Quote from cfusionpm »Quote from pierrebai »F2F Hamilton modern open was won by Hogaak, with two copies of the deck placing in the top 8.
The report says they were surprised it was not played more, being so dominant: "We had two copies of the deck in our Hamilton Top 8, and from where I’m sitting, that number is actually pretty low for how good this deck is compared to the rest of the format."
Either buy it now or sell it now, I'd say.
People are likely hesitant to buy in since it will very likely be banned. With Eldrazi, the opportunity cost of so many free wins was small since, other than Eye of Ugin, pretty much everything in the deck was dirt cheap and available in current Standard sets. If you don't have Vengevines, Bloodghasts, Bridges, Gravecrawlers, and Hogaak himself (in addition to the black fetchlands, you're looking at a LOT of money to buy into a deck that is very likely not set to live past July 8th.
It's a lot easier and faster to buy/sell/change decks on MTGO, but paper metas are much slower. Buying cards is a more weighty investment, and selling them is slow and arduous for most players. As a result, paper metas are often filled with Cards_I_Own.dec (also helping to contribute to the idea of "diversity").
This is definitely a thing, I expect a lot of people assume the deck will be gone in such a short timespan it's not worth investing money and time into; the deck is pretty hard to pilot optimally.
If WotC ruins modern for 3 months on July 8th, I expect the Hogaak share to explode
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and honestly, even if this IS a bump to unfair decks, i think i can live with that so long as it's addressed in the long term. it's a fair price to pay for such a powerful tool that will help seriously mitigate the number of games lost to bad opening hands.
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On thin ice's biggest strength IMO is that it's a removal spell that scrying sheets can draw
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moon can auto-win vs nearly any multi-color deck that isn't careful about how it fetches, sun is a mild annoyance at best.
frankly these recent few sets have been disappointing me in the big red department. a couple wacky big cards like etali or form of the dinosaur, but nothing that would actually make sense to run in a real modern list.
we got nothing to add from this set or amonkhet save that new flavoring of 3-mana-3-point-sweep. and more importantly they're not really exploring any terribly interesting design spaces for red atm.
back when commune with lava ( a card i still recommend as a one-of ) was printed, i was excited/hopeful. it looked like WotC had found their footing with the 'impulse' mechanic and were finally going to be able to give red some ways of directly generating card advantage, but new chandra's been the last we've seen of it.
maybe i'm just dumb, but i'm not seeing useful utility spells being printed in red
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i'd like to respectfully disagree with the underlined bit.
with the pith naming lightning storm their only three options to kill us become
A) remove the needle
B) laboratory maniac
C) conflagrate
with hope of ghirapur they have the following options
A) prevent hope from dealing combat damage
B) wait/survive one more turn and combo out anyway
B part 2) combo off on your upkeep after the turn you silence them, the combo is instant speed, thus you've not actually slowed them down whatsoever.
C) combo off before hope can attack/before you decide to pop it
i just scoured the last 10 or so pages of the ad nauseum primer and here's what i found.
ad nauseum doesn't run conflagrate anymore, or at least, if anyone in that primer was running it (or even linking performing lists) i missed it
ad nauseum runs 2-3 ways to remove artifacts, and notably they all seem to be at the 2 CMC spot. (hurkyl's recall, echoing truth, wear // tear with the former two being the most common)
ad nauseum often runs similar numbers of fog effects
hurkyl's, e-truth, and co. all work against both hope and needle. however, ethereal haze, darkness, and holy day only work against hope.
already, you've given your opponent more options by running hope over needle.
hope is also a 1-turn silence. meaning you have to know exactly when to pop it or you lose, additionally, you need to be able to capitalize on that one turn (assuming they can't just kill you at upkeep, which they should) both of these points put additional pressure on you that needle doesn't. needle solely asks that you get it into play and protect it.
of course, needle doesn't stop maniac. but volcanic fallout does. and all the pact of negations in the world can't stop it.
in any case, the maniac is a moot point. maniac is their backup plan, it's what they resort to if lightning storm can't do the job. which hope doesn't adequately prevent as i mentioned above.
if you're running pithing needle in conjunction with a chalice on 2, they've got no way to kill you. unless they still run conflagrate, which seems to have fallen out of favor.
pithing needle > chalice on 2 > find a relic of progenitus (for when they discard conflagrate at EoT, if they run it, which they likely wont) & a volcanic fallout.
if you do all that, they cannot win. period. well, in the case of the vast majority of their lists anyway.
i know that's easier said than done (to say the very least), but it's at least a real line of play.
compare that to
play hope > connect with hope and pop it on just the right turn with the correct reads > hope they don't play lightning storm (???) > kill them from likely 10-15 life.
maybe mix in some chalice's for added security.
doesn't seem reasonable.
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right, cause tron got banned (eye was incidental and didn't stop it at all), affinity got banned, literally all control decks got a ban, burn got banned, merfolk got banned, etc. /s
there are tons of 'safe' options that are available to you.
i get that WotC is doing a straight garbage job of explaining these bans, but are you honestly going to sit there and say,"man i really just had no idea dredge was on the chopping block".
i called a dredge ban of some kind way back when cathartic reunion got spoiled. but all y'all just bought further into it without considering the possibility the deck would get banned. sorry, but i can't feel sorry for any of ya. especially considering this likely just means a demotion to tier 2.
and I'm not even convinced infect is dead either. the deck remains powerful, if you can read your opponent without needing a peek effect, then it will perform similarly if you simply swap the git-probes for street wraiths. not that street wraiths are the replacement of choice but my point stands.
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more broadly, no more git-probe means at least a slight inconvenience to the consistency of most combo decks, which is good news considering the average combo deck challenges us more than most.
dredge is definitely gonna be hurting at least a noticeable bit.
i think fatal push is easily the best thing to happen FOR skred in a minuet. a-lot of the more general, but slower, black removal will get fazed out at least to some small extent in favor of fatal push. so fewer dismembers, terminates, slaughter pacts, etc. we're looking at a removal spell that rivals both bolt and path.
this new trinity of high-quality removal spells all share a single commonality, they can't kill stormbreath. this even benefits sarkhan and GDD among others. this is VERY good for us. the % of decks that simply can't answer our late-game threats profitably is guaranteed to increase because of this.
But wait! there's more! an inevitable rise in fatal pushes may just lead to a decrease in low-cmc high-p/t creatures that we can struggle to answer early on. (this may backfire slightly and lead to one or two more angler's than we'd like, but oh well)
there's other potential benefits to come from this too, but personally, even if the list stops here i'm rather pleased.
i think the main thing that could stand to really screw us in all this is if tron, of any variety, picks up steam.
also, @okoSheep, if U-tron is only our 2nd worst MU, what's worse by your estimation? personally i've not found more trouble with any other deck than U-tron.
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Ignoring tier 3 stuff you shouldn't bother worrying about like U-Tron, we already annihilate that MU.
Kill their pitiful clocks early, do nothing mid, play around their now-worthless counters late.
Our worst case scenario is an unanswered T2 tasigur or nahiri.
And nahiri hardly counts as a concern, T4 Nahiri, pass -> T4 koth, bash nahiri, pass.
We MB relics to slow their delve and shutdown their snaps/neuter their k-commands.
Blood moon nearly auto-wins when landed.
All our threats are highly relevant vs jeskai, and PWs are amazing vs the rest.
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The majority of games where koth is unanswered, I win before he can ult.
Plus I've survived somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of the hasty emrakuels that've been thrown at me. Usually from through the breach decks, I just sac my lands, untap my threats and kill them. I had a game with nahiri vs storm breath where I just let nahiri ult, then killed him at 5.
Meanwhile, the only 2 games I've ever lost with koth ult, had come from aggressively terrible misplays on my part.
Koth isn't useless on board when you're behind, so long as they have 3 or less power on board, he's basically "deal 8 damage, fog 2(+) times". So unless you're significantly behind, he's still useful. Very useful infact, won plenty of games by drawing a stormbreath, sarkhan, or those last few burn spells I needed in the midst of that 2 turn fog to close out the game.
That said, I don't like multiples, it can be bursty, which is nice. But it's almost exclusively bursty.
@taheenmage
It's a blackhand trooper from c&c
@okosheep
I know personally, I replaced koth #4 with chandra #2. Considering the rest of my deck makes slight sacrifices in the grind area for better late-game-bursts, it's been nice having one more grind-house card in the list.
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First of all, you've managed to look at this data and the first thing that comes to mind is,"let's measure dicks". Impressive.
Second, and more on topic, this means that a 68% winrate doesn't satisfy you. No wonder indeed, that we find your expectations unreasonable. Honestly, what are you asking for?
Can we get a number?
Or is it 100% and your afraid to say?
I try to be objective about the discussion at hand but this is absolutely insane. Your complaint is that there isn't a deck in modern that is so bonkers OP that you can guarantee a winrate somewhere over 68% just by sleeving it up? And you dismiss our confusion on this with sarcasm? Actually?
This isn't even what the thread is for, you've done nothing but complain about things wholly unrelated to the thread subject without so much as providing a plan or suggestion as to how to remedy your complaints. You haven't even been clear about what your personal goals would be for the format.
You complain that the format is too linear, but then justify the same claim by providing anecdotal evidence of the exact opposite.
And here's where I drop all objectivity.
You offer no meaningful discussion.
I doubt you've so much as even researched half the decks you claim to have played.
I doubt you've entered even a third of the pptq's you've implied that you've been a part of.
I highly doubt your MWR is anywhere near what you claim, or at the very least the site responsible for providing such a number must simply be wrong.
Considering how often you bring up cheating and claiming it's "all you can do" I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if you cheated regularly.
There is no redeemable value for your participation in this thread, or for that matter, any other.
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And second, while it may very well not be the time to Unban SFM, which I'm very much inclined to agree with for the same reasons you laid out, it is still the safest thing to unban.
Just because it "seems fine" doesn't mean it deserves an unban automatically. I get that, no need to rock the boat when things are so good.
But new cards get printed and the end of our current balance is inevitable. It's just a question of how long. So taking the time during a period where we can see what makes a good format good to really take a look at some of the cards on the list and try to understand what their impact would be if unbanned may prove to be useful down the line.