Finally getting around to an old idea I have had for this. With a local group forming again my only decision right now is to post before or after the pressure tests.
oh please I am sooo eager to know at least
I think one big question now is ”how to protect value engine pieces from Prismatic Ending?”
I'm sure this has already been answered, but why play Dredge over Hollow One in Modern?
Not sure if this is a correct forum page to ask things like this but I will answer anyway. Dredge is much more resilient to spot removal and wrath effects. Dredge is usually also much better and stable at what it does (this includes mulliganing) and Dredge is grindier than Hollow Bois.
On the other hand Hollow One is more resilient to hate which in some cases hose the whole Dredge as deck (Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage), Dredge isn't that aggressive and fast, Dredge at some level ignores what opponent is doing and hopes that recurring threats and huge Conflagrate are enough to keep opponent at bay meanwhile Hollow Bois has more interactive early approach in form of Lightning Bolts, Thoughtseizes and Burning Inquiries.
I am not an expert but I think this is more or less the situation between these two decks.
UW is a horrible match up for Hollow One... where is this 50/50 meme coming from? UW has a ton of very favorable match ups right now. Hollow One, GDS, Affinity and Modular, Humans is decent, same with KCI.
It might be the best deck in Modern right now
I think he just meant 50/50+, not 50/50. But yes, it has many good matches and is clearly Tier 1. Blue mages should be happy.
Death's Shadow isn't very favorable for UW control if Shadow player knows how to play and sideboard that matchup. It is still favorable for UW but not laid back favorable.
Have you guys played against new UW spirits? The matchup feels very cold from Dredge's side; all their creatures fly, they outclass our creatures very fast, when they get double hexproof it is pretty much game over, they have counters ans graveyard hate for days in form of that new grvayard exile spirit, Rest in Peace, Wanderers and Quellers.
How should I approach this matchup or do I just agree that it is bad one and move on?
You actually don't win with Valakut triggers since the mountain count is so much lower that you need them for comboing. You don't actually either have a way to search for Valakuts and usually RUG runs only two of them anyway. Controlling board and attacking with Cliques and Baloths has done the trick for me couple of times against heavy disruption decks like pox but usually you just have to slam the Shift to win the game.
I've noticed a few mtgo 5-0 lists have 4x hornet nest in the side. What matchups does this significantly improve? Also- noob question- if a death's shadow deals 10 damage to a hornet nest when I block it, would I get 10 1/1's or 2 1/1's ???
It is meant to be used against aggro decks (DS included), since they might reduce the number of straight removal after sideboarding. In past I have also Angered board with my own Nest out since it wrathed my opponent and I was left with three Wasps. Also if attacking Death's Shadow is 10/10 and you block it with the Nest there is no choice for your opponent other than deal 10 damage to the Nest and then you get your angry bee army of ten tokens.
Grishoalbrand is a bit too inconsistent. Though powerful things, it does powerful things.
While I tend to agree, it's notable that Amulet was once dubbed as "too inconsistent" until Cohen and Black got their hands on it and made it a monster. A big part of the push for these fringe decks is to get them into the hands of people with the monetary incentive to break them.
And even then it was considered a monster because it got famous. List they played was like almost exactly the same as couple of years earlier when some people played it - after the twelve post ban.
When we have such a large card pool, being an eternal format, linear strategies are going to be prevalent. I think its just the way its going to be for Modern forever. The only reason control decks survive in Legacy is because of insanely powerful reactive control cards like Force of Will and Counterbalance. The car pools are just too big to cover everything, and even if we had something like Counterspell, I'm not sure if control would even be much more powerful than the current Jeskai lists are. There's a reason proactive cards like Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize are so good.
Must say it once again, this wasn’t the case when we had deck that curved Bolt into Remand into Exarch. That was ’the Force of Will of modern’. It wasn’t tier 0 deck.. people just lack imagination and couldn’t accept the fact that you will lose if you don’t interract. It was so much more interesting and entertaining than today’s who combos or aggros faster is the winner (read: who draws the most broken starting seven + three cards).
I dont really see how the prevalence of linear strategies were any less than when Splinter Twin was legal. Storm was tier 2 because it didn't have Baral, Chief of Compliance, Infect was tier 1 because of Gitaxian Probe. Scapeshift has always been a thing, and the control version was more popular earlier on. We went through broken combo decks like Bloom Titan being tier 1, and during the Treasure Cruise meta, we had Jeskai Ascendency combo. Meanwhile, Affinity has always been at the top since the beginning, and Tron has always been a thing, while not always tier 1, it isnt tier 1 now either.
Linear strategies have always been prevalent even with Splinter Twin. Thats why Thoughtseize decks have always been so good, even without Death's Shadow.
Well this is true but those deck were not like 30% of the whole meta game back in that era. Storm would have not stand a chance versus Twin, it didn't have it back then and it would not have it now, both are turn four combo decks meanwhile other runs three Remands and couple of Bolts (which doesn't even do anything) and other runs like 10 permission cards + Bolts. Storm wasn't that good back then because it was inconsistent and too fair.
Decks those try to interact the stack have been so bad after that red aura got banned because there is not really a reward for keeping opponent doing degenerate things - they will just do it again in their next turn if you can't close the game. You could just pick up that deck if you wanted to punish non-interactive strategies hard and it was something I liked. Infect was also an ok deck but definitely not a tier 1, blue Scapeshift was tier 1 for sure because Twin made meta slow down so Remands and Cryptics were actually good cards. Cruise was a misprint and it was all about Delver anyway (enjoyed that meta also quite much).
Death's Shadow got its power spike from Fatal Push tho, just like blue based decks would go rampant with printing of a Spell Snare that would say "Counter target spell with converted mana cost two or less".
Things have changed lot since those days and even the decks Twin kept of the format are pretty much unplayable now (GR Scapeshift being an exception). I chose to play Twin because I refused to lose almost any kind of linear timmy aggro/combo played by bad players. Those decks are pretty much gone now and replaced by better and more powerful same kind of decks which even Twin would not defeat. It was actually very hard and also rewarding to achieve a placement in a top 8 of bigger local tournaments back then. Now those tournament top tables are filled with random people playing random linear garbage - meanwhile some of them have played format for like couple of weeks.
When we have such a large card pool, being an eternal format, linear strategies are going to be prevalent. I think its just the way its going to be for Modern forever. The only reason control decks survive in Legacy is because of insanely powerful reactive control cards like Force of Will and Counterbalance. The car pools are just too big to cover everything, and even if we had something like Counterspell, I'm not sure if control would even be much more powerful than the current Jeskai lists are. There's a reason proactive cards like Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize are so good.
Must say it once again, this wasn’t the case when we had deck that curved Bolt into Remand into Exarch. That was ’the Force of Will of modern’. It wasn’t tier 0 deck.. people just lack imagination and couldn’t accept the fact that you will lose if you don’t interract. It was so much more interesting and entertaining than today’s who combos or aggros faster is the winner (read: who draws the most broken starting seven + three cards).
oh please I am sooo eager to know at least
I think one big question now is ”how to protect value engine pieces from Prismatic Ending?”
That is correct
Not sure if this is a correct forum page to ask things like this but I will answer anyway. Dredge is much more resilient to spot removal and wrath effects. Dredge is usually also much better and stable at what it does (this includes mulliganing) and Dredge is grindier than Hollow Bois.
On the other hand Hollow One is more resilient to hate which in some cases hose the whole Dredge as deck (Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage), Dredge isn't that aggressive and fast, Dredge at some level ignores what opponent is doing and hopes that recurring threats and huge Conflagrate are enough to keep opponent at bay meanwhile Hollow Bois has more interactive early approach in form of Lightning Bolts, Thoughtseizes and Burning Inquiries.
I am not an expert but I think this is more or less the situation between these two decks.
Death's Shadow isn't very favorable for UW control if Shadow player knows how to play and sideboard that matchup. It is still favorable for UW but not laid back favorable.
How should I approach this matchup or do I just agree that it is bad one and move on?
It is meant to be used against aggro decks (DS included), since they might reduce the number of straight removal after sideboarding. In past I have also Angered board with my own Nest out since it wrathed my opponent and I was left with three Wasps. Also if attacking Death's Shadow is 10/10 and you block it with the Nest there is no choice for your opponent other than deal 10 damage to the Nest and then you get your angry bee army of ten tokens.
And even then it was considered a monster because it got famous. List they played was like almost exactly the same as couple of years earlier when some people played it - after the twelve post ban.
Well this is true but those deck were not like 30% of the whole meta game back in that era. Storm would have not stand a chance versus Twin, it didn't have it back then and it would not have it now, both are turn four combo decks meanwhile other runs three Remands and couple of Bolts (which doesn't even do anything) and other runs like 10 permission cards + Bolts. Storm wasn't that good back then because it was inconsistent and too fair.
Decks those try to interact the stack have been so bad after that red aura got banned because there is not really a reward for keeping opponent doing degenerate things - they will just do it again in their next turn if you can't close the game. You could just pick up that deck if you wanted to punish non-interactive strategies hard and it was something I liked. Infect was also an ok deck but definitely not a tier 1, blue Scapeshift was tier 1 for sure because Twin made meta slow down so Remands and Cryptics were actually good cards. Cruise was a misprint and it was all about Delver anyway (enjoyed that meta also quite much).
Death's Shadow got its power spike from Fatal Push tho, just like blue based decks would go rampant with printing of a Spell Snare that would say "Counter target spell with converted mana cost two or less".
Things have changed lot since those days and even the decks Twin kept of the format are pretty much unplayable now (GR Scapeshift being an exception). I chose to play Twin because I refused to lose almost any kind of linear timmy aggro/combo played by bad players. Those decks are pretty much gone now and replaced by better and more powerful same kind of decks which even Twin would not defeat. It was actually very hard and also rewarding to achieve a placement in a top 8 of bigger local tournaments back then. Now those tournament top tables are filled with random people playing random linear garbage - meanwhile some of them have played format for like couple of weeks.
Forgive me the grammatical errors
Must say it once again, this wasn’t the case when we had deck that curved Bolt into Remand into Exarch. That was ’the Force of Will of modern’. It wasn’t tier 0 deck.. people just lack imagination and couldn’t accept the fact that you will lose if you don’t interract. It was so much more interesting and entertaining than today’s who combos or aggros faster is the winner (read: who draws the most broken starting seven + three cards).