#hogaak

[niuttuc]

The Graveyard Gang

Did you know Golgari likes the graveyard? Read the cards carefully next time you face a golgari deck, and you might notice it. As a result, a lot of Golgari commanders like the graveyard a whole lot, and specifically creatures being in there. So I made a deck for them, a deck that can use any of its ten commanders, randomly selected before each game. And their companion, Umori, just to make deckbuilding a bit spicier. Here's the gang as a whole!

They all have equal chance of leading the deck every game, and even if they don't show up in the command zone, they'll be somewhere in the 99. They're all in special versions when possible and all in foil, the only foils in the deck, as to be able to find them easily when sifting through the deck to pick one at random before every game. They're of differing power levels, but that's fine! If you end up rolling one that's too strong or weak for the table, you could always reroll, or worse, pick one of them, but that's less fun.

As far as strategies, we're playing only creatures, so I wanted to lean onto creatures that get really strong from having many of them in the graveyard, so there's lot of that! Their large bodies are our wincons, either through regular attacks or throwing them at people's faces with Jarad.

Of course, we're playing commander, so we're also eating our veggies, with plenty of ramp, card advantage, interaction, and in this case, self-mill.

This deck WILL fold like wet paper in games featuring plenty of graveyard hate, but that's the life of a graveyard deck. And we can survive a reasonable amount of it. Just don't get your graveyard exiled when it's your entire library, before you can recycle it with Endurance.

Speaking of, Endurance is here as a safety valve. If we do our plan TOO well and end up milling out, like this deck is known to do on occasion, the combination of Genesis triggering on our upkeep and Endurance having flash can ensure we shuffle our graveyard into our library to avoid dying. We may have a lot of work to do once again milling all that, and a couple */*s may die, but that's a worthwhile price to stay alive.

Is Umori optimal for this deck? No, I haven't used it once. But this is a deck with ten commanders all wanting slightly different things and trying to be alright with all of them. We're not here for optimal.

[genderstormwrites]

I'm dating Hogaak and no one can stop me.

CONCEPT: dating sim with the cards that have broken or menaced their respective formats

Eligible bachelors including but by no means limited to:

(Thrasios and Tymna are also included, but polyamory is mandatory with them, you have to be their third)

[reuxben]

Here’s our MTGinktober for “Horizon,” starring Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis; Grief (Campbell White Special Guest version); Fury (Campbell White Special Guest version); Arcum's Astrolabe; and Nadu, Winged Wisdom! get baN or get out

Click this post’s Source link for this piece’s Making-Of.

More MTGinktober here.

Daily art updates on Instagram, Twitter, and Bluesky.

Reuxben

[markrosewater]

Hi Mark,

Just a small message in relation to today's banned announcements.

I understand that isn't fully your area, but both MH2 and MH3 have had a card banned due to it being designed for Commander and ending up too good.

Will Hogaak and now Nadu help R&D learn that Commander doesn't need to have its influence in everything?

The aim of a card's design has *zero* to do with whether or not the card ends up balanced or not.

[mtg-talk]

Ho-Ho-Hogaak, the holiday card for this year has arrived!

[jeskaim]

Commander Bans

I wasn't initially planning on posting about this but it's just so controversial I felt like I had to. Yesterday when I woke up to the news I was shocked to say the least. This past month I spent $3000 on a cEDH Birgi, God of Storytelling deck with three out of four of these cards and to say I was upset would be an understatement. I've seen a lot of people on Facebook and Instagram either celebrating the bans or, like me, expressing how bummed they are that they spent hundreds of dollars on cards for their commander decks that they can't play. I got into cEDH a few years ago with Narset and Yisan and was excited to add Birgi to my list so I decided to go all out to make it as fast and as efficient as possible. With that I decided to splurge for Dockside Extortionist, Mana Crypt, and Jeweled Lotus along with other mana rocks like Mox Diamond and Mana Vault. For Narset and Yisan I know what to replace the Lotus and Crypt with but Birgi is a little harder to find replacements since the best substitutes are already in the deck. I'm thinking about Springleaf Drum as a substitute for one of the artifacts and a cheap cantrip like Academic Dispute (I'm not sure if it technically counts as a cantrip since it lets you discards and draw with the learn mechanic and doesn't replace itself). For now I replaced Dockside Extortionist with Simian Spirit Guide which I think is good enough but I also ordered a Walking Ballista and Ragavan as other possible replacements.

For me this feels bittersweet because on one hand my cEDH decks suffered a major blow but at the same time it slowed them down enough so that more casual decks can compete better. I guess I'm just upset that I spent $400 on cards for my Birgi deck that I can't use anymore and they synergized so much with her. There's still a SLIGHT chance they'll be unbanned after the backlash so I'm going to keep them. I've seen a lot of people say they're going to keep playing with them anyway with rule 0 in casual games since Wizards doesn't care about them.

For Nadu it's just another Oko and Hogaak situation and shows that every few years Wizards prints a card that's so OP they don't know it until after it's been released. Considering how much havoc it's been causing in Modern I would say it was a good call, especially with the larger card pool in commander. Apologies to anyone who built Nadu as a commander.

And The One Ring is still $100 and is played in almost every deck in Modern.

[inventors-fair]

From Nothing, Victory: The Origin Winners

~

Our winners this week are @genericaura, @horsecrash, and @nicolbolas96!

@genericaura — Nilix, Scholar of Nothing

First up is this curious specimen, taking a distinctly mathematical approach to the idea. D'you think their associates ever tease them about their title? At any rate, this is a fascinating piece of design. Copying spells is by no means untrodden ground in these colors, but the requirement for the spell to have been free is such a bizarre wrinkle that I can't help but be enthralled. It's a pretty hefty buy-in to get the effect online, too, so the card feels more fair than you'd think something centered around cheating mana costs to be. There's a decent amount of depth to the use cases, too. Sure, chaining this into a Mind's Desire is positively rapturous, but there are plenty of spells that are already free, or cast something for nothing as more of a formality, and suddenly those become worth their weight in gold. This really got the wheels in my head turning, and I can't really ask for more. Although, it is kind of odd to have a bird without flying. An ostrich aven, perhaps? That's just nitpicking, though. Good show!

@horsecrash — Hogaak, Tide of the Dead

Hogaak's back, baby! And hopeful not about to ruin a format this time. I saw a design like this tossed around several times this week, a card with a cost reduction mechanic that gets a bonus if you manage to shave it down to zero. None of them require quite this much reduction, though! The chance to get a huge beater that also traumatizes you (which is a sentence I don't get to say often) is a supremely tasty carrot on the end of the stick, though, and it sets my self-mill loving heart aflutter. Consume makes a fascinating companion to convoke here (although I'd also be interested in seeing what you can do with it by itself), allowing a real scale of quite how hard you want to commit. That's assuming you want the mill in the first place; an 8/8 trampler on the cheap is nothing to turn your nose up at. I appreciate the reminder text clearing up any confusion around the intersection of the mechanics, and I could see plenty of times when you'd rather tap but not sacrifice something. I'm not quite as sure about the inverse, but it's always good to keep the option open. My one concern is that the fact that any way to get this onto the battlefield without casting it (so reanimation, blink, or what have you) also counts for the effect feels a bit against the spirit of the card, but it's hardly a dealbreaker.

@nicolbolas96 — Desperate Necromage

Yeesh, desperate is right! This is one of those beautiful cards that completely reshapes the game around itself the second your opponent is aware of it, because now every single decision they make has to be made in respect to it. Cards with both first strike in deathtouch can often be unblockable if they don't give your opponent a compelling reason to interact with them, and while that's true of this for most of the game, boy does that flip on its head the second your life hits zero. It really does crystalize that feeling of being on the brink of death, but just one more good hit and you can take them out! I do really think the life loss on attack is deceptively important here. Obviously it advances the card's win condition, but by doing that it encourages you to be aggressive with a card that would otherwise sit back as a deterring blocker. Even more than that it introduces a real sense of riskiness, because if this is removed too early, even before you hit zero, you can suddenly find yourself in a very bad position. After all, a deck designed to lower your life total probably isn't packing many tools to raise it, and the lower you go, the more risk you run of being abruptly blown out. All in all, this is the kind of intersection of flavor and gameplay that just captivates me.

Runners-up to follow shortly, then commentary (hopefully) later today. See you then!

@spooky-bard

[calamarimo]

Been having tons of fun with MTG lately with a format I think a friend of mine either made up or saw online, where it's full power vintage EXCEPT you can only spend 30 bucks max on your entire deck.

So far I've fucked around with affinity for artifacts (busted as fuck) and Hogaak (very hard to squeeze under 30 dollars, currently jank but there's still room for improvement)

[nitroedh]

⚫️🟢

Grist, the Hunger Tide with Umori as their Companion! It’s a slight rebuild of a Hogaak deck I had in mind. It revolves around having a huge graveyard full of creatures. Utility creatures in the graveyard can be reanimated to be recycled!

[zoydraft]

ML's Sultai Hogaak, December 29, 2024.

Is this the draft where ML learns it's time to stop forcing Sultai?

Killing Hive of the Eye Tyrant with Fatal Push and felt so good.

Dumpy little Doomed Necromancer took part in some really lovely sequencing with Hogaak. Well-played by ML, and I like seeing that the card can be relevant.

I liked the willingness to play Hydras for low X-values, especially in a deck that looks like a classic Gx ramp deck. Sometimes that's the right play.

I need to take a second to defend Sidisi. Yes, Sidisi is a bit of a Lunchable, but she's one of the most elegant Lunchables around. When I hacked and slashed this cube to focus more on atomic effects, I realized I went too far, and didn't give people enough dreams to envision. Sidisi is a fun card that also serves as an accessibility aid. You get Sidisi, you have a plan (until you get punched in the face).

[walcutt]

DECK TECH - 8Trap, or 8Crab, or 8Rav

Against all odds, got first place at the league AGAIN. This deck has some similarities to last week's, but actually has remarkably little overlap in cards-played (just 4x Prismatic, 3x Harrow). Again, we're playing off of the creature-axis to throw off our opponents. Unlike last week though, we don't want to play a long game. We want to mill our opponent's deck as fast as possible!

There's 3.... or, 3.5 cores to this deck.

CORE I: 8Crab

This has been a staple tier-2 core in the format since before I joined in. Hedron Crab + Fetches has been a rogue staple since it was printed back in Zendikar. Fetchlands are the best fixing in our format anyways, so we're happy to play 12 to double the effectiveness of our little critters. Snow Crab is much worse, but is a good blocker and still helps us count to 60. We play snow lands for him.

CORE II: Removal

We don't play a ton of removal, but we have some primo shit. Dead of Winter is an extremely powerful wipe, and was quite prevalent before there was a ban on Arcum's Astrolabe. However, even labeless, it helps us clear threatening early boards and give us time to win. We're playing snow anyways, and it doesn't even kill our best blockers. Speaking of anyways, because the format only has enemy fetches, both our blue and black fetches overlap on green, making the splash for Abrupt Decay just kind of fall out of the manabase on its own. It's a pretty key card for hitting noncreature threats like Aria of Flame, Oath of Druids, or Survival of the Fittest.

CORE III: 8Trap

Archive trap is our heaviest mill-hitter in the deck. Slamming in for a whopping 13 cards, a playset of these literally wins the game on their own. Sadly, we can't draw all of them. However..... we can search for more! Trapmaker's snare is my new spin on some old Archive Trap/Crab lists, effectively doubling our reach of Archive Traps for the low cost of 2 mana. Since fetchlands are dominating the manabases of FS7, it's almost always a freecast, or the hardcast will win in the endgame.

CORE III.5: 8Trap, Part 2, AKA 8Rav

Now.... since we're playing a trap tutor, we might as well play some more.... and there's plenty of pretty good pieces for a toolbox! Lethargy and Ravenous are the clear winners here, with the former shoring up aggro matchups considerably, and the latter hosing the numerous graveyard decks that would otherwise only be fed by us. Usually, these would all be sideboard options, but we get the chance to pre-board them, gaining us some game-1 wins.

SIDEBOARD

Our sideboard consists of 3 more copies of each of the above traps, as well as 3x Grafdiggers Cage. Cage primarily is here to stop Oath of Druids and Hogaak, but helps a bit against some prominent Green Sun's Zenith and Flashback plays. Notably, each trap in the sideboard has an amplified presence due to the tutor -- after board, we can effectively play 8 copies of Ravenous Trap, truly shredding the many, many decks weak to it in the format.

[celibateweedeater]

expanding on those tags, i wonder if there's a good mage/brawler type class as a mod for ToME. Because I now really really wanna as a jacked spellcaster. Unfortunately, ToME antimagic abilities totally lock you out of anything magic, so none of that.

That specific idea, of a hybrid brawler/spellcaster casting antimagic zone against other mages and beating the shit out of them, is so so good and really activates me. Its so cool when you have a global effect that substantially hurts you, but you use it anyway because it hurts the opponent more. itd be like a hogaak deck running rest in peace against another, more degenerate graveyard deck*, and just opting for straight beatdown strats. its so cool.

and just generally i love any deck/build/class/whatever that's flexible enough to completely shift playstyle depending on your opponent. its why Sun Paladin appeals to me so much where Arcane Blade doesnt in ToME, even though they're both ostensibly melee/magic hybrids. Arcane Blade just uses flurry and blows up whoever they're looking at, all the time. Sunpal is a lot more dynamic, particularly because of Path of Light, my favorite talent in the whole game. It does so much, but most of all, when used well, it enables Sunpal to be at whatever range it wants to be, all the time. And in a game where positioning is this important, that's a very good ability to have.

Anyway, the point is, i love being able to adapt my playstyle based on the opponent's weaknesses, and i really love hurting myself in order to hurt the opponent more - see also, Lilliana of the Veil in classical Modern Jund, where you get it so ur both topdecking, but your cards are individually stronger than theirs so you have the advantage.

*i have a vague memory of something like this actually happening. but leyine of the void exists so idk why hogaak would do that, also i think hogaak's not usually white. idk you get the idea. leyline of the void is stupid, total shutdown hate cards like that should be symmetric, make things interesting. Luv u Thalia Guardian of Thraben

[foxgirlintestines]

Weird MtG trivia? Time for me to shine. For those curious (please answer it first before looking):

Epic mechanic (Don't talk to me or my Never-Ending Torment prison deck ever again)

Harness Infinity (We have Praetor's Council at home)

Aeon Engine (there is also an Un card that does this but doesn't have the correct wording. Honestly was thinking of the un card and was surprised there is one in black border)

The correct answer. There are cards that refer to your opponents losing the game, but there are no conditional effects based on this.

The Millennium Calendar (only knew this because it's pretty new and was memed on)

Lich (The original effect from Alpha that has spawned many other effects to exchange your life total for another metric to determine if you are alive. Lich + Mirror Universe was a silly jank deck once)

Pain's Reward (people have tried to make this card work in Legacy storm shells, but it's just awful)

The Foretold Soldier and Etherial Valkyrie (I only remembered it being a pun from the Doctor Who set but turns out there is a second card with this text too)

Imperial Mask (We had to make due before Leyline of Sanctity was printed in places where Solitary Confinement was not legal. I have never seen this card actually make tokens)

Opposition Agent (There are many opponent controlling effects but only this one controls all opponents instead of controlling target player/opponent)

Disciple of Caelus Nin (for some reason WotC really wanted phasing to be a thing again)

Hogaak (This card is so infamous that TCGPlayer advertised that they would give everyone a bigger store credit back discount if it was banned on the first banlist announcement since it was printed. Without surprise, the Arisen Necropolis was put to rest instantly after terrorizing Modern and becoming one of the poster children of WotC's current era of wild power creep in card design alongside Oko and Uro) btw, if you want proof of that last one, I saved their promotion page for the sale:

Weird Magic: the Gathering effects: Second edition

A couple months back, I ran a poll where people guessed which of a bunch of weird MTG effects wasn't real. It was fun, so we're running it back with a second batch of weird things.

As last time, only the current text of effects is used, not necessarily the one printed on the card. Limited to cards that exist in paper, and are legal to play in at least some tournament formats. Though this time, I did expand a bit to rules that aren't directly on the cards, but might be part of the full rules text of keywords from the comprehensive rules, and then those keywords are on cards.

Have fun!

[mtg-official]

Hogaak comeback

[mtgdays]

Single Scoop: Boros Convoke Works in Explorer!

The Boros Convoke deck has been dubbed "Hogaak" of Pioneer so naturally we had to see if the hilarity works in Explorer as well without Bushwhacker……and it does! Source: MTG GOLD FISH

[inventors-fair]

The Origin Entries (1-9 of 22)

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@bergdg — Pact of Annihilation @curiooftheheart — Belzym, Veteran Grafter @genericaura — Nilix, Scholar of Nothing @hanavesinauttija — Rogkhar, Kher Keep Raid Leader @helloijustreadyourpost — Mindbreak Phoenix @horsecrash — Hogaak, Tide of the Dead @hypexion — Spectral Host Prelate @izzet-always-r-versus-u — Indulgence @jestingmaniac — Sanity Blast