[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.
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.
The consensus was that the UW list was running the correct amount of hate, not that it wasn't enough
Burn and Hardened Scales played the right amount of hate, 0 main and the have their sideboard ready, no problem there (although I don't see the tutor you mention in the scales list, Recombiner searches for Constructs only)
The GDS list is interesting as I think it's the only I've seen with 4 maindeck cards to deal with graveyard strategies and even has room for 4 Jailers in the side, I think it's the list with most hate I've seen but it's still less than what you stated:
mainboarding 4 pieces of GY hate and having another 6 to 8 in the SB
These sideboards reflect how the deck warped the meta around it and are more than enough to justify the ban, no need to exaggerate, a deck with 10-12 graveyard hate cards is likely not going to succeed as it's diluting it's own gameplan too much, there is a point where going up is actually not worth it and it looks like 6-8 slots total was that point.
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.
Again, I agree with the ban, I never said they should have given it more time, just that they didn't need to cherrypick data to justify it.
My concern is: if they cherrypick data in an obvious ban like this, how can we trust they won't do the same in future situations where it isn't obvious that a ban is needed?
man you guys are thinking way too hard over-analyzing what, at face value, was a rather straightforward decision.
like attributing choosing bridge over another card because they are greedy and only care about selling new product. is it not possible that bridge was chosen because it was actually the appropriate choice given its role in the most degenerate play patterns and its awkward and frankly poor design?
similarly their citing of certain data points but not including all the data they looked at isnt some deliberate attempt at deceive or hide anything. there isnt some set of immutable guidelines for ban decisions where some burden of proof exists. they are just people designing a game, and they adapt the 'rules' as they see fit in order to craft what they believe is a more enjoyable environment. so you either agree or you dont, and in turn you trust them or you dont. i get that players, especially ones that might use this forum/thread, would delight in more transparency; however it behooves wizards not to share everything they look at and the specifics because its needlessly constrains future decisions by setting precedent/expectations that most will likely misinterpret.
i mean did anything about the announcement seem unreasonable if taken at face value? regardless if anyone believed bridgevine didnt ultimately cross some line, i dont believe it can be argued the deck w/ bridge wasnt at least a borderline case.
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Modern: UWGSnow-Bant Control BURGrixis Death's Shadow GWBCoCo Elves WCDeath and Taxes (sold)
Again, I agree with the ban, I never said they should have given it more time, just that they didn't need to cherrypick data to justify it.
My concern is: if they cherrypick data in an obvious ban like this, how can we trust they won't do the same in future situations where it isn't obvious that a ban is needed?
The numbers themselves may be hidden, but looking at the last two sentences in that particular paragraph:
It has only two unfavorable matchups among the other ten most played decks and a high win rate against lesser played "rogue" decks. Especially telling is its Game 1 win rate of roughly 66%, requiring most decks to sideboard heavily against it.
We can infer from this that its win rate against at least 8 other decks is above 50% and has at least a 50% match win rate against most rogue decks. Going back to when cards were hit out of Temur Energy and Ramunap Red in Standard (the article for reference) we know that simply having a positive match rate across nearly the whole meta is a concern for Wizards, even if most of those positive matches are just over 50%.
I do agree that posting a match win rate chart like they did for Ramunap Red and Temur energy wouldn't kill them, but if I had to hazard a guess, the goal wasn't to hide Hogaak's match win percentages. Rather, I think the goal was to hide what the 10 most popular decks were after Hogaak so as not to influence deck choices or tip people off on how to side for the upcoming Mythic Championship. A rather fruitless effort, I know, but these are the same people that still think that hiding MtGO data stops metas from being solved, so there's that. I also may be giving them too much credit, but they were at least willing to post numbers for the Ramunap Red and Temur Energy bans, which I assume would be more controversial bans given the number of cards that had already been banned in Standard.
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man you guys are thinking way too hard over-analyzing what, at face value, was a rather straightforward decision.
like attributing choosing bridge over another card because they are greedy and only care about selling new product. is it not possible that bridge was chosen because it was actually the appropriate choice given its role in the most degenerate play patterns and its awkward and frankly poor design?
similarly their citing of certain data points but not including all the data they looked at isnt some deliberate attempt at deceive or hide anything. there isnt some set of immutable guidelines for ban decisions where some burden of proof exists. they are just people designing a game, and they adapt the 'rules' as they see fit in order to craft what they believe is a more enjoyable environment. so you either agree or you dont, and in turn you trust them or you dont. i get that players, especially ones that might use this forum/thread, would delight in more transparency; however it behooves wizards not to share everything they look at and the specifics because its needlessly constrains future decisions by setting precedent/expectations that most will likely misinterpret.
i mean did anything about the announcement seem unreasonable if taken at face value? regardless if anyone believed bridgevine didnt ultimately cross some line, i dont believe it can be argued the deck w/ bridge wasnt at least a borderline case.
All of this. People need to look at this and internalize it.
I dont know if you are on twitter tronix, but I consistently think 'this is someone people should listen to more.'
Moving away from speculation about why they banned bridge, now that they have I'm very interested in how the deck itself transforms. Off the top of my head, a lot of cards are much less useful: (Carrion Feeder, Altar of Dementia). I vaguely remember a "hollowvine" build from a while back, does hogaak improve that significantly?
Also outside of that, what do we expect now? Izzet and UW were already very strong, and they've only got more toys.
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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 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.
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.
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 Narcomoeba nor Haunted Dead do anything close to bridge. Carrion Feeder and Altar of Dementia are very meh without bridge and those cards certainly don't help. Also, a big problem without bridge is that a deck can now just eventually match you card for card.
Deck will certainly look very different or just not exist really.
Hogaak often won without the mill plan, so the deck is still powerful. The non-mill good draws are based off filling the graveyard while having two bodies in play. As such carrion feeder is still a key card: it's a one-drop that can sacrifice a stitcher's supplier to fill the graveyard. Stitcher, carrion feeder and any other one-drop allows playing hogaak on turn 2. Carrion feeder is also protection against path to exile, which is the main answer to a turn-two hogaak. One way Hogaak is resilient is to sac hogaak in response to removal and replay it off having multiple 1-drops and way to fill the GY.
I'm not saying there won't be a better build. The mill plan is still there to fill the GY for the delve requirements of hogaak and to get vengevines.
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.
I guess Dessert Boy too, but it isn't a deck that wants to invest heavily in blue. That said, I do think that not having a clear replacement for Bridge is probably a good thing. I'm not really sure what you mean by "making creatures to delve," though. You couldn't delve creature tokens since they get exiled as a state based effect when they hit the graveyard and I'd never seen a winning play that required you to delve your Bridges away. Technically, you can delve Narcomoeba and Haunted Dead too. Do you mean creature tokens to convoke?
Neither Narcomoeba nor Haunted Dead do anything close to bridge.
Of course not. They're basically just cheap or "free" creatures to help get Hogaak out of the yard. Remember, Haunted Dead's ability is instant speed, meaning that if you can pull it off during someone's endstep it will be available during your turn to tap for Convoke.
Carrion Feeder and Altar of Dementia are very meh without bridge and those cards certainly don't help. Also, a big problem without bridge is that a deck can now just eventually match you card for card.
That's a bit of a hot take. It's a good thing a deck can now actually compete with Hogaakvine card for card, and calling Feeder and Altar "meh" without Bridge is hyperbolic to be generous.
Deck will certainly look very different or just not exist really.
I don't really think so. No-one can deny it lost a lot of strength with Bridge, but I suspect that Hogaakvine will just be a lot more aggro-focused and not as a resilient to hate.
The new tech for Hogaak is Hedron Crab. It's pretty good. Like, still disturbingly good, according to the guy who 5-0'd FNM with it last night, and put 20 power into play by turn 2 against me.
I guess Dessert Boy too, but it isn't a deck that wants to invest heavily in blue. That said, I do think that not having a clear replacement for Bridge is probably a good thing. I'm not really sure what you mean by "making creatures to delve," though. You couldn't delve creature tokens since they get exiled as a state based effect when they hit the graveyard and I'd never seen a winning play that required you to delve your Bridges away. Technically, you can delve Narcomoeba and Haunted Dead too. Do you mean creature tokens to convoke?
Yes, sorry I had meant convoke not delve. You need black or green creatures to convoke for Hogaak so any tokens (or creatures) that aren’t those colors have significantly reduced value.
But, I agree that it’s a good thing that there’s not a clear replacement for Bridge.
The new tech for Hogaak is Hedron Crab. It's pretty good. Like, still disturbingly good, according to the guy who 5-0'd FNM with it last night, and put 20 power into play by turn 2 against me.
Seems pretty swingy, TBH. It's great if you mill a couple of Bloodghasts on turn 2, or if you can get two crabs on turn 2, but it's very vulnerable to removal- plus it makes the deck even more vulnerable to Chalice.
Yes, sorry I had meant convoke not delve. You need black or green creatures to convoke for Hogaak so any tokens (or creatures) that aren’t those colors have significantly reduced value.
But, I agree that it’s a good thing that there’s not a clear replacement for Bridge.
I mean, if you endstep a haunted dead it still can convoke for one black on your next main phase. Narcomoeba is still a free creature which can be tapped for the colorless part of Hogaak's cost. But the Mill plan is probably not going to be consistent anymore- unless some mad lad goes for the Altar + Abnormal Endurance combo.
If 3 mana isn't too much for an initial investment, then Diregraf Colossus can pump out a fair number of Zombie tokens with Gravecrawler, now that I think of it- but they come into play tapped.
Well as expected they got rid of the bridge - lol @ all those who were saying "not enough data" when it was so obviously broken.
Too bad they didn't ban more cards to make the format even more enjoyable.
So the ball goes to the next broken thing, which is IMO neoform. I think it will have the highest winrate in the next pro tour.
No posts in this thread in days is a sign of the format being pretty great right now, yes?
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I can't say I'm pleased to see you and must warn you I may have to do something about it.
EDH: UGEdric
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Modern: UGRDelver
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Actually, most of this thread's actve posters have been posting in MTGNexus, which is why it's been quiet here. The format does seem to be doing all right. Maybe a little Phoenix heavy, but nothing blatantly egregious in my opinion
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Lol are you kidding me about the format being great right now? Neobrand goes off on turn 1 at least once every match I play against it, and quite frequently twice. At least against hogaak, there was a chance to do something, the last match I played, I lost twice in a row on turn 1. There literally 0 percent chance that deck makes it past a major tournament before it gets hit with the hammer.
Is this really a conversation about the actual numbers of a deck in MODERN going off on turn 1? Is there any deck ever in modern that was even capable of winning on turn 1 at all, much less at a 10%? A deck that's winning 10% on turn 2 in modern has a fair shot of getting banned, and no, it was on MTGO, not paper. Not to mention it's a deck that can combo turn 1, that can dodge any way to stop it outside of a 1 or 0 mana blue answer even if you actually get a turn to play something. It's unaffected by graveyard hate, unaffected by a chalice on 1, only slightly affected by a chalice on 0. You do nothing and they either have it or they don't. And for a deck that wins on turn 3 that wouldn't be a problem but it isn't winning on turn 3, it's winning before I play my first land. And I'd love to see your <10% data, make sure it's post London Mulligan.
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.
The deck has no results though why should we ban a deck that simply isn't winning tournaments. Modern has these decks from time to time but they mostly fade out or only get played by a few people because they like that form of deck. It simply isn't consistent enough to spike a tournament
Is this really a conversation about the actual numbers of a deck in MODERN going off on turn 1? Is there any deck ever in modern that was even capable of winning on turn 1 at all, much less at a 10%? A deck that's winning 10% on turn 2 in modern has a fair shot of getting banned, and no, it was on MTGO, not paper. Not to mention it's a deck that can combo turn 1, that can dodge any way to stop it outside of a 1 or 0 mana blue answer even if you actually get a turn to play something. It's unaffected by graveyard hate, unaffected by a chalice on 1, only slightly affected by a chalice on 0. You do nothing and they either have it or they don't. And for a deck that wins on turn 3 that wouldn't be a problem but it isn't winning on turn 3, it's winning before I play my first land. And I'd love to see your <10% data, make sure it's post London Mulligan.
In the past, there have been decks like AmuletBloom that have a turn one nut draw (amulet, summer bloom, spirit guide, bounce land, hive mind, pact, x) but never really consistently. The only other deck I can think of is Goryo's which can exile a couple spirit guides, Faithless Looting, play a black source, and Goryo's, but there are likely more behind a bunch of apes. Never at "10%," but it has been possible.
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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.
The consensus was that the UW list was running the correct amount of hate, not that it wasn't enough
Burn and Hardened Scales played the right amount of hate, 0 main and the have their sideboard ready, no problem there (although I don't see the tutor you mention in the scales list, Recombiner searches for Constructs only)
The GDS list is interesting as I think it's the only I've seen with 4 maindeck cards to deal with graveyard strategies and even has room for 4 Jailers in the side, I think it's the list with most hate I've seen but it's still less than what you stated:
These sideboards reflect how the deck warped the meta around it and are more than enough to justify the ban, no need to exaggerate, a deck with 10-12 graveyard hate cards is likely not going to succeed as it's diluting it's own gameplan too much, there is a point where going up is actually not worth it and it looks like 6-8 slots total was that point.
Again, I agree with the ban, I never said they should have given it more time, just that they didn't need to cherrypick data to justify it.
My concern is: if they cherrypick data in an obvious ban like this, how can we trust they won't do the same in future situations where it isn't obvious that a ban is needed?
like attributing choosing bridge over another card because they are greedy and only care about selling new product. is it not possible that bridge was chosen because it was actually the appropriate choice given its role in the most degenerate play patterns and its awkward and frankly poor design?
similarly their citing of certain data points but not including all the data they looked at isnt some deliberate attempt at deceive or hide anything. there isnt some set of immutable guidelines for ban decisions where some burden of proof exists. they are just people designing a game, and they adapt the 'rules' as they see fit in order to craft what they believe is a more enjoyable environment. so you either agree or you dont, and in turn you trust them or you dont. i get that players, especially ones that might use this forum/thread, would delight in more transparency; however it behooves wizards not to share everything they look at and the specifics because its needlessly constrains future decisions by setting precedent/expectations that most will likely misinterpret.
i mean did anything about the announcement seem unreasonable if taken at face value? regardless if anyone believed bridgevine didnt ultimately cross some line, i dont believe it can be argued the deck w/ bridge wasnt at least a borderline case.
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)I do agree that posting a match win rate chart like they did for Ramunap Red and Temur energy wouldn't kill them, but if I had to hazard a guess, the goal wasn't to hide Hogaak's match win percentages. Rather, I think the goal was to hide what the 10 most popular decks were after Hogaak so as not to influence deck choices or tip people off on how to side for the upcoming Mythic Championship. A rather fruitless effort, I know, but these are the same people that still think that hiding MtGO data stops metas from being solved, so there's that. I also may be giving them too much credit, but they were at least willing to post numbers for the Ramunap Red and Temur Energy bans, which I assume would be more controversial bans given the number of cards that had already been banned in Standard.
Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix
All of this. People need to look at this and internalize it.
I dont know if you are on twitter tronix, but I consistently think 'this is someone people should listen to more.'
Spirits
Also outside of that, what do we expect now? Izzet and UW were already very strong, and they've only got more toys.
UWUW ControlUW
UGWSpiritsUGW
GHardened ScalesG
WGRUKiki PodWGRU [RIP]
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.
Neither Narcomoeba nor Haunted Dead do anything close to bridge. Carrion Feeder and Altar of Dementia are very meh without bridge and those cards certainly don't help. Also, a big problem without bridge is that a deck can now just eventually match you card for card.
Deck will certainly look very different or just not exist really.
UWUW ControlUW
UGWSpiritsUGW
GHardened ScalesG
WGRUKiki PodWGRU [RIP]
Hogaak often won without the mill plan, so the deck is still powerful. The non-mill good draws are based off filling the graveyard while having two bodies in play. As such carrion feeder is still a key card: it's a one-drop that can sacrifice a stitcher's supplier to fill the graveyard. Stitcher, carrion feeder and any other one-drop allows playing hogaak on turn 2. Carrion feeder is also protection against path to exile, which is the main answer to a turn-two hogaak. One way Hogaak is resilient is to sac hogaak in response to removal and replay it off having multiple 1-drops and way to fill the GY.
I'm not saying there won't be a better build. The mill plan is still there to fill the GY for the delve requirements of hogaak and to get vengevines.
I guess Dessert Boy too, but it isn't a deck that wants to invest heavily in blue. That said, I do think that not having a clear replacement for Bridge is probably a good thing. I'm not really sure what you mean by "making creatures to delve," though. You couldn't delve creature tokens since they get exiled as a state based effect when they hit the graveyard and I'd never seen a winning play that required you to delve your Bridges away. Technically, you can delve Narcomoeba and Haunted Dead too. Do you mean creature tokens to convoke?
Of course not. They're basically just cheap or "free" creatures to help get Hogaak out of the yard. Remember, Haunted Dead's ability is instant speed, meaning that if you can pull it off during someone's endstep it will be available during your turn to tap for Convoke.
That's a bit of a hot take. It's a good thing a deck can now actually compete with Hogaakvine card for card, and calling Feeder and Altar "meh" without Bridge is hyperbolic to be generous.
I don't really think so. No-one can deny it lost a lot of strength with Bridge, but I suspect that Hogaakvine will just be a lot more aggro-focused and not as a resilient to hate.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Yes, sorry I had meant convoke not delve. You need black or green creatures to convoke for Hogaak so any tokens (or creatures) that aren’t those colors have significantly reduced value.
But, I agree that it’s a good thing that there’s not a clear replacement for Bridge.
I can see dredge and phoenix returning to the graveyard decks of choice again but they're pretty fair in comparison
Seems pretty swingy, TBH. It's great if you mill a couple of Bloodghasts on turn 2, or if you can get two crabs on turn 2, but it's very vulnerable to removal- plus it makes the deck even more vulnerable to Chalice.
I mean, if you endstep a haunted dead it still can convoke for one black on your next main phase. Narcomoeba is still a free creature which can be tapped for the colorless part of Hogaak's cost. But the Mill plan is probably not going to be consistent anymore- unless some mad lad goes for the Altar + Abnormal Endurance combo.
If 3 mana isn't too much for an initial investment, then Diregraf Colossus can pump out a fair number of Zombie tokens with Gravecrawler, now that I think of it- but they come into play tapped.
Too bad they didn't ban more cards to make the format even more enjoyable.
So the ball goes to the next broken thing, which is IMO neoform. I think it will have the highest winrate in the next pro tour.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
Modern:
UWUW Control
UBRGrixis Shadow
URIzzet Phoenix