Final Fantasy Deck Tech: Professor Hojo

Professor Hojo | Art by Danciao

Welcome to a deck tech for one of the cool new legends from the Final Fantasy Magic set! If you're a fan of the acclaimed Final Fantasy video game series you're sure to be stoked by seeing so many of your favorite characters and in-game moments realized as Magic cards.

But don't worry if you don't know anything about Final Fantasy; if you're here on EDHREC you're a fan of Commander, and Final Fantasy has a ton of cool stuff for Commander fans. And today, I'm shining a spotlight on a fun little monogreen legend, Professor Hojo!

I really like building monocolor decks in Commander because the mana base is easy and the narrow color identity often forces you to get creative in filling out your deck.

What Does Professor Hojo Do?

As your commander, Hojo wants your deck filled with activated abilities that target a creature you control and, as a reward for doing so, draws you a card each turn you do so.

What more does a Magic fan want than to draw extra cards? I mean, each time you draw an extra card you can strike a pose like the good Professor in the artwork and practice your best Evil Laugh™.

The first time you use an activated ability to target a creature you control doing your own turn it costs mana less to activate, which tells me that the deck is going to want to run Equipment as an excellent way to satisfy all the requirements for Hojo. Monogreen Equipment? Monogreen Equipment!

While there are a fair number of green Equipment decks in the the EDHREC database, they're mostly built around creatures that make excellent recipients of Equipment cards, like Thrun, Breaker of Silence, Toski, Bearer of Secrets, and Wilson, Refined Grizzly - all of which I'm going to put in the 99 of Professor Hojo's deck.

But I think Professor Hojo plays closer to Sram, Senior Edificer since it draws you cards and it cares about things other than just Equipment.

Since Hojo draws you a card just once each turn, I'm including various ways to activate and target my creatures during an opponent's turn too. Since Hojo only provides a discount to the ability during my own turn, cards that can target for little or no mana will be best.

Key Cards for Professor Hojo

Equipment

I started out looking for high impact Equipment with an equip cost of two or less, and ones that cost one mana are perfect since you can play them on turn one and then immediately equip to Hojo when you play it on turn two.

Bloodforged Battle-Axe makes copies of itself if you can connect with the equipped creature, and Shadowspear gives trample and lifelink and, even more importantly, its activated ability can take away hexproof and indestructible from all permanents your opponents control.

Pip-Boy 3000 has three awesome attack triggers to choose from depending on your needs.

The various Swords of X and Y are awesome since they can be cast on the turn after you play Hojo and you can immediately equip for no mana and attack, hopefully getting those sweet damage triggers.

I picked Sword of Hearth and Home for the mana ramp, and being able to blink a creature you own means you can "untap" an attacker so it's available for blocking, or you get another enters trigger, or even get back a creature you own that an opponent has gained control of.

I also like Sword of Sinew and Steel since it can destroy an artifact and up to one target planeswalker.

Staff of Titania is an Equipment I've found a smidge underwhelming in monogreen decks due to the relatively high equip cost of three, but quite good when Hojo shaves that down to one. Deathrender and Tanuki Transplanter also often fail to make the cut due to the total mana value plus equip/reconfigure cost, but the Hojo discount makes them much, much better.

Commander's Plate, Blade of Selves, and Helm of the Host are often well-worth playing even without an equip discount, so I'm excited to slam them in with Hojo.

Creatures

As I mentioned above Thrun, Breaker of Silence, Wilson, Refined Grizzly, and Toski, Bearer of Secrets make excellent and resilient creatures to equip, taking the attention off of Hojo and forcing opponents to react to them instead. I mean, Toski has to attack each turn anyway, might as well gear it up and make blocking problematic!

Seeker of Skybreak is the wombo-combo of the deck; it doesn't cost any mana to activate its targeted ability, and since it can target itself to untap, you can do this on each other player's turn to draw three extra cards each round.

Scryb Ranger and Quirion Ranger can target a creature you control on other players' turns, but it does cost you a land drop because you have to return a Forest you control to your hand. I do have ways in the deck where I can play extra lands that can mitigate this to some degree.

Lands

Rogue's Passage, Witch's Clinic, and Pendelhaven are lands I can activate to target one of my creatures, even on an opponent's turn in a pinch if I want to draw an extra card.

Activated Abilities

Ulvenwald Tracker provides much needed creature removal in green with its targeted ability, especially if you've got a creature geared up and large. Broken Fall can protect a creature from being destroyed for no mana, and can be activated on an opponent's turn.

I've always found Power Matrix to be remarkably useful, with the flying ability particularly awesome in a green deck that's often vulnerable to flyers.

Endbringer is a useful creature that can tap to do one of three things, and since it untaps on each other player's upkeep it can be activated to deal a point of damage to itself to let you draw a card with Hojo.

Kogla, the Titan Ape is already great in a monogreen deck, but even more so when you have a Human as your commander like Hojo, so Kogla can be activated to save Hojo - and itself - from removal and draw a card to boot.

Extra Lands

When I have a deck that regularly draws extra cards, I like playing things like Burgeoning, Gaea's Touch, and Case of the Locked Hothouse which let me deploy extra lands. Making extra land drops helps solve the Case and turns it into an incredible card advantage engine.

Wayward Swordtooth offers a sizeable body attached to extra land drops once you've gotten the city's blessing. Loot, Exuberant Explorer has an awesome activated ability you can use once you've deployed your extra lands.

Then there's the incredible Cultivator Colossus, which is a superb way to use extra lands in hand, and you can set it up nicely with Quirion or Scryb Ranger. Just remember that once Colossus's enters ability triggers, it will resolve even if an opponent kills it in response.

How Does This Professor Hojo Commander Deck Win?

Hojo isn't a combo card, it's a card-drawing engine that saves you two mana on each of your turns to be more efficient on activated abilities. This means the deck is all about grinding value, interaction, and long games, and as such you can pretty much jam in any of your favorite ways to end long Commander games.

Since Saryth, the Viper's Fang and Ohran Frostfang give some or all of your attacking creatures deathtouch, I've included Fynn, the Fangbearer for a potential poison kill out of nowhere.

While you can certainly run the recently reprinted Craterhoof Behemoth as your finisher, I like Kamahl, Heart of Krosa since it triggers each of your turns, and it has an activated ability that could target a land creature you control to draw a card with Hojo.

Ezuri's Predation doesn't immediately end a game, but it can certainly swing a game around in a hurry, especially if one player has been pumping out a bunch of small token creatures that you can fight down with your 4/4 Phyrexian Beast tokens. Most of the time you'll end up with a handful of those sizeable creatures that can push you to victory over the next few turns, especially if you can gear them up.

Professor Hojo Commander Deck List

Conclusion

The beauty of this sort of deck is just how customizable it is for each deckbuilder. The core engine of the deck draws extra cards and revolves around solid value cards like Equipment, so you can pepper in your favorite monogreen high impact cards and feel reasonably assured you'll draw them a decent amount of the time.

Like most of my decks, I built this as a Bracket 2 (Core) Commander deck, and the easy-going pace of those games plays perfect with this style of play.

If you want to power up the deck to play in against Bracket 3 (Upgraded) decks, there are some strong Game Changers you can add.

Seedborn Muse is the best of the bunch since it untaps all your permanents on each other player's untap steps, which should give you plenty of opportunity for drawing extra cards with Hojo. Worldly Tutor can go get that game finishing creature, while The One Ring can draw you even more cards, while giving you some protection on the turn you cast it.

I don't think the deck concept is worth pursuing for higher brackets, but don't let me discourage you. If you make it work, let me know!

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