I didn't make a claim to the deck's overall win rate. You did. I shared personal experience only. Therefore since you introduced the stat the onus is on you to cite it or provide evidence that the number you stated is accurate. You didn't include a sample size, you didn't say if it was pre or post london mulligan rule, and you also didn't address the fact that any deck winning on turn 1 at anywhere near 10% (if that's even accurate) is still easily worthy of a ban in modern.
Here you go friend. A deck that's less than 2% of the meta, which posts a single 5-0 roughly every 2-3 days. As I said before, you are free to watch people who actually test the deck on twitch. No I will no do it for you. You ARE the one who made the claim that " Neobrand goes off on turn 1 at least once every match I play against it, and quite frequently twice." which is outlandish and supported by no evidence other than your word. You are now walking that back saying you didn't claim anything and shared personal experience, but expect WotC to ban the deck based on your personal experience. Multiple other people have refuted your outlandish claims.
Uhh,except they haven't. First of all, when a deck is new, meta share is largely irrelevant to brokenness. Modern is an expensive format. Usually until a deck makes a few top 8s at some larger events, people are not going to buy in. Again, KCI, was 2% of the meta for a long ass time, but was always just as broken, the same with AmuletBloom. Hogaak didn't have top meta share or even large meta share right off the bat, and people had an easier transition to it, because bridgevine was already a thing. Also people don't like to buy into a deck that may be immediately on the chopping block. Neobrand is not a thing without the London Mulligan and that went into effect 2 weeks ago. So saying a deck isn't broken because it doesnt have meta share after 15 days is absurd. As far as my claim, again I made a personal experience claim. The last match I played against it I lost on turn 1 twice. I have yet to play against Neobrand without it getting at least 1 turn 1 win. Here's screenshots form my last match. If there was easier ways to find specific games in MTGO I could definitely get more. Watched some content on youtube today from a popular streamer playing against neobrand and guess what? Turn 1 win.
You on the other made a general claim about what the deck can do and provided no evidence at all, and no detail about how those numbers were reached. I didn't post screens with what I said because I was making a statement based on anecdotal evidence and stated so, so evidence is largely irrelevant. But YOU made a claim about the deck as a whole backed by "data" and then provided no data. I don't expect WOTC to do anything, it's dumb to expect anything from WOTC even if scores of people want them to, but that's not what this thread is about is it? So stop making baseless claims with no evidence. After a little bit of searching I only found one real reference to the turn 1 win rate and it was wrong, as pointed out by someone else.
"Number of possible opening hands is 60C7=~386 million. A lower bound for the number of T1-win opening hands is 4 Neoform*4 Rider*4 Chancellor*8 Cavern/Spirit Guide*19 other green cards*55 generic cards*54 generic cards = ~29 million.
29/386=~7.5% Not perfect, but it's a definitive lower bound, and mulligans will improve it significantly."
"I think you've missed a lot of the opening hand variation. I'd suggest that the best way to approach is classifying functional T1 hands in 7 categories:
Chancellor + Land + Neo + Pact/Rider + Green
Ch + Sim Spirit Guide + Morphose + Neo + P/R + Gr
Ch + Ch + Mor + Neo + P/R
SSG + Land + Mor + Neo + P/R + Gr + Gr
SSG + SSG + Ch + Eldritch Evo + P/R + Mor + Gr
SSG + Land + Ch + Evo + P/R + Gr
Ch + Ch + Land/Guide/Ch + Eldritch Evo + P/R
(and potentially SSG + SSG + Land + Morphose + P/R + Green + Pickup a Green card on the draw)"
So without even including all the possible turn 1 combos, mathematically it can go off at roughly 7.5% That doesn't include mulligans, and especially doesn't include the London Mulligan rule, so I'd say your statement of it only wins turn 1 less than 10% is almost certainly false. If you got some better data then stop hiding it and post it. Regardless, none of this takes account how often the deck can put together a turn 2 or turn 3 win. If it can win turn 1 at 10% and turn 2 30%, is that worth a ban to you? What numbers of people barely getting to play magic are acceptable to you? Because the fact is decks have been banned in modern for being less explosive than that.
So I say it wins on turn 1 less than 10% of the time, you show evidence it wins less than 10% of the time and I'm wrong? Goldfishing is not a representation of a deck irl. Half those games (statistically) would be the opponent goes first, and could disrupt. You can not brute force the number up that way and claim it as evidence.
So, again you've replied without your "data". If you had read the post you would have seen how it's much more likely that the true number is well over 10%. The 7.5% number was wrong because it didn't include all the possible turn 1 combos. Secondly, the turn 1 goldfishing stats were done all on the play, so outside of force of negation, there is 0 interaction you could have. Turn 2 goldfishing was a whopping 48% so even if you take some off of that due to interaction, it's still absurdly high and that's with the Vancouver mulligan. With London mulligan it's much higher, the guy said his turn 1 on the play winrate is closer to 20% now. It's laughable that you're talking about evidence again and yet you have still provided none. I went from providing my personal experience to actually providing some data for analysis. You have made statements that you've provided no evidence for, and I provided a decent amount of evidence that what you said is false. I said if you had any data to share yourself, feel free and you didn't. So unless you got something more than just blindly trying to refute what I'm saying, then I guess we're done here.
The Pro seems to have chosen: Hogaak is at 21% of the meta. Neobrand is just at 1.1%. The truely broken deck seems to be the first. We'll see the results.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks played: Modern:
0 Affinity;
URG Delver
URGW Countercats
(Here you can find some video contents about Countercats and Temur Delver decks)
Day 1 stats matter way less than day 2 stats. At Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch, there were about 5 times as many Infect decks as there were Eldrazi Aggro decks day 1. By day two there were 26 Eldrazi decks and 25 Infect decks. Decks with relatively high day 2 conversion rates are the ones people should be worried about. That's not to say Hogaak won't have those, but when Leyline of the Void is the most played card in people's 75 and when RiP and Grafdigger's Cage are among the most played sideboard cards, we can at least conclude that people aren't treating Hogaak as some nerfed rogue deck
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks
Modern: UWUW Control UBRGrixis Shadow URIzzet Phoenix
The Pro seems to have chosen: Hogaak is at 21% of the meta. Neobrand is just at 1.1%. The truely broken deck seems to be the first. We'll see the results.
One deck loses to Force of Negation, the other deck wins through multiple graveyard hate cards. Seems reasonable.
Surprised by the small amount of discussion from the Mythic Championship/Magicfest Barcelona. People seemed like they had written off Jund entirely, but then there were two copies of Jund in the Top 8 of Mythic Championship Barcelona. Granted, the Draft means that the Top 8 doesn't depend entirely on Modern and thus the results are questionable, but this is backed up by the fact that the finals of Magicfest Barcelona was a Jund mirror. You also had ThopterSword get into the Top 8 of both events.
Thread in general's been pretty slow since a lot of the regulars moved to MTGNexus. There's also a lot of data tables there from users sifting through the data and segregating the Limited portion from the Modern Portion as well as links to other people's analyses. Some highlights:
Hogaak over-performed. Despite a tournament where there were more copies of Leyline of the Void in people's 75 than any other card, it still had the highest MWR at about 56%
Phoenix did all right, but it's MWR was only about 50%, which is about the same range as most of the other popular decks
UrzaSword was surprisingly high, with a MWR at about 55.4%, almost the same as Hogaak
It's also nice to see a BGx deck so well-positioned after what seemed like an eternity of BGx decks struggling to remain relevant
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks
Modern: UWUW Control UBRGrixis Shadow URIzzet Phoenix
I'm pretty happy to see multiple Jund decks in the Top 8 of teh MC, I'm looking forward to seeing how the format adjusts but I'm not getting my hopes up
The whole "Leyline of the Void was the most played card" doesnt mean too much when people say things like "imagine Hogaak in a world where of Leyline wasn't the most played card." The reason is because Leyline was being played in Hoggak itself for the mirror, which skews the numbers. So we are talking about the most played sideboard card in the most played deck
I wonder if leyline would still be the most played card if we didn't have the london mulligan. I feel like it got a huge power boost from that.
Also, Hogaak is a good deck, but it seems very odd to be playing 2 leylines mainboard to be honest. I can see about ?half? ish of the pros running Hoogaak seem to be running it, but for a non Mythic Championship it just seems a little odd what with over half the top 8 consisting of Jund, E-Tron, Humans, Burn, Tron, and UW. (Though it is somewhat useful against UW)
I think Urza overperformed mostly because it destroys hogaak, and also because nobody was geared towards it (Jund was only running 1 k-command and 1 ouphe in some cases, which isn't nearly enough). I'm curious if it'll just fade like every other prison deck we've made though.
Also, lovely to see Hardened Scales give a gasp of performance. Deck is still pretty solidly t2 now though.
I do agree with the assessment that Urza's performance was likely do to a lack of artifact hate. When I looked over the deck lists for the MC, there seemed to be a lot of Nature's Claims, but not a lot mass artifact removal/negation like Stony Silence or Shattering Spree. If the meta opens up in such a way where people cut back on grave hate, I wouldn't be surprised if better artifact answers took those spots
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks
Modern: UWUW Control UBRGrixis Shadow URIzzet Phoenix
Thread in general's been pretty slow since a lot of the regulars moved to MTGNexus. There's also a lot of data tables there from users sifting through the data and segregating the Limited portion from the Modern Portion as well as links to other people's analyses. Some highlights:
Hogaak over-performed. Despite a tournament where there were more copies of Leyline of the Void in people's 75 than any other card, it still had the highest MWR at about 56%
Phoenix did all right, but it's MWR was only about 50%, which is about the same range as most of the other popular decks
UrzaSword was surprisingly high, with a MWR at about 55.4%, almost the same as Hogaak
It's also nice to see a BGx deck so well-positioned after what seemed like an eternity of BGx decks struggling to remain relevant
There were about 900 copies of Leyline of the Void in the tournament for 450 players. There was also about another 1600 GY hate cards in decks across Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Surgical Extraction, Rest in Peace, and a couple others. So, we're looking at 5.55 pieces of GY hate per deck on average, and despite that Hogaak overperformed.
I think this creates a good case for an argument that Hogaak just doesn't care much about GY hate. And that if it can be stopped, it needs to be stopped another way. Or, alternatively an argument that Hogaak cannot be stopped.
A card like Leyline of the Void is basically a last ditch safety valve. A turn 0 1 sided graveyard hate card. You run something like that only when you need either 1 sided hate, and/or you need reliable hate extremely quickly. Having so much of that in the format suggests huge issues. Even if we grant the point Hogaak supporters are making, that Hogaak was running 4 and that inflated the numbers, they were still running 2 mainboard because their worst match was the mirror and they could afford the slots, and that if the 21% of the day 1 meta that was Hogaak all ran 4 leylines that only accounts for 380 copies. There were 900 copies (and then additional hate beyond that) meaning the average in the non Hogaak decks was still 520 or so copies for 350 players which is 1 out of every 3 decks running a playset, and then the other 350 decks running around making up the remainder of the 1100+ other copies of GY hate.
I think Modern has changed significantly from even 2 years ago. For a lot of people, I think modern has finally become the pro-format that they prefer. Pros really like formats that are smaller in scopes to leverage deck decision and sideboards. Modern has finally shrunk what is good to be able to do that compared to before. There are a lot less random decks out there. You still see them on occasion, but I think the TIER 2 and 3 plethora of decks which defined Modern for years are essentially shoved down thanks to Humans, Phoenix, Hogaak, Jund, UW Control, and an artifact deck and some variations inbetween.
It is really tough to play a brew anymore or a tier 2 net deck and win more and having trouble competitng. The velocity of deck search, the power, and the amount of removal have drastically impacted what could be played, especially for decks with little interaction such as Merfolk, Elves, Mono-Green devotion, Ponza, and all the rest of the tier 2 and 3 decks that are played.
It is fine to modern to be this way for the pros. Professionals LIKE smaller fields of play. This way they can leverage game skill, deck building, and all the other tiny skills that make you have percentage win chances against the field. it is why standard is generally well liked by pros let alone the generally money and attention lavished on it.
Modern has finally become that pro-format that really competitive pros wanted it to be.
I just don't like it. I liked the more casual 60 decks a week modern. It really isn't that anymore I don't think. There might be non-games due to the deck style of modern, but there really is a tightening of what is good or bad or what works or doesn't. Winning a couple games here or there and spiking a tournament with a deck just doesn't work as much if you aren't playing the clear best decks. It is much much harder to take a wierd brew or a tier 3-4 deck and do well. There is a much smaller tier 2 and tier 3 list. Staples on that list are no longer as good. They can still win and occasionally spike, but I bet it is less before.
Format looks bad. People are acting like just one hogaak deck in a top 8 is a good thing.
Not at all. Right now we are just waiting for it to get banned. No one in my local scene is playing the deck because no one wants to buy into a deck that that's just going to get banned. Without Hogaak the meta actually is pretty good to be honest. Yeah there's still Dredge, but its not as good as it was once. Once Hogaak is gone, I can see a lot more people being happy about Modern
I think Modern has changed significantly from even 2 years ago. For a lot of people, I think modern has finally become the pro-format that they prefer. Pros really like formats that are smaller in scopes to leverage deck decision and sideboards. Modern has finally shrunk what is good to be able to do that compared to before. There are a lot less random decks out there. You still see them on occasion, but I think the TIER 2 and 3 plethora of decks which defined Modern for years are essentially shoved down thanks to Humans, Phoenix, Hogaak, Jund, UW Control, and an artifact deck and some variations inbetween.
It is really tough to play a brew anymore or a tier 2 net deck and win more and having trouble competitng. The velocity of deck search, the power, and the amount of removal have drastically impacted what could be played, especially for decks with little interaction such as Merfolk, Elves, Mono-Green devotion, Ponza, and all the rest of the tier 2 and 3 decks that are played.
It is fine to modern to be this way for the pros. Professionals LIKE smaller fields of play. This way they can leverage game skill, deck building, and all the other tiny skills that make you have percentage win chances against the field. it is why standard is generally well liked by pros let alone the generally money and attention lavished on it.
Modern has finally become that pro-format that really competitive pros wanted it to be.
I just don't like it. I liked the more casual 60 decks a week modern. It really isn't that anymore I don't think. There might be non-games due to the deck style of modern, but there really is a tightening of what is good or bad or what works or doesn't. Winning a couple games here or there and spiking a tournament with a deck just doesn't work as much if you aren't playing the clear best decks. It is much much harder to take a wierd brew or a tier 3-4 deck and do well. There is a much smaller tier 2 and tier 3 list. Staples on that list are no longer as good. They can still win and occasionally spike, but I bet it is less before.
I completely disagree. Modern is a lot like Legacy these days in my opinion. You can play basically anything you want, but you need to respect the constraints of the format and make sure that what you play includes ways to interact with the powerful things your opponents are doing.
That's funny, my sentiment is different as well. In Modern, every top deck has a completely different package of cards. If I take a look at the stats, not a card is played more than for 20% of the meta share. We have a glimpse of what happens in legacy with Looting, but tbf, it's far from being hegemonic. Also popularity and money have a big influence on the metagame. Right now Hogvine's popularity is exaggerated, but everyone has to follow the track somehow. It's very hard to figure out what deck to play amongst the top 8 decks right now.
I have a different experience with Legacy. There, it's pretty much split by 7 cards to define the big archetypes (Jace, Daze, Chalice, Vial, Loam, Griselbrand & LED, e.g. cards that almost never overlap in decks). You pick a card and build the better deck with that card. Besides, you either play Fow or you play against it. It's a very specific dichotomy we don't experience in Modern. The popularity of a deck never goes through the roof (the Eldrazi era being a special case). The format remains way more stale, I don't feel like I changed my way of playing it in years (Delver redefined legacy forever but that's when I started playing Legacy so...). Even bans didn't really change much for me, and I'll never switch amongst the top 8 decks of the format like I could do in Modern.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Pioneer - A bunch of stuff Modern - Humans Legacy - Grixis Phoenix / Death & Taxes
Your definition of the top decks in Legacy is accurate, but Legacy still has a lot of diversity. Nic Fit, Maverick, Sneak Attack, and many more. Those decks might not be tier 1, but they're still competitive in the metagame and the reason they can function is because Legacy has extremely strong answers, and almost every color has access to relevant answers. So, as long as you play the cards you need to play to interact with the metagame, you can fill the rest of your deck with whatever you find to be fun or interesting.
Modern is in a similar spot these days, except our answers aren't as widely available, or as powerful. In Modern, you need to answer your opponent, but you also need to be running only the most efficient threats, because we're still very much a threat vs threat format rather than a threat vs answer format, though things are gradually moving in that direction. Especially now that Wizards has fixed their development philosophy and started actually printing answers again (Standard primarily, but some of that naturally comes to us), which is something that was ignored for all of Moderns life until very recently.
its funny to hear legacy compared to modern and actually make sense now. The argument was always made but never held merit now it is starting to as you have very clear and defined top decks that have been stream lined to where only a couple tier 2 decks can run the gauntlet.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
So in GP Minneapolis Hogaak was almost 20% percent of the field on day one, the Top 16:
1. Hogaak
2. Hogaak
3. Mono Red Prowess
4. Hogaak
5. Hogaak
6. Burn
7. Hogaak
8. Humans
9. Eldrazi Tron
10. Hardened scales
11. Mono Red Phoenix
12. Mono Red Phoenix
13. Hogaak
14. Mono Red Phoenix
15. Hogaak
16. Merfolk
5 of top 8 and 7 in top 16.
IMHO it seems an emergency ban is required, other decks were running 6-8 hate pieces and it wasn't enough. With the last two modern GP's of the year in just 2 weeks I wonder if WotC wants to see the events being so warped around hogaak.
So in GP Minneapolis Hogaak was almost 20% percent of the field on day one, the Top 16:
1. Hogaak
2. Hogaak
3. Mono Red Prowess
4. Hogaak
5. Hogaak
6. Burn
7. Hogaak
8. Humans
9. Eldrazi Tron
10. Hardened scales
11. Mono Red Phoenix
12. Mono Red Phoenix
13. Hogaak
14. Mono Red Phoenix
15. Hogaak
16. Merfolk
5 of top 8 and 7 in top 16.
IMHO it seems an emergency ban is required, other decks were running 6-8 hate pieces and it wasn't enough. With the last two modern GP's of the year in just 2 weeks I wonder if WotC wants to see the events being so warped around hogaak.
Not only that, but mono red Phoenix and mono red prowess play faithless looting, so that’s 11 faithless looting decks in the top 16.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
As long as Looting powers up different types of deck (as hogaak/dredge and phoenix are), Wizzie won't ban it.
There won't be any emergency ban. It would crash the already small confidence some people have in Wizards. At end of August probably Hogaak summer will end and a new meta will come. Then Eldraine come and we will reset the meta again. Stagnant is not what modern has been recently!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks played: Modern:
0 Affinity;
URG Delver
URGW Countercats
(Here you can find some video contents about Countercats and Temur Delver decks)
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Uhh,except they haven't. First of all, when a deck is new, meta share is largely irrelevant to brokenness. Modern is an expensive format. Usually until a deck makes a few top 8s at some larger events, people are not going to buy in. Again, KCI, was 2% of the meta for a long ass time, but was always just as broken, the same with AmuletBloom. Hogaak didn't have top meta share or even large meta share right off the bat, and people had an easier transition to it, because bridgevine was already a thing. Also people don't like to buy into a deck that may be immediately on the chopping block. Neobrand is not a thing without the London Mulligan and that went into effect 2 weeks ago. So saying a deck isn't broken because it doesnt have meta share after 15 days is absurd. As far as my claim, again I made a personal experience claim. The last match I played against it I lost on turn 1 twice. I have yet to play against Neobrand without it getting at least 1 turn 1 win. Here's screenshots form my last match. If there was easier ways to find specific games in MTGO I could definitely get more. Watched some content on youtube today from a popular streamer playing against neobrand and guess what? Turn 1 win.
You on the other made a general claim about what the deck can do and provided no evidence at all, and no detail about how those numbers were reached. I didn't post screens with what I said because I was making a statement based on anecdotal evidence and stated so, so evidence is largely irrelevant. But YOU made a claim about the deck as a whole backed by "data" and then provided no data. I don't expect WOTC to do anything, it's dumb to expect anything from WOTC even if scores of people want them to, but that's not what this thread is about is it? So stop making baseless claims with no evidence. After a little bit of searching I only found one real reference to the turn 1 win rate and it was wrong, as pointed out by someone else.
"Number of possible opening hands is 60C7=~386 million. A lower bound for the number of T1-win opening hands is 4 Neoform*4 Rider*4 Chancellor*8 Cavern/Spirit Guide*19 other green cards*55 generic cards*54 generic cards = ~29 million.
29/386=~7.5% Not perfect, but it's a definitive lower bound, and mulligans will improve it significantly."
"I think you've missed a lot of the opening hand variation. I'd suggest that the best way to approach is classifying functional T1 hands in 7 categories:
Chancellor + Land + Neo + Pact/Rider + Green
Ch + Sim Spirit Guide + Morphose + Neo + P/R + Gr
Ch + Ch + Mor + Neo + P/R
SSG + Land + Mor + Neo + P/R + Gr + Gr
SSG + SSG + Ch + Eldritch Evo + P/R + Mor + Gr
SSG + Land + Ch + Evo + P/R + Gr
Ch + Ch + Land/Guide/Ch + Eldritch Evo + P/R
(and potentially SSG + SSG + Land + Morphose + P/R + Green + Pickup a Green card on the draw)"
So without even including all the possible turn 1 combos, mathematically it can go off at roughly 7.5% That doesn't include mulligans, and especially doesn't include the London Mulligan rule, so I'd say your statement of it only wins turn 1 less than 10% is almost certainly false. If you got some better data then stop hiding it and post it. Regardless, none of this takes account how often the deck can put together a turn 2 or turn 3 win. If it can win turn 1 at 10% and turn 2 30%, is that worth a ban to you? What numbers of people barely getting to play magic are acceptable to you? Because the fact is decks have been banned in modern for being less explosive than that.
Edit: here's a little more evidence for you:
So, again you've replied without your "data". If you had read the post you would have seen how it's much more likely that the true number is well over 10%. The 7.5% number was wrong because it didn't include all the possible turn 1 combos. Secondly, the turn 1 goldfishing stats were done all on the play, so outside of force of negation, there is 0 interaction you could have. Turn 2 goldfishing was a whopping 48% so even if you take some off of that due to interaction, it's still absurdly high and that's with the Vancouver mulligan. With London mulligan it's much higher, the guy said his turn 1 on the play winrate is closer to 20% now. It's laughable that you're talking about evidence again and yet you have still provided none. I went from providing my personal experience to actually providing some data for analysis. You have made statements that you've provided no evidence for, and I provided a decent amount of evidence that what you said is false. I said if you had any data to share yourself, feel free and you didn't. So unless you got something more than just blindly trying to refute what I'm saying, then I guess we're done here.
Modern:
Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix
Only one top 8
One deck loses to Force of Negation, the other deck wins through multiple graveyard hate cards. Seems reasonable.
Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix
Reality is but a perception of your being --
Visit my blog!!! - http://huffalump-magic.blogspot.com/
"The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside."
—Emily Dickinson
For sales or trade, visit my blog or visit my ebay blog for my listings :http://myworld.ebay.com/arcane7828
881
Oooh Dicey:
[dice=1]100[/dice]
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
Also, Hogaak is a good deck, but it seems very odd to be playing 2 leylines mainboard to be honest. I can see about ?half? ish of the pros running Hoogaak seem to be running it, but for a non Mythic Championship it just seems a little odd what with over half the top 8 consisting of Jund, E-Tron, Humans, Burn, Tron, and UW. (Though it is somewhat useful against UW)
I think Urza overperformed mostly because it destroys hogaak, and also because nobody was geared towards it (Jund was only running 1 k-command and 1 ouphe in some cases, which isn't nearly enough). I'm curious if it'll just fade like every other prison deck we've made though.
Also, lovely to see Hardened Scales give a gasp of performance. Deck is still pretty solidly t2 now though.
UWUW ControlUW
UGWSpiritsUGW
GHardened ScalesG
WGRUKiki PodWGRU [RIP]
Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix
There were about 900 copies of Leyline of the Void in the tournament for 450 players. There was also about another 1600 GY hate cards in decks across Relic of Progenitus, Tormod's Crypt, Surgical Extraction, Rest in Peace, and a couple others. So, we're looking at 5.55 pieces of GY hate per deck on average, and despite that Hogaak overperformed.
I think this creates a good case for an argument that Hogaak just doesn't care much about GY hate. And that if it can be stopped, it needs to be stopped another way. Or, alternatively an argument that Hogaak cannot be stopped.
It is really tough to play a brew anymore or a tier 2 net deck and win more and having trouble competitng. The velocity of deck search, the power, and the amount of removal have drastically impacted what could be played, especially for decks with little interaction such as Merfolk, Elves, Mono-Green devotion, Ponza, and all the rest of the tier 2 and 3 decks that are played.
It is fine to modern to be this way for the pros. Professionals LIKE smaller fields of play. This way they can leverage game skill, deck building, and all the other tiny skills that make you have percentage win chances against the field. it is why standard is generally well liked by pros let alone the generally money and attention lavished on it.
Modern has finally become that pro-format that really competitive pros wanted it to be.
I just don't like it. I liked the more casual 60 decks a week modern. It really isn't that anymore I don't think. There might be non-games due to the deck style of modern, but there really is a tightening of what is good or bad or what works or doesn't. Winning a couple games here or there and spiking a tournament with a deck just doesn't work as much if you aren't playing the clear best decks. It is much much harder to take a wierd brew or a tier 3-4 deck and do well. There is a much smaller tier 2 and tier 3 list. Staples on that list are no longer as good. They can still win and occasionally spike, but I bet it is less before.
Not at all. Right now we are just waiting for it to get banned. No one in my local scene is playing the deck because no one wants to buy into a deck that that's just going to get banned. Without Hogaak the meta actually is pretty good to be honest. Yeah there's still Dredge, but its not as good as it was once. Once Hogaak is gone, I can see a lot more people being happy about Modern
URStormRU
GRTitanshift[mana]RG/mana]
I completely disagree. Modern is a lot like Legacy these days in my opinion. You can play basically anything you want, but you need to respect the constraints of the format and make sure that what you play includes ways to interact with the powerful things your opponents are doing.
I have a different experience with Legacy. There, it's pretty much split by 7 cards to define the big archetypes (Jace, Daze, Chalice, Vial, Loam, Griselbrand & LED, e.g. cards that almost never overlap in decks). You pick a card and build the better deck with that card. Besides, you either play Fow or you play against it. It's a very specific dichotomy we don't experience in Modern. The popularity of a deck never goes through the roof (the Eldrazi era being a special case). The format remains way more stale, I don't feel like I changed my way of playing it in years (Delver redefined legacy forever but that's when I started playing Legacy so...). Even bans didn't really change much for me, and I'll never switch amongst the top 8 decks of the format like I could do in Modern.
Modern is in a similar spot these days, except our answers aren't as widely available, or as powerful. In Modern, you need to answer your opponent, but you also need to be running only the most efficient threats, because we're still very much a threat vs threat format rather than a threat vs answer format, though things are gradually moving in that direction. Especially now that Wizards has fixed their development philosophy and started actually printing answers again (Standard primarily, but some of that naturally comes to us), which is something that was ignored for all of Moderns life until very recently.
Tooth & Nail........Grishoalbrand....Living Dominance....Tezzerator.........Vannifar Pod
My Decks that have been BANNED
DRS Jund | Kiki-Pod | Bloom Titan | Splinter Twin | KCI
1. Hogaak
2. Hogaak
3. Mono Red Prowess
4. Hogaak
5. Hogaak
6. Burn
7. Hogaak
8. Humans
9. Eldrazi Tron
10. Hardened scales
11. Mono Red Phoenix
12. Mono Red Phoenix
13. Hogaak
14. Mono Red Phoenix
15. Hogaak
16. Merfolk
5 of top 8 and 7 in top 16.
IMHO it seems an emergency ban is required, other decks were running 6-8 hate pieces and it wasn't enough. With the last two modern GP's of the year in just 2 weeks I wonder if WotC wants to see the events being so warped around hogaak.
Not only that, but mono red Phoenix and mono red prowess play faithless looting, so that’s 11 faithless looting decks in the top 16.
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB
There won't be any emergency ban. It would crash the already small confidence some people have in Wizards. At end of August probably Hogaak summer will end and a new meta will come. Then Eldraine come and we will reset the meta again. Stagnant is not what modern has been recently!
Modern: