by ghbell
Hydra wins if you think only in terms of damage. Hand is offensive, defensive, and heals, all as a reaction. It can do whatever you want, whenever you want, at ANY range!Hyrdra is great, of that there is no doubt, just in a different way.
If you are playing the Hands and see a store and rush strategy, you can counter by not playing the extra hands and going a different direction. Like a creature to guard for example.
Any good deck is going to be flexible. All I am saying is that the hand is super cheap and feeds that flexibility in multiple different deck types with different mages.