GB Vengevine [Hogaak Placeholder Thread]

[Hanni]

Yeah, the first land is awesome, the 2nd land is useful, the 3rd land is dissapointing. The best use after the initial push is to pump Rootwallas and maybe cast a Troll. Wasteland can be annoying, but it isn't lights out. I do feel more comfortable with 14 lands.

I tested 4 games against UB Shadow, ended up going 3-1. Lotleth Troll went way up in my esteem, the regenerate in a non-Swords to Plowshare matchup is pretty damn awesome. The trample is really great, too. He's bigger than everything except a late game Shadow, and honestly I was just jamming my stuff against it to push through damage.

I have yet to play a Stain the Mind...I think right now I'm leaning towards sideboard tech. I kinda want some removal in the maindeck, some kind of 1 mana hard removal, or maybe even Lightning Bolts. So hard to squeeze it in, but it answers Delver, Arcanist, Death&Taxes.dec, Stoneforge (batterskull can be hard to race if they get it onboard fast enough), and most other early creatures. So I'm thinking of jamming Bolts in the main or side. And they go to the face.

I think Ruthless Sniper is the best removal option for the maindeck, but Fiery Temper or Dark Withering could be cool non-creature options since they discard with Madness to reduce the cost of Hollow One and synergize well with Faithless Looting.

I'm still of the mind (pun intended) that maindeck discard with sideboard removal is the better plan overall, but I'm sure it is also metagame dependent.

[Mr. Safety]

I think Ruthless Sniper is the best removal option for the maindeck, but Fiery Temper or Dark Withering could be cool non-creature options since they discard with Madness to reduce the cost of Hollow One and synergize well with Faithless Looting.

I'm still of the mind (pun intended) that maindeck discard with sideboard removal is the better plan overall, but I'm sure it is also metagame dependent.

That's probably correct. I find myself always trying to shoehorn Bolts into any deck that plays red. Old habit.

Edit: I think there is an argument for Bolts over Firestorm in the sideboard. It leaves it more flexible, that way we are controlling the tempo of the game rather than opponents. We really won't ever play the control role very well. Bolt still deals with Priest and other hate bears, clears blockers, and gives reach.

I'm looking for something to break this wide open, something that pushes this over the top. Right now it's good, but I really think it could go to another level. Something that gives everything flying (maybe Wonder), unblockable, an Overrun effect, something that is more than just vanilla beaters.

[Hanni]

Firestorm is a pretty strong card in the matchups we want it for, where Lightning Bolt doesn't do enough, like against Elves. It's still really strong against Infect, D&T, Goblins, etc. I'm not sure that we need to bring it in against Delver, but it's still pretty strong there too if it doesn't eat a Force of Will. Firestorm can also go to the face as reach. I definitely think it's the strongest removal option we have access to. It can kill multiple creatures for a single mana.

I can't run Anger or Wonder with my manabase, but I had considered it before, especially in the Gamble list.

I think I'm pretty okay with the overall power level of the deck right now. The deck has the speed and disruption to race other combo decks, and the threats are sticky enough to out grind the fair matchups where we may get slowed down due to their interaction. I think Stain the Mind solves a lot of problems too.

[Mr. Safety]

I didn't like being 1-2 damage short in some races, especially against Depths. Karakas and maybe Edicts in the board might solve that.

Curious about flamewake Phoenix, have you tried it?

Also Shared Discovery seems good, going with the theme of using the creatures for added value a-la-Stain the Mind.

[Hanni]

I didn't like being 1-2 damage short in some races, especially against Depths. Karakas and maybe Edicts in the board might solve that.

Curious about flamewake Phoenix, have you tried it?

Also Shared Discovery seems good, going with the theme of using the creatures for added value a-la-Stain the Mind.

I have quite a bit in the board for Depths. Aside from the obvious Tomak and Karakas, I also have Thoughtseize and Firestorm. Being able to discard/exile Crop Rotation and Vampire Hexmage slows them down a lot, as does killing Elvish Reclaimer. They can still assemble natural Marit Lage, but that plan is slower, and we should be capable of racing if we can interact. I used to have Pithing Needle in the board too, but I cut it for Ruthless Sniper. I'd probably bring in the Ruthless Sniper against Slow Depths, although that matchup is much less dangerous.

Flamewake Phoenix has the same problem that Gravecrawler has; it costs 1 mana. It's better than Gravecrawler at being a better body, but it also doesn't trigger Vengevine the same. It's also continually, wear Gravecrawler can be cast from hand. I had considered Flamewake, but the mana cost is why I'm uninterested.

Shared Discovery could be good, but we do need to limit the amount of "Convoke" cards we are running, because we don't want to be tapping instead of attacking multiple turns in a row. Right now my Looting list has 2 Stain the Mind and 1 Hogaak; I think 3 is probably the most of those effects that we would want to run. I might ultimately just move back to 3 Stain the Mind and 0 Hogaak, but I just don't know yet. I do think I would rather run Stain the Mind over Shared Discovery, at any rate. Not to say that drawing 3 cards isn't good, but if we have 4 creatures to tap, we probably don't need to draw more cards as much as we would like to disrupt our opponent so that the creatures we do have can seal the deal.

[Mr. Safety]

I have quite a bit in the board for Depths. Aside from the obvious Tomak and Karakas, I also have Thoughtseize and Firestorm. Being able to discard/exile Crop Rotation and Vampire Hexmage slows them down a lot, as does killing Elvish Reclaimer. They can still assemble natural Marit Lage, but that plan is slower, and we should be capable of racing if we can interact. I used to have Pithing Needle in the board too, but I cut it for Ruthless Sniper. I'd probably bring in the Ruthless Sniper against Slow Depths, although that matchup is much less dangerous.

Flamewake Phoenix has the same problem that Gravecrawler has; it costs 1 mana. It's better than Gravecrawler at being a better body, but it also doesn't trigger Vengevine the same. It's also continually, wear Gravecrawler can be cast from hand. I had considered Flamewake, but the mana cost is why I'm uninterested.

Shared Discovery could be good, but we do need to limit the amount of "Convoke" cards we are running, because we don't want to be tapping instead of attacking multiple turns in a row. Right now my Looting list has 2 Stain the Mind and 1 Hogaak; I think 3 is probably the most of those effects that we would want to run. I might ultimately just move back to 3 Stain the Mind and 0 Hogaak, but I just don't know yet. I do think I would rather run Stain the Mind over Shared Discovery, at any rate. Not to say that drawing 3 cards isn't good, but if we have 4 creatures to tap, we probably don't need to draw more cards as much as we would like to disrupt our opponent so that the creatures we do have can seal the deal.

I ended up taking out 4x Faithless Looting for 2x Gamble, 1x Shared Discovery, 1x Stain the Mind. In the testing I evaluated when I drew either Discovery/Stain which one would be better in the given situation, and without fail Stain was always a better option. If we aren't attacking we need to be winning on a different axis; Stain does that, Discovery doesn't. If we somehow were able to swing a mid-range, blue-based Hollow-Vine plan then Shared Discovery could be a split set with Stain 2/2, but I don't think that's good enough ATM. We would need a lot of things to make that work, like a metagame where the only hate is Surgical Extraction or it's slow enough give time for that kind of value. We don't play control very well, so we need to be racing in almost every matchup. Gamble was frustrating, for 2 reasons: I discarded the first card I tutored and I actually didn't need anything specific at the time because I already had an enabler on the battlefield. I didn't have enough gas to grab a Vengevine and get it back so the only good options were a Hollow One (and hope to keep it), Cabal Therapy, or Bloodghast. Bloodghast would help to trigger the Amalgam in my hand, but I didn't have a land drop to trigger it. It was R: get some dudes in the next few turns. Gamble does give an automatic -2 to the cost of Hollow One, so that's a big point in it's favor. Therapy could have been useful if I needed disruption, but do we need more than 4 Therapy? Gamble is a nuanced card, for sure. There aren't directly correlated uses that I have learned yet, the patterns are just too foreign to me. Looting is so much more direct, without any real guessing. It doesn't mean Looting is bad, it means Looting is easier to play. Hogaak may be a missing element here because if that were available I 100% would have gotten him with Gamble. One red mana for a potential 8/8 trampler the next turn is an awesome back-up plan.

I'm really enjoying the deck with Faithless Looting, but I don't think it's enough to feed Hogaak. If we were miraculously able to work in a set of Street Wraith it would be easy. When I was testing Gurmag Angler/Death's Shadow/Daze I would often have a Gurmag and a Shadow by turn 2, about 60-65% of the time. I had one or the other by turn 2 in almost every game. I didn't worry so much about getting free Hollow Ones because the tradeoff instead of a Hollow One was a 5/5 or better with Angler or Shadow. I was much more vulnerable to spot removal but more consistently putting pressure. In that setup, Daze was *incredibly* good, but it was essentially UB Shadow with extra steps and less interaction. I liked having sideboarded Forces and the lower dependency on the graveyard. However, it didn't have the explosive nature that our current setup provideds. Giving up Tireless Tribe was probably incorrect, I was leaning on Wraith/Careful Study/Imp which is a slower approach than having Imp/Tribe/OUaT (to find Imp/Tribe.) That's a long-winded way of saying that Daze performed exceptionally well in the deck if it can be supported, but it's incredibly difficult to get in there without compromising some aspect. I would never be able to squeeze in Daze plus Shared Discovery, there just isn't enough room. At that point I would have to cut Lotus Petal, and I don't think that's smart. So to justify Daze, I would need fetch/duals and another payoff (because mana gets worse.) With Careful Study, Prized Amalgam, and Daze x3 that's 11 maindeck blue cards. To me, that's borderline enough to justify 3x Force of Will, especially if I can work in some additional utility blue cards in the board to feed it like Chain of Vapor, Mindbreak Trap, or Misdirection. The blue angle is appealing, for sure, it's just a lot less reliable than the rainbow lands and having more explosive options open. In magical Christmas-land I would have my explosive Vengevine deck with 10 power on turn 1 with Daze backup and a fallback Shadow in the mid-game. EDIT: If I make sure to have 5-6 fetches in the deck, I could always sideboard a blue dual land alongside Daze. Adding a land to the sideboard is something on my mind already, just for the Delver/D&T/Wasteland matchups.

After all that word salad, this is where I'm at currently: I want to try Hogaak with Gamble. So -4 Looting, +2 Gamble, +1 Hogaak, +1 Stain the Mind. Gamble's ability to tutor for disruption (stain/therapy) really puts it in contention for the deck. I need to connect the dots on lines of play, learn how to use it properly to see if it's good enough. As you mentioned earlier, having access to silver bullets could be good (Sniper, Vengeful Pharoah, Hogaak come to mind.) It sounds counterintuitive, but Gamble *may* be better at enabling a 1off Hogaak better than Looting. In the mid-game it isn't hard to assemble 2 creatures and enough graveyard fodder to feed Hogaak, which can strain opponent's resources after dealing with the first wave. Sideboard cards get a little tricky, just because discarding them randomly with Gamble could be an auto-loss unless we actively want it in the graveyard (or have mana to pull off a trick like Big Game Hunter.) We wouldn't be able to cast Hogaak multiple times, but that wouldn't be our goal anyways.

[Hanni]

I really want Hogaak to work in here, but it never makes sense over Stain the Mind. It's a midrange finisher in a deck that doesn't need a midrange finisher. We don't have the graveyard resources to delve 5, so we're almost always tapping down a board of creatures that could be attacking to add another creature to the board.

Hogaak is bad in the combo matchups. In the matchups where you would think you would want it, where the ground can get stalled and you'd want a big trampler, like Elves and D&T, I'd still rather cast Stain the Mind. Against Elves, we'd like to attack their hand or remove Craterhoof. Against D&T, we want to deal with Swords to Plowshares and Stoneforge Mystic/Batterskull, and they have Karakas for Hogaak.

I'm not sure if 2 or 3 Stain the Mind is correct, but I just cannot justify Hogaak over Stain the Mind, so if nothing else, I need to cut Hogaak.

As far as Gamble vs Looting is concerned, I really think it needs a lot of playtesting. Gamble is higher risk but higher reward. Gamble can turn bad hands into good hands and good hands into great hands, but it can also discard the wrong card and ruin everything. Looting only grabs randoms off the top, but it draws two cards, which does actually do a lot for assembling a critical mass. Gamble let's you tutor for silver bullets. It's really a toss up.

I do appreciate the increased consistency that both Looting and Gamble add to the deck, so I do believe that either (or even a combination of both) are worth it. We're not sacrificing any core components that enable the broken turn 1's, and in lieu of options that do, they seem totally worth it.

I do still wish I had access to Ruthless Sniper in the maindeck, so right now I'm torn between cutting Hogaak for either the 3rd Stain the Mind or 1 Ruthless Sniper. I guess another option could be running a 3/2 or 4/1 split of Looting and Gamble (or vice versa). I'm still undecided.

EDIT: Daze does sound amazing, but I'm only running 12 lands, and 4 Cavern + 4 Undiscovered Paradise is pretty much non-negotiable for me, so I just don't think I could make it work. Chancellor of the Annex would be easier to run, but I don't think it makes sense in here, as we've already discussed before.

[FTW]

I think Faithless Looting is a lot better than Gamble for this strategy

It's basically "R: Draw 2 cards. You may cast 1-2 creatures from hand without paying their mana cost." That's extremely strong value.
Then it flashes back for 2R, which means you can either use it twice or you can pitch it to a discard outlet and still have the spell to use later.

Gamble is better in combo decks that abuse a specific degenerate combo piece, e.g. Echo of Eons or Underworld Breach, with highly skewed power level, where getting one engine card strongly outweighs any risk of losing anything else in your hand. I tested Gamble heavily in many combo decks. It performs best when it has <25% chance to do anything harmful to your hand (i.e. you don't care about discarding most of the cards as long as you get the card you wanted) and does something broken the rest of the time. It's much weaker in decks where there are certain cards you want to discard and others you want to keep in hand, since you have no control over the discard. It can backfire too often and just lose games. It's just bad in fair strategies, as card disadvantage and an unreliable tutor. This isn't quite a "fair" deck, and there are multiple cards we want to discard, but it's a bit of a hybrid between aggro and combo, and the power level is much flatter than engine-based decks like Echo or Breach.

Looting won't always find the exact card we want, but it digs into 2 new cards to increase the selection of cards we have access to. It can put 2 new useful cards in hand, something Gamble can never do, and performs better when the deck's average power level is flatter (i.e. there is no one broken card we want, and many draws are roughly equivalent in power). It doesn't excel at either digging for an answer or as a discard outlet, but it does a good job of playing a hybrid role for more grindy potential. It gives us the option to play slow through graveyard hate, and it can flashback to help us recover if the first wave is stopped.

There's a reason Faithless Looting is in almost every competitive Red GY-based deck in Modern and Legacy and was eventually banned from Modern. It's like the Brainstorm of these strategies, not degenerate or explosive but increasing card selection and consistency.

It could come down to player style. Some people prefer playing the lottery for the fastest explosive goldfish, accepting variance happens. Others prefer running card selection to reduce variance, at the cost of some explosiveness. Even with my combo decks, I usually end up running Xerox cantrips for card selection, so I'm biased. Others may try to run more explosive mana for turn 1 goldfishes. I run Brainstorm in any deck I can sneak it in. I like the dynamic decision trees offered by cantrips in real interactive games, but others enjoy the thrill of luck and explosiveness.

Edit: I guess you could run Gamble for PImp/Tribe, with that as the engine piece, willing to discard any other card (1 rainbow land is already in play). Is OUAT + Looting + London Mulligan already enough to find PImp/Tribe though? (without having the dead draw of Gamble when you already have an outlet). Needs testing.

[Hanni]

I think Faithless Looting is a lot better than Gamble for this strategy

It's basically "R: Draw 2 cards. You may cast 1-2 creatures from hand without paying their mana cost." That's extremely strong value.
Then it flashes back for 2R, which means you can either use it twice or you can pitch it to a discard outlet and still have the spell to use later.

Gamble is better in combo decks that abuse a specific degenerate combo piece, e.g. Echo of Eons or Underworld Breach, with highly assymetric power level, where getting one engine card strongly outweighs any risk of losing anything else in your hand. I tested Gamble heavily in many combo decks and ran odds on it. It performs best when it has <25% chance to do anything harmful to your hand (i.e. you don't care about discarding most of the cards as long as you get the card you wanted) and does something broken the rest of the time. It's much weaker in decks where there are certain cards you want to discard and others you want to keep in hand, since you have no control over the discard. It can backfire too often and just lose games. It's just bad in fair strategies, as card disadvantage and an unreliable tutor. This isn't quite a "fair" deck, and there are multiple cards we want to discard, but it's a bit of a hybrid between aggro and combo, and the power level is much flatter than engine-based decks like Echo or Breach.

Looting won't always find the exact card we want, but it digs into 2 new cards to increase the selection of cards we have access to. It can put 2 new useful cards in hand, something Gamble can never do, and performs better when the deck's average power level is flatter (i.e. there is no one broken card we want, and many draws are roughly equivalent in power). It doesn't excel at either digging for an answer or as a discard outlet, but it does a good job of playing a hybrid role for more grindy potential. It gives us the option to play slow through graveyard hate, and it can flashback to help us recover if the first wave is stopped.

There's a reason Faithless Looting is in almost every competitive Red GY-based deck in Modern and Legacy and was eventually banned from Modern. It's like the Brainstorm of these strategies, not degenerate or explosive but increasing card selection and consistency.

It could come down to player style. Some people prefer playing the lottery for the fastest explosive goldfish, accepting variance happens. Others prefer running card selection to reduce variance, at the cost of some explosiveness. Even with my combo decks, I usually end up running Xerox cantrips for card selection while others may try to run more explosive mana for turn 1 goldfishes. I run Brainstorm in any deck I can sneak it in. I like the dynamic decision trees offered by cantrips in real interactive games, but others enjoy the thrill of luck and explosiveness.
I tend to agree with you. Consistency is absolutely the intent of that card slot. However, this deck needs to assemble specific combinations of cards to make the hands work, so Gamble does add a ton of value in here for that. Discarding the wrong card is definitely a concern though, so it's probably correct to run Looting over Gamble. Whether or not to run both is still a legitimate question, IMO.

I'm perfectly fine with what Looting brings to the table. We are usually relying on our opening hand to be enough, and drawing 2 additional cards just makes it better.

I'm not ever expecting to have 3 mana available in a given game, but when it can be cast for the flashback cost, that is certainly a nice bonus.

I'm still not sure if my final flex slot should be a Ruthless Sniper, Stain the Mind, or Gamble. I'll think about it some more to try and figure this out. I'm leaning toward the 3rd Stain the Mind, but we'll see.

[Mr. Safety]

I tend to agree with you. Consistency is absolutely the intent of that card slot. However, this deck needs to assemble specific combinations of cards to make the hands work, so Gamble does add a ton of value in here for that. Discarding the wrong card is definitely a concern though, so it's probably correct to run Looting over Gamble. Whether or not to run both is still a legitimate question, IMO.

I'm perfectly fine with what Looting brings to the table. We are usually relying on our opening hand to be enough, and drawing 2 additional cards just makes it better.

I'm not ever expecting to have 3 mana available in a given game, but when it can be cast for the flashback cost, that is certainly a nice bonus.

I'm still not sure if my final flex slot should be a Ruthless Sniper, Stain the Mind, or Gamble. I'll think about it some more to try and figure this out. I'm leaning toward the 3rd Stain the Mind, but we'll see.

I am not convinced that 4x Faithless Looting is correct. I think it really shines on turns 3+, and I don't want to ever draw more than one. I really like 3x Faithless Looting, so that opens up a slot for Gamble if you're interested.

Here's another question: we accept that Lotleth Troll is a necessary part of the deck, but does it need to be maindeck? I have not had any issues finding a 1-mana discard outlet in about 30 games so far. I have had slower hands with Faithless Looting, but in those games I would rather Looting turn 1 than risk firing off a Petal/Troll into a Force (or Daze on the draw.) Could Troll be our sideboard beater in the mid-range matchups? Our enablers would be 4x Pimp/Tribe and 4x OUaT/Looting to find them or sculpt explosive t1-2's. I have the occasional hand where I play t1 Therapy into a t2 Troll, and that is much more resilient in the mid-rangey matchups, but it's definitely slower. I'm proposing that we find a way to shift Troll to the sideboard but actually play more of them, maybe even a full set. We could cut some number of the worst enabler in our deck given the matchup (Pimp or Tribe) and get a beefy trampler that dominates combat against non-StP decks. It slows us down, but we'll be going slower already, likely with more hand disruption. Post-board we don't necessarily need to play around hate with troll either; we can discard to make him beefy, even if we lose some value, and even Rootwalla still hits play (because Madness discards to exile, not the graveyard.)

So in the maindeck that frees up a couple slots to play around with, possibly to add silver bullets for Gamble or to add additional Stain the Mind.

Something like this:

13 Lands (I just can't cut to 12, sorry!)

4x Tribe/Pimp/Bloodghast/Vine/Hollow/Rootwalla/Amalgam
4x OUaT/Looting/Therapy/Petal
3x Stain the Mind

Sideboard (just a rough pass)
3x Force of Vigor
3x Lotleth Troll
2x Silent Gravestone
2x Firestorm
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Big Game Hunter
1x Thoughtseize

Additionally, if Stain the Mind isn't completely necessary in the maindeck it could be in the sideboard, opening up 3 slots for Daze (if we can somehow make this work I think it will bring a lot to the table.) EDIT: We could actually cut to 3x Looting and still cram in a maindeck Troll.

[Hanni]

I am not convinced that 4x Faithless Looting is correct. I think it really shines on turns 3+, and I don't want to ever draw more than one. I really like 3x Faithless Looting, so that opens up a slot for Gamble if you're interested.

Here's another question: we accept that Lotleth Troll is a necessary part of the deck, but does it need to be maindeck? I have not had any issues finding a 1-mana discard outlet in about 30 games so far. I have had slower hands with Faithless Looting, but in those games I would rather Looting turn 1 than risk firing off a Petal/Troll into a Force (or Daze on the draw.) Could Troll be our sideboard beater in the mid-range matchups? Our enablers would be 4x Pimp/Tribe and 4x OUaT/Looting to find them or sculpt explosive t1-2's. I have the occasional hand where I play t1 Therapy into a t2 Troll, and that is much more resilient in the mid-rangey matchups, but it's definitely slower. I'm proposing that we find a way to shift Troll to the sideboard but actually play more of them, maybe even a full set. We could cut some number of the worst enabler in our deck given the matchup (Pimp or Tribe) and get a beefy trampler that dominates combat against non-StP decks. It slows us down, but we'll be going slower already, likely with more hand disruption. Post-board we don't necessarily need to play around hate with troll either; we can discard to make him beefy, even if we lose some value, and even Rootwalla still hits play (because Madness discards to exile, not the graveyard.)

So in the maindeck that frees up a couple slots to play around with, possibly to add silver bullets for Gamble or to add additional Stain the Mind.

Something like this:

13 Lands (I just can't cut to 12, sorry!)

4x Tribe/Pimp/Bloodghast/Vine/Hollow/Rootwalla/Amalgam
4x OUaT/Looting/Therapy/Petal
3x Stain the Mind

Sideboard (just a rough pass)
3x Force of Vigor
3x Lotleth Troll
2x Silent Gravestone
2x Firestorm
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Big Game Hunter
1x Thoughtseize

Additionally, if Stain the Mind isn't completely necessary in the maindeck it could be in the sideboard, opening up 3 slots for Daze (if we can somehow make this work I think it will bring a lot to the table.) EDIT: We could actually cut to 3x Looting and still cram in a maindeck Troll.

Faithless Looting is perfectly fine as a 4-of, because unlike Once Upon a Time, multiples (2) in the opening hand are castable without taking away from going off on turn 2. Drawing 3+ in an opener is obviously not what we want, but it's still serviceable. Once Upon a Time is a card you love to see in the opener, but you really don't want to see multiples. Having a 2nd copy isn't necessarily horrible, and they are usually fine to topdeck into (assuming we have the mana), but it's definitely better to run 4 Looting and 3 OUaT than it is the other way around.

I believe Lotleth Troll is necessary, but not every one is on the same page with me. The thing is though, you have to have an initial discard outlet creature before the rest of the deck does anything. Sometimes, you don't have a Cavern of Souls and the first one gets countered. Sometimes, the first one gets killed after a mediocre opener and we need another one to go off again in the midgame. I'd much rather have an initial discard outlet in the opener, and use OUaT to dig for a Hollow One or Vengevine. Keeping a hand with a OUaT without a discard outlet creature is much riskier than needing any other piece.

Lotleth Troll gives us a non-graveyard dependent large trample regenerate creature that is a powerhouse in a lot of matchups. More resilience to Chalice @ 1 is also really important. Maybe they could be trimmed to 1 copy, but I wouldn't cut them completely. I also don't think it's the sort of card you should run copies of in the sideboard. There are better cards that address matchups more significantly, and I already don't have the room for all of the cards I'd like to have (especially the 1-of Pithing Needle that I had to cut).

Stain the Mind is just way too good for me to not want to run in the maindeck. Most matchups have 1-2 cards that we care about, that Stain the Mind deals with. Even just being used as a discard spell against redundant fair matchups in tandem with Cabal Therapy, it's still a solid card. It's also castable in multiples in later turns without tapping impactful attackers by spending more actual mana to cast it. Obviously the first cast tapping down summoning sick attackers to cast it for 0-1 mana is busted, but it's not out of the realm to tap something like a Putrid Imp, Basking Rootwalla, and Bloodghast along with 2 lands to cast a 2nd copy on the following turn without reducing the amount of pressure we can apply too significantly.

I'm pretty happy with 59 out 60 cards in my maindeck, with a single flex slot that I'm not completely sure about, but I'm leaning extremely heavily towards Stain the Mind right now because of how powerful the effect is and the fact that I'd love to be able to cast one in almost every game.

Aside from wanting to fit the 1-of Pithing Needle back into the sideboard, I'm also 100% happy with those choices as well.

You're certainly welcome to tweak and playtest your list until you find a configuration you're comfortable with, and I've certainly tweaked mine around quite a bit myself, but I'm extremely satisfied with where I'm at right now.

EDIT: Maybe Tomik is the cut for Pithing Needle in my sideboard? Needle is worse than Tomik against Depths and Lands, but way more applicable in more matchups. It's strong in the Delver matchup to shut down Wasteland, great against D&T, can deal with activated hate like Tormod's Crypt, so on and so forth.

I like Tomik for its uncounterability with Cavern on human, but WW is still hard to cast. I like that it's a creature that can be found with OUaT, and a 2/3 flyer is a nice body, but 2cc could possibly be too slow even in the Depths/Lands matchups...

I think I'm going to swap Tomik to Pithing Needle, tbh.

[Mr. Safety]

You're on 12 lands as well, making the 4th Looting pretty important. I'm not disagreeing with you on Troll, far from it. I think when it's good it's *really good* and when it's bad it's still serviceable. I was just trying to think in terms of 75 cards instead of 60, and Troll is obviously better in some matchups. I would be happy with 1 Troll in the main but siding in another 2 copies post-board against mid-range blue decks and Chalice decks. He can easily compete with Uro most of the time. The only thing I don't like about Troll, and this is minor considering we now have Faithless Looting, is that he can't discard non-creatures. Tossing a redundant OUaT /land/therapy into the yard as a 3rd card for Hollow One is perfectly fine on t1, but that's something you can't do with Troll. In the slower matchups we'll be concentrated on disrupting and landing more resilient threats like Troll, trading off some 1-drops to reduce susceptibility to Chalice and having a better 'combo' turn by ending with a massive troll even in the face of grave hate. It's just a thought, one that intrigues me. I was thinking about your comments about when Hogaak is good, which made me consider Troll to be an easier to cast, more reliable beatstick than Hogaak given our game plan. Instead of adding a Hogaak, maybe we just want another troll (somewhere in the 75.) If anything I'm leaning towards more copies of troll, not less, overall.

I'm definitely not arguing against Stain the Mind, I'm just not sure if I want 2 copies or 3 maindeck. That will end up being determined by whether I pig-headedly play 3 or 4 Looting.

[Hanni]

You're on 12 lands as well, making the 4th Looting pretty important. I'm not disagreeing with you on Troll, far from it. I think when it's good it's *really good* and when it's bad it's still serviceable. I was just trying to think in terms of 75 cards instead of 60, and Troll is obviously better in some matchups. I would be happy with 1 Troll in the main but siding in another 2 copies post-board against mid-range blue decks and Chalice decks. He can easily compete with Uro most of the time. The only thing I don't like about Troll, and this is minor considering we now have Faithless Looting, is that he can't discard non-creatures. Tossing a redundant OUaT /land/therapy into the yard as a 3rd card for Hollow One is perfectly fine on t1, but that's something you can't do with Troll. In the slower matchups we'll be concentrated on disrupting and landing more resilient threats like Troll, trading off some 1-drops to reduce susceptibility to Chalice and having a better 'combo' turn by ending with a massive troll even in the face of grave hate. It's just a thought, one that intrigues me. I was thinking about your comments about when Hogaak is good, which made me consider Troll to be an easier to cast, more reliable beatstick than Hogaak given our game plan. Instead of adding a Hogaak, maybe we just want another troll (somewhere in the 75.) If anything I'm leaning towards more copies of troll, not less, overall.

I'm definitely not arguing against Stain the Mind, I'm just not sure if I want 2 copies or 3 maindeck. That will end up being determined by whether I pig-headedly play 3 or 4 Looting.

Well, that is an interesting way to look at it. If we're looking at the whole 75, and postboard configurations against certain matchups, there are certainly some matchups where having 3 Troll would be really good. My only reservation is that the sideboard is an important space for high impact cards to bring in for specific matchups, and I'm not sure I'd be willing to sacrifice from some of those slots for Troll.

So I take back what I said about it being a bad idea, but I'm still not sure that is the way I would want to approach it. If I were to go that route, I'd probably try to fit the Ruthless Sniper in the maindeck to open up at least one spot in the sideboard for Troll, but beyond that, I'm not sure.

I'm also not 100% on if Stain the Mind should be at 2 or 3 copies, but I'm going with 3 for now, especially for playtesting purposes.

I don't think there is a huge difference between playing 3 or 4 Looting per say, but the card is sort of like Brainstorm in the sense that once you decide to include it, it just makes sense to run the full playset.

[Mr. Safety]

Well then that's decided for me, it's 2x Stain the Mind. I want the 13th land. Mulligans are, to put it lightly, very hard to recover from. OUaT/Looting help out tremendously but if I have the opening land + enabler both of those just get even better. RUG Delver is probably the most popular deck right now, and they aren't skimping on Wastelands.

[Hanni]

That's understandable. The goal with most deck building decisions for a deck like this is to try and improve consistency. As a critical mass deck, you want to build the deck in a way that reduces the need to mulligan as much as possible. Finding the correct number of lands/mana sources is certainly a part of that process.

Drawing too many lands ends up being just as bad as drawing too few, and so finding the correct balance is something to figure out through trial and error. OUaT helps a lot. With 4 Lotus Petal, somewhere between 12 and 14 lands is going to be the correct number. Eventually we will be able to dial that in. Doing maths lead me to trim to 12, but maybe that's too greedy. Only time will tell.

Either way, I feel like we continue to keep getting closer and closer to a dialed in list. I'm excited to see this pet deck evolve into something competitive, especially given the power level of Legacy these days.

[Mr. Safety]

I am really optimistic as well, Vengevine is definitely a legacy power-level card and there have been some great cards to support it over the past few years (Amalgam, Hollow One, Once Upon a Time.)

Part of my mana issues aren't related to number of lands, but the actual mix. I need to switch over to all rainbow lands if I want to make mine work better. I have had some non-games because I had only one land in hand and it was a Bayou, but I needed white for Tribe or red for Looting. I'm working on getting the lands I need (Cavern and UParadise.)

A couple quick questions for you on mana/lands: would it ever be correct to cut down to 3 Petals to get another land in? Would Elvish/Simian Spirit Guide ever be considered for fast mana? Have you tried it without Petals but 15 lands?

[Hanni]

Petal does way too much for me to ever consider less than 4. It dramatically improves the speed and consistency of this deck. Even just being able to cast a Cabal Therapy on turn 1 before going off is a big deal. We may lack the midgame power that the standard Hogaak lists have, but the speed and resiliency is what makes this deck so dangerous.

The Guides aren't good in here. Our color requirements are too diverse. We need the rainbow lands and Lotus Petals to be able to cast our key spells without issues. The most important color is black, followed by white, because casting Imp or Tribe is our main priority. We need red and green too, but not enough to justify either of the Guides.

Getting the rainbow lands and Lotus Petals are a must for this deck. Cavern and Paradise are especially critical. Cavern is how we beat Chalice and countermagic, and Paradise is mandatory for supporting Bloodghast with such a low land count. Without these lands, the deck is going to perform dramatically worse. Lotus Petal is just as important too, for the reasons explained above. I know the cards are pricey, but the deck literally needs them in order to be competitive.

[Mr. Safety]

I would love to have another 1-mana black/green/red discard outlet like Putrid Imp, because that would mean I could cut Tribe and play jund colors. Until then, rainbows it is. I always have the idea in my head that Stitcher's Supplier could be that extra outlet, but it isn't a discard outlet to feed Hollow One. It's nice with everything else but then I think it naturally turns into traditional Hogaak, simply because you just cut Hollow One for Hogaak, cut other slots until you can fit in Altar of Dementia and Bridge from Below, and boom. Your go-wide Vengevine strategy has been converted to Hogaak.

I think the reason to play this deck is to go wide, period. Rather than combo kill with Altar we combo-kill with lethal threats by t3.

[FTW]

Spirit Guides seem really bad. Color of mana matters more than anything.

4x Lotus Petal, especially before any non-5c ramp.

Stitcher's Supplier would be good with other stuff, including Gravecrawler, but eventually the deck turns too much into Hogaak. This deck wants Madness enablers for Hollow One and Rootwalla.

I like Stain as a 2x main. 4 copies just seems excessive, since it does nothing unless you already have a dominant board state AND are facing a combo-ish deck that needs a specific card extracted.


//Creatures: 28
4 Putrid Imp
4 Tireless Tribe
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Bloodghast
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Vengevine
4 Hollow One

//Spells: 13
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Faithless Looting
3 Once Upon A Time
2 Stain the Mind

//Mana: 17
4 Lotus Petal
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Mana Confluence
1 City of Brass


That leaves 2 open slots, which could be
2x Lotleth Troll (backup discard outlets main)
or
Stain the Mind + Once Upon A Time (add more copies of spells for redundancy, but these might be too many copies)
or
2x Thoughtseize (more disruption main)
or
2x Gravecrawler (more threats)
or
2x Abrupt Decay (more answers)

For the SB, we definitely want Firestorm and Big Game Hunter and Faerie Macabre.

Force of Vigor is strong but needs a higher green count than just 11-13 main.

[Hanni]

I would love to have another 1-mana black/green/red discard outlet like Putrid Imp, because that would mean I could cut Tribe and play jund colors. Until then, rainbows it is. I always have the idea in my head that Stitcher's Supplier could be that extra outlet, but it isn't a discard outlet to feed Hollow One. It's nice with everything else but then I think it naturally turns into traditional Hogaak, simply because you just cut Hollow One for Hogaak, cut other slots until you can fit in Altar of Dementia and Bridge from Below, and boom. Your go-wide Vengevine strategy has been converted to Hogaak.

I think the reason to play this deck is to go wide, period. Rather than combo kill with Altar we combo-kill with lethal threats by t3.

Pretty much. Stitcher's Supplier is quite good, and the standard Hogaak lists are really strong, but the synergies in that deck are different. Supplier is a bit slow for us and is a non-bo with a good portion of our deck.

We don't generate as much card advantage as the standard Hogaak lists do through milling off the top, but our deck operates on significantly less mana and gets down onto the board much faster. Where they lack 0 mana creatures to trigger Vengevine, have significantly more cards that cost 1-2 mana, and typically durdle a bit on turns 1 and 2, we usually dump our hand onto the board on turn 1 or 2. Bridge from Below is more broken than what we are doing though, and that deck is a bit more consistent, so it's basically speed vs reliability. It's sort of like BR Reanimator vs Show and Tell in a way. This deck is, as you said, more like old school Affinity.

However, I've been watching quite a bit of footage of the standard Hogaak lists to find ways to possibly improve this deck, but I think it has actually helped me to find ways to improve that deck based on my experience with this deck. I couldn't find another Hogaak thread on the forum, and since that deck is also technically a GB Vengevine deck, I'd like to discuss that deck for a moment. I'm sorry to derail the thread, and I'd be happy to create a new if it is warranted.

So anyways, it appears that there are 2 different directions that the standard lists go in; Sultai and Jund.

The Sultai lists opt for Hedron Crab (and Careful Study), which gives them a more robust card advantage engine for milling into resources, but they have less tools to take advantage of those resources and are slower to get onto the board.

The Jund lists don't generate as much resources from milling, but they run more cards that interact with the resources that they have (Carrion Feeder, Putrid Imp, Gravecrawler), get bodies onto the board faster, and run Faithless Looting instead of Careful Study.

There are pros and cons to both lists, but I found it intriguing to try and blend the strengths of both lists together, whilst also including some tech that I have worked on with the Hollow One list. I feel like I came up with a really strong list, but maybe I'm way off base.

The idea is that Hedron Crab is extremely strong, but so is Carrion Feeder and the rest of the zombie cartel with how they interact with Bridge from Below. Comparing Hedron Crab specifically to the Jund list, Crab seems way stronger than Faithless Looting. You have Putrid Imp (and Cabal Therapy) to discard any naturally drawn Bridges (with Vengevine to a lesser extent, and Bloodghast to an even lesser extent), and Crab just digs way more resources deeper and has way more synergies as a creature.

The funny thing is, I didn't start out intending to cut Careful Study or Faithless Looting. What happened was that I started out wanting to fit Once Upon a Time, and gradually went from 2 copies to 3 and then 4. Once Upon a Time is just so ridiculously good in the deck, even in multiples. The initial cast is obviously the strongest, but the card becomes significantly better when hard cast as the game goes on.

The deck assemble these mini-engines, and aside from not finding Bridge from Below or Altar of Dementia, Once Upon a Time finds whatever piece is needed to do broken things. A lot of times, there are multiple different cards that could combine with the current board state to go broken, and so the chances of finding a piece in the top 5 is high. The standard lists are on 19 lands, but Once Upon a Time allows the deck to drop down to less (I'm on 18, could maybe be even less) without missing a beat.

The cards that Once Upon a Time dig into all contribute to the engine, whether that be Supplier/Hedron for resource accumulation, Imp to discard Bridges/etc, Feeder as a sac outlet to generate tons of zombie tokens with Bridge + recursion creatures, Gravecrawler as an engine creature to generate zombie tokens every turn with a sac outlet, a fetchland to double trigger Crab or Bloodghast's, or just straight dig for gas (Hogaak, Vengevine, or Bloodghast).

Without Careful Study or Faithless Looting, the deck is worse at digging for Altar of Dementia specifically (as well as sideboard cards that aren't creatures or lands that cannot be cast from the graveyard), which is the downside. On the up side, the deck is significantly more creature based and less color demanding, and can therefore run Cavern of Souls to become resilient to Chalice of the Void and countermagic.

Standard Hogaak lists are straight up cold to a Chalice @ 1, and get disrupted pretty hard by countermagic, where Cavern of Souls is just straight up wicked when your most important cards to actually cast are one mana zombies. Casting sideboard Abrupt Decay and Assassin's Trophy becomes much harder to cast with Cavern of Souls vs the standard manabase, which is definitely another drawback, but I feel like it's still worth it. Maybe I'm wrong.

The other realization that I had is that Bridge from Below is actually the card that makes the deck so broken, not Hogaak. While Hogaak is certainly an incredibly powerful card, and the loop with Altar of Dementia (+ Bridges) results in basically an instant win by decking the opponent, the deck doesn't even need Hogaak to be ridiculous. If they banned Hogaak, the deck would still be top tier.

The deck is basically just a better version of Dredge. You don't mill cards at quite the same rate, but you're significantly less vulnerable to graveyard hate, don't lose draw steps to dredging, have a more robust manabase for casting spells, have much better threat diversity, are much less linear, significantly more resilient to other forms of interaction, and kill roughly on the same fundamental turn (barring ridiculously OP hands from Dredge where the opponent has no interaction).

Back to my point about Hogaak though; you can develop a board with a quick push with Bloodghast and Vengevine in a similar way as we do it (albeit a turn or so slower), which is oftentimes enough on its own to close games out, but you can also flood the board with zombies from Bridges with Feeder/Altar and Bloodghast/Gravecrawler and basically mimic the way Dredge wins. Obviously Hogaak improves both the quick push and the zombie flood, but I was shocked how effective the deck still is when it doesn't have its namesake.

I've also observed enough games to question if the standard 4 copies of Hogaak is actually correct. As good as the card is, and as quickly as the deck is capable of casting it, it's still a card that is unecessary in multiples (especially with instant sacrifice effects to dodge Swords to Plowshares). In lieu of a sacrifice effect, you can chain two back to back to trigger Vengevine or create zombie tokens, but it's super niche.

More often than not, I see players flooded with multiple unecessary copies of Hogaak, and sometimes even unable to cast them due to insufficient bodies on board (in the Sultai lists) or not enough resources (in the Jund lists). I'm not saying that my assessment is correct, but with Hedron Crab and Once Upon a Time to dig for them, the fact that you only really need a single copy, and the fact that you don't even need one to do broken things, I think it makes sense to trim some in my bastard of a list.

In the same vein, Gravecrawler is the same way. You only need a single copy with a sacrifice effect on the board to multicast them to generate tons of zombies with Bridge (while pumping Feeder or milling with Altar). Outside of the sacrifice loop, they are fine at being a creature to trigger Vengevine or sacrifice to Cabal Therapy, but you really don't need multiple copies.

The last place that I got stuck on was the number of copies of Carrion Feeder and Putrid Imp. I only had 6 slots left, and was back and forth a bit on whether to go 3/3 or 4/2 (in favor of Feeder).

Ultimately, Feeder is significantly more important for enabling the broken lines with Bridge from Below than discarding cards from hand to me. We already have Supplier and Crab to feed the yard with resources to not always need to bin Bloodghast or Vengevine from hand right away, and we can target ourselves with a milled Cabal Therapy to get Bridge from Below's out of our hand. The repeatable instant sacrifice outlet engine of Feeder/Altar is not something we can mill into, but is a critical component for going broken with Bridge, so I ultimately decided on the 4/2 split.

Feeder is also a significantly more impressive threat than Putrid Imp, despite the lack of evasion, and dramatically improves the Swords to Plowshares (and especially Terminus) matchups.

I also realized that my list is almost just as consistent at casting a turn 2 Stain the Mind as the Hollow One version. The reason being is that Bloodghast typically comes into play on turn 2+ in either list, Amalgam's don't tap for Stain the Mind until the turn after they come into play, both decks are capable of getting Vengevine on the board by turn 2, and while it is impossible for the Hogaak list to cast Stain the Mind on turn 1, it is rare for the Hollow One list to pull that off anyway.

I do not have the space for Stain the Mind in the maindeck, but it's definitely something that I feel deserves to be included in the sideboard. Stain the Mind is just as powerful in this deck as it is in the Hollow One list when cast on turn 2, and multiple copies are actually significantly easier to cast in this list on turns 3+ because it has more lands available, as well as zombie tokens to tap.

Anyway, sorry for the super long rant. Here's my brainchild, that I'm sure will receive endless criticism because of how far away from the status quo of what the current Hogaak list is, but whatever:

B/g/u Hogaak

Lands (18)
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Marsh Flats
2 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
4 Cavern of Souls

Creatures (26)
4 Hedron Crab
4 Stitcher's Supplier
3 Carrion Feeder
3 Putrid Imp
2 Gravecrawler
4 Bloodghast
4 Vengevine
2 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

Spells (16)
4 Once Upon a Time
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Altar of Dementia
4 Bridge from Below

Sideboard (15)
2 Stain the Mind
4 Force of Vigor
2 Assassin's Trophy
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Plague Engineer
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Silent Gravestone
1 Karakas

As far as the manabase is concerned, I know it looks weird to see 10 fetchlands with only 4 fetchable lands, but in almost all of the games I've watched, the deck almost never gets to more than 4 lands in play.

The deck only has a single Sea, but usually you're casting Hedron Crab at the beginning of the game (their value diminishes past that), and there is still Cavern of Souls to cast it if the Sea eats a Wasteland (not ideal, obviously).

The reason for 2 Bayou is because I want to hardcast Once Upon a Time, where Cavern of Souls cannot contribute to the green cost, and I need double green for hardcast Vengevine. If a Bayou eats a Wasteland, we have the 2nd Bayou to still be able to cast Once Upon a Time, and we have Cavern to cast Vengevine (not ideal obviously). We also have green sideboard cards that need to be cast. The only blue card that I see other Hogaak lists running is Oko (which is rare), but I'm not really sure if that makes sense in here other than being a graveyard independent threat.

Forewarning that this is a rough untested list that was built through theory crafting, and so some of the numbers or even some of the ideas may be wrong. Most specifically is the number of Hogaak's, which may be too few.

There's also interesting tech I've seen in other Hogaak lists, like Dryad Arbor, Phyrexian Tower, and Satyr Wayfinder.

I'm not sure that I'd be willing to cut a Bayou for a Dryad Arbor or not, but it does seem like really good tech. I'd have to retool the fetchlands, probably 4 Verdant Catacombs, 3 Misty Rainforest, 1 Polluted Delta, 1 Bloodstained Mire, and 1 Marsh Flats.

Wayfinder is an interesting idea instead of Hedron Crab as a way to either keep the deck two colors, or to splash red or white instead for different sideboard options. Being green is good for Hogaak, as well as postboard Force of Vigor. Ultimately though, I think Hedron Crab is going to be better since it costs 1 mana instead of 2, and can dig way deeper... but who knows.

Tower seems cool, but I'm not really sure how to fit it unless I'd be willing to trim from Cavern of Souls, which I'm not sure that I am right now.

I also wish I could fit in Lotus Petal, because the card would be just as good at accelerating the deck a full turn in here as it is in the Hollow One list, but this deck needs actual lands more for enabling Hedron Crab and multiple triggering of Bloodghast in a single turn because of sac effects + Bridge, unfortunately.

However, another interesting direction to take the deck in would be Entomb and a few toolbox cards. Life from the Loam would enable Crab and Bloodghast while allowing me to trim down on total lands, with the Dredge effect being beneficial as a side effect. Darkblast obviously comes to mind too, but I could even run a Dread Return package (whether maindeck or sideboard), with juicy targets like Elesh Norn, Archon of Valor's Reach, Iona, Ashen Rider, etc. That calls into question if Chancellor of the Annex would be viable too, but then we're talking about a completely different deck due to how much space that would all take up, so I'm not trying to go down that rabbit hole right now.

Even without Entomb, a Dread Return package in the sideboard could still have merit... but finding a singleton tutor creature without Entomb seems unlikely, so maybe not.

I'm still trying to work out the sideboard, which is going to take me some time. I've looked at a ton of Hogaak, Depths, and Dredge lists for inspiration, plus obviously my current sideboard choices for the Hollow One list, so there's quite a bit to sift through to dial it in for this list. I'll edit the decklist later after I figure some things out.

Again, I'd be fine with creating a new thread for this idea if ya'll think that it is distracting the discussion in this one, unless someone can link me to a thread for the standard Hogaak deck, of course.

Sorry for the super long post guys =/

EDIT: I've decided to go back to a 3/3 split of Putrid Imp and Carrion Feeder. Without Careful Study or Faithless Looting, it seems pretty important to have the extra discard outlet. I think with Once Upon a Time, I should have an easier time assembling the correct combination of pieces to make opening hands work better this way.

I also put together a preliminary sideboard.

[Mr. Safety]

That's really not that far away from Sultai Hogaak…the difference is Cavern really, which makes your mana slightly worse. Other than that I think you're closer to standard than you think.

Here's the most recent Sultai list, with OUaT making an appearance at 2 copies:

https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=27313&d=416338&f=LE

I'm actually thinking about trying an esper version now, simply because the most important cards are BWug. Somehow, some way, I'm going to get Daze into this deck, lol. As you say, we need stuff to be free/cheap. Daze is 'free'. Maybe, just maybe, there's a way to play Bazaar Trademage x2. It takes the place of Lotleth Troll, which seems kinda bad but it's the only place.

Rough list:

4x Putrid Imp
4x Tireless Tribe
4x Bloodghast
4x Prized Amalgam
4x Hollow One
4x Vengevine
4x Basking Rootwalla
2x Bazaar Trademage

3x Cabal Therapy
3x Daze
4x Once Upon a Time
4x Careful Study
4x Lotus Petal

4x Polluted Delta
1x Marsh Flats
1x Watery Grave
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Godless Shrine
4x City of Brass
1x Gemstone Mine

Sideboard
4x Death's Shadow
3x Thoughtseize
3x Force of Will
2x Brazen Borrower
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Silent Gravestone


This essentially ignores green, it will never cast a Vengevine, Once, or likely boost a Rootwalla. The tradeoff is a Carrion Feeder threat in the sideboard (Shadow) and the ability to completely hose combo decks with Thoughtseize/Force of Will.

[FTW]

Daze is a nonbo with City of Brass

Bazaar Trademage is a nonbo with 13 lands and should just be Faithless Looting, Brainstorm, Lotleth Troll or Island

I think you're just pushing too many directions when the deck you had before was better.

[Hanni]

That's really not that far away from Sultai Hogaak…the difference is Cavern really, which makes your mana slightly worse. Other than that I think you're closer to standard than you think.

Here's the most recent Sultai list, with OUaT making an appearance at 2 copies:

https://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=27313&d=416338&f=LE

I'm actually thinking about trying an esper version now, simply because the most important cards are BWug. Somehow, some way, I'm going to get Daze into this deck, lol. As you say, we need stuff to be free/cheap. Daze is 'free'. Maybe, just maybe, there's a way to play Bazaar Trademage x2. It takes the place of Lotleth Troll, which seems kinda bad but it's the only place.

Rough list:

4x Putrid Imp
4x Tireless Tribe
4x Bloodghast
4x Prized Amalgam
4x Hollow One
4x Vengevine
4x Basking Rootwalla
2x Bazaar Trademage

3x Cabal Therapy
3x Daze
4x Once Upon a Time
4x Careful Study
4x Lotus Petal

4x Polluted Delta
1x Marsh Flats
1x Watery Grave
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Godless Shrine
4x City of Brass
1x Gemstone Mine

Sideboard
4x Death's Shadow
3x Thoughtseize
3x Force of Will
2x Brazen Borrower
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Silent Gravestone


Well, the controversial parts are Cavern of Souls, no Careful Study or Faithless Looting, a full playset of Once Upon a Time, and only 2 Hogaak, which are all a really big deviation from the norm.

As far as your list is concerned, Daze seems like an alright replacement for Stain the Mind, considering it works prior to going off.

I don't think Trademage is worth it. 3cc spells just are not going to work with only 13 lands.

Since you still have some rainbow lands, you could try to fit in a Bayou (or the shock equivalent) and try to run Lotleth, or you could just forego the additional discard outlet creatures since you're on a full playset of Once Upon a Time and Careful Study.

I still think the core that we worked on, that FTW just outlined, is the better and more streamlined way to go, but it never hurts to try out other configurations.

[Mr. Safety]

Meh, I was just throwing shit against a wall. I think the most recent list developed is by far the best.

[Hanni]

Spirit Guides seem really bad. Color of mana matters more than anything.

4x Lotus Petal, especially before any non-5c ramp.

Stitcher's Supplier would be good with other stuff, including Gravecrawler, but eventually the deck turns too much into Hogaak. This deck wants Madness enablers for Hollow One and Rootwalla.

I like Stain as a 2x main. 4 copies just seems excessive, since it does nothing unless you already have a dominant board state AND are facing a combo-ish deck that needs a specific card extracted.


//Creatures: 28
4 Putrid Imp
4 Tireless Tribe
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Bloodghast
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Vengevine
4 Hollow One

//Spells: 13
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Faithless Looting
3 Once Upon A Time
2 Stain the Mind

//Mana: 17
4 Lotus Petal
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Mana Confluence
1 City of Brass


That leaves 2 open slots, which could be
2x Lotleth Troll (backup discard outlets main)
or
Stain the Mind + Once Upon A Time (add more copies of spells for redundancy, but these might be too many copies)
or
2x Thoughtseize (more disruption main)
or
2x Gravecrawler (more threats)
or
2x Abrupt Decay (more answers)

For the SB, we definitely want Firestorm and Big Game Hunter and Faerie Macabre.

Force of Vigor is strong but needs a higher green count than just 11-13 main.

Stain the Mind doesn't necessarily require a dominant board state or a combo matchup to be effective. Costing 2 mana with 3 dudes on the board is still undercosted for the effect, and it hits cards from their hand like Cabal Therapy would. Even in fair matchups like 4c Snowko, removing Swords to Plowshares is a big deal. Even against Delver, removing Lightning Bolt can prevent them from buying time to stabilize, etc.

I agree with the rest of your assessments though, and it's likely correct that 2 copies is the right amount.

Again, the correct number of lands is somewhere between 12 and 14. 13 seems like a fine middle ground.

I'm of the mind that the 2 extra slots should be Lotleth Troll, but you are more than welcome to experiment with other options. Ruthless Sniper, Gamble, and Careful Study are some other options that I didn't see you in your list, which should probably also be included.

I'm not sure that Gravecrawler works with only 4 Putrid Imp and 4 Prized Amalgam as the only other zombies, but who knows.

I don't think that Abrupt Decay is reliably castable with our manabase, unfortunately.

My Force of Vigor green card count is at 17 after sideboarding right now, which should be enough. I tend to want 20+ blue cards for Force of Will in all of my blue decks, but I think 16 is around the minimum needed to be able to reliably cast it in a window of time where the game is still relevant. More is certainly better, but it is what it is. The standard Hogaak lists get away with running it with even less green cards maindeck than we have, and it still works out for them.

[FTW]

Stain the Mind doesn't necessarily require a dominant board state or a combo matchup to be effective. Costing 2 mana with 3 dudes on the board is still undercosted for the effect, and it hits cards from their hand like Cabal Therapy would. Even in fair matchups like 4c Snowko, removing Swords to Plowshares is a big deal. Even against Delver, removing Lightning Bolt can prevent them from buying time to stabilize, etc.

Right, and that doesn't make it uncastable, but isn't something like Thoughtseize a lot more consistent for that slot in fair matches? Or just attacking before they draw the StP/Terminus? You're trying to stop them from buying time by giving up time skipping an attack... Undercosted or not, casting Lost Legacy on removal is not something aggro wants to do when it could just aggro instead. Especially when it has a convoke cost.

Extra copies of Stain seem much better in unfair matches, where they both won't try to disrupt your board presence and where extracting a few cards from their deck is much stronger than a regular Thoughtseize effect. I could see a 3rd Stain in the board. It just doesn't seem right main.


I'm not sure that Gravecrawler works with only 4 Putrid Imp and 4 Prized Amalgam as the only other zombies, but who knows.

Good point. From my previous Vengevine decks, I'm pretty sure it would need some other cheap zombies. Probably at least 3 Lotleth Troll main, Carrion Feeders, or Bridge from Below. So Gravecrawler is out. The new 1B Zendikar guy is probably too slow too. Your suggestions (Ruthless Sniper, Cabal Therapist, Careful Study) deserve consideration too.


I don't think that Abrupt Decay is reliably castable with our manabase, unfortunately.

Stain the Mind off less than 4 creatures suffers from a similar problem. Though Decay is a bit harder due to Cavern, which could at least help cast Lotleth Troll. The upside is Decay increases the green count to run Force of Vigor. So does Lotleth Troll.



My Force of Vigor green card count is at 17 after sideboarding right now, which should be enough. I tend to want 20+ blue cards for Force of Will in all of my blue decks, but I think 16 is around the minimum needed to be able to reliably cast it in a window of time where the game is still relevant.

The consistency at that level is lower though. You'll be forced to pitch your OUAT (messing up your opening hand) or Vengevine (reducing your aggressive potential) most of the time. Or worse, if your only discard outlet is Lotleth Troll but that's also your only green card, do you even cast the FoV? You would have at most 1 green card a lot of the time, and often losing that green card could cost you a lot of tempo.

We could also run cards like Ingot Chewer, Nature's Claim or Ancient Grudge.

[Mr. Safety]

Right, and that doesn't make it uncastable, but isn't something like Thoughtseize a lot more consistent for that slot in fair matches? Or just attacking before they draw the StP/Terminus? You're trying to stop them from buying time by giving up time skipping an attack... Undercosted or not, casting Lost Legacy on removal is not something aggro wants to do when it could just aggro instead. Especially when it has a convoke cost.

Extra copies of Stain seem much better in unfair matches, where they both won't try to disrupt your board presence and where extracting a few cards from their deck is much stronger than a regular Thoughtseize effect. I could see a 3rd Stain in the board. It just doesn't seem right main.

In sideboard matchups where *not dying* against combo is your primary plan, I think Stain the Mind shines. I don't think I would play Thoughtseize instead of Stain the Mind maindeck, though. If anything I would make the aggressive plan stronger. In my case it would at a minimum be getting Looting #4 into the maindeck, and I mentioned above that I actually think 3 Trolls wouldn't be bad in the maindeck.



Good point. From my previous Vengevine decks, I'm pretty sure it would need some other cheap zombies. Probably at least 3 Lotleth Troll main, Carrion Feeders, or Bridge from Below. So Gravecrawler is out. The new 1B Zendikar guy is probably too slow too. Your suggestions (Ruthless Sniper, Cabal Therapist, Careful Study) deserve consideration too.

My next test is Cabal Therapist over maindeck Stain the Mind. I know Hanni considers Stain sacrosanct, but my experience has been that it's amazing in combo matchups but lackluster in fair matchups. I haven't done nearly as much testing as Hanni, but in my test matchups against Daze Stain the Mind was a liability. Against decks like Depths it was game-winning.



Stain the Mind off less than 4 creatures suffers from a similar problem. Though Decay is a bit harder due to Cavern, which could at least help cast Lotleth Troll. The upside is Decay increases the green count to run Force of Vigor. So does Lotleth Troll.

I was skeptical of Troll at first, but it has really justified it's role in this deck. Some decks just can't deal with a 7/6 trampler that can regenerate for B.


The consistency at that level is lower though. You'll be forced to pitch your OUAT (messing up your opening hand) or Vengevine (reducing your aggressive potential) most of the time. Or worse, if your only discard outlet is Lotleth Troll but that's also your only green card, do you even cast the FoV? You would have at most 1 green card a lot of the time, and often losing that green card could cost you a lot of tempo.

We could also run cards like Ingot Chewer, Nature's Claim or Ancient Grudge.

It is correct if the graveyard hate in particular is Leyline of the Void. The most common hate you'll run into is Surgical Extraction, followed by Grafdigger's Cage and Rest in Peace. OUAT is a perfectly acceptable card to pitch to Force of Vigor, Vengevine less so. In matchups where you need Force of Vigor you're playing slower already, you can't just spam a bunch of dudes in the face of permanent hate. Troll is incredibly powerful in these matchups, again, of which I am debating a 3rd in the maindeck. Costing tempo is just a cost you have to accept so you have better odds at finding windows to win.

[Hanni]

Stain the Mind tapping down a Putrid Imp, Basking Rootwalla, and Bloodghast doesn't give up too much damage, while you can still attack with bigger threats like Vengevine or Hollow One. Disrupting with Cabal Therapy and Stain the Mind helps prevent the opponent from being able to stabilize.

Don't forget that Stain the Mind also acts as graveyard hate too. Maybe a threat like Uro isn't a huge deal for us, but there are plenty of problematic cards in Legacy that Stain the Mind just straight up deals with.

Since we don't run engines the same way that the standard Hogaak lists do, there is the possibility that our initial rush doesn't push through for enough if they can deal with our bigger threats, which is what motivated me to want to include it, but maybe you're right.

Maybe Thoughtseize is just straight up better in the maindeck, with the Stain the Mind in the sideboard?

Casting Stain the Mind for 2 mana is different than casting Abrupt Decay though, considering that most of the time, we can satisfy the black cost from Putrid Imp or Bloodghast, so we only need colorless from lands (i.e a double Cavern hand would still cast it).

Decay is hard to cast because it costs both green and black, and Cavern of Souls won't cast it. So you have 8-9 lands and 4 Lotus Petal that you need to have 2 of. It's not impossible to cast, it's just unreliable. Paradise bounces back to hand, too, so getting GB into play to cast it against a deck with Wasteland just seems unlikely without Lotus Petal.

Lotleth Troll costs the same as Abrupt Decay, but it is castable from Cavern of Souls, which makes it more likely to be castable.

I'm not saying Decay is wrong per say, I'm just skeptical. I still think Force of Vigor is worth it for dealing with problems that demand an answer. It dodges Chalice and deals with double Leyline starts, turn 1 Blood Moon, etc.

I know that I trimmed down to 3 Once Upon a Time, but maybe the 4th copy is warranted again. When I trimmed down to 3, I was still on 14 lands. Multiples in the opener isn't great, but at the same time, excess lands in the opener isn't great either, so maybe that's the solution. If I drop to 12 lands with 4 Once Upon a Time, my consistency for hitting the correct amount of mana goes up, and extra Once Upon a Time's aren't necessarily horrible to cast on turn 2+. That also ups my green spell count to 18, which I'm more than happy with to satisfy Force of Vigor.

EDIT: I updated my Hogaak list to include a sideboard, and I switched back to a 3/3 split of Carrion Feeder and Putrid Imp.

I updated my Hollow One list to trim to 2 Stain the Mind for the 4th Once Upon a Time.

[Hanni]

Watching even more games of standard Hogaak lists has my brain brewing even more shit.

Bridge from Below is a pretty busted card. I'm curious if we could find a way to include it in the Hollow One list somehow. It doesn't necessarily contribute to the busted turn one starts (which would require Lotus Petal and/or Cabal Therapy), but it does give us a powerful engine for the midgame (turns 2+).

The problem is that in order to really maximize Bridge, we'd need a sacrifice outlet besides just Cabal Therapy. Carrion Feeder makes the most sense due to casting cost, we have Cavern of Souls that gives it uncounterability, and it's another creature for triggering Vengevine.

At that point, we would probably want some Gravecrawler's too, since they are an engine with Carrion Feeder for creating zombie tokens, and can retrigger both Vengevine and Prized Amalgam in the midgame. We have a sufficient number of zombies now to properly support Gravecrawler.

But how many Bridge's, Feeder's, and Crawler's would we want, and what's the cut, then?

Lotleth Troll is an obvious cut since it doesn't discard Bridge, and I'm also fine with cutting Stain the Mind.

We need Once Upon a Time to increase the consistency of finding an initial discard outlet without Lotleth.

The only other card that I would be willing to cut would be Faithless Looting.

I really like the consistency increase that Faithless Looting provides in the early game, and as an engine for enabling Hollow One's in the midgame, but maybe the Bridge engine is worth it?

I'm not really sure right now, tbh. It's exciting brewing different ideas in this design space, but I don't know if this would actually be any better than what we already have.

Cutting 2 Lotleth, 4 Faithless Looting, and 2 Stain the Mind gives me 8 slots to play with. I could trim down to 3 Once Upon a Time to go up to 9 slots...

Would 3 Carrion Feeder, 2 Gravecrawler, and 4 Bridge from Below be worth it?

New list, for reference:

Lands (12)
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Mana Confluence

Creatures (32)
4 Tireless Tribe
4 Putrid Imp
2 Carrion Feeder
2 Gravecrawler
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Hollow One
4 Bloodghast
4 Vengevine
4 Prized Amalgam

Spells (16)
4 Once Upon a Time
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Bridge from Below
4 Lotus Petal

Sideboard (15)
2 Stain the Mind
2 Force of Vigor
2 Nature's Claim
2 Firestorm
1 Ruthless Sniper
1 Big Game Hunter
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Silent Gravestone
1 Pithing Needle
1 Karakas

I'm actually pretty excited to try this out...

I know my green spell count for Force of Vigor is lower now, which is why I split it with Nature's Claim. Costing mana is relevant, but losing 2 cards with Vigor when you only need to blow up 1 permanent is also relevant, so I'm fine with the split.

EDIT: Cutting a Carrion Feeder for the 4th Once Upon a Time to increase consistency of hitting a discard outlet or land in the opening hand.

[Mr. Safety]

The issue is you don't have strong ways of getting Bridge into your yard. Hogaak enables it with Altar of Dementia and milling a minimum of 4 cards with Supplier and Vengevine, 8 for a single Hogaak. That is how Bridge gets busted wide open. Otherwise you're still just trying to luck-draw Bridge with an enabler out. You will almost never have more than one Bridge in the yard, and you don't have Alter/Hogaak turbo-charging it. I don't think it's worth the loss of consistency cutting Looting and Troll. I think you will eventually just land on a tweaked version of Hogaak, which is fine! If this thread discussion leads to development of a modified Hogaak list then its worthwhile.

[Hanni]

The issue is you don't have strong ways of getting Bridge into your yard. Hogaak enables it with Altar of Dementia and milling a minimum of 4 cards with Supplier and Vengevine, 8 for a single Hogaak. That is how Bridge gets busted wide open. Otherwise you're still just trying to luck-draw Bridge with an enabler out. You will almost never have more than one Bridge in the yard, and you don't have Alter/Hogaak turbo-charging it. I don't think it's worth the loss of consistency cutting Looting and Troll. I think you will eventually just land on a tweaked version of Hogaak, which is fine! If this thread discussion leads to development of a modified Hogaak list then its worthwhile.

The intention of Bridge in the list I posted isn't to get all of them into the graveyard; they are just another threat that gets discarded by a 1cc outlet, that creates some amount of 2/2 creatures for free when other creatures die or get sacrificed. It's basically more redundancy of cards that we want to discard.

Your Hogaak argument of filling the yard is just as applicable to everything else, be it Bloodghast, Vengevine, or whatever. That deck obviously puts more total resources into the graveyard. That's not the point in here. Just think of Bridge as another card we want to discard like Vengevine or Prized Amalgam, which ends up putting creatures into play for free when certain other conditions are met.

An opening hand of say land, Imp, Hollow One, Vengevine, Bridge from Below, and Cabal Therapy (with whatever else) gives us a hand where we have enough cards we actually want to discard to enable Hollow One, while also triggering Vengevine, with a bonus Bridge from Below in the yard that we can get immediate value out of with the Cabal Therapy flashback, and that can continue to generate additional value in the future.

Past the initial burst, Bridge from Below can continue to generate value when our creatures die or we sac them to Feeder or Therapy (usually when we can recur them). Drawing multiple Bridges is not even unlikely.

Once we have a Carrion Feeder with a Gravecrawler or Undiscovered Paradise + Bloodghast assembled, we can turn those into an engine to generate more tokens. Vengevine and Prized Amalgam can also be sac'd and recurred after combat to generate tokens too.

Adding what is essentially more redundancy is in a way increasing consistency. I'm not saying the idea is more or less consistent or even better than the Looting + Troll list, but I don't think it should just be dismissed without consideration either.

The Bridge list does some very interesting things that the Looting variation lacks. It has more relevant plays that it can make past turn 1. It improves our consistency of recurring Amalgam by giving us 10 cards that can do so vs 8 (with 2 Gravecrawler). It gives us greater resiliency to Swords to Plowshares and Terminus with Carrion Feeder (instead of relying on Stain the Mind). It makes our Cabal Therapy's better. The list also has more 1cc creatures to make it easier to recast Vengevine in the midgame, especially with Gravecrawler recursion.

The broken turn 1 starts aren't any less consistent. I simply changed the dynamics of the turn 2+ plays by changing the engine. For what it's worth, I feel like the Looting engine has better synergy with Hollow One, while this engine has better synergy with the rest of the deck.

None of these changes make Hogaak any more viable in this list. The Hollow One lists simply do not feed the delve cost of Hogaak enough to make him worth it.

I also don't want to turn the Hollow One lists into a Hogaak deck. The entire reason for the extra discard outlets, Rootwalla, Hollow One, and Lotus Petal is that the deck is significantly faster. Where sometimes the Hogaak deck can be slow to get onto the board, we can often flood the board on turn 1. We lack the raw power, but we make up for that by overwhelming the opponent before they can handle it. We can often get under the hate, expose our graveyard less, and have extra resiliency with Cavern of Souls.

Maybe 8 discard outlets with only 3 Once Upon a Time and 12 lands isn't consistent enough... in which case, it's back to the drawing board. I'm also not necessarily against trimming a Carrion Feeder for the 4th Once Upon a Time if it's necessary, but I think the configuration I have listed is the base that I would want to begin playtesting with. I've already fine-tuned the Looting list pretty thoroughly, so I see no harm in trying out something else.

All I'm saying is don't knock it until you try it. Experimenting with different variations is sort of the point of this thread, is it not?

[Mr. Safety]

Sure thing, just didn't think the loss of looting was worth it. I get where you're coming from. I think you want 4 OUAT in your list, 12 lands without Looting is scary low.

[Mr. Safety]

I have been jamming this list, with promising results. It isn't as fast as the rainbow version, but it's a lot more resilient. It can still put a bunch of dudes on the table t1 occasionally, but its much more focused on crafting an explosive turn 2-3. I ended up with fewer fast outlets (down to 5 with Imp/Troll) and some fairly big changes (cutting Rootwalla.) It plays better than it looks. I'm going to continue testing it. The cards aren't as synergistic (Thoughtseize over Therapy, Shadow over Rootwalla) but they are much more individually powerful, making the house of cards less likely to fall down.

Creatures - 29
4x Putrid Imp
4x Death's Shadow
4x Bloodghast
4x Prized Amalgam
4x Vengevine
4x Hollow One
4x Street Wraith
1x Lotleth Troll

Spells - 18
4x Lotus Petal
4x Careful Study
3x Once Upon a Time
3x Thoughtseize
3x Daze
1x Reanimate

Lands - 13
4x Polluted Delta
3x Verdant Catacombs
3x Watery Grave
1x Bayou
1x Swamp
1x Island

Sideboard
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Faerie Macabre
3x Force of Will
2x Brazen Borrower
2x Silent Gravestone
2x Dismember
1x Karakas
1x Cabal Therapy


I get t1 Hollow One more often, but sometimes only Hollow One. However, I also get t1 Thoughtseize plus Daze that really stunts opponents and allows for protected starts. Cavern makes for uncounterable outlets, but if the swarm is answered we're really not that favored to restart. Now I can just use pure velocity (Study/Wraith) to dig into 6/6+ Shadows to close out games. Sideboard is completely rough right now, but serviceable. Not quite sure what to do about tribal decks like Elves and Goblins, haven't tested against them yet. I have tested against D&T and it's not too bad pre-board, Dismember helps post-board.

I've posted lists like this before, which haven't worked out so well. I think the addition of Prized Amalgam (wasn't there before) and Once Upon a Time have made this setup much better.

[Mr. Safety]

Testing has been promising against D&T, Sneak/Show, and against UWx Stoneblade. It's basically a hyper-aggressive UB shadow deck that trims on some tempo but gets on the board much faster, to the point that racing is a legitimate strategy even against combo. I sound like a broken record, but Daze is just incredible here. Gone is the tempo denial plan of Wasteland/Force of Will/Daze and instead it's just 'protect the combo turn with Daze.' Much more often I am spending turn 1 just digging with OUAT/Careful Study ord playing a Thoughtseize, sometimes with Daze available. This means I'm slower onto the board (turns 2-3 instead of turns 1-2) but it means there are much fewer non-games where I am not pressured into going all-in turn 1 because that's all I can do with the opening hand. However, when I do draw into an amazing t1 I sometimes have it with Daze backup, which is just crushing. The most significant thing I've noticed in about 15 games or so is that I still have about the same odds of having a broken t1.

I was having trouble getting Death's Shadow online fast enough in some matchups, which is where I cut 1x Troll for 1x Reanimate. Reanimate is great early for Street Wraith, but it's perfectly serviceable with a Vengevine or Hollow One. It drops my life total and gets a big threat for B. Late game it can grab a killed Pimp to re-combo or just grab a killed Death's Shadow.

The biggest difference is that I don't get Rootwalla for 0, but so far paying B for Shadow instead is just so much more powerful. Rootwalla just didn't do enough when not enabling multiple graveyard threats. Shadow still enables graveyard threats for cheap and is usually a 4/4+ by turns 3-4. I hit my land drops a lot more consistently as well given Street Wraith/Study/Once Upon a Time. Before with just Looting/Once I still missed out on lands. I'm very happy with this setup so far.

The sideboard is a mess, but it's something I can work on as I develop game plans. I think I want Sylvan Library and Darkblast (Firestorm is out now that I've cut red for blue.) Chalice is definitely a concern, so there needs to be an answer for that in there. Engineered Explosives seems to be ok, maybe Ratchet Bomb. I need to have enough blue sideboard cards to sideboard into the Forces. I have 11 maindeck blue cards, and I need to get up to a minimum 16-18 to make the forces work. With Thoughtseize already maindeck I don't need to mulligan into Force too hard post-board, but having some anti-combo cards isn't a bad thing. I'm not sure what those blue cards should be, but I'm working on it. Brazen Borrower is one option.

2x Surgical Extraction
1x Faerie Macabre
4x Force of Will
2x Brazen Borrower
2x Dismember
1x Darkblast
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Sylvan Library
1x Karakas

The other blue cards I'm looking at: Echoing Truth, Spell Pierce, Oko (risky, but the payoff is pretty big), Force of Negation, Drown in the Loch. I think for the simple sake of Marit Lage and Chalice of the Void it has to be Borrower, but I'm open to suggestions. Ideally those 2 blue cards would be good enough in the matchups I want Force of Will because I will want to sideboard them in to support the Forces pretty much every time.

[Hanni]

I think Carrion Feeder does more for the deck than Death's Shadow. If you can reliably recur your creatures, it doesn't take very long for Carrion Feeder to grow into a threat as large or larger than Death's Shadow, with the benefit of sacrificing your creatures to protect them from Swords to Plowshares (and Terminus). The Carrion Feeder list I posted also has Bridge from Below to make Carrion Feeder even better. Carrion Feeder cannot block, but you should almost always be the aggressor with this deck anyways.

I respect your interaction package of Thoughtseize and Daze, although I do think that Cavern of Souls does enough to protect the combo turn, while also giving you better outs to Chalice of the Void.

I definitely do not agree with cutting Tireless Tribe, but I'm glad that the list you posted has been performing well for you. Given that your deck is a bit slower now, have you put any consideration into trying the standard Hogaak deck? It has roughly the same fundamental turn as you do, but with much more powerful midgame plays.

[Mr. Safety]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll try and answer the questions/points in a way that explains why I decided for Death's Shadow specifically.

1) Carrion Feeder not blocking isn't the issue at all, it's the fact that Death's Shadow needs no extra work to make it huge. Fetch/shocks, Thoughtseize, and Street Wraith all support multiple aspects of the deck but most importantly Hollow One and Death's Shadow. The more I play this I think there needs to be more emphasis on enabling Hollow One. It's the replacement for Delver, which is easier to flip and build around but also weaker to common non-Swords removal. The most common removal being played is Lightning Bolt right now. While the Carrion Feeder synergy is good with Bridge from Below, it's just too close to standard Hogaak for me. I feel like I would naturally end up at Hogaak. Carrion Feeder top-decked on turn 5 is lousy. Death's Shadow top decked on turn 5 is pure gas.

2) Thoughtseize and Daze are, simply put, better interaction than Cabal Therapy. When I trimmed Rootwalla the only creature I could profitably sacrifice to enable Therapy was Bloodghast. Thoughtseize and Daze are both much better at combating combo decks, and usually better against all decks in the early game. I'm the type of player that likes combo-esque decks but I don't like the polarizing play style (win big or lose big.) I'd rather dial back the all-in synergy, add cards that are individually good, and attempt something that can level out the wild up-and-down of the deck's performance. Again, I haven't noticed a discernable drop in t1 combos when compared to the Looting setup. I have noticed easier enabled Hollow Ones and just a ton of velocity t1 in almost every game, whereas with Looting/Tribe I was having to mullilgan a lot more often and relying on a t2 combo anyways. I may not get a Putrid Imp, Vengevine, Hollow One start in every game but I might cycle a Street Wraith, play a Thoughtseize/Careful Study, and have Daze ready. That is a perfectly acceptable "combo" for the first turn, and still allows me to craft an explosive board presence.

3) Tireless Tribe was a necessary evil, one that led to all-in first turns. However, some of those first turns only ended up with a couple Rootwallas and a Hollow One, and I was just short of racing opponents before they stabilized. I don't want anemic threats like Rootwalla/Tribe, I feel Legacy needs bigger dudes to compete. The impetus of this thought was how good Troll ended up being; it was light years better than Tribe in every situation. I have cut to one copy to squeeze in a Reanimate, but that will likely go back to 2 copies again. Reanimate is the 'cute one of' that has shown up in Shadow occasionally that enables shadow and makes Street Wraith a legitimate threat. It's also another way to enable Prized Amalgams more consistently. My approach is this: rather than have a critical mass of synergy with anamic threats I would rather have ways of digging to the best threats and enable those ones.

4) I haven't really considered going to standard Hogaak, but I'm open to playing Hogaak in this list (possibly.) With a lower critical mass of creatures I don't think it would work out, but on the other hand I consistently fill my graveyard with excess chaff to pay the delve cost (fetches, Street Wraith, thoughtseize, daze, careful study all provide non-essential fodder.) My first goal is to get 30+ games under my belt to see how it performs, then use that experience to determine tweaks. I think I'm going to want at least 1 more Troll, possibly 2. I think I'm going to want Naturalize (the new flexible one) or Abrupt Decay instead of Force of Vigor. Chalice is one concern but Leyline of the Void is another bad one, although I am much more resilient to Leyline with a stronger focus on Shadow/Hollow One/hard-cast Amalgams. I can actually cut Vengevine from the deck post-board. I might want a Breeding Pool in the deck, maybe not. I might even be able to play an extra land and Oko in my sideboard. The flexibility of this setup is so much better than the all-in Hollow-Vine aggro plan.

5) I can do a passable impression of UB shadow post-board with Forces and Dismember, and if there's a deck that hates on combo harder than UB Shadow I haven't heard of it. Fast clock, great disruption. I want graveyard-aggro-Shadow. I am also much better equipped with my current card pool to do this because I already had UB Shadow built; I don't have the Caverns, Undiscovered Paradise, and Mana Confluence to enable the perfect mana.

I hope that answers your questions. It will still be soft to Swords to Plowshares (like any Shadow deck), it will have a hard time against Terminus (like any go-wide strategy), and it will be slightly weak to graveyard hate. What I gain back for conceding those points is bigger creatures (Shadow), more resiliency to post-board hate, and a higher level of consistency.

EDIT: I have a statement from Bryant Cook rumbling around in the back of my mind as well: he said recently (concerning Vintage Paradoxical Outcome) that he would rather play some cards that are a solid 7 always than cards that are a 10 sometimes (scale of 1-10.) I'm trying to give the deck an overall power boost, but that means cutting some cards that are always a 10 for other cards that are only a 7. However I am also getting rid of some of the cards that are only a 3 and getting a card that is a solid 6 in return. The overall level of the deck goes up even if some of the synergy is sacrificed to do it.

EDIT #2: New sideboard, I conceded that Oko is likely the most powerful blue card to include alongside the force of wills, even if it isn't great against combo decks. It's blue fodder and a way to stabilize. I'm still on the fence about Nature's Claim and Veil of Summer. I may want to just focus on dealing with the board rather than trying to interact on the stack. I'm a little thin on ways to deal with Marit Lage, Reanimator, and Sneak/Show.dec.

2x Surgical Extraction
1x Sylvan Library
1x Oko, Thief of Crowns
4x Force of Will
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Silent Gravestone
2x Dismember
2x Sickening Dreams
1x Karakas

[Hanni]

I know this distracts from the Tireless Tribe versions, but I tweaked another Hogaak list that I'm pretty happy with.

UBg Hogaak

Lands (17)
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Dryad Arbor

Creatures (20)
4 Hedron Crab
4 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Bloodghast
4 Vengevine
4 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

Spells (23)
4 Brainstorm
4 Careful Study
3 Once Upon a Time
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Altar of Dementia
4 Bridge from Below

Sideboard (15)
4 Force of Will
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Brazen Borrower
1 Plague Engineer
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Silent Gravestone
1 Pithing Needle
1 Karakas

Basically, this is a 180 from my other list, cutting the extra creatures (and Cavern of Souls) for more cantrips. The idea here is that between the cantrips, Crab, and Supplier, the deck is ridiculously consistent. Brainstorm not only fixes hands, it also helps the deck dig into Altar of Dementia much better. The deck is able to trim lands, Gravecrawler, and Hogaak because of how much dig the deck has.

The cantrips cost a bit of tempo, and therefore the list loses a bit of speed for getting onto the board, but the deck is much more capable of assembling the best pieces to combo off faster.

The sideboard probably still needs some work, and Force of Vigor might not be worth it with how low the green spell count is.

[FTW]

That's just a variation of Hogaak. That's not really the same deck anymore... no Hollow One, no 8Pimp, self-mill...

[Hanni]

I know, but I couldn't find a thread for standard Hogaak, just Depths Hogaak.

I'd hate to start a new thread for an established deck by starting it off with an experimental list, and I don't feel like typing up a primer for the two tried and true versions (Jund and the regular Sultai lists).

As far as the list I posted, I wonder if Force of Will + Brazen Borrower would be a better sideboard plan...

EDIT 1: Trimmed a Cabal Therapy for a Putrid Imp. Being able to dig into a discard outlet with Once Upon a Time seems like a good idea. Also decided to try out Force of Will in the sideboard.

EDIT 2: Brainstorm is actually pretty sick in addition to Hedron Crab and Stitcher's Supplier, acting like a Careful Study to bin Bloodghast and Vengevine by putting them on top and then milling them. Probably don't even need the Putrid Imp, tbh. Probably better off with a 3rd Hogaak or back up to 4 Therapy.

EDIT 3: I know I keep rapidly changing things around. Blame it on my ADD baby. Gravecrawler just seems straight up worse than Hogaak. It makes sense in other lists to run it in addition to Hogaak, but with the amount of dig that I have, it's just a subpar version of Hogaak himself. Yeah, it can be cast from the yard with a single zombie on board or not enough food in the yard, but those conditions seem fairly fringe given rest of the deck. Gravecrawler does trigger Vengevine easier than double casting Hogaak, but it makes more sense to run 4 Hogaak before any Gravecrawler.

The argument I had for multiple Hogaak's being redundant in hand makes less sense with Brainstorm. Brainstorm can shuffle extras away. The fact is, the combo is Hogaak + Altar with Bridges in the yard, so I should be maxing out on Hogaak to make that happen. More Hogaak means more consistency for casting Hogaak on turn 2, so it is what it is.

With 4 Hogaak, I'm fine with trimming Gravecrawler completely and going back up to 4 Therapy. Milling into Therapy to sac Supplier, or even Crab for zombie tokens to enable Hogaak, are important play lines. Therapy itself is important for removing problems out of the opponent's hand. I'm pretty sure the optimal configuration should include 4.

The list feels super streamlined now. I'm pretty sure the maindeck is the optimal configuration for Hogaak, tbh. The sideboard is still a work in progress, but the maindeck is sick. It's literally all of the most important cards, with a sufficient amount of engines and cantrips to ensure it does exactly what is supposed to do every time. The extra cantrips make digging for postboard answers extremely consistent as well.

EDIT 4: Brazen Borrower is pretty sick in here. It can be grabbed with Once Upon a Time, deals with nearly everything you need it to, you can Therapy away the problem, and then you cast it as a creature later. End of turn bounce, untap and cast the creature, sac to Therapy to hit the card you bounced, make two zombie tokens with Bridges, cast Hogaak with the zombies, trigger Vengevines. Disgusting line out of nowhere.

Once Upon a Time digging for Hedron Crab or Brazen Borrower at instant speed turn 1 on the draw to enable Force of Will is pretty sick, too.

[Mr. Safety]

How many fetchlands are needed to feed Hedron Crab? Where I'm on a fetchland mana-base with Shadow/Vine now I'm wondering if it's worth playing Crab over Lotleth Troll. It could be another enabler for Vengevine/Bloodghast/Prized Amalgam. Getting the blue count higher only supports the Daze plan better, making the need for green mana even lower for the deck. Force of Will gets really easy to support out of the sideboard as well.

EDIT: It looks like most are playing 10-11 fetchlands. With only 13 lands in my version I don't think that's possible. I think 8 fetches is about all it can handle, maybe 9.

[FTW]

Yeah, I think you do not have the right support for Hedron Crab, and it's very bad with Hollow One anyway.

[Mr. Safety]

You're right, it's just fun to try and evaluate all the different ways you can enable these types of strategies in legacy. If I were to drop Hollow One there would be no good reason to continue, it would be better to just play BUG Hogaak.

[Qweerios]

I know this distracts from the Tireless Tribe versions, but I tweaked another Hogaak list that I'm pretty happy with.

UBg Hogaak

Lands (17)
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Dryad Arbor

Creatures (20)
4 Hedron Crab
4 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Bloodghast
4 Vengevine
4 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

Spells (23)
4 Brainstorm
4 Careful Study
3 Once Upon a Time
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Altar of Dementia
4 Bridge from Below

Sideboard (15)
4 Force of Will
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Brazen Borrower
1 Plague Engineer
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Silent Gravestone
1 Pithing Needle
1 Karakas

Basically, this is a 180 from my other list, cutting the extra creatures (and Cavern of Souls) for more cantrips. The idea here is that between the cantrips, Crab, and Supplier, the deck is ridiculously consistent. Brainstorm not only fixes hands, it also helps the deck dig into Altar of Dementia much better. The deck is able to trim lands, Gravecrawler, and Hogaak because of how much dig the deck has.

The cantrips cost a bit of tempo, and therefore the list loses a bit of speed for getting onto the board, but the deck is much more capable of assembling the best pieces to combo off faster.

The sideboard probably still needs some work, and Force of Vigor might not be worth it with how low the green spell count is.

I really like this list. I like how there are 12 enablers and 11 manipulation spells for consistency.

However, I wonder if the current cards are all better than Gravecrawler. It seems to me that Crawler is an important card to have in the main as it combos with the mill effects, discard effects, Therapy, it's a VV and Hogaak enabler. Crawler is an important piece of synergy in this deck. Off the top of my head, Crawler enables plays like T1 Crab, T2 Supplier and if you have milled anything valuable off the potential 9 cards you can return VV via Crawler on T2. It makes sense to me that it is played in BUG Hogaak over Brainstorm. I would likely play something like Brainstorm over OUAT rather than Crawler.

It seems to me you'd want something like this as a core:

4 Hedron Crab
4 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Gravecrawler
4 Bloodghast
4 Vengevine
4 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study

3-4 Altar of Dementia
4 Bridge from Below


I think we are discussing BUG Hogaak at this point but, hey, this is the VV thread!

[Hanni]

Yeah, Hedron Crab is bad with Hollow One. Hedron Crab and Stitcher's Supplier are incredibly powerful, but are leveraged much better in the regular Hogaak decks.

The value in the Hollow One lists vs regular Hogaak is the speed at getting onto the board, the resiliency to Chalice and Force of Will with Cavern of Souls, and the ability to get under some of the graveyard hate.

Your Shadow list can get away with being slower since you have more graveyard independent threats and more disruption, but I'm still unsure how much better or worse that is than the Tireless Tribe route or the regular Hogaak route.

EDIT: Also, for what it's worth, I'm really happy with the Bridge from Below list I posted a page back. I did cut a Carrion Feeder for the 4th Once Upon a Time to increase the consistency of the broken turn 1's, though.

The loss of consistency from losing Looting is made up for with the redundancy that Feeder, Crawler, and Bridge from Below add to the deck.

I have more cards that I want to discard, increased consistency of recurring Vengevine and Prized Amalgam with Gravecrawler, more sources of creatures coming into play for free and stronger Cabal Therapy's with Bridge from Below, and the resiliency to Swords to Plowshares and Terminus that Carrion Feeder offers.

The list also works much better with my manabase. Sometimes, Cavern of Souls is my only land, which can't cast Faithless Looting, but can cast Carrion Feeder and Gravecrawler.

[Hanni]

I really like this list. I like how there are 12 enablers and 11 manipulation spells for consistency.

However, I wonder if the current cards are all better than Gravecrawler. It seems to me that Crawler is an important card to have in the main as it combos with the mill effects, discard effects, Therapy, it's a VV and Hogaak enabler. Crawler is an important piece of synergy in this deck. Off the top of my head, Crawler enables plays like T1 Crab, T2 Supplier and if you have milled anything valuable off the potential 9 cards you can return VV via Crawler on T2. It makes sense to me that it is played in BUG Hogaak over Brainstorm. I would likely play something like Brainstorm over OUAT rather than Crawler.

It seems to me you'd want something like this as a core:

4 Hedron Crab
4 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Gravecrawler
4 Bloodghast
4 Vengevine
4 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Careful Study

3-4 Altar of Dementia
4 Bridge from Below


I think we are discussing BUG Hogaak at this point but, hey, this is the VV thread!

Well, Gravecrawler certainly does help enable faster lines with Stitcher's Supplier on the board. My line of thinking though was that the deck is capable of functioning without it, using Cabal Therapy and Bridge from Below to enable Hogaak, and Hogaak can contribute to triggering Vengevine, but I'm sure Gravecrawler would make getting onto the board on turn 2 more consistent.

The point of Brainstorm was to make the deck more consistent overall towards assembling the kill with Altar + Bridge + Hogaak. It fixes hands, getting rid of excess redundant cards, digs towards Altar of Dementia, and allows the deck to trim on lands. This version is less consistent at getting onto the board on turn 2, but more consistent at actually killing the opponent with the combo.

Brainstorm also helps prevent the durdle hands that don't do much, by digging into an engine creature (Supplier/Crab), and then puts cards from hand (like Bridge) on top to be milled by an engine creature to get the deck going. In standard lists, sometimes the deck gets its initial creature countered and stutters while it waits to draw into something else to get going.

Brainstorm also makes fighting against hate postboard easier.

It may simply be correct to cut Brainstorm for Gravecrawler, but it's an experimental list that I wanted to try out.

Another thing I want to try is Daze, which has synergy with Crab and Bloodghast, and gives the deck a lot more resiliency.

EDIT: Just want to point out that turn 1 Supplier, turn 2 Crab is better than vice versa, because it allows you to mill 6 with Crab (with a fetchland) regardless of if they have a spot removal for it or not.

[Hanni]

In hindsight, Brainstorm was probably a bit excessive. I could just as easily see cutting them and 1 Hogaak for the 4th Once Upon a Time and 4 Gravecrawler. The deck has plenty of dig to find Hogaak and only needs a single copy, whereas binning multiple Gravecrawler's still has value, and they do improve the overall engine of the deck, although maybe 4 Hogaak is still better for more consistent turn 2's.

I think Once Upon a Time is way stronger for the deck than Brainstorm, and the deck can definitely get away with trimming on lands still, because the deck only ever needs more than 2 for Crab and Bloodghast, which Once Upon a Time can dig into; otherwise, you'd much rather dig into creatures vs excess lands, so it dramatically improves the decks consistency. Being free on turn 1 is huge, and digging 5 deep is much stronger on turns 3+.

That does mean moving away from Force of Will out of the sideboard and back into the standard Hogaak sideboard, though.

[Mr. Safety]

Brian Coval (BoshNRoll) did a cool league with a GR HollowVine deck recently, it's worth checking out if anyone is still looking to combine Vengevine and Hollow One for fun and profit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STyaX0Vibfg

Phil Gallagher (ThrabenU) did a league with a similar list as well, but I'm having trouble finding the link. I'll post it in here when I finally hunt it down. The Vintage HollowVine deck is absurd, but has access to Bazaar of Baghdad. Us plebeians have to make do with other options.

[H]

So this was the closest thread I could find to what TCDecks is calling "Hogaak" here (https://www.tcdecks.net/archetype.php?archetype=Hogaak&format=Legacy).

As such, if someone wants to write a Primer for the deck (probably best in a new thread, since this started as a very different deck), please feel free to.. If you have any issues or questions, post or PM me (or any of the staff).

[Reeplcheep]

https://draftsim.com/legacy-hogaak-deck-guide/

This is the best primer I could find

[H]

https://draftsim.com/legacy-hogaak-deck-guide/

This is the best primer I could find

I fixed you link (it had a double http in it), but I will take a look tomorrow.

Honestly, what we need is really a new thread plus a Primer.

Anyone invested in the deck and want to write one? Let me know. If no one really does, I can see what I can do about writing one myself eventually.

[Reeplcheep]

No gaak player seems to be on here, but Grief is an insane addition to the deck and will significantly help the matchups vs blue decks and combo. Putting my called shot here that it will make the deck the best legacy graveyard deck and at least tier 1.5.

https://i.imgur.com/KLNFNFW.png

Triggers bridge for free

Triggers vengevine for free

Doesn’t hurt yourself like thoughtseize (very relevant vs ur)

Flood insurance

Quite good vs Omnitell which is a horrible mu.

Pushes through crab or supplier on t1 (relevant vs control)

Free hand information, refunding the card disadvantage in conjunction with cabal therapy.

Makes the deck a bit better vs blood moon and chalice.

In dredge or reanimate it isn’t very good as mentioned in the spoiler thread. The last three points were true of unmask, but the first ones make it go from worse than thoughtseize to much better.

[Mr. Safety]

I agree with all of that; triggering Vengevine/Bridge is pretty awesome.

[lavafrogg]

I agree with all of that; triggering Vengevine/Bridge is pretty awesome.

Cool interaction in the BUG versions is that it is another use for Bridges stuck in hand; I know not a crazy big deal but without Careful Study or self Therapy we have no way to utilize Bridges that don’t get milled.

[ReAnimator]

Agreed. Card seems nuts.