Comments on: Emergent Decks From Modern Horizons

By: David Ernenwein

David Ernenwein — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 16:12:32 +0000

In order:
1. The alternate kill doesn’t actually avoid the graveyard. Yes, you’re sacrificing creatures that are in play. However, they’re only there because you made all the tokens using your graveyard combo. Without the graveyard, the alt-win can only mill a piddly 1-2 cards at a time, and that’s never going to work out.
2. As I argue in the article, the actual kill turn is slightly faster, but the functional kill turn is the same. If Bridgevine was going to win, it did so by hemorrhaging zombies onto the board in the first three turns, usually followed by a concession when that board wasn’t answerable. This is also true of the fast Hogaak kills, so functionally nothing’s really changed. If you’d have been dead to Bridgevine last year, you’re dead to Hogaak this year. No real difference.
I’ve advocated running the permanent graveyard hate like Relic of Progenitus or Rest in Peace over things like Surgical for years because decks like this exist, so I’m not sympathetic to complaints that players now have to. It’s something that needed to be done for a very long time, but players got away with running the weaker options. That’s not going to work out anymore, so now they’ll have to adopt the options they should have been running in the first place.
Hogaak isn’t like Amulet Titan or other combo decks. There’s no excuse for not running hard graveyard hate, but there’s very limited hate for Amulet or similar decks, so just losing to them is forgivable. No deck ever had to lose to Dredge when Relic and Tormod’s Crypt exist; being weak to them was a choice. Now they’re facing the consequences of that choice.

By: David Hassell

David Hassell — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 14:46:26 +0000

I know ban mania is a thing, and it’s not good for the game. However…
I felt your analysis of the hogaak deck didn’t really do it justice. Comparing to a past vengevine deck is all well and good, but there’s significant differences that were just sort of “ignored”.
1. there’s an alt wincon that avoids the GY.
2. The kill turn is quicker, so gives you less time to find an answer.
I realise you mention both of these, but then almost ignore them by saying “I think the deck will follow the same pattern as the last 1”, which really ignores the power those 2 points add.
Lets pretend we’re talking about amulet titan for a second, since that’s my pet deck. If you said “it has an alt wincon (hive mind) and is a turn quicker (summer bloom)” – no-one thought that version of the deck was ok, it’s too much of a power boost, and it got banned because it could kill before you could deploy your hate. There was only 1 really great hate card (blood moon), but arguably there’s a tonne of decks that can’t run Leyline of the Void or Rest in Peace. Playing against the deck without Leyline or RIP has felt miserable. It’s currently stifling what you can play in modern, because it’s kill is so fast and it’s resilient to commonly played interaction.
I’d be interested in your counter-argument to the above!

By: ben coley

ben coley — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 18:59:50 +0000

An altogether refreshingly optimistic take on the format, taking into consideration the lessons of the past, rather than sensationally panicking about the current ‘best thing’

And a pleasure to read. Thanks!