I don’t expect Bridgevine to stay competitive without one of its namesake cards so I suppose the meta will go back to the pre Horizons meta of decks like Humans, Azorius Control, Izzet Phoenix, Dredge, Tron, and Amulet Titan. So basically big mana will come back and Dredge will take back its place as the go to graveyard deck. And then decks that have been rising in the Horizon meta like Eldrazi Tron, Mono Red Phoenix, and Jund will get knocked back down a little because of the return of big mana.
I dunno man. My guess is that the Hogaak deck will stay pretty much the same, and still be very competitive. I'm not 100% sure what the next best replacement for Bridge is, but Narcomoeba has worked well enough for me. Haunted Dead is also pretty interesting.
Neither of those make creatures that you can delve though. On the other hand Xathrid Necromancer does create free zombies. But, I can't think of any humans with the proper recursion to enable that as a pseudo bridge aside from maybe Loyal Cathar.
[quote from="Aazadan »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/812218-the-state-of-modern-thread-b-r-08-07-2019?comment=53"]
Fighting through 4 maindeck GY hate and another 6 to 8 hate pieces in the sideboard? C'mon, don't inflate the numbers, nobody played so much hate
Really? 4 Surgical Extraction mainboard was becoming common in every deck, not just to stop Hogaak, but because it's a good answer to opposing Surgicals since everyone was running them anyways.
6 was the standard during week 2 of Hogaak, it was creeping up in week 3. And that's in addition to other cards being sideboarded just for it.
And yes, it's possible it may have been less of an issue given a few more weeks... like I said before, this was a ban after 3 weeks which is unheard of, and something I'm not a fan of in general (should give the meta 3 to 6 months to adapt in most cases), but I think this was a perfect storm of a very good deck, little time to innovate (especially publicly), plus an upcoming high profile tournament where they wanted to show diversity, not dominance.
imo just buy forces now if you foresee playing them at all. could the card go down a bit in 4-6 months? maybe, but id give it an equal if not higher chance for the card to go up. regardless of the outcome purchasing now incurs very little risk.
So a couple things:
1. This set is very reprint resistant. Since it's full of cards they didn't want to put through Standard, this is a lot of cards that will be hard to reprint elsewhere. There are very few reprint opportunities, just Commander and the summer special set really, plus Masters sets which we know won't be happening much for a while.
2. Unlike most sets, this set is not going to have a rotation devaluation. There is no Standard demand to prop up the price on any of these cards. No huge drop 2 years from now before it settles at it's real price.
3. Despite the print to demand nature, I think people are over estimating how much of this is going to be printed. It will not have the demand of larger sets. Usually with Modern, about 85% of the playerbase is opening packs and sending cards to Modern players. Here, it's more like 15 to 20% that are doing so. Supply on this set will never be all that high.
A few cards do stand out to me as likely reprints in the future though. I think Prismatic Vista screams Commander precon include one day. I think they want fetches out of historic though, so it won't ever go through Standard but I see this like a potential future Sol Ring in getting reprinted into oblivion.
A few cards here are going to shift in price a bit, but you're probably not going to get a better long term buy than right now across the set.
Initial? Was it decreasing after people started adjusting to it? Remember MH1 was released less than 1 month ago so taking the initial results before people adapted to it seems intentional to put more emphasis on how dominant it is. If it was still 60% I am pretty sure they would have told us but they didn't
I think it was falling slightly, but I don't think those numbers are particularly meaningful. For starters, the deck hadn't really evolved to deal with any hate yet. Second, it was effectively tier 0 so everyone was gunning for it, and despite that it was still over 50% (even if not over 60% anymore). Third, in order to get it's win rate down slightly, and not even below 50% people were mainboarding 4 pieces of GY hate and having another 6 to 8 in the SB.
That is unhealthy for the meta no matter how you cut it, because it then means every deck is either SB'ing specifically for Hogaak and losing to everything else, or SB'ing for everything else and losing to Hogaak.
It was definitely a very quick ban, I think that's the fastest they've ever taken action on a ban outside of emergency bans. Mental Misstep lasted 3 or 6 months (I don't remember) and Treasure Cruise lasted 3 months. Hogaak lasted 3 weeks. Definitely controversial as to what should be banned, but I think everyone agrees the deck was too good in it's current incarnation.
My world is the real one. Just look at Reid Duke's today's stream. Full of interesting, interactive decisions.
Just watched the stream of his first league today. The ending of the final game of round 5 was insane, great example of where skill+luck can win you games that you should otherwise lose.
I've started to realize that spending money chasing the hype cards is a bad plan in general. Watched a seminar on hook, habit, hobby marketing strategies and realized that most of this is psychological manipulation.
The big problem is the company went full EA on the community post modern masters 2 and decided they can create artificially high prices by setting a high box price, and now they are going into making special mythic edition super limited print run boxes. I'm genuinely afraid of where the game is going.
They even introduced an arena season pass now to get the hooks in deeper on arena.
Speaking as someone who has a Magic collection that's valuable enough to outright buy a house if I wanted. I've realized that investing in Magic cards really isn't as reliable as it used to be, if you're trying to spec on certain things. Prices are too variable, and the cards that are worth a lot are too few, and too hard to move in large numbers.
The most reliable way I've found these days to invest, is to pick up cards that bypass Standard rotation depreciation. Modern Horizons is insane for that, in both singles and boxes. Also, pick up cards that are reprint resistant due to rarity. Mythic editions, MPR foil bolts (even though they did make a new full art bolt), expedition lands, and so on. As a whole, these are likely to go up over time. Don't try to invest in regular cards that you might be playing at FNM. The upside is that you save $100 on a deck. The downside is that you waste hundreds per year trying to time the market.
Remember way way back when we were asking if Modern was going to be Little Legacy or Big Standard? At this point I think it is fair to say that Modern is Little Legacy. Historic is going to be Big Standard. It will be a lower powered non-rotating format post New World Order.
At the time, Modern was big extended. Consider though that Modern today has a larger card pool than Legacy had when Modern released. With more cards comes a higher power level. Arenas power level will go up over time.
On what do you base the idea that "they knew what was going to happen with Eldrazi Winter"? That deck made its debut on the Pro Tour and was a big shock to pretty much everyone.
You really think that the same Wizards of the Coast that missed a 2-card infinite combo in Standard (CopyCat) that the playerbase noticed immediately was somehow so prescient that they were able to see a deck coming in Modern that 99.999% of the playerbase didn't?
In their banning justification they said they were aware of how much Eye of Ugin broke the new Eldrazi they printed. It was a known quantity, the deck did end up being more dominant than they originally thought it would be, largely due to them not actually testing the format, but it's not like the deck appeared out of nowhere, they knew it would be a real deck in the format.
I literally acknowledged GGT as a ban with minimal GP data, I.e. the battle of sideboards reference you are making, in the post I assume you are responding to. So I don't know why you are framing this as a no GP result = no ban scenario. As I posted on this same page and will repost now, GGT was banned with very few GP results, likely based off MTGO data. Hogaak could be the same case regardless of how the GP plays out. I know you are exceedingly skeptical of Wizards and routinely negative towards Modern over a good chunk of the last 3 years, but that doesn't mean you need to indict Wizards' handling of the current situation. At least, not until after the 8th.
They knew what was going to happen with Eldrazi Winter but that PT still happened.
What do you think the chances are that Wizards leaves Hogaak in with the express purpose of making it the level 0 deck at the Pro Tour, and seeing if the PT can define a new metagame first?
The battle of the sideboards thing is a joke honestly. Do you beat current Dredge without dedicated hate? Absolutely not, after Creeping Chill.
Was anything banned out of Dredge? No, because of Phoenix sucking up air/text space.
I know we cannot have 'reasonable discussion' without metrics and past choices informing our dialogue on the ban list, but lets be real. It's a meaningless exercise. They ban what they want, they unban what they want, and it does not have to make sense.
If the ban logic from 3 or even 2 years ago was in place at Wizards both Dredge (post Chill) and Phoenix would have seen a ban on something already.
Wizards needs to start changing it's design philosophy for Modern cards. Sideboard battles are one thing, but there needs to be some mainboard answers to certain strategies, not just when making a meta deck but in general. Cards like Scavenging Ooze fill that role well.
We get yet another Future Sight variant in Mystic Forge, which is a 4-generic-mana artifact that only lets you cast the top card of your library if it's an artifact or colourless nonland card, but at least taps (and makes you pay 1 life) to get a land off the top of your library. It does seem better than Experimental Frenzy in Affinity, but can it see play anywhere else?
Lantern can probably play it too. Anyways, Affinity was already using Frenzy to good effect, and this is a better version of that in that it lets you get away from red, and instead play blue for better 3 mana cards. Also, while the first thought with the tap to exile ability is to remove lands, it can also allow you to remove things that cost too much mana, so there is less risk to running too many 3 or 4 drops (Frenzy hitting Frenzy was always the worst). Or, if you need a specific answer (like a Bomat Courier to get a hasty win in), this can always dig an extra card deeper with a tap.
I'd think the major issue is, if they 'go off' you can Force of Despair all you want, you have no library, you lose on your Draw step, and they can do this at instant speed. So...yeah.
Force of Despair isn't great against them, at least not against the mill plan, but it's effective if they're just playing creatures. Any decks that attack from several angles though are hard to deal with.
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.
The big issue with Hogaak is that they can trigger Bridge and go off again, but even then we have Tormod's Crypt and Nihil Spellbomb that are GY hate on turn 1.
Bridge or Altar have to go. Anything else is just leaving the door open for more "battle of sideboards" graveyard abuse. I also wouldn't mind just a blanket shot at removing Looting. They didn't care about killing multiple offending and collateral decks when they banned Probe, why should Looting be any different?
For the record, I own four foil signed copies of Faithless Looting. I would be happy to never see or play that card in Modern ever again.
We just got a manaless instant speed board wipe, a manaless counterspell (though it only hits non creatures), a manaless way to wipe out enablers like Altar, a reprint of Leyline of the Void, and several other ways. I think we're fine here.
Neither of those make creatures that you can delve though. On the other hand Xathrid Necromancer does create free zombies. But, I can't think of any humans with the proper recursion to enable that as a pseudo bridge aside from maybe Loyal Cathar.
Really? 4 Surgical Extraction mainboard was becoming common in every deck, not just to stop Hogaak, but because it's a good answer to opposing Surgicals since everyone was running them anyways.
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=22380&d=351976&f=MO
That deck won a big event recently, the consensus afterwards was that it didn't run enough GY hate.
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=22380&d=351982&f=MO
Same event, same top 8, while none were MB that's a burn deck with 6 pieces of GY hate.
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=22380&d=351983&f=MO
5 pieces, with an extra way to tutor for a piece MB, so effectively 6.
https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=22375&d=351915&f=MO
4 main, 4 side.
6 was the standard during week 2 of Hogaak, it was creeping up in week 3. And that's in addition to other cards being sideboarded just for it.
And yes, it's possible it may have been less of an issue given a few more weeks... like I said before, this was a ban after 3 weeks which is unheard of, and something I'm not a fan of in general (should give the meta 3 to 6 months to adapt in most cases), but I think this was a perfect storm of a very good deck, little time to innovate (especially publicly), plus an upcoming high profile tournament where they wanted to show diversity, not dominance.
So a couple things:
1. This set is very reprint resistant. Since it's full of cards they didn't want to put through Standard, this is a lot of cards that will be hard to reprint elsewhere. There are very few reprint opportunities, just Commander and the summer special set really, plus Masters sets which we know won't be happening much for a while.
2. Unlike most sets, this set is not going to have a rotation devaluation. There is no Standard demand to prop up the price on any of these cards. No huge drop 2 years from now before it settles at it's real price.
3. Despite the print to demand nature, I think people are over estimating how much of this is going to be printed. It will not have the demand of larger sets. Usually with Modern, about 85% of the playerbase is opening packs and sending cards to Modern players. Here, it's more like 15 to 20% that are doing so. Supply on this set will never be all that high.
A few cards do stand out to me as likely reprints in the future though. I think Prismatic Vista screams Commander precon include one day. I think they want fetches out of historic though, so it won't ever go through Standard but I see this like a potential future Sol Ring in getting reprinted into oblivion.
A few cards here are going to shift in price a bit, but you're probably not going to get a better long term buy than right now across the set.
I think it was falling slightly, but I don't think those numbers are particularly meaningful. For starters, the deck hadn't really evolved to deal with any hate yet. Second, it was effectively tier 0 so everyone was gunning for it, and despite that it was still over 50% (even if not over 60% anymore). Third, in order to get it's win rate down slightly, and not even below 50% people were mainboarding 4 pieces of GY hate and having another 6 to 8 in the SB.
That is unhealthy for the meta no matter how you cut it, because it then means every deck is either SB'ing specifically for Hogaak and losing to everything else, or SB'ing for everything else and losing to Hogaak.
It was definitely a very quick ban, I think that's the fastest they've ever taken action on a ban outside of emergency bans. Mental Misstep lasted 3 or 6 months (I don't remember) and Treasure Cruise lasted 3 months. Hogaak lasted 3 weeks. Definitely controversial as to what should be banned, but I think everyone agrees the deck was too good in it's current incarnation.
Urza, Paradox Engine, Future Sight.
...obviously.
Just watched the stream of his first league today. The ending of the final game of round 5 was insane, great example of where skill+luck can win you games that you should otherwise lose.
Plus that whole league was amazing.
Speaking as someone who has a Magic collection that's valuable enough to outright buy a house if I wanted. I've realized that investing in Magic cards really isn't as reliable as it used to be, if you're trying to spec on certain things. Prices are too variable, and the cards that are worth a lot are too few, and too hard to move in large numbers.
The most reliable way I've found these days to invest, is to pick up cards that bypass Standard rotation depreciation. Modern Horizons is insane for that, in both singles and boxes. Also, pick up cards that are reprint resistant due to rarity. Mythic editions, MPR foil bolts (even though they did make a new full art bolt), expedition lands, and so on. As a whole, these are likely to go up over time. Don't try to invest in regular cards that you might be playing at FNM. The upside is that you save $100 on a deck. The downside is that you waste hundreds per year trying to time the market.
At the time, Modern was big extended. Consider though that Modern today has a larger card pool than Legacy had when Modern released. With more cards comes a higher power level. Arenas power level will go up over time.
In their banning justification they said they were aware of how much Eye of Ugin broke the new Eldrazi they printed. It was a known quantity, the deck did end up being more dominant than they originally thought it would be, largely due to them not actually testing the format, but it's not like the deck appeared out of nowhere, they knew it would be a real deck in the format.
They knew what was going to happen with Eldrazi Winter but that PT still happened.
What do you think the chances are that Wizards leaves Hogaak in with the express purpose of making it the level 0 deck at the Pro Tour, and seeing if the PT can define a new metagame first?
Wizards needs to start changing it's design philosophy for Modern cards. Sideboard battles are one thing, but there needs to be some mainboard answers to certain strategies, not just when making a meta deck but in general. Cards like Scavenging Ooze fill that role well.
Lantern can probably play it too. Anyways, Affinity was already using Frenzy to good effect, and this is a better version of that in that it lets you get away from red, and instead play blue for better 3 mana cards. Also, while the first thought with the tap to exile ability is to remove lands, it can also allow you to remove things that cost too much mana, so there is less risk to running too many 3 or 4 drops (Frenzy hitting Frenzy was always the worst). Or, if you need a specific answer (like a Bomat Courier to get a hasty win in), this can always dig an extra card deeper with a tap.
This card is very, very good.
Force of Despair isn't great against them, at least not against the mill plan, but it's effective if they're just playing creatures. Any decks that attack from several angles though are hard to deal with.
The big issue with Hogaak is that they can trigger Bridge and go off again, but even then we have Tormod's Crypt and Nihil Spellbomb that are GY hate on turn 1.
We just got a manaless instant speed board wipe, a manaless counterspell (though it only hits non creatures), a manaless way to wipe out enablers like Altar, a reprint of Leyline of the Void, and several other ways. I think we're fine here.