MTGNexus

Well, no changes. Enjoy your format for the rest of the month, you better be grinding Hogaak if you make any claims of playing competitively.

Thank god I'm done with this game next week.

For those curious:

idSurge wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Well, no changes. Enjoy your format for the rest of the month, you better be grinding Hogaak if you make any claims of playing competitively.

Thank god I'm done with this game next week.

cfusionpm wrote: ↑

4 years ago

For those curious:

Disappointing response? Yes.

Awesome that the community forced this response at all? Nice job all!! As I noted on Reddit. it's a huge accomplishment to just get any powers-that-be to acknowledge a community issue. We should absolutely keep pushing this. Wizards and Forsythe have famously walked back two major opinions in short time spans. First, Forsythe revised his Sword of the Meek stance before the end of Eldrazi Winter after previously stating it was potentially obnoxious in Lantern Control. Second, Wizards banned Guardian after initially taking no action on it in a recent B&R update. That change came literally days after initially failing to ban it with just a few days of data. We should continue to push this issue.

ktkenshinx wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Disappointing response? Yes.

Honestly, I can't even keep my ire up. Thats how checked out I am as it is.

[mention]FoodChainGoblins[/mention] you better rep that deck hard. There is zero excuse to play any other deck for the rest of the month.

Just out of curiosity, do we know why there's a longer gap between the previous announcement and the next one? All the other ones are about a month apart, but this one is almost 2 months, and Wizards clearly would have benefited from having a shorter announcement period this time around.

I guess Hogaak has plot armor for being in a new product.
WoTC needs him to give them more income before getting banned.

I want to make sure and stress that people remember vividly how banning KCI did nothing to change or improve the overall landscape of Modern. And that removing Hogaak won't magically make Modern a wondrous utopia. People were already running main deck Surgical Extraction before Hogaak was printed.

Emergency ban or not, Hogaak is taking the spotlight for a myriad of other problems that have been a slow boil for at least the last year. It's just easier to scapegoat a single deck, and convince ourselves that removing it will fix everything.

You are not going to find many who claim a Hogaak ban is going to fix anything.

You will find those who think we cant even kNOW until Hogaak is banned what is going on. At this point its irrelevant. If you are playing Modern to win, you play Hogaak until the 26th.

Any other choice is OBJECTIVELY wrong.

The Fluff wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I guess Hogaak has plot armor for being in a new product.
WoTC needs him to give them more income before getting banned.

I just want to say that this is not really a valid argument. If people know that the card will be banned anyway, and we know it by now more or less, why would they buy the product anyway?

MH1 sales are not driven by Hogaak, but by chase cards such as Force of Negation, Urza, and W6. Hogaak has a price trend of not even 6$ in MCM, none in their right mind would invest in him at this point. People would (and will) continue buying MH1 even if the walking necropolis is banned.

I don't think the reason they are not banning him is financial. On the contrary, low GP attendance and bad press would hurt them more financially, than banning Hogaak. Without a statement, it's unclear as to why they choose to not emergency ban. I am sure the banning announcement will clear things up in that front.

cfusionpm wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I want to make sure and stress that people remember vividly how banning KCI did nothing to change or improve the overall landscape of Modern. And that removing Hogaak won't magically make Modern a wondrous utopia. People were already running main deck Surgical Extraction before Hogaak was printed.

Emergency ban or not, Hogaak is taking the spotlight for a myriad of other problems that have been a slow boil for at least the last year. It's just easier to scapegoat a single deck, and convince ourselves that removing it will fix everything.

I really don't think a lot of people believe any of this (see IDS's response below). I think the majority of people think Hogaak is a unique, singular issue that is so warping and dominant we have no idea what else is going on behind the Modern scenes. Any number of decks might be broken/not broken or viable/not viable in a no-Hogaak environment. We can't even begin to diagnose this until Hogaak is gone.

Also, I wish people would stop citing maindeck Extraction as a problem. It's no different from maindeck sweepers. It's a 1-3 bullet to deal with a huge subset of decks and a major resource.

idSurge wrote: ↑

4 years ago

You are not going to find many who claim a Hogaak ban is going to fix anything.

You will find those who think we cant even kNOW until Hogaak is banned what is going on. At this point its irrelevant. If you are playing Modern to win, you play Hogaak until the 26th.

Any other choice is OBJECTIVELY wrong.

I agree that everyone should play Hogaak or some tiered, anti-Hogaak deck (kind of like Affinity and Living End being viable choices in Eldrazi Winter). But yeah, just play Hogaak.

The only option I would consider is Mono R Phoenix/Prowess, everything else is too slow. Its funny actually I remember when UR Phoenix was just making its start, and the online meta was faster than Paper decks seeing play so I included Kiln Fiend as my other choice of creature.

Just like every Standard since the dawn of time. When the meta is in flux, you go fast and go at the face.

Ym1r wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I don't think the reason they are not banning him is financial. On the contrary, low GP attendance and bad press would hurt them more financially, than banning Hogaak. Without a statement, it's unclear as to why they choose to not emergency ban. I am sure the banning announcement will clear things up in that front.

I really think the only reason is because they don't want to establish a precedence for emergency banning cards. They did it once with Felidar Guardian and people were less than thrilled when it happened, not because it didn't deserve it, but because a lot of players thought it would be safe to buy into and keep using for another cycle. I doubt it's something they want to ever do again

ktkenshinx wrote: ↑

4 years ago

cfusionpm wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I want to make sure and stress that people remember vividly how banning KCI did nothing to change or improve the overall landscape of Modern. And that removing Hogaak won't magically make Modern a wondrous utopia. People were already running main deck Surgical Extraction before Hogaak was printed.

Emergency ban or not, Hogaak is taking the spotlight for a myriad of other problems that have been a slow boil for at least the last year. It's just easier to scapegoat a single deck, and convince ourselves that removing it will fix everything.

I really don't think a lot of people believe any of this (see IDS's response below). I think the majority of people think Hogaak is a unique, singular issue that is so warping and dominant we have no idea what else is going on behind the Modern scenes. Any number of decks might be broken/not broken or viable/not viable in a no-Hogaak environment. We can't even begin to diagnose this until Hogaak is gone.

There are a nonzero number of people across multiple platforms that have repeatedly said things like "Once Hogaak is gone, Modern will be great and healthy again." Which is somewhere between "whimsically optimistic" and "horrendously unlikely" in my view.

And much of that was based on the numerous people who said that once KCI was gone, Modern would be great and healthy again. When, instead, the format sped up its dive into graveyard degeneracy.

So people, and honestly I've only seen one in recent months, are just not honest. Its irrelevant what they think, because at this point, who knows? Nobody.

I think the funny thing here, is something BBD said when Jace was unbanned. Paraphrasing "Cards like this force us to become better deck builders, maybe Jace is fine, maybe he isnt, but the decks built to beat Jace, will push other decks out of the format".

Thats what Hogaak has contributed to. Thats what KCI contributed to, and its what decks like UW Walkers and Phoenix contributes to.

The other effect of Hogaak/Phoenix/Dredge, is that if you are building a deck which is GY-adjacent (I think thats a KtK phrase) you better be able to bring heat, or you are just setting yourself up to fail because of collateral hate against these big 3.

The meta is completely hosed now, and the fall set is soon upon us. We will have literally no clue what the War of the Spark/Horizon's meta would/could have looked like, because Throne is coming.

@ cfusionpm

Sometimes I suspect that you perceive a lack of outrage is equivalent to ignorance. Most of us have qualms with the format and I think most people here would agree that banning Hogaak isn't going to solve all of the problems of the format. Modern is more linear than most of us would like.

I'm also not sure that Modern can really backpedal to the days when Tron/Jund/Twin were the defining pillars of the format. I admit that I had more fun with the format back then, but I've since accepted that Modern will probably never be that again. Answers just haven't kept up with the level of threats that have come from the last few years. So, while I sometimes agree with your vision of the format (a format that's more based in interactive/reactive strategies and less skewed towards linearity), I just don't see it happening without a massive reformation of the entire format and a huge shift in card design and development moving forward.

I enjoy the format as is. I don't get to play the decks I REALLY want to play when I'm trying to be competitive, but there's still plenty of fun to be had in the format, even if it doesn't match the experience I used to have in the format.

Slightly off topic: I think this period of time is deserving of a name, like eldrazi winter or black summer from years past. I could think of any good names. Gaak summer? Arisen season? Summer of hogs? I think these are pretty bad, who has a good name?

metalmusic_4 wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Slightly off topic: I think this period of time is deserving of a name, like eldrazi winter or black summer from years past. I could think of any good names. Gaak summer? Arisen season? Summer of hogs? I think these are pretty bad, who has a good name?

I think in the future, just saying Hogaak will be clear of what we all mean

Simple Hogaak Summer, in alignment with Eldrazi Winter.

For the memes 'when we got Gaaked' or some such. :p

LeoTzu wrote: ↑

4 years ago

I enjoy the format as is. I don't get to play the decks I REALLY want to play when I'm trying to be competitive, but there's still plenty of fun to be had in the format, even if it doesn't match the experience I used to have in the format.

Forgive the slight tangent, but I think the problem is similar to what is happening in Formula 1 racing over the past several years. Yes, there is still plenty of fun to be had with less than top deck, just as there is excellent racing in the midfield pack of cars. But the discrepancy and power difference between those midfield cars and the top of the pack is staggeringly excessive. Nobody from the midfield is putting up any meaningful fight to the front runners. And even among the front runners (Merc, RBR, Ferrari), there is a laughably huge gap that Mercedes has had on all other teams for six years now. The only time we see an interesting race is when a Merc has some sort of failure or massive mechanical problems, or if the cameras literally just ignore them and watch the more interesting battles happening between RBR and Ferrari, or any number of the really tightly-clustered midfielders; all vying for precious points in a razor-close battle.

What we have in Modern is a divide between the top decks and "the rest" that seems similar. The power level of the best decks is so astronomically higher than "the rest" that it requires the baked-in variance of our game to allow these to have any meaningful success outside of their own tier level.

If I had to complete the analogy, "Graveyard abuse" decks are the Mercedes of Modern. If you aren't doing this, you are choosing to play something that is objectively weaker or less powerful overall, even if just by a little. They have been a menace that have collectively dominated Modern for a year. Then you have your Ferraris and Red Bulls in UW, Jund, Tron variants, Humans, Burn again apparently. And then you have the "piles of cards" that happen to 5-0 a League that people use to justify Modern's 'health' and 'diversity' that routinely get chewed up and spit out of any remotely competitive event the majority of time.* The same ones that are so hilariously outclassed by pretty much anything that Ferrari/RBR are doing, never mind Mercedes. Those are the ones which make for great gameplay, interesting lines, interactive back-and-forths, etc. At least it's better than the Mercedes line of "Did one of the Mercs crash?" which is the Magic equivalent of "Does player A have their hate card? Y/N. Does player B have their anti-hate card? Y/N."
*again, this is a game of large variance and anything can happen to any deck.

This is all kind of rambling, but the parallels were hard for me to ignore. Perhaps I would hold different feelings if the top decks of the format promoted good gameplay, instead of linear racing, hope-to-dodge-or-destroy-hate-card, and prison lock pieces. One can only hope that Jund comes and saves us from this nightmare. Its resurgence gives lots of hope, but he needs his blue-red buddy cop to return and help!

For the time period name I'm a fan of Hogaak Hoedown. Doesn't indicate a particular period of time but I love me some alliteration. I'd say Hogaak Hour, but the lack of phonetic alliteration bugs me

cfusionpm wrote: ↑

4 years ago

What we have in Modern is a divide between the top decks and "the rest" that seems similar. The power level of the best decks is so astronomically higher than "the rest" that it requires the baked-in variance of our game to allow these to have any meaningful success outside of their own tier level.

Definitely agree here. Very few people really talk about the 'Winners Meta' but its a thing.

I agree with those saying there was never much chance of emergency ban, they can't set a precedent like that. Every annoying deck for the next 5 years will have the rabble clamoring for an emergency ban. That why I was thinking we might be in for some "apology unbans".

robertleva wrote: ↑

4 years ago

That why I was thinking we might be in for some "apology unbans".

I've had my paper stockpile for years, but picked this up the other day... "just in case"...

robertleva wrote: ↑

4 years ago

Every annoying deck for the next 5 years will have the rabble clamoring for an emergency ban. That why I was thinking we might be in for some "apology unbans".

There's a difference between 'wow GDS/Humans/KCI/InsertTier1DeckHere is annoying' and 'Well we already banned a piece, and this deck absolutely slaughtered an event where the meta was expecting it...what now'.

Regardless, wont happen. A few apology unban's would be just great.

I feel like we are all waiting for the Hogaak ban. The format is pretty stagnant until then and not a real reflection of the meta. My LCS cancelled Modern FNM's until the B&R announcement because almost nobody was attending.