MTG Salvation

Why should the graveyard be the exception? In certain metagames, it's completely reasonable to play 4 Fatal Push, but that's a sign of a healthy metagame, but 4 Surgical Extractions main is for some reason a symptom of unhealthy decks. If you get run over by a creature deck… but you don't have a single piece of creature removal, the response is really "Sorry, Charlie. You should've packed some creature removal in your mainboard. Them's the breaks!" If you get run over because someone goes buckwild with their graveyard it's, "The format is a hot dumpster fire." That's the part I have difficulty with.

Hogaak takes it too far, that's for sure. That's a deck abusing a zone beyond the limits of what the format can handle. I doubt we see that deck for too much longer in the format. But is it immediately wrong to have to pack grave hate, perhaps even mainboard? Most decks utilize their graveyard as a resource, so maybe we should be more open to interacting with it in general. Graveyard usage and creature prevalence both seem to be high. What truly separates them? Because we're just more comfortable with creatures being a core mechanic?

I'm curious to see the reasoning on why we should have such opposition to having to run gravehate. On a personal level, I don't enjoy having to run so much gravehate in the main or side. I'd be fine if most of the heavy grave-abusing formats left the format, but I just wonder if our mindset is what needs adjusting, instead of trying to force the format into a box that it used to fit inside of.

The Force cycle doesn't do enough. Force of Despair is much better than people are giving it credit for, but most of the decks you need the speed of a free wipe against can just reestablish their board.

Force of Despair is barely a speedbump for Hogaak, Bloodghast, Vengevine, and Gravecrawler, along with Phoenix. It's hardly a decent safety valve for Hogaak. Force of Vigor might help you stop the combo kill using Altar, but you're 2 for 1ing yourself against a deck that can recur the entire grave against you.

Against fair-ish creature decks, Force of Despair is a decent safety valve card. As long as at least 2 creatures hit the battlefield, it's an even trade on card resources. It's the dredge problem. It's fine if a deck is resilient to removal, or fast, or has a combo kill… but when it has all three that require different hate pieces, the deck is much harder to keep in check.

Quote from tronix »

just gotta say wizards missed an opportunity with force of despair. could have easily tagged on an exile clause to give it applications against GY creature decks.

Totally agree on this one. I was really expecting some better safety valve cards from Modern Horizons, but all we got are highly situational cards that don't truly address some of the issues in the format. I like the design of Force of Despair, and I even think it's a decent card as it is... but an exile clause would have went a long way on that one.

My overall feeling about Modern Horizons, as a mostly fair deck player, is that it feels like Christmas... except all of your friends got really cool toys when they opened up their presents and I got a pair of long underwear. Force of Despair? Sort of cool I guess, but most of those creatures I just killed for zero mana are just coming back the next turn. Force of Negation? It's okay, but totally overhyped. Archmage's Charm? Um, neato... a really hard to cast Cancel that sometimes turns into CA when I need it. Seasoned Pyromancer? Again, cool, but nothing that really makes me feel any more equipped to take on linear decks. The Horizon lands are awesome, but they slot right into the linear, unfair decks too, so it doesn't really fee like a win.

Don't get me wrong, I'm going to continue playing Modern and I think the format is still fine, but I just can't help feel a tinge of disappointment at the whole set.

I don't find the idea of restricting cards in Modern elegant at all. It just adds to the variance and lopsided nature by allowing some decks to have more busted than average hands. What purpose does that serve in the format? For example, if we restricted Allosaurus Rider, does it help the format to have a deck that sometimes can have a turn 1 kill "oops I win" mode, but has to grind out its wins some other way when it doesn't have the broken opener? I just want to know HOW it's better for the format?

I think it's fine in Vintage, but the goals of Vintage are different than those of Modern.

Quote from DaveJacinto »

I was discussing this event with a couple of friends and for some reason I ended up defending the deck. I surely believe it's way too early for a ban but it's a deck that is doing really obnoxious things. It attacks through multiple angles and it's required a considerate amount of hate/interaction to win.
Regardless, the discussion was that the deck that was in number one on the Challenge was a UW Control with 4 snapcasters and 2 surgicals mainboard. One of my friends reply to that was that if we are mainboarding hate it means that the format is busted. That made me wonder...

Is the format broken? If we look at legacy... Force of Will is the safety valve of the format, a free spell that interacts with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format. In legacy the stack is where the degenerate decks win from... In modern our stack is the graveyard. Can't we accept that maybe we should just be playing Surgicals main?
If we really think about it Surgical is 100% analogue to Force of Will in legacy. It's card disadvantage, free, instant speed, costs life, deals with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format while being somewhat mediocre to bad in the fair match ups. It's also a card that we sideboard out in a lot of matches.

Probably I'll get some bash over this but it's a different point of view. To be honest it eases my mind looking at things this way. My only grief is that surgicals are super expensive (same as force of will) and playing 4 is a big hit in the budget.

This is where my mind has been going lately.
People often tout that "Surgicals main is a symptom of an unhealthy format" but I've really been wondering if that's even a reasonable statement. We accept creature "hate" as fine and normal, because most decks feature a heavy creature element. Occasionally, your Path to Exile and Fatal Push cards will be dead, but no one laments about that. We've sort of come to accept that creature removal is just a part of the format. Perhaps we should be just as open to grave hate being "just a part of the format." Maybe that's just where the format needs to go.

I do think Wizards has been trying when it comes to land-hate. We got fairly recent additions like Alpine Moon, Field of Ruin, and Damping Sphere, which were all aimed at decks that leverage lands to win. I like where their head is when it comes to cards aimed at taking out lands and I'd rather see them continue going that route instead of letting Sinkhole loose into the format.

And Hymn? You're a true madman

Steam Vents is by far our worst shockland. I'd almost even say it's our worst land period (Basic Swamp is certainly better than it... Island might be a toss up). I'd cut it if there weren't situations where one is absolutely necessary. In our current iteration, I just don't think we want it… even though I want a reason to play the UR Canopy Land soooo bad.

It lets you control your life total AND you can ditch it to draw a card. Too bad they didn't print a UB one.

Ended up playing Modern at the LGS this week. Went 2-2. My list is mostly just modified from old lists I played and I tossed it together with a few additions of newer cards I had laying around. The sideboard was hastily thrown together.



Round 1 vs GW Tokens 1-0
This games was an easy win. It looked like the guy had grabbed a Selesnya Guild kit and added a few cards, so I handily won both games without much problem.

Round 2 vs UW Control 1-1
These were close games. I won the first game by dropping an early threat and slinging counters to get the win. Chart a Course was pretty great in this game. Games 2 and 3, I decided to double down on the aggro plan. I only boarded in one Disdainful Stroke and took out a Bolt. In hindsight, I should have added some cards that help me keep pace with card advantage. Both games played out pretty much the same. I went on the aggressive, but ran out of tricks by the time late game hit and got outvalued. I'm considering the possibility of adding more Chart a Course either in the side or in the main because the card felt really great in this matchup.

Round 3 vs UW Control 2-1
Went to 3 games. Game one I scrapped a victory by sneaking in a bolt-snap-bolt for the kill after a Supreme Verdict cleared out my board. After the last round against UW, I tried to switch to a more midrange gameplan. Game 2, Supreme Verdict, followed by a Teferi I had no answer for lead me to scoop after it was clear that I wasn't going to pull back into the game. We went to time and ended up having a messy judge call after I tried to Simic Charm an unblocked wolf token for the win. Judges ultimately ruled in my favor, but I didn't feel great about the win because of it. Swapping in the grindy cards and getting rid of Shoal seemed to be the right call. Crackling Drake is a house. He's a sweet top deck that can the turn the game around in a single combat phase.

Round 4 vs Humans 2-2
First game was close. I landed a Tarmogoyf which was beating down pretty hard, but he couldn't outrace the double Mantis Rider beatdown. Game 2, I went on a full midrange plan. I did a good job of keeping the board under control, landed a Huntmaster and began flipping him, but a well-timed Meddling Mage via Aether Vial stopped me from Snapping a bolt from the grave. I had the means to turn the game around in my hand, but I needed to use that bolt to get rid of a Mantis Rider to not die from lethal.


All in all, I'm rather surprised how strong the deck felt. With some tinkering, I can probably tool it the meta a little better for some better results. There are definitely some holes in the list I played (no grave hate and no hard removal for bigger threats), so when I break this deck out again, I'll definitely be making some adjustments. The main deck felt okay, but I need some more reps in with it to really adjust numbers and cut the fat, so to speak.

Yeah, the enthusiasm in this thread has really gotten to me. Definitely going to sleeve up my Italian Disrupting Shoals.

There's just nothing quite like casting a "Branco Smembrante" on someone.

Control matchups seemed pretty good back when I was exclusively on RUG Delver, but that was when we had Gitaxian Probe (man, do I miss that card). That made it easy to line up your counterspells perfectly to answer their removal and threats. Supreme Verdict was a pain, but often times, just sequencing your threats correctly could help keep a Verdict from wrecking you.

Basically, you stuck a threat by Turn 1 or 2, then used counter magic to muck up any plays that would let them stabilize or neutralize your board presence. If they hit Cryptic Command range and you don't have interaction for it, that's when the game can turn ugly pretty quickly. Basically, you needed have that clutch Stubborn Denial/Mana Leak to hit their 4/5 mana way of turning the tables and be close to killing them so you could finish the game up in a turn or 2. Post board, Blood Moon was a house against most Control decks.

Control has more toys now. Teferi and Search for Azcanta can be pretty rough when those are both online. It's probably a tougher matchup than it used to be, since RUG hasn't gotten much to work with.

I'm glad this thread is still so active. I've been on GDS, UR Moon, and Phoenix lately, but I think I'm going to sleeve RUG up for old time's sake. Nothing feels as quite as good as jamming a Hooting Mandrills on turn 2!

I don't believe it was bearscape who suggested that. I however added our resident conspiracy lover to my ignore months ago, so I'm not going to go confirm.

Either way, Historic is going to be nothing for a few rotations and that's how Wizards wants it. They don't want to invest energy in another format, just let it be there so ppl don't cry about their virtual content being lost.

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.

Quote from cfusionpm »

Remember when doing things like main-boarding multiple sideboard cards was considered warping? How is this not warping?

Because its not a deck anymore, its literally Modern.

Tell me, without Hogaak, is it 'wrong' to ignore Dredge, Phoenix, any deck that plays Snaps, Storm? People want to pretend decks like Phoenix are not 'GY' but there is a reason its starting to shift toward Aria of Flame.

Quote from RedGauntlet »

Since we have so mutch grave hate, might aswell unban Golgari Grave-Troll and Dread Return. Just pack main board graveyard hate, its fine right?

While I appreciate what you are trying to do, you don't pour gas on a fire.

If Hogaak is the big thing (and it appears to be) then one would be a fool to not account for it. After we determine if one can hate it out, let's see then?

Yes, we all get it, it's obnoxious to run 6+ dedicated hate cards but that's life IF Hogaak remains popular.

If it works, and we can hate it out? Wizards won't care, and won't ban anything.

As to people who claim the format is healthy, well that's between them and their conscience.

I can only say that Wizards does not care how successful Dredge and Phoenix have been, and until shown otherwise I have zero reason to believe they will care about Hogaak, if we can suppress it.

Diva has something like a 60% win rate against it. Just accept it exists, and Ravenous Trap/Surgical/Void.

Quote from Bearscape »

And I will never forget K0no, for defending Eldrazi winter a month into it being ~50% of the meta, saying people just had to adapt

A broken clock is right twice a day. The fact that you just had to resort to hyperbole from a period that happened three years ago (because I'm not even sure he defended it) and had no other examples to show off really drives your point home.

just gotta say wizards missed an opportunity with force of despair. could have easily tagged on an exile clause to give it applications against GY creature decks.

I was discussing this event with a couple of friends and for some reason I ended up defending the deck. I surely believe it's way too early for a ban but it's a deck that is doing really obnoxious things. It attacks through multiple angles and it's required a considerate amount of hate/interaction to win.
Regardless, the discussion was that the deck that was in number one on the Challenge was a UW Control with 4 snapcasters and 2 surgicals mainboard. One of my friends reply to that was that if we are mainboarding hate it means that the format is busted. That made me wonder...

Is the format broken? If we look at legacy... Force of Will is the safety valve of the format, a free spell that interacts with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format. In legacy the stack is where the degenerate decks win from... In modern our stack is the graveyard. Can't we accept that maybe we should just be playing Surgicals main?
If we really think about it Surgical is 100% analogue to Force of Will in legacy. It's card disadvantage, free, instant speed, costs life, deals with the degenerate stuff that happen in the format while being somewhat mediocre to bad in the fair match ups. It's also a card that we sideboard out in a lot of matches.

Probably I'll get some bash over this but it's a different point of view. To be honest it eases my mind looking at things this way. My only grief is that surgicals are super expensive (same as force of will) and playing 4 is a big hit in the budget.

Relevant things Force of Negation doesn't deal with:

• Hardcast Primeval Titan
• Dredging from natural draws
• Cast triggers for Phoenix
• Cast triggers to flip Thing
• Any creature put in with Vial
• Any creature with haste
• Any creature with relevant ETB/Cast triggers
• Flurry of small spells
• Spells cast on your own turn/upkeep/combat/end step, etc

I LOVE the idea of FoN and you better believe I am jamming some number of them into just about any blue based deck from now until the end of time. But I am under no delusion that it is anything other than a niche card (like Spell Snare or Dispel). This is not something you just jam 4 of into every blue deck. Even I probably won't ever have more than 1-2 main and 2-3 in the 75 of any deck at any time. And I play decks with 4 Remand and 4 Cryptic.

I prefer 1 mana Negate over 3 mana Negate...

The fact that it can cost 0 mana on your opponent's turn means that it does a poor job at protecting our threats and only works as a reactive card against the development of our opponent. For me that's exactly the type of card I'm not looking for.
Unless the gameplan changes to a more reactive approach, which is likely given that the format is becoming more hostile towards our deck, I don't see us rocking this card.

Quote from pierrebai »

Reporting that people are pre-turn-3 killing opponents 50% of the time on MTGO is not ban mania. I counter your "knee-jerk ban-mania" claim with "anti-ban knee-jerk" claim! And double down for using the tired glass canon meme. Yes, combo-decks that are disrupted mid-combo fail to win, we know that.

The key points with this new deck are that:

1. It draws the entire library.
2. It kills on the turn it goes off.
3. Due 1 and 2, it can run pact of negation for protection.
4. Due to 1, it can ensure it has pact in hand.

There is a reason Enter the Infinite is 12 mana. It basically is ad-nauseam, but with a faster clock, an earlier fundamental turn. Sure, people can start packing dispel or some 1-mana creature bounce as a reaction, but that would not be healthy. (And still fails if they happen to have pact of negation in hand.)

None of this is relevant to the bannability of the deck. All four of those qualities apply to Ad Nauseam, an eminently acceptable combo deck. The only question is whether or not the deck can consistently win before T4. Based on the previous Bloom ban example, I would estimate a deck would need to win before T4 in 20%+ of games in a large N, large T context in order to be bannable. Cherrypicked streamer results don't get there. My Cheeri0s win rate was about 75% with more than 25% of my wins happening before T4. Obviously, nothing from Cheeri0s got banned. My personal examples don't necessarily reflect the wider metagame realities. Let's increase the number of auditable events and the time span before we entertain ban discussion like Cohen's.