Big Changes with Hogaak, Stoneforge, and Vintage
- Derek Gill Holden Gabriel
- Sep 4, 2019
- 3 min read
This ban and restricted list update that came out last week is just surprising to almost everyone. Banning Hogaak wasn’t much of a surprise but Faithless Looting? Did it really deserve the ban? Other surprising news: Ferocidon unbanned in standard (a month before rotation), SFM unbanned (thanks to Pleasant Kenobi being so vocal about it), and a bunch of Karn pieces restricted in Vintage with unrestricting Fastbond.
First, the end of Hogaak Summer. This was the least surprising news to come out of the B&R announcement. Some people (including myself) expected the banned card from the deck to be Stitcher's Supplier, others thought Altar, others thought Looting (which they got but that’s for later). Hogaak was the most dominant deck in the format since it was printed. It has been more prominent than Splinter Twin when it was banned for “homogenizing the format” and it won roughly the same amount as Pod when it was banned, except for the fact that Hogaak decks are much easier to pilot and required a lot less testing with the deck to learn how to play it. This deck made a lot of people want to quit playing Modern, and the banning of this card made even more people happy to play Modern than it drove away. On Twitter yesterday, there were people posting about playing Modern decks that have stopped playing the format years ago. A lot of people who are going to be picking up their old decks talked about how happy they were to finally be able to play them again. A lot of archetypes are viable again thanks to the slowing down of the format back to a more comfortable “Turn 4 format” (which is still yet to be seen due to WhirUrza and NeoShoalBrand being popular). Overall I think everyone is glad to see Hogaak on the list.
Faithless Looting though? I’m not going to talk about this because Andrew talked a lot about it already and we share fairly similar views on this. I do disagree with this decision.
Stoneforge Mystic is unbanned. Stoneforge might make WhirUrza, Humans, and WU Control a little bit better but it doesn’t make the format worse. I think that this is going to be a healthy addition to the format, the same way Bloodbraid Elf and Jace, the Mind Sculptor were when they got unbanned. This card allows for a lot of brewing and new deck archetypes to get tested (my favorite being Death and Taxes) which is very important to being an appeal for the format.
Should anything else have been banned or unbanned? Definitely. People argue that either Karn or Lattice should have been banned for being too much of a lock that doesn’t win you the game, there’s also an argument to be made for unbanning Bridge From Below because Hogaak was leaving (and in hindsight Bridge is more than safe to comeback after Faithless Looting was dropped). A lot of people also wanted there to be some kind of fix with Wrenn and Six and little Narset in both Modern and Legacy. The biggest surprise that nothing was changed was in Legacy, where the previously named cards are making the format less diverse and making Wasteland too good. The next B&R announcement is October 7th.
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