MTG Salvation

I think hoogak will be banned in order to avoid eldrazi winter on camera at an MC. Unless it completely flops this coming weekend in results.

The deck is broken. I dont need more convincing. This isnt some cute plays with shadow or Phoenix. The deck is very much busted. You stick s leyline or jailer or 100 percent lose. Reid Duke on camera last night had no issues facing fast decks with it for a turn 3 win.

Deck is getting banned, let's not do this foolishness again, we all said to give eldrazi a chance for data collection. This is easily a tier 0 deck. Ban it. Its not healthy to see 8 or 9 gy hate in people's 75.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

Its not healthy to see 8 or 9 gy hate in people's 75.

Still wizards promotes a lot of graveyard interactions. I may see it becoming a routine in the future. We may be packing creatures removals and grave hate at the same rate. I don't like it much, but we shall adapt.

I hope hoogak is the target. Don't need to see it in dredge after we ban bridge

Quote from Mtgthewary »

I hope hoogak is the target. Don't need to see it in dredge after we ban bridge

IDK. Bridge from Below is obviously both the most efficient engine for the deck and happily jumps in to the GY from self mill. It costs no mana and super-synergize with hogaak + altar.

Are there other builds that can achieve this without BfB?

The deck still works as long as you can recur 2 creatures from the GY and use them to play hogaak and/or mill with altar to recur them again. Dredge and various zombies can be brought back from the GY but not for free and not at instant speed. You can play gravecrawler from the graveyard but it needs both another zombie in play and mana. Others tend to only come back only and only at EOT. From this perspective, I don't think hogaak would be abusive without BfB. I don't think it would improve Dredge all that much. (Obviously, it fill their GY, but dredging already does it efficiently.)

At this point, Hogaak Bridge has all the hallmarks of a broken deck, except a major paper finish/presence. If it enjoys this kind of performance at the upcoming GP, it will have more than enough data points to justify a ban. If it doesn't, it might still have enough data points based on MTGO alone; GGT was banned without too much Dredge dominance at the GP level.

As other users have noted in the swirl of ban talk around Hogaak, none of this should change our ban method. Waiting for more data to validate a ban theory has proven a significantly more reliable and accurate method of predicting bans and brokenness than the knee-jerk responses we typically see. We should not change that method in the future regardless of how Hogaak turns out.

So if people are weary of Hogaak's ban potential as soon as two weeks from now, and refuse to buy it in paper to show it off dominating a large GP, then we're just in for yet another period of insufferable misery in Modern?

I remember when "battle of sideboards" was a ban criteria. Now 8 pieces of GY hate in your 75 is supposed to be "normal."

Why do I play this format again? /shrug

Quote from cfusionpm »

I remember when "battle of sideboards" was a ban criteria. Now 8 pieces of GY hate in your 75 is supposed to be "normal."

yeah i expect if bridgevine is hit with a ban it will be because the deck is very reminiscent of dredge prior to the GGT ban.

though i do think you are right that peoples wariness of a potential ban will prevent them from picking up the deck, much like it was to amulet bloom when it blew up. that said grinders and pros typically have easier access to cards and decks, so if something is running hot in the meta they should still be likely to show up with it (at least we can hope).

you did make a good point though about bridgevine having some pricier components. i dont think its a stretch to assume that UR phoenix blew up as much as it did because, outside of the scalding tarns, the deck was relatively cheap to build.

we will see though.

Quote from cfusionpm »

So if people are weary of Hogaak's ban potential as soon as two weeks from now, and refuse to buy it in paper to show it off dominating a large GP, then we're just in for yet another period of insufferable misery in Modern?

I remember when "battle of sideboards" was a ban criteria. Now 8 pieces of GY hate in your 75 is supposed to be "normal."

Why do I play this format again? /shrug

I literally acknowledged GGT as a ban with minimal GP data, I.e. the battle of sideboards reference you are making, in the post I assume you are responding to. So I don't know why you are framing this as a no GP result = no ban scenario. As I posted on this same page and will repost now, GGT was banned with very few GP results, likely based off MTGO data. Hogaak could be the same case regardless of how the GP plays out. I know you are exceedingly skeptical of Wizards and routinely negative towards Modern over a good chunk of the last 3 years, but that doesn't mean you need to indict Wizards' handling of the current situation. At least, not until after the 8th.

Let's just say that my expectations for Wizards are exceedingly low. Anything other than "no changes" will be considered a good thing for Modern. But yes, given their continued display of incompetence with regards to the inner workings of the format, I could very easily see them coming out and saying "This is fine. None of us extensively play Modern, but our spreadsheets say this is OK. No changes."

So you're saying that those of with the deck should play as much as possible online before the B&R date. Well if I must, I can take one for the team. For the sake of the format.

Quote from Deadkitten »

So you're saying that those of with the deck should play as much as possible online before the B&R date. Well if I must, I can take one for the team. For the sake of the format.

I believe in you! Do it for the greater good!

Very interested in the top 8/16 results in the next few big modern events going forward, and whether they will be indicative of a ban. Until then I'm happy to have my leylines permanently chilling out in the board.

Quote from Deadkitten »

So you're saying that those of with the deck should play as much as possible online before the B&R date. Well if I must, I can take one for the team. For the sake of the format.

That's what I did during Eldrazi Winter, jamming UR Eldrazi like a madman. I literally played something like 5-6 times per week at minimum. I knew I was on borrowed time.

This deck is different. It can be beaten and you see players move to goldfish decks like Cheerios (*wink ktkenshinx), Storm, Devoted Devastation, Infect, and other decks as well. But it is definitely NOT fine to warp the meta so much. Battle of the sideboards = your Leyline of the Void vs. my Wispmare/Assassin's Trophy/Nature's Claim... This deck is very different from Eldrazi, where you can metagame vs. Eldrazi and have a 50/50 matchup with them, but you lose to everything else. Meanwhile Eldrazi still has a 50/50 matchup with you and 80/20 elsewhere. What would you choose?

*I'm also very happy that my buddy won the "win a Mustang" tournament down in Alabama with Hogaak. That if the definition of "getting your money's worth." So far for me with Hogaak, I've gotten around $90 worth of prizes, but the Hogaaks cost me $80, so I have a long way to go to get my money's worth, especially considering store credit and gas prices TO tournaments.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

*I'm also very happy that my buddy won the "win a Mustang" tournament down in Alabama with Hogaak. That if the definition of "getting your money's worth." So far for me with Hogaak, I've gotten around $90 worth of prizes, but the Hogaaks cost me $80, so I have a long way to go to get my money's worth, especially considering store credit and gas prices TO tournaments.

dang im sure that tournament brought in some good attendance. he tell you what the top 8 was, or what was big at the top tables?

It had 189 players. (Living in California, I was unable to go.) Jody Keith and Aaron Barich (of SCG Open fame) were in the top 8 and the top 16 from what I heard.

He beat Burn in the finals.
1. Hogaak
2. Burn
3. Jody Keith on Urza Thopter Sword
4. GB Rock
5. Humans
6. Red Phoenix
7. Infect
8. Whir Prison w/ Karn, the Great Creator

I saw the info on fb, along with the twitch.tv coverage (I just watched the top 4 and a little before.)

Metagame is perfectly fine. If they are going to ban something, it will probably be Bridge. But Hogaak is nowhere close to a Tier 0.

IMHO ‘sideboard wars’ are a constant of every format. Grave hate is only a part of it. In the same way as Midrange decks usually pack 7-8 cards against a Tron to have a chance vs it.

Let’s see what it happens at GP/PT, anyway.

I don't think there will ever be a time where you don't want four exile gy effects. Game's changed. Grayeyard is now just another resource. What WOTC really needs to do is print more versatile cards, as they have been doing, that say, deals 2 damage or exiles two cards for one mana.

IMHO Golgari Grave-Troll was never oppressive, indeed. I have a Vintage background, and as I see the game it’s definitely normal conceding 6-7 slots in the board to graveyard decks. It also benefits the maindeck building for a large part of the format, knowing that you can’t just sideboard tons of cards in every matchup, so you have to think about every single card you’re playing.

Dread Return is another story, cause it was simply too broken alongside Bridge from Below. I don’t know about now. The format is overpowered compared to those days.

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

It had 189 players. (Living in California, I was unable to go.) Jody Keith and Aaron Barich (of SCG Open fame) were in the top 8 and the top 16 from what I heard.

I cannot understand the maths behind a 189 players tournament with a 1st prize being a mustang.

That top 8 looks... well it sure doesn't look like a a highly competitive tournament. (I mean, I can understand one, maybe two lower tier decks making a top 8, but sword, burn, infect and rock?)

Quote from BlueTronFTW »

I don't think there will ever be a time where you don't want four exile gy effects. Game's changed. Grayeyard is now just another resource. What WOTC really needs to do is print more versatile cards, as they have been doing, that say, deals 2 damage or exiles two cards for one mana.

Yep. Even if Hogaak as a deck is completely obliterated, one was not 'wrong' for having at least 4 GY hitting cards, and now you are in the 6-8 range.

Quote from BloodyRabbit_01 »

IMHO ‘sideboard wars’ are a constant of every format. Grave hate is only a part of it. In the same way as Midrange decks usually pack 7-8 cards against a Tron to have a chance vs it.

Let’s see what it happens at GP/PT, anyway.

the GGT ban rationale was certainly more ambiguous than others. wizards did a decent job injecting a catchy buzzphrase with 'battle of the sideboards' that people can point to and most players sort of get the gist of what wizards (and much of the community) thought was a problem when really it doesnt actually say anything of substance.

you are right that sideboards are for cards that target whatever specific decks or strategies the player has in mind, and is thus constrained by its size. grave hate, creature hate, land hate, artifact hate, spell hate, etc. however with the battle the sideboards thing its implicit that there is some point where the strain is too much and wizards, as the arbiters of the game/format, deem it a detriment to the gameplay experience - which as people are so fond of pointing out includes some subjective qualitative assessment.

outside of determining whether the meta provides engaging/interesting/fun games there is some concrete stuff wizards could be looking at. there is the obvious stuff like how quickly its winning, its matchup and overall win percentage, or 'diversity' related stuff such as a decline in other decks showing up. then there is also how many pieces decks are playing interacting with the GY in the main or side over a given timeline compared to how much said change influenced percentages against bridgevine, other matchups, and or pre and post board.

i mean this is what they need and use the data for. how much hate do given decks need to meaningfully improve their chances of winning, or how big of a factor given hate pieces in whatever quantities are on the outcome of a game. if its too extreme for too many decks then that is probably indicative of a problem. if stuff like speed, dominant win percentages, or diversity stuff are also involved; then its a problem that likely needs a solution sooner rather than later.

The battle of the sideboards thing is a joke honestly. Do you beat current Dredge without dedicated hate? Absolutely not, after Creeping Chill.

Was anything banned out of Dredge? No, because of Phoenix sucking up air/text space.

I know we cannot have 'reasonable discussion' without metrics and past choices informing our dialogue on the ban list, but lets be real. It's a meaningless exercise. They ban what they want, they unban what they want, and it does not have to make sense.

If the ban logic from 3 or even 2 years ago was in place at Wizards both Dredge (post Chill) and Phoenix would have seen a ban on something already.

Quote from pierrebai »

Quote from FoodChainGoblins »

It had 189 players. (Living in California, I was unable to go.) Jody Keith and Aaron Barich (of SCG Open fame) were in the top 8 and the top 16 from what I heard.

I cannot understand the maths behind a 189 players tournament with a 1st prize being a mustang.

That top 8 looks... well it sure doesn't look like a a highly competitive tournament. (I mean, I can understand one, maybe two lower tier decks making a top 8, but sword, burn, infect and rock?)

Thopter Sword with Urza has been putting up some results by also using goblin engineer to tutor up a fast ensnaring bridge or other bullet. Infect, storm, cheerios etc are turn three combos that can race hogaak reliably enough. Burn, crazy enough, would get rolled against hogaak but is actually solid against those decks I just mentioned plus UW control. If I wasn't expecting a ton of bridge decks, but knew people would be planning for it, I'd consider burn. Still, that's a very specific meta call.

In order to try and better quantify Wizard's vague definition of "pushing the format too far toward a battle of sideboards", I actually checked the top 8 results of the last few paper tournaments that GGT was legal prior to its second ban via MTGTop8, namely GP Dallas '16, the SCG Milwaukee Open and VIII Edición Arcanis Deluxe '16. Interestingly enough, decks seemed to actually be carrying less hate for Dredge back then than people are carrying now for Hogaak decks. The most hate I think I found in any one deck was the Skred Red deck that won GP Dallas '16 with 4 Relics main and a Grafdigger's in the side. However, I also noticed that Anger of The Gods seemed more prevalent in people's 75, which could have led to less dedicated graveyard hate since Dredge was the only major Grave deck you needed to prepare for. There also seemed to be a lot more decks like Infect looking to just straight race Dredge, which might have also led to finding fewer decks with a lot of dedicated hate.

I couldn't find any data on the MTGO meta during that same time period, so there could have been more pieces of dedicated grave hate on average at the time online that I'm unaware of, and there's also a chance I'd find more if I started digging into top 16s, but from what I've gathered, Hogaak Bridgevine has driven the meta to rely on either racing, finding hate faster, and/or finding more hate within a short number of turns the same way Dredge did with GGT post-Kaladesh. It's also shaped the meta this way in a matter of weeks, not months.

If WotC doesn't hit Bridgevine in July for doing exactly what Dredge did, I would imagine that it's because they want to have more tourney results to cite in their justification and because they have the benefit of only having to wait another month for another chance to pull the trigger as opposed to the 3-4 month waiting period they used to have. That being said, I would sincerely doubt people are going to start dropping GY hate when Hogaak decks are still taking top 8 spots in spite of the 6-8 hate pieces decks are running, and hopefully WotC figures this out as well.