BRIDGELESS HOGAAK MANUAL


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Okay, so Wizards banned Bridge from Below. Seems like a reasonable move, made Hogaak back off for a while, but make no mistake - the deck is still alive and extremely powerful. The most absurd card in it is the 0-mana 8/8 trampler on turn two (duh), and the only reason to ban Bridge from Below is that Hogaak is a newly released card.

Without Bridge the deck has to adapt - Altar no longer provides an alternative kill, sacrifice outlets are less valuable without Bridge, and there is, in general, less graveyard active cards to hit when milling yourself. I haven't experimented with Altar of Dementia post-ban, although I have heard from people that it is supposedly still good and strong enough to mill a person over a few turns, but I haven't personally explored that space. All the reasons why it wouldn't seem good anymore are sound and logical, and I haven't seen it pop in any of the well-performing decklists.

A little bit of interesting context is that at the end of pre-Bridge ban Hogaak’s lifespan I was actually wondering about how good the inclusion of Altar was. During the last tournament where it was legal- Red Bull Untapped Qualifier in Brussels - I performed the mill combo kill exactly once in seven rounds of Modern. Altar being only an intermediate enabler (needing to pair with other cards to actually produce anything meaningful) was a liability versus both permanent GY hate and maindeck Surgical (on Bridges). Surgical was maindecked by decks that were also able to withstand your aggro plan - Phoenix with Thing in the Ice and UW with sweepers and planeswalkers, while also being bad in the mirror due to how hard was it to stick a Bridge. It added up to Altar being probably still good enough, but not matching up ideally against the top decks, and hence not being an uncuttable sacred cow. Very powerful decks can have a somewhat hard time being iterated on - less incentive to do so if you keep winning anyways.

The reason why I am bringing this up is that the new version of Hogaak that I won the Modern Challenge with feels like it has actual upsides over the pre-ban version. It doesn't feel like just a straight-up downgrade, which is insane after a ban. My list so far that I will probably register in Barcelona is:




3 Insolent Neonate
3 Lightning Axe
4 Faithless Looting
4 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Carrion Feeder
4 Satyr Wayfinder

3 Golgari Thug
4 Gravecrawler
4 Bloodghast
4 Vengevine
4 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

1 Nurturing Peatland
1 Swamp
2 Blood Crypt
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Gemstone Mine
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
2 Marsh Flats
2 Verdant Catacombs

SB:
4 Thoughtseize
2 Assassin's Trophy
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Nature's Claim
1 Fatal Push
2 Force of Vigor
1 Engineered Explosives


What changes post-ban

The deck became one-dimensional - it's just an aggro deck. At the same time, it's more streamlined and actually better at summoning turn two Hogaaks. This is your goal now. Mill win and Bridge from Below board stall applications are gone, so you need to win by dealing damage to your opponents. Because of that, I try to fit as many Blackcleave Cliffs and Gemstone Mines into the deck as possible. You need to win races. Not sure how Nurturing Peatland fits into that picture - I added it as a 19th land but haven't played much with it yet. 19th land makes a lot of sense though, especially when you want to run Dredgers. It could be a Blackcleave Cliffs #4, but I'd be a little afraid of running low on Green sources then.

This deck has more draws that assemble a turn 2 Hogaak, and most of it's power is tied into that play. If your life total matters less - for example, when you are on the play - don't hesitate to speculate by fetching turn one instead of playing Blackcleave Cliffs, if drawing another fetch next turn might give you enough cards to delve away. In the same vein, don't be afraid to delve Lootings, Gravecrawlers, dredgers or extra Hogaaks to summon one early - the game most frequently won't go long enough for the loss of value to be felt.

Neonate is a way worse card without Bridge. You don't have a combo win versus Thing in the Ice. Bridge from Below no longer forbids you from maindecking removal. You need to race more often. All of this makes me like Lightning Axe quite a bit.

Running Satyr makes you need to run Green as your splash color. You can't support Wispmare anymore, and the Bridge from Below synergy isn't there anymore. Wispmare was a LOT better versus exactly Leyline and RiP. Nature's Claim and Assasin's Trophy are downright embarrassing versus Rest in Peace out of UW control - inflexibility is costly, ramping them is asking for trouble, and not dodging Force of Negation adds up. Combining all of the above, my approach to beating their Rest in Peace changed - I want to rely on my high game one win percentage, secure a post-board game while I am on the play, and rely much more on Thoughtseize than on disenchants. On the play, you can just get under it.

Carrion Feeder is worse and I have experimented with cutting the fourth, but it still synergizes well enough and is a good enough aggro creature that I think I want to play four of them.

There is less of a need for discard outlets in this deck now - every single card is perfectly castable from your hand, and the only one that gets stranded versusLeyline is Hogaak itself. Because you always win through damage, hardcasting Vengevine for the win comes  up a lot more than it would have in the pre-ban versions, where your hand versus hate was frequently containing Altars and Bridges anyways.

One thing stayed the same - I have yet to see Cryptbreaker actually contribute to a win.
Why I dislike Hedron Crab

Hedron Crab is an excellent enabler for the deck if you disregard its mana cost. Of course, you can't actually do that, and splashing one-drops is hellish. Effects of splashing the Crab are cascading:

- You already wanted to alternate between casting T1 Supplier and Looting. Crab needs to be played off of your first land to be effective, making Looting/Crab one-landers need a Steam Vents. Steam Vents has a huge cost and it's frequently not easy to use non-black lands in this deck.
- Blue makes your deck base Grixis, which means no enchantment removal and little other options otherwise
- You can try to remedy those problems by running utopia lands - but you either run multiple Gemstones and need to play them early, or play Confluences and take a lot of pain. You still need a healthy amount of fetches for your landfall cards, and if you splash for a Leyline answer you still need your Green or White shockland.

Your manabase end up being a very painful mess, and you end up losing games because you took 10 damage from your lands or because you can't cast your spells. Crab also can't convoke Hogaak and is blank when facing hate.

Why Satyr Wayfinder is good

Satyr is innocuous but performs extremely well. As a two-drop, it’s much easier to splash. Providing card advantage synergizes subtly with Faithless Looting. Providing extra lands goes well with Dredgers, not locking you out of Bloodghasts. Getting extra lands makes hardcasting Vengevine a real plan under Leyline. It taps for Hogaak. Supplier into Satyr is a clean turn two Hogaak. Instead of clashing with other cards and being generally inconvenient, it synergizes subtly with the deck as a whole, which is how the best decks in any format typically end up being built.

Prized Amalgam, Dredgers, hasters

A word on ratios: before the ban, I was frequently expressing how I feel the old Hogaak deck had a little too few enablers. Current Satyr version feels much closer to perfect to me in this aspect. The most logical explanation is Satyr being a direct enabler, not an intermediate one.

I tried Prized Amalgam at first, to imitate pre-ban density of graveyard payoffs, but it was never impressive. It only played to what the deck was strong at anyways - putting out a lot of power on the battlefield to untap with next turn. Mostly just didn't seem to matter while not being castable from hand.

Dredgers impressed me. They are perfect game one cards, speeding you up quite a bunch and preserving a healthy amount of active Supplier mills. They should be your first cuts nearly every time, as those are the weakest cards versus hate. Whether to run Darkblast, Stinkweed Imp or Golgari Thug isn't clear. All of them have upsides - I liked Thug the most for its contribution towards casting Hogaak and triggering Vengevine. If you have a Thug and a Carrion Feeder in play, you get some minor Surgical Extraction protection, but it's rarely relevant. Stinkweed Imp has a better body when facing hate, but I want to board it anyways. It also blocks fliers, but it matters less when you already maindeck Axe.

I thought having a way to give Hogaak haste should be excellent, but the cards rarely played out well in practice. The options are Claim//Fame, Maximize Velocity and Goblin Bushwhacker.
Goblin Bushwhacker doesn't work from your graveyard, and RR is an extremely inconvenient cost. I don't think it is any good.
Maximize and Claim are better options, but actually hasting Hogaak and mattering lines up very rarely. I am not even sure if including non-synergistic-when-drawn cards like those speeds up your average goldfish. Claim having a castable, decent frontside is a saving grace. Those cards aren't justifiable to leave in your deck post-board when facing hate, being nonautonomous payoffs, so I that they might as well just not be in the deck. In general, having access to a haste effect would have been much more desirable had this deck not been running Bloodghast and Vengevine already.

The sideboard

My sideboard right now is simple:

- Four Leylines, because of the prisoner's dilemma versus Dredge and the mirror match.
- Four Thoughtseizes, because I haven't found a non-graveyard threat that would perform better than the discard spell versus UW.
- Ways to kill things.

I am not confident in my removal splits, but I want to kill Thing in the Ice, Leyline of the Void, Chalice of the Void (frequently alongside Leyline), Ensnaring Bridge, Rest in Peace, Auriok Champion, very rarely Grafdigger's Cage. Build your removal suite around these. Auriok Champion is the toughest amongst those, but might actually be ignorable. I tried Plague Engineer for a long time, but it was performing worse than I wanted it to. Explosives seem clunky, but I had people recommend it to me. I like Force of Vior a lot against any Mox Opal deck, but it's also excellent versus Eldrazi Tron and convenient versus double Leyline - just remember that you can't cut green cards when you bring them.

Many players like Shenanigans, because it seems to have a very low opportunity cost against Grafdigger's Cage. After playing with the card a bit, I have to say I don't really like it - two mana at sorcery speed is a very cumbersome spell to cast, so I suspect it might just look smarter than it really is, and right now I think I'll be better served by a stronger and more efficient spell that I need to draw.

If you want a non-graveyard sideboard threat to juke, it needs to be serviceable versus UW. Otherwise, it's a waste. I have seen people sideboard Death's Shadow, but it's not especially impactful against control and pretty embarrassing with Blackcleave Cliffs. Cryptbreker is too mopey for my tastes. I have thought about Liliana of the Veil or of the Last Hope, but I doubt you'll actually ultimate them through their Celestial Purges. Lotleth Troll is a card that's probably too weak to be sideboard, but you might maindeck it over dredgers - despite being generally unexciting it synergizes well in many places. In general, I doubt you'll find a plan more reliable than just quad Thoughtseize.

If you want to free space, you can trim Leylines. Just be aware that with every single one you cut you give up percentage points against people who won't.


Sideboard plans

UR Phoenix

-3 Golgari Thug

+1 Fatal Push
+2 Thoughtseize

It's very hard for them to beat you without Thing in the Ice. Maindeck Axe flips this matchup around. The more Surgical and Trap they have, the better Thoughtseize becomes, and it's entirely possible I want a third Neonate. Leyline leaves their most threatening cards still active, so I don't want any.


Burn

-3 Golgari Thug

+2 Assassin's Trophy
+1 Nature's Claim

They are going to have Rest in Peace, but I don't think you want to be boarding any more answers than that - on the draw, it might be hard to win the game if you had to Trophy their RiP anyways, so mostly just trying to go under them again. It's possible that Forces are just better because they are free.


Jund

-3 Golgari Thug

+2 Assassin's Trophy
+1 Fatal Push

If they have Leylines, I'd have two less Neonate and one less Carrion Feeder for Leyline answers. You need to kill Scavenging Ooze, but other than that Jund doesn't have good removal for Hogaak, so you just need to turbo it out. Unsure about how effective Engineered Explosives would be there.



UW control

-3 Lightning Axe
-3 Golgari Thug
-1 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

+4 Thoughtseize
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+1 Nature's Claim

Not sure if I even want to board Nature's Claim when I am on the play, as I want to maximize a turn two Hogaak to force them to have both Path and Rest in Peace. Trophy gives you answers to Baneslayers if they board them. It's awkward because Hogaak is somewhat of a liability unless you turbo it out, but it's a crucial part of your most busted draws, so it's not an easy problem to solve.



Humans

-3 Golgari Thug

+1 Fatal Push
+1 Assassin's Trophy
+1 Engineered Explosives

If you are sure that they have Cages, you'd need to trim Neonates for more Claims and Trophies, but I wouldn't overboard - Humans is a matchup that you can easily lose without hate involved. Post-board, you need to rush them down before they assemble an unkillable Auriok Champion squad or before they outrace you with Mantis Riders, so you can't water your deck down too much. Some players love to cut Bloodghasts against Humans, but I think you just need to put out as much power as possible ASAP. Prioritize Carrion Feeder so Reflector Mage isn't as much of a blowout, but they'll bounce your Feeder most of the time.




Eldrazi Tron

-3 Insolent Neonate
-1 Gravecrawler
-1 Lightning Axe

+1 Nature's Claim
+2 Force of Vigor
+2 Assassin's Trophy

I want to keep Thugs over one-drops in this matchup because of Chalice of the Void. Lightning Axe is attractive versus Thought-Knot Seer, but typically Chalice comes down before creatures, so it might still be worse than a Neonate because the risk of getting it stranded is higher. Expect Leylines, take your win if they don't have them. Chalice is scary, but it's only really strong on the play, and Satyr Wayfinder into Hogaak helps against it quite a bunch when you are going second.

Mirror

-3 Lightning Axe
-1 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis
-3 Golgari Thug
-1 Insolent Neonate
-1 Carrion Feeder

+4 Leyline of the Void
+5 Leyline removals

Super unsure about the mirror match strategy, so I just keep it simple so far. Leyline and don't get Leylined. Dredge is going to be similar,but you probably want way less Leyline removal, as they play way less Leylines generally. Hogaak under Leyline functions way beter than Dredgedoes, so take advantage of that, too - there is a lotof pressure on them to mulligan towards their Nature’s Claim.

That's most of the things that I have figured out so far. I feel good about my deck choice even if my opponents read this document, so wish me luck in Barcelona take care, and let me know in my Discord if you like this type  of content and it incentivizes you to sub.