Hogaak in legacy format

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The Fluff
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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

As most people already know. Hogaak is a powerful deck in Modern, which resulted into the ban of not only Hogaak but also faithless looting in modern.

Now my question for legacy players.... is Hogaak something to be feared in legacy?
Or is it just a normal powered deck here, because legacy decks are much stronger than in modern?

Hogaak got into the top 8 of GP Atlanta.

https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=23176&f=LE
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Post by wildfire393 » 4 years ago

It's definitely a competitive card. It showed up in the top 8 of GP Atlanta in a Dredge list, and there was two more in the top 16 and another in the top 64. And it's made some appearances in BG Dark Depths lists as well, though none of those showed up in the top 64.

I don't think it's a hugely problematic card though. 4 out of 64 is more of a showing than Dredge has had in a while, but it's a far cry from broken or what Hogaak was doing in Modern where it was the most played deck and Leyline of the Void was the most-played card and it was still making up half of all top 8's. The top 8 of Atlanta was hugely diverse with 2 RUG Delver, 2 Turbo Depths, 1 Burn, 1 Storm, 1 Dredge, and 1 UW Control ("Miracles" but not packing any Miracle cards).

The top 64 was also exceptionally diverse. RUG Delver was the most-represented with 20 decks in the top 64, followed by Miracles/UW Control with 9 lists (including a 4-color list with Wrenn and Six), then Turbo Depths with 5, Grixis+Green 4c Control and Dredge with 4, Aggro Loam, Red Prison, and Show and Tell with 3 (including one Omni-Tell), 2 Reanimator and ANT Storm lists, and then a ton of miscellaneous lists with one showing including Burn, Death and Taxes, Eldrazi Post, Food Chain, Goblins, Humans, Hypergensis-Cascade, Infect, and Painter's Stone. And there's a handful of lists that have been putting up good numbers lately and are definitely contenders in this meta, but didn't show up in the top 64, like Bomberman, other Delver variants (Grixis/4c/Izzet), Maverick, Hogaak Depths, Aggro Eldrazi, and Stoneblade.

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

I don't think it's a hugely problematic card though. 4 out of 64 is more of a showing than Dredge has had in a while, but it's a far cry from broken or what Hogaak was doing in Modern
Hmm, I guess you're right.

I think now that Hogaak is just an ok card here, and not broken at all.
Also remembered that Eye of Ugin is legal here, but also did not break anything. The power level of legacy is different from modern.
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Post by wildfire393 » 4 years ago

Yeah, Legacy is a very different format from Modern. Modern has a lot fewer answers (cards like Daze, Force of Will, Wasteland, etc) and as such, it has a lot more highly-linear decks that just try to play past each other as quickly as possible. In that kind of format, cards like Hogaak and Eye of Ugin push a specific deck to be much faster and reliable than its alternatives.

There's a laundry list of cards that are banned in Modern but just fine in Legacy - Blazing Shoal, for instance, is not played even in the Infect decks. Faithless Looting is a fine card but not broken. Green Sun's Zenith similarly is fine but not busted. Punishing Fire. Etc.

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

I do remember that Hogaak has a strong alternate win condition.. with Altar of Dementia + bridge to mill a ton of cards. That combo not giving problems here in legacy?
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Post by drmarkb » 4 years ago

The card has found a home in Hoogy-Depths, and Hoogy Dredge, with and without Altar. Solid card, but Legacy has Force and Karakas on top of both B and W Leylines from the board, and much better selection to find Rest in Peace plus cheap fringe cards that shut down damage strategies like Energy Field. Chalice is more common too. Tabernacle can hurt swarms of cheated critters and, in general, everyone's gameplan is online earlier.

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Post by wildfire393 » 4 years ago

The Fluff wrote:
4 years ago
I do remember that Hogaak has a strong alternate win condition.. with Altar of Dementia + bridge to mill a ton of cards. That combo not giving problems here in legacy?
Altar-Hogaak Dredge was actually a worse build of Dredge than the post-banning version in Modern. And Legacy has more answers and more decks that can take advantage of the fact that Dredge is largely non-interactive.

It seems like if any card is a problem right now, it's Wrenn and Six. Over a third of the top 64 was decks packing Wrenn, including 20 RUG Delver lists. Wrenn has also basically pushed out all other Delver variants which were doing well before he was printed.

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Post by The Fluff » 4 years ago

so that's why Wren is 100 dollars. Not only in modern, she's also doing well here in legacy.
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Post by drmarkb » 4 years ago

W6 seems to be in a lot of the online meta from what I can see and have been told by the players I know who MTGO.
It seems to have cropped up in all sorts of control decks too, albeit experimentally in some cases.
I am not so sure it stifles diversity overall, outside of delver. Grixis control has morphed to 4 col control astrolabe shenanigans, and they sort of all feel the same I suppose- but it is not quite as bad as death-rite era where there really was no reason not to play BUG with drs and Leovold. RUG delver is back on the back of W6, other delvers have declined as mentioned above, and the card has found a home in Lands I guess, and it is not unusual to see it splashed into everything from miracles, to stoneblade to depths. I guess its big impact is that it hurts on elves, d n t etc. I would not be sorry to see it gone, unlike , T3 and Narset, which I actually like as I feel they go someway to hurting on the brainstorm-force control decks. Karn GTC also goes in everything almost, but unlike W6 there seemed to be less of a hate mob after him.
I think new card paper impact is lower- most people play what they want and know in paper Legacy, to a greater or lesser extent. I would not want to see us go back to the Pile era of DRS, though, and I would worry if every deck that was successful just ignored w6 grind-fests by having to be decks that ignore W6- i.e. combo

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