Hound Cycle

## Summary

The Hound Cycle is a five-card cycle of single colored hound creatures from Rain of the Kami.

Each of the five hounds cost one mana of their respective color, and are 2/2. In exchange for being slightly above curve, each of the five has a unique downside.

## Prairie Hound

Prairie Hound is the white creature of the cycle. Upon entering the battlefield, it allows each of its controller's opponents to pay 2 mana, and gives each opponent who paid mana this way a 1/1 white dog creature token.

Prairie Hound did see decent usage in its standard format, as it virtually had no downside. The ability would be impossible to pay for during the first few turns, and once the opposing player did have enough mana to pay it, the fact that they didn't have a better play that turn usually meant they were going to lose anyways, and didn't have an answer for the larger hound. So, it became a common card in white weenies decks, where dropping 2-3 of them in the first two turns led to a massive head start on the game.

It was also occasionally used in some commander group hug and forcefeed strategies, but overall was a much weaker creature in the format due to its downside effectively being three times higher.

## Water Hound

Water Hound is the blue creature of the cycle. Upon entering the battlefield, it forces the user to pick an opponent, who then may Fateseal 2.

Water Hound was very much the opposite of Prairie Hound. Where Prairie Hound got by on it being a sub-optimal play for the opponent, the two power and toughness just didn't cut it when mana could be kept up for counters or cantrips. It was also a major liability, as even though blue has the most ability to fix its cards back into place after a fateseal, this would often cost a cantrip to do so, meaning it often provided negative card advantage for minimal gain.

In multiplayer formats, however, Water Hound would shine as a political piece. Since the fateseal didn't have to target Water Hound's user, it could be used between players to bury a wincon brought about by Vampiric Tutor or Cruel Tutor, or generally slow momentum when one player was clearly running away with the game.

## Market Hound

Market Hound is the black creature of the cycle. Upon entering the battlefield, it causes its controller to lose 3 life.

Like its predecessor, Carnophage, Market Hound's ability to pay life to beat the mana curve made it a very popular choice in Suicide Black. However, its larger initial investment and lack of choice gave it an interesting caveat: It's a super powerful card on the play, where it's always ahead of your opponent's answers, but terrible on the draw, as you're losing life to something that will be answered next turn. As such, this card was almost always used in a configuration of two in the mainboard and two in the sideboard, typically with full swaps in and out depending on how the next game would start.

## Rock Hound

Rock Hound is the red creature of the cycle. Whenever damage is dealt to it, it takes that much damage plus one.

Rock Hound's ability effectively makes it a 2/1 in most contexts, and as such it didn't see a ton of play at first. However, over time it did find its niche as a piece in two relatively powerful red decks.

It saw play in Ritterator, a deck based all around dealing as much damage to your own creatures as possible to trigger on-damage effects. It paired especially well with Dried Well which would repeatedly deal 0 damage to Rock Hound at no cost, boosting that damage to one to consistently trigger it for free.

It also was an important piece of the Gift of Fire deck, a donation-based deck that utilized it alongside things like Jackal Pup, Firedrinker Satyr and Shinka Gatekeeper, and effects that dealt damage to a creature and its controller.

## Tree Hound

Tree Hound is the green creature of the cycle, which gets -1/-1 as long as you control a land that isn't a basic forest.

On account of most formats wanting to use nonbasics, and not fitting in with it's Zoo buddies due to effectively working in the opposite way, Tree Hound would find amazing success, but exclusively in the Pauper format.

A lack of access to strong monocolor nonbasics meant Tree Hound is just a plain 2/2 for one in mono-green pauper, which, along with the release of just a few important green devotion pieces, would lead to Mono-Green Devotion to become one of the most powerful decks in the format, known as Divestment Strategy.