Giant response to lots of different people. If I've missed someone who wanted me to reply, just @ me and I'll get on that.
metalmusic_4 wrote: ↑4 years ago
Thank you for clarifying your position. You know what we need? A new ban/unban poll! The ban choices should have every core hogaak deck card on it and then we can see easily where consinces is building.
We'll definitely do one as we get closer to the 08/26 update. The funny thing is, I think there's a series of GP literally the weekend before that Monday, so our banlist results won't consider standings at that event. I don't think it will matter too much, and will probably post the poll on 08/12 or 08/19. @ me if I forget or if you have a preference between the 12th and the 19th.
Albegas wrote: ↑4 years ago
I haven't really found a good jumping point for the discussions, so I thought it'd be easier for me to just unload my thoughts on a lot of these discussions:
Amen. This thread can get hard to keep up with and/or jump into.
tl;dr
-Hogaak was a fun experiment and I really hope that regardless of what happens in the next few months, Hogaak players find something to run that they like. If they don't, I hope WotC experiments more and creates something that lets them be happy
-Between Phoenix's short slump and Hogaak's dominance, I think it's too soon to worry about Phoenix. See what happens with Hogaak before even worrying about Phoenix
-Until other colors get better maindeck answers to GY or until a weaker version of Looting comes out, I'd rather keep it in the format for better or worse. I don't believe that this is a "correct" opinion, simply the one I have after years of observing Modern and Legacy
Going to reply to your TLDR having read the rest of your post too; if you feel I've misrepresented something by doing so, let me know.
I agree Wizards should be experimenting with cards like Hogaak; there's a lot of non-rotating format design space Wizards needs to keep exploring. I just hope it's more in the direction of reactive, generic answers like FoN/FoV and not proactive haymakers like Hogaak. Time will tell and I suspect
MH1 was successful enough we'll see an
MH2 soon enough. Regarding Phoenix, I also don't see Wizards taking any action in such a warped period of time as this Hogaak situation. I know CFP (and potentially others) talked about GY hate also impacting Phoenix, but I remember a number of Phoenix pilots noting GY hate was way less effective than people thought. This is due to Aria, Ascension, Crackling Drake, and/or Thing, depending on what build and threat suite you are running. The only time Wizards has proactively banned the next best thing after banning a clear offender was TC and DTT, but that was more of a case of a one-for-one card replacement, not a deck replacement. As for Looting, I don't have any issue with Looting being legal as long as we have answers to Looting strategies (we mostly do, except Hogaak potentially), AND if other strategies get comparable tools. The Preordain/Ponder discrepancy with Stirrings/Looting is both complicated and glaring as of late, and it's something I'm going to get back to later in this post.
I don't think this gets said enough, but while I agree that Preordain is fine in comparison to Looting and Stirrings, Wizards won't unban it any time soon, and it's not because it's as good or better than Looting or Stirrings. It's because it immediately slots into two tier 1 decks (UW Control and Phoenix), one of which is on of the best decks in the format. As far as Wizards is likely concerned, unbanning Preordain just boosts two T1 decks without giving weaker decks a greater gain than those decks. So long as two of the best decks in the format are blue, we aren't getting Preordain, no matter how small the gains for those decks are.
cfusionpm wrote: ↑4 years ago
I am openly and brazenly in support of banning both Hogaak itself and Faithless Looting. At least then I don't have to say "I told you so" when Looting gets other decks banned in the coming year or so, while remaining legal itself.
Meanwhile, Preordain is still banned, mind you.
Wraithpk wrote: ↑4 years ago
I've always said that I think it's inconsistent how Faithless Looting and Ancient Stirrings are legal in Modern, but Preordain and Ponder are not.
That is my biggest gripe with FL and AS. Let's be consistent, either unban Preordain and Ponder, or ban Faithless Looting and Ancient Stirrings. That said, I would rather they unbanned the blue cantrips. Does FL enable a lot of graveyard decks? Sure. Is that really a problem as long as each of those decks are an appropriate power level? I don't think so. I want to see them ban Hogaak and then see what the format does after that. I, for one, have never thought Phoenix was a problem. It's MWP since it rose to prominence has always just been
fine. It was never the slamdunk best deck that some people hyped it up to be. We've also got Jund back and the strongest its been since the Twin ban, which is cool. We might have an actually interesting format on our hands after Hogaak is gone.
Grouping all of these to discuss the P&P vs. AS/FL issue. On the one hand, I largely agree that Preordain should return to Modern, with some caveats I'll discuss shortly. The key argument against Preordain is that any deck can use it and it imposes no deckbuilding restrictions. This argument is quite simply not meaningful anymore, given how many top decks are using FL and AS to take advantage of their comparatively higher power level. Moreover, I would even argue FL especially has unique advantages Preordain cannot leverage: it stocks the GY. This actually does the opposite of imposing deckbuilding restrictions; it creates deckbuilding opportunities Preordain does not. Similarly, Preordain creates deckbuilding opportunities for blue-based strategies that are looking for specific tools and/or leveraging a tempo gameplan. The latter is particularly absent from Modern these days, and Preordain could address that. Preordain also decreases variance in accessing answers, which is a big reason Legacy is able to be a slower format (Brainstorm, P&P + Daze/Fow/etc.) despite significantly stronger/faster threats, and is a big complaint people have about Modern.
There are a few issues with the Preordain unban, however, that we have to acknowledge. The first is that, as others pointed out, it immediately slots into UW Control and Izzet Phoenix. These are two top-tier decks that I sincerely doubt Wizards thinks need help, and I am unaware of any other unban where Wizards unleashed a card into not just one but two top-tier strategies. This makes this unban less likely and potentially risky. The other issue with the Preordain unban is it hinges on a discrepancy with FL/AS. If Preordain gets unbanned, it makes FL/AS ban talk significantly less defensible. I'm fine with that because I think most ban talk isn't defensible, but I've seen a ton of anti-FL statements in this thread and throughout the weekend. It would be hard to argue it both ways (i.e. "ban FL and unban Preordain"). It almost has to be an "either/or" statement. I think the pros of unbanning Preordain probably outweigh the cons, but we need to acknowledge them in our arguments.
cfusionpm wrote: ↑4 years ago
Re Force of Negation: I think for FoN to be a true police card and not some neat flashy toy is it either needed to be free at any time or it needed to hit creatures. Maybe not both of these, but I would GLADLY trade the exile clause for either of these. As now, Negate is simply dead a lot of times. Especially to creature-based GY decks like Hogaak and Dredge.
I actually think FoN is fine against Dredge, which depends on three spell-based engines to do its business: Looting, Conflagrate, and Life from the Loam. Add in Shriekhorn for some builds. It's horrible against Hogaak because that deck uses crap like Stitcher's Supplier, Satyr Wayfinder, Hedron Crab (sub-optimal, but a thing), etc. to do broken things. Again, this is just another strike against Hogaak, a deck that will likely continue its MC4 trend of offensive performance statistics as the month progresses.
In my experience, FoN does have problems, but it's these two. First, it can be a mismatched answer in matchups that have some spells and some creatures. For instance, against Hardened Scales or Affinity, maybe the opponent kept a hand leveraging the enchantment or Opal or Cranial Plating, in which case FoN is great. But maybe the opponent just kept a creature-heavy hand leveraging Ravagers, Overseers, Hangarbacks, etc. and now your FoN is totally dead. FoW never has this issue, and I know Wizards deliberately designed FoN to be less universal, but that creates problems in a diverse format like Modern.
Second, FoN has some top-tier matchups where it's totally flat. The biggest of these is Humans, where you're really stuck on Vial or bust. But even this gets you into the same problem I cited above, because maybe Humans leads with Vial, or maybe leads with Hierarch/Champion. It also feels really bad against some ramp decks, where you're stuck on a non-universal counterspell and your opponent is playing Prime Time. YIkes.
All that being said, I think FoN is a lot better than most people give credit. I suspect we see a lot more FoN in the future after this Hogaak thing settles down; it's actively bad against that deck.
FoodChainGoblins wrote: ↑4 years ago
There's no point in banning Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis when
Bridge from Below already took the ban for it. Everyone knew that Hogaak was the correct ban anyway, but Wizards essentially "told us that they are NOT going to ban Hogaak." So they may as well UNBAN Bridge from Below, a card that hardly ever did anything in Modern, outside of some Bridgevine lists during a Pro Tour when
Stitcher's Supplier came out. That's all Bridge from Below ever did.
How do I know? I play a lot of Modern. I move from deck to deck quite frequently. I never used the card, Bridge from Below in Modern until Stitcher's Supplier gave us ... Bridge Vine. Then I got scummed out of a top 8 at a PPTQ and went 2-4 at another PPTQ with it. (did very well in local tournaments, but I'd happily switch that around for how I did at the PPTQs)
The decision to ban Hogaak will be, and should be, made independently from the Bridge ban. If the deck remains broken, they're not going to deliberately avoid Hogaak because they didn't ban enough cards. I can't think of any area in society where a management group will fail to fix a problem and just leave it broken because they already used up their one try. They're just going to ban something new. Could they unban Bridge in a concession to messing up? Maybe but probably not. Many of the arguments against Bridge in the article would still be true, in that it insulates against removal and has strong synergies with Feeder/Altar. Also, can you even imagine what would happen if they banned Hogaak, unbanned Bridge, and then an Altar/Feeder/Bridge Dredge deck got big, forcing them to RE-BAN BRIDGE?? Modern would just break. It seems extremely unlikely Wizards risks that scenario.
**To be more transparent if it's not already well known (I'm going to say what I said months ago) - Bridge from Below should NOT have gotten banned. I'm not saying Hogaak is as good as Mishra's Workshop or Brainstorm like someone else here tried to twist my words. I said that banning a lesser problem card because of the real problem card and then going down that slippery slope is one that may never stop.
The issue is Hogaak is potentially a problem independently of FL. There are always going to be cheap 1-2 mana GY fillers coming through Standard. We can't ban all the Suppliers and Wayfinders and Shriekhorns and other crap that can get Hogaak into the GY and out in the T2-T3 range. We may still need to explore FL in Modern, but Hogaak itself will be creating imbalances whether or not FL is around.
The Fluff wrote: ↑4 years ago
there are probably several reasons why people don't like to have gy removal in the main. In my case, depends on the deck. For example, my
bg delirium had some default scavenging ooze in the main even before Hollow One debuted in modern.. so my
bg deck is just fine. What I find unpleasant is now, even decks that don't normally have gy removal main are forced to have it.. for example,
uw did not have gy removal main before, Now, I'm forced to stick in three
remorseful cleric as a hedge against yard decks. Of course, yard decks are not the only decks in modern.. so when my
uw encounters a non-gy deck like Burn, Humans, Merfolk.. the clerics feel bad to draw, at best they are chump blockers.
Yeah, I think the issue is twofold. First, people don't want to dilute their gameplan to hedge against decks they may or may not run into. Remorseful Cleric is not what I want to be drawing against Tron, for example. This is in contrast to Scavenging Ooze, which has relevance in a lot more matchups and gets at your point about more universally applicable cards like
Kaya's Guile. Second, I think people are annoyed by how decisive the GY hate is. If I don't have T1 discard against Storm, I can still probably hold the line with a T2 Bolt/Push/Path on the Baral/Electromancer. Or a counterspell on that creature in the first place, or even at the Gifts they fire off. There's counterplay on multiple axes. With some GY decks, those axes get shut down in a big way, leaving you stuck on did you or did you not draw the GY hate.
robertleva wrote: ↑4 years ago
Is this even a real question? Who the heck DOES like to run GY hate, or any other hate card main deck that wasn't supposed to be there already? These types of cards are what you run to deal with holes or blank spots in your overall strategy, they add nothing to whichever game plan they are being shoehorned into...
Again, I'm going to encourage you and anyone else using this kind of strong language to avoid questions like "is this even a real question?" It's borderline trolling when I asked the question and phrased it as I did. It's also a much more open question than you are making it out to be, which is the other danger of these kinds of sweeping, sarcastic reductions of arguments. No one has any issue with many green decks running MD Scavenging Ooze. It's the kind of universal answer/threat package we're cool with in Modern. No one cares if UWx is running Verdict and Wrath even if they are largely dead or at least super inefficient in a number of matchups (the mirror, Titanshift, Amulet Bloom, Storm, etc.). We also wouldn't care if we saw BWx decks playing
Kaya's Guile, or BRx strategies running K-Command as a hedge against artifacts and for value.
The problem arises when we see super specialized GY hate that is completely dead in other matches. Leyline of the Void is particularly bad, because it's actively useless against some major top-tier Modern decks: E-Tron (I don't want to hear any nonsense about Buried Ruin), G-Tron, Humans, etc.
Yixlid Jailer would be another one, because no one plays
Goblin Piker against Humans or Amulet Titan. This is contrast to acceptable GY hate, like those listed above. Another more acceptable GY hate that I'm willing to give a pass on is
Surgical Extraction. It's a free spell, which we already know tends to make Modern-playable cards, and it has unique relevance against even non-GY decks. It's quite decent against Tron and other non-GY synergies in the right setup, and in its absolute worst mode reveals an opponent's hand for "free." It has way more potential upsides against even the dead matchups than crap like Leyline. I think as long as we're seeing these kinds of choices made in Modern, that's just flexible deckbuilding. Leylines. Of course, all the other caveats I mentioned about GY hate maybe being too decisive still apply.