Hallowed Burial MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Hallowed Burial stands out as a premier board wipe that neatly tucks creatures away into the player’s library rather than sending them to the graveyard. This essentially diminishes the potential for graveyard-based strategies to take advantage of creature deaths and ends up netting significant card advantage by dealing with recurring and indestructible threats in one clean sweep.

Resource Acceleration: Although Hallowed Burial may not directly accelerate resources in the conventional sense of producing mana or ramping, the advantage gained by effectively resetting your opponent’s creature-based progress can indirectly boost your own board state and tempo relative to your opponent’s.

Instant Speed: While Hallowed Burial operates at sorcery speed, the strategic depth it provides can’t be understated. It allows players to reset the board on their terms and forces opponents to reconsider their deployment of creature threats, knowing that their board can be invalidated regardless of their creatures’ protective abilities.

Card Cons

Specific Mana Cost: Hallowed Burial demands a precise mana combination including white, which could restrict its inclusion in decks that are not based around those colors or lack sufficient mana fixing.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Costing five mana to cast, this can be quite costly, especially when you need to respond quickly to threats on the board. In fast-paced games, this might hinder your tempo and leave you vulnerable.

Discard Requirement: While Hallowed Burial does not have a direct discard requirement, its high mana cost implies a heavy investment. This can lead to situations where casting it necessitates forgoing other potential plays, which is akin to a discard in terms of opportunity cost.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Hallowed Burial doesn’t just wipe the board, it tucks creatures away into the library. This unique approach makes it a potent tool against decks relying on graveyard strategies or creatures that are otherwise difficult to permanently remove using traditional destruction methods.

Combo Potential: In decks where you control the top of your opponent’s library through cards like Lantern of Insight, Hallowed Burial can act as a pseudo-exile effect. The ability to control the flow of your opponent’s draws after a board wipe adds a strategic level to your gameplay.

Meta-Relevance: If the battlefield is often cluttered with indestructible or regenerate-able creatures, Hallowed Burial can bypass those abilities by shifting creatures out of play entirely. This ensures a cleaner reset against decks that thrive on those mechanics, keeping you one step ahead in the current meta.

How to beat

Hallowed Burial is a potent spell in the realm of Magic: The Gathering, mainly due to its ability to reset the battlefield. Unlike other board wipes that send creatures to the graveyard, Hallowed Burial tucks them neatly into the library, effectively bypassing any death triggers or graveyard synergies that many decks rely on. This attribute can make overcoming the card rather challenging.

To effectively counter Hallowed Burial, deck builders often include tools like counterspells or hand disruption techniques. These approaches prevent Hallowed Burial from being cast in the first place. For instance, the inclusion of spells such as Negate or Thoughtseize in your deck can provide an early defense against such sweeping removal.

Additionally, having resilient creatures that can either regenerate or return to the battlefield from the library can mitigate the impact of Hallowed Burial. Prioritizing permanents with effects that protect your creatures or those that offer benefits when they leave the battlefield can strengthen your position against such powerful cleansing spells.

Overall, outmaneuvering Hallowed Burial involves preemptive strategy, with proper threat assessment and the implementation of potentially disruptive elements to preserve your board state.