This was evident in the fact that cards like Surgical Extraction, Leyline of the Void, and Rest in Peace-cards whose use is solely to combat the graveyard-became important cards in the main deck of many Modern decks.

This led to a Modern metagame that was dominated by graveyard strategies to the point where deck diversity was being negatively impacted. According to Wizards, “ver the past year the winningest Modern deck at any given point in time has usually been a Faithless Looting deck.” In enabled graveyard-centric decks like Izzet Phoenix, Dredge, Hollow One, and Bridgevine (both pre- and post-Hogaak) to easily dump cards cards into the graveyard and draw cards at the same time, creating an engine so powerful it became a format-defining card. While the entire Magic community expected the banning of Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, few expected that Wizards would go so far as to ban Faithless Looting, as well.įaithless Looting has been one of the most important cards in Modern over the last year.

Today, Wizards officially acknowledged that Hogaak had an “oppressive effect on the metagame,” and given the “variety of successful ways to build ”, it was clear that Hogaak was “the crux of the problem.” But after GP Minneapolis, Aaron Forsythe, Magic’s Vice President of Design, said that Wizards would not be emergency banning given the proximity to today’s Banned and Restricted update. Hogaak was so dominant that Mark Rosewater, Magic’s Head Designer, said that Hogaak was a “mistake” and players were calling for an emergency ban. Mark Rosewater says that Hogaak was a mistake.

Modern dredge post ban