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Let's face it, Hogaak, the Arisen Necropolis has not had a very friendly introduction to the Modern format. It terrorized us all for a few weeks, ultimately leading to Bridge From Below being banned in Modern and creating an immediate first impression of inciting groans.
However, what if we played Hogaak a bit more fairly?
Pro Tour Champ Steve Rubin recently 5-0ed a Magic Online league with a very interesting take on Hogaak. Rather than use it in some broken graveyard engine, Steve was instead using it as a powerful endgame threat in a deck designed to strip each player of all of their resources. Smallpox is an extremely powerful card that has been in Modern for a long time, but decks that play it often have trouble closing the game out before their opponent can draw their way back into the game. Hogaak attempts to solve that problem.
Time Stamps:
Match 1 - 00:0738
Match 2 - 00:37:01
Match 3 - 01:20:17
Match 4 - 01:08:41
Match 5 - 01:39:33
Hogaak Pox | Modern | Steve Rubin
- Creatures (19)
- 3 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis
- 4 Bloodghast
- 4 Cabal Therapist
- 4 Pack Rat
- 4 Stitcher's Supplier
- Planeswalkers (4)
- 4 Liliana of the Veil
- Instants (3)
- 3 Fatal Push
- Sorceries (10)
- 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
- 4 Smallpox
- 4 Thoughtseize
- Lands (24)
- 6 Snow-Covered Swamp
- 1 Dryad Arbor
- 1 Marsh Flats
- 4 Mutavault
- 4 Nurturing Peatland
- 4 Verdant Catacombs
- 4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- Sideboard (15)
- 2 Plague Engineer
- 2 Liliana's Triumph
- 1 Fatal Push
- 1 Liliana, the Last Hope
- 3 Fulminator Mage
- 2 Bitterblossom
- 4 Leyline of the Void
Unfortunately our slate of matchups today wasn't too great for us. Wrenn and Six is a huge problem for us as it is able to invalidate our Liliana of the Veil and Smallpox plan, while graveyard decks aren't going to be easy either without Leyline of the Void. Still, there's definite potential here.
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Cabal Therapist impressed, and Bloodghast provides the fuel to the decks fire by making every card work better. The deck also had an interesting sideboard plan of removing most of the graveyard-based elements to try and beat graveyard hate, but while the plan is good the exact threats themselves do need some tweaking.
Either way, it's a fun and exciting new take on an old and popular archetype! If you love Smallpox as much as I do, this is an excellent place to start.
