You honestly sound like a pompous ass- you don't have to play with a card extensively to understand how it will play out in a large majority of scenarios or to see whether or not it has built in synergies within a list. All you have to do is read it. Hazoret is a card that is at its best in fast, aggressive decks that puke their hand out within the first 3 turns of the game, or have symmetrical forms of discard for both you and your opponent. Look at the results so far- ponza has a win at the dutch open series, an SCG open, and today a 200 person MKM series in Rome: http://series.magiccardmarket.eu/coverage-mkm-series-rome-2018-modern/
None of these players have deemed hazoret worthy in the 75 because they read it, evaluated whether they thought it fit well into the ponza game plan, and realized that other 4 cmc options are better.
None of these lists run hazoret- there is literally zero reason to run hazoret in ponza unless you're trying to have some fun and play a suboptimal card for the deck.
I don't have to test the card to know it has a built in failure rate in this deck- ponza plays multiple 4, 5, and 6 cmc cards- there are going to be times when hazoret isn't going to do anything. Even if hazoret worked say, 75% of the time, which seems fairly generous, it still would not be worth mainboarding as like I said, many other good, proactive options in the 4 cmc slot exist. Hazoret is better in a deck like jund or mardu as a midrange mirror breaker sideboard card because you can actively discard your hand to the likes of liliana and collective brutality to get her online.
I figured that you hadn’t which is why I asked. There are plenty of cards that on paper look bad but in actual testing turn out to be great cards. Posting in a forum when you don’t have experience with the card does no good to help further the discussion. There are quite a few people in here who have played with the card to great success. In short try it before you knock it.
I don't have to test the card to know it has a built in failure rate in this deck- ponza plays multiple 4, 5, and 6 cmc cards- there are going to be times when hazoret isn't going to do anything. Even if hazoret worked say, 75% of the time, which seems fairly generous, it still would not be worth mainboarding as like I said, many other good, proactive options in the 4 cmc slot exist. Hazoret is better in a deck like jund or mardu as a midrange mirror breaker sideboard card because you can actively discard your hand to the likes of liliana and collective brutality to get her online.
There's no reason to ever play a 4 mana do nothing in modern- hazoret is a card with a built in fail rate- sometimes it's going to work and you'll be happy about it, other times you're going to spend 4 mana to do nothing because you have inferno titan and multiple other spells in hand. Modern is a format that punishes those who aren't trying to have a proactive strategy- and sometimes hazoret is not proactive at all. There's just no reason to include a card like this when there are so many other completely fine options available that readily impact the board when they come down- chameleon colossus, huntmaster, P&K, chandra, mwonvuli acid moss, etc.
Monday night modern report- went 3-1 vs. burn, dredge, affinity, U/W control. This was my first time playing ponza- I was pretty disappointed with my play even though I made it in the money tonight- there are definitely some things that I plan to change going forward that I will discuss below. To give you a background on the meta I play in- it is very cutthroat and the field is full of really great players- a few have GP wins and multiple pro tour appearances. There are also a couple of known (they have their own SCG tokens) SCG grinders as well. It's a meta full of linear aggro/combo decks like dredge, burn, affinity, ad naus, and storm- usually between 25 and 30 people show up so you still have to cover a lot of bases and expect anything. Normally I play eldrazi tron and do very well- tonight I wanted to try out ponza
R1: burn (2-1)- I got the play and had a goldfish T1 elf, T2 sprawl + acid moss hand. He stumbled on lands and I was able to just outrace him with a tireless tracker and stormbreath dragon. Game 2 I stumbled on lands and he killed me in 3 turns. Game 3 was very strange and very close- I think he misplayed and locked himself out of the game by playing a second eidolon while at 3 life while I was at 4 life and had a 5/4 tracker. However, any haste threat from me would have ended the game in this scenario so I think he was playing to the fact that he would need to chump block if it came down to it- I recognized the fact that he would kill himself off any spell, and just hung my creatures back till I topdecked the solution-if I gave him the opportunity to chump he would have been able to fire off a burn spell at my face and kill me. We went through about 5 draw steps and 3-4 tireless tracker clues before I topdecked stormy b and won the game. Super tight and fun game that ended with a pretty weird board state.
R2: dredge (1-2)- he got the play which is obviously very bad against a deck like dredge-game 1 he went off on turn 2 and had like 11 power on board so I couldn't do anything. Game 2 I sided in all of my hate and a turn 2 scooze essentially rode me all the way to victory- I never tapped out and always ate things in response to narcomoeba and bloodghast triggers. I eventually had eaten his entire deck and he scooped. Game 3 he had a perfect hand even though I had relic + anger on a mull to 6. He was able to nature's claim my relic on turn 2 and I stumbled on a 3rd land to anger. I had one draw step to hit the 3rd red source but bricked and lost.
R3: affinity (2-1)- game 1 he played double darksteel citadel while I watched 2 stone rains and an acid moss rot away in my hand. Got killed promptly by cranial plating on an ornithopter. Game 2 was very strange- I only drew 1 sideboard abrade as my artifact hate and he managed to spellpierce it so I missed out killing his plating. Crazily enough I managed to outrace him with 3 bloodbraid elves,1 finks and 2 tireless trackers even though he had a cranial plating and etched champion. He had a nice vault skirge topdeck and equipped plating but was forced to block one of my creatures with it. He didn't draw a second plating and lost. Game 3 he mulliganed to 5- I found chandra, lightning bolt, and an ancient grudge off of an arbor elf +utopia sprawl turn 1 and turn 2 and the game was over.
R4: U/W control (2-1)- I kept a really greedy 1 lander game 1 on the draw that had a lot of 3's in it and an elf. Unfortunately I bricked 3 draw steps for land and he slammed a baby gideon and JtMS turns 3 and 4 and I couldn't catch up. Game 2 I had a really nice hand with turn 2 stone rain and turn 3 chandra into blood moon. Tracker came down, drew into BBE, won the game because he was so far behind with no basics. Game 3 was closer- he turn 3 cliqued my BBE away but I still had a tracker and thrun by turn 4. Tracker generated 6 clues this game. We both misplayed once each- I fetched a land while at 10 life to go to 9 to put myself on a 3 turn clock to the clique- he misplayed by not bouncing my tracker with jace and didn't recognize that he needed to race me to win. I still drew a stormbreath so it didn't matter quite as much because I would have found a blocker for clique. Thrun, tracker, and stormy B closed the game out for me here.
I definitely could have tightened up my play a little bit in the U/W control and affinity matchups- I am not quite as savvy with the ramp package as I want to be with this deck even though it seems very straightforward.
Potential changes to the decklist and other observations:
a. I really hated molten rain and having more than the 4x stone rain, 4x blood moon, 2x acid moss LD package. It just felt like way too much redundancy to be worth it- getting hands jammed with LD led me to more mulligans than I felt like I should be making. My LGS's meta is also very low to the ground and can easily get underneath a deck like ponza. Having 2 red mana on turn 2 is also not always reliable in this deck if you draw two forests in your opener. These will be cut going forward.
b. Scavenging ooze felt like a maindeck worthy card and seems like it might be one of the best creatures in the new modern format- it can gain life against aggro, it can grow huge and take over a game in midrange creature matchups, and it can combat the various types of graveyard reliant decks (of which there are many- storm, dredge, R/B hollow one, and snapcaster based blue decks are all perfect examples of decks where scooze can singlehandedly win you the game). It is also a decent hit off of BBE- so I will probably replace the two molten rains with these. This will also free up two sideboard slots to hedge more against other decks.
c. BBE, tireless tracker, and blood moon are the nuts in ponza. These cards all carried games on their own individually- I would never play less than 4 of each in the main.
d. Stormbreath and inferno titan feel like necessary "over the top" bombs that let you end games in 1-2 turns. Although tarmogoyf is an excellent magic card, I never felt like I was missing it tonight- there's a lot of speculation on whether a lower to the ground, creature heavy G/R midrange list with goyfs and hierarchs could be better than the traditional LD gameplan. I don't think this is correct primarily because we don't play black and can't control the size of goyf with all of black's discard options. Jund and abzan remain the far and away best tarmogoyf decks. Temur is probably also a better home for the goofball.
Playtested a lot last night with my buddy who has big Jacekai and mardu put together. Was really impressed with the consistency of the deck and how powerful it felt. Went 7-1 against him with 4 games (not matches) of him on each deck. To be fair I think most midrange/control matchups are good for ponza aside from those that run tarmogoyf- I'm guessing jund is probably the worst midrange matchup for the deck. Blood moon obviously was the all star versus jeskai, and inferno titan was the curve topping bomb that helped win most games against mardu. Bloodbraid and tracker really feel like they give the deck a lot of "glue," as in it helps you maintain your LD game plan and cascade/draw into more fuel- basically they kept the game plan coherent whenever they hit the board. With molten rain in the deck it's really important to have an extra fetchland to be able to get stomping ground turn 2- thus I have 4 foothills and then 5 split green fetchlands. I liked chandra a lot- I found her ramp to be very relevant with stone and molten rain, and giving the deck an extra source of removal/card advantage seemed like it was exactly where I wanted to be in a deck that can run out of gas so quickly. Courser of kruphix I also liked a lot as a 1-of (I never want to have more than 1 in any game, and I don't need it to win, so 1 was fine) as an extra BBE hit and it also had some nice "lantern" synergies with BBE and chandra.
I goldfished a lot the evening prior with a list similar to the one that won the dutch modern open series (4 stone rain, 4 blood moon, 4 molten rain, 2 acid moss)- I felt like a lot of openers were really really sketchy trying to get double red for molten rain- so I cut 2 of them and replaced with 1x courser and 1 more tracker to finish out the playset. I also cut one birds for a basic because I just felt that it would be better to minimize the "bad" bloodbraid hits. Here's the list- stormy b definitely felt like the weakest card in the deck- although I understand it's been a mainstay and that it dodges the 3 most common removal spells in the format (push, bolt, path) a 4/4 for 5 is not really what I'm interested in doing in modern. I might be underselling the card though because it is a solid clock that can go over the top of the majority of decks in the format. Anyway, here's the list:
Two different ponza versions made the 5-0 decklist posting for MTGO (both ran 4 BBE)- neither of these are mine but I wanted to share them here to start some more discussion:
This first version is more of a traditional list with the high end threats but with 4 molten rain in the mainboard for extra BBE hits.
The second is more of what I expect to see more in the future for ponza- lower to the ground, more aggressive version of the deck with overall less mana accelerants, slightly less high end threats, but a lot of built in resilience and grind potential with 4x tracker, 4x BBE, and 2x chandra.
This is starting to lean to more of a "G/R goodstuff" list than traditional ponza. It makes more sense to me because the power level of each card is much higher in a vacuum than old ponza lists- modern is a brutal, fast, and disruptive format, and having your deck still be able to function when things don't go completely according to plan is important. Durdling for too long also gives your opponent the opportunity to get back in games you should be winning. There's no doubt that ponza lists need to adapt to increase the amount of BBE hits, playing arguably the best 2 drop in the format is a good place to start- goyf. I'll be experimenting with something similar to this in the future and post some thoughts later on after I've gotten a lot of playtesting in.
Pure power level wise- BBE is the best gruul card that is modern legal at the moment. It is an auto 4 of in this deck. If you want to play a "fair" game plan with obstinate baloths, p&k, and chameleon colossus that is all well and good- but it is simply not good enough and is way too cute for a format like modern- these turn 3 plays are basically just concessions to unfair decks like storm, ad naus, affinity, goryos vengeance, etc. There's a reason that ponza doesn't put up consistently good results- and that's because it simply lacks the overall power level and explosiveness that other decks do. BBE enables possible turn 2 and consistent turn 3 3/2 haste into stone rain, blood moon, or another threat like tireless tracker. If you are on the play and hit the nut draw- you've slammed a 3/2 body, blown up your opponent's only land, and are going to have access to at least 5 mana on turn 3. That is a play that almost zero decks will be able to recover from especially if you curve out. It pushes ponza into a place from doing "fair" things to doing very unfair things. The worst case scenario is that you hit a utopia sprawl or arbor elf off of the cascade triggers- while certainly not ideal- these are still reasonable forms of ramp that may help you curve out into a titan or dragon. It is more than worth it to take the gamble on the elf to make a very up tempo play than to continue trying to win with current lists. Inconsistency and taking risks is part of the game- decks like R/B hollow one and tron are always taking a gamble trying to do unfair things- R/G ponza already has inconsistency issues. If anything, BBE will make it more consistent just because of how powerful it is. In the end I'm guessing a lower to the ground, slightly lowered curve deck becomes the best option. Bonfire is pure ***** anyway, the card is just way too slow for the format and doesn't even do anything to decks like humans because their key creatures are all x/4 by the time you get to cast it for 2.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/modern-challenge-2018-03-18
None of these players have deemed hazoret worthy in the 75 because they read it, evaluated whether they thought it fit well into the ponza game plan, and realized that other 4 cmc options are better.
None of these lists run hazoret- there is literally zero reason to run hazoret in ponza unless you're trying to have some fun and play a suboptimal card for the deck.
4x Arbor Elf
1x Birds of Paradise
4x Bloodbraid Elf
1x Courser of Kruphix
2x Inferno Titan
2x Stormbreath Dragon
4x Tireless Tracker
Enchantment (8)
4x Blood Moon
4x Utopia Sprawl
Instant (2)
2x Lightning Bolt
9x Forest
1x Mountain
3x Stomping Ground
3x Verdant Catacombs
2x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
Sorcery (8)
2x Molten Rain
2x Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
4x Stone Rain
Planeswalker (2)
2x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1x Abrade
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Anger of the Gods
1x Grafdigger's Cage
3x Kitchen Finks
2x Relic of Progenitus
1x Roast
2x Scavenging Ooze
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
R1: burn (2-1)- I got the play and had a goldfish T1 elf, T2 sprawl + acid moss hand. He stumbled on lands and I was able to just outrace him with a tireless tracker and stormbreath dragon. Game 2 I stumbled on lands and he killed me in 3 turns. Game 3 was very strange and very close- I think he misplayed and locked himself out of the game by playing a second eidolon while at 3 life while I was at 4 life and had a 5/4 tracker. However, any haste threat from me would have ended the game in this scenario so I think he was playing to the fact that he would need to chump block if it came down to it- I recognized the fact that he would kill himself off any spell, and just hung my creatures back till I topdecked the solution-if I gave him the opportunity to chump he would have been able to fire off a burn spell at my face and kill me. We went through about 5 draw steps and 3-4 tireless tracker clues before I topdecked stormy b and won the game. Super tight and fun game that ended with a pretty weird board state.
R2: dredge (1-2)- he got the play which is obviously very bad against a deck like dredge-game 1 he went off on turn 2 and had like 11 power on board so I couldn't do anything. Game 2 I sided in all of my hate and a turn 2 scooze essentially rode me all the way to victory- I never tapped out and always ate things in response to narcomoeba and bloodghast triggers. I eventually had eaten his entire deck and he scooped. Game 3 he had a perfect hand even though I had relic + anger on a mull to 6. He was able to nature's claim my relic on turn 2 and I stumbled on a 3rd land to anger. I had one draw step to hit the 3rd red source but bricked and lost.
R3: affinity (2-1)- game 1 he played double darksteel citadel while I watched 2 stone rains and an acid moss rot away in my hand. Got killed promptly by cranial plating on an ornithopter. Game 2 was very strange- I only drew 1 sideboard abrade as my artifact hate and he managed to spellpierce it so I missed out killing his plating. Crazily enough I managed to outrace him with 3 bloodbraid elves,1 finks and 2 tireless trackers even though he had a cranial plating and etched champion. He had a nice vault skirge topdeck and equipped plating but was forced to block one of my creatures with it. He didn't draw a second plating and lost. Game 3 he mulliganed to 5- I found chandra, lightning bolt, and an ancient grudge off of an arbor elf +utopia sprawl turn 1 and turn 2 and the game was over.
R4: U/W control (2-1)- I kept a really greedy 1 lander game 1 on the draw that had a lot of 3's in it and an elf. Unfortunately I bricked 3 draw steps for land and he slammed a baby gideon and JtMS turns 3 and 4 and I couldn't catch up. Game 2 I had a really nice hand with turn 2 stone rain and turn 3 chandra into blood moon. Tracker came down, drew into BBE, won the game because he was so far behind with no basics. Game 3 was closer- he turn 3 cliqued my BBE away but I still had a tracker and thrun by turn 4. Tracker generated 6 clues this game. We both misplayed once each- I fetched a land while at 10 life to go to 9 to put myself on a 3 turn clock to the clique- he misplayed by not bouncing my tracker with jace and didn't recognize that he needed to race me to win. I still drew a stormbreath so it didn't matter quite as much because I would have found a blocker for clique. Thrun, tracker, and stormy B closed the game out for me here.
I definitely could have tightened up my play a little bit in the U/W control and affinity matchups- I am not quite as savvy with the ramp package as I want to be with this deck even though it seems very straightforward.
Potential changes to the decklist and other observations:
a. I really hated molten rain and having more than the 4x stone rain, 4x blood moon, 2x acid moss LD package. It just felt like way too much redundancy to be worth it- getting hands jammed with LD led me to more mulligans than I felt like I should be making. My LGS's meta is also very low to the ground and can easily get underneath a deck like ponza. Having 2 red mana on turn 2 is also not always reliable in this deck if you draw two forests in your opener. These will be cut going forward.
b. Scavenging ooze felt like a maindeck worthy card and seems like it might be one of the best creatures in the new modern format- it can gain life against aggro, it can grow huge and take over a game in midrange creature matchups, and it can combat the various types of graveyard reliant decks (of which there are many- storm, dredge, R/B hollow one, and snapcaster based blue decks are all perfect examples of decks where scooze can singlehandedly win you the game). It is also a decent hit off of BBE- so I will probably replace the two molten rains with these. This will also free up two sideboard slots to hedge more against other decks.
c. BBE, tireless tracker, and blood moon are the nuts in ponza. These cards all carried games on their own individually- I would never play less than 4 of each in the main.
d. Stormbreath and inferno titan feel like necessary "over the top" bombs that let you end games in 1-2 turns. Although tarmogoyf is an excellent magic card, I never felt like I was missing it tonight- there's a lot of speculation on whether a lower to the ground, creature heavy G/R midrange list with goyfs and hierarchs could be better than the traditional LD gameplan. I don't think this is correct primarily because we don't play black and can't control the size of goyf with all of black's discard options. Jund and abzan remain the far and away best tarmogoyf decks. Temur is probably also a better home for the goofball.
I goldfished a lot the evening prior with a list similar to the one that won the dutch modern open series (4 stone rain, 4 blood moon, 4 molten rain, 2 acid moss)- I felt like a lot of openers were really really sketchy trying to get double red for molten rain- so I cut 2 of them and replaced with 1x courser and 1 more tracker to finish out the playset. I also cut one birds for a basic because I just felt that it would be better to minimize the "bad" bloodbraid hits. Here's the list- stormy b definitely felt like the weakest card in the deck- although I understand it's been a mainstay and that it dodges the 3 most common removal spells in the format (push, bolt, path) a 4/4 for 5 is not really what I'm interested in doing in modern. I might be underselling the card though because it is a solid clock that can go over the top of the majority of decks in the format. Anyway, here's the list:
4x Arbor Elf
1x Birds of Paradise
4x Bloodbraid Elf
1x Courser of Kruphix
2x Inferno Titan
2x Stormbreath Dragon
4x Tireless Tracker
9x Forest
1x Mountain
3x Stomping Ground
3x Verdant Catacombs
2x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Sorcery (8)
2x Molten Rain
2x Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
4x Stone Rain
Enchantment (8)
4x Blood Moon
4x Utopia Sprawl
2x Lightning Bolt
This first version is more of a traditional list with the high end threats but with 4 molten rain in the mainboard for extra BBE hits.
4 Arbor Elf
2 Birds of Paradise
4 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Courser of Kruphix
2 Inferno Titan
2 Stormbreath Dragon
3 Tireless Tracker
4 Molten Rain
3 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1 Primal Command
4 Stone Rain
Enchantment (8)
4 Blood Moon
4 Utopia Sprawl
9 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Stomping Ground
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
The second is more of what I expect to see more in the future for ponza- lower to the ground, more aggressive version of the deck with overall less mana accelerants, slightly less high end threats, but a lot of built in resilience and grind potential with 4x tracker, 4x BBE, and 2x chandra.
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Creature (22)
2 Birds of Paradise
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Stormbreath Dragon
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Tireless Tracker
2 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
4 Stone Rain
Instant (4)
4 Lightning Bolt
Enchantment (4)
4 Blood Moon
Land (22)
1 Fire-Lit Thicket
7 Forest
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
3 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
This is starting to lean to more of a "G/R goodstuff" list than traditional ponza. It makes more sense to me because the power level of each card is much higher in a vacuum than old ponza lists- modern is a brutal, fast, and disruptive format, and having your deck still be able to function when things don't go completely according to plan is important. Durdling for too long also gives your opponent the opportunity to get back in games you should be winning. There's no doubt that ponza lists need to adapt to increase the amount of BBE hits, playing arguably the best 2 drop in the format is a good place to start- goyf. I'll be experimenting with something similar to this in the future and post some thoughts later on after I've gotten a lot of playtesting in.