great midrange value engine, backed up by Tetzimoc, Primal Death as a relatively efficient threat and haymaker after you stall out the board with Zombie tokens. You also have Mastermind's Acquisition as a way to leverage your overwhelming mana advantage.

Mastermind's Acquisition allows you to find Wildest Dreams or Conqueror's Galleon out of your sideboard if you need to grind out your opponents. You can get Lost Legacy against The Scarab God or other powerful engine cards or Zacama, Primal Calamity to go way over the top of opposing midrange decks. Once you can account for just how slow Mastermind's Acquisition is, having access to a broad variety of silver bullet effects in pre-board games is an enormous advantage.

If you want to play a greedy midrange deck in Standard, this seems like a great place to start. All the most efficient removal and lots of incidental life gain gives you a reasonable matchup against aggressive decks. Adding Hour of Promise and value lands, as well as Mastermind's Acquisition, gives you lots of angles to attack opposing midrange and control decks from. The best part is that, thanks to Mastermind's Acquisition, even the smallest amounts of customization for your local metagame will be enormously impactful and rewarding.