December Hammer Update (Post-Ban Modern)

Happy December everyone! Hammer has struggled in recent months and– wait, I’m getting breaking news:

Just… wow. They did it. The madlads at wotc did it. They banned The One Ring AND gave us Mopal. Time to jam.

First thing first: I don’t have a sideboard guide because well… the sideboard is very much in flux, and the meta is far from stabilized (it’s a whole new format since Monday after all). As such, I’ll post the list, my thoughts on it, and then touch on a bunch of different SB cards I think are worth looking at. Also note that I’m likely to leave some off the list since I might just miss them. There is a ton to consider and I am just one simple man.

Decklist

Elephants in the Room: Wrath, Meltdown, Stony, and Ouphe

These are the 4 biggest sledgehammers against us, and are things we want to keep in mind when playing the deck. Meltdown is arguably the easiest to try and play around, and both Stony and Ouphe can be played through with Kappa, Sigarda’s aid, and Construct beatdown, but Wrath is definitely the card we need to try and straight up counter, since it uniquely wipes our creatures, artifacts, AND enchantments (notably Saga). You won’t always be able to beat these, especially if your opponents have these paired with a way to close out the game, but these are the cards you should try to keep in mind most.

Notes on current configuration:

-4 Mox Opal - Play 4, not negotiable. This card is incredible and it is worth us warping our deck around to play. It enables turn 2 kills in multiple ways, more reliable turn 1 saga into double construct lines, and even equipping a hammer on turn 1. Plus it makes it easier to deploy threats while holding up interaction (pierce/surge etc). Remember that even if you have 2, it means that one of them is a Lotus Petal, which is another absolute banger of a card. This card fully replaces drums, and lets us reduce our land count since we have a lower curve with all the 0s.

-3 Kappa Cannoneer - I want to draw 1 copy basically every game, but drawing 2 is pretty terrible (especially early), and drawing more than 2 means you probably lose on the spot barring some weird game play. If I could play 8 but guarantee I only drew 1, I would play that many. Unfortunately, we live in reality, where the damage of turtle flooding is too high in my opinion. I have already spoken about Kappa in my recent stream, but there are a number of reasons I am so high on Kappa.

• It comes down as a 5/5, and is pretty easy to keep giving unblockable to thanks to its trigger. Also remember that if you have boots, you can immediately attack for a ton of unblockable damage for a mere 1 additional mana.

• If you ever suit this thing up with a Hammer, it means your OP is almost certainly dead.

• It dodges hate better than basically anything else we could play.

  • Its mana value is 6, so the best cards against us (Wrath of the Skies and Meltdown) almost always do nothing against it.

  • It is blue, so it can’t get Consigned.

  • Against Stony Silence/Collector Ouphe, you can still improvise this big turtle into play and likely win off of its back.

  • It has Ward 4, making it effectively Hexproof.

All of that said, It is still incredibly bad to draw more than 1 copy in the first 4+ turns, so I believe that 2 or 3 is the right number in Hammer despite its power. As we play more, it may be clear that it is simply too important to play fewer than 4 copies that we up the numbers, but for now 3 is where I’m landing.

-4 Sentinel - Sentinel is incredible right now. Not only are there a ton of cheap noncreatures that people are playing since the influx of blue decks due to Splinter Twin, Frog uptick, etc. Being an additional cheap artifact for Kappa and Opal is also very real. Sentinel is great, and you should play 4.

-4 Memnite, 4 Thopter - Historically, these guys were here to enable fast kills by getting on the board fast and enabling metalcraft. Now they are still around for metalcraft, but it’s all in the service of powering Mox Opal. Additionally, these are moxen for Kappa, enabling the Turtle to come down as early as turn 1, but much more reasonable on turn 2 or 3. You can certainly trim some post-board, but right now I am very happy to play the full 8 0-drops in the main.

-2 Pierce - Pierce has felt better now than it has in literal years. The format has sped up, meaning mana is usually tighter, and it covers a wide array of things from Wrenn and Six, to early Meltdown, to Splinter Twin, and beyond

-0 Forge Anew - With the addition of Kappa and the extra 0’s I simply don’t believe there is enough room for Forge. I think the card is a reasonable inclusion, but I don’t have the room in my list right now.

-Nettlecyst/Kaldra slot - Right now, I am higher on Cyst because of how easy it is to cast, and how big it gets in the higher artifact-count builds (like this one). Plus you can just put it on a Kappa and kill your OP. Kaldra is reasonable, but the risk of it getting stranded in your hand without Givers or protection for your Stoneforge is why I’ve declined to play it.

-20 Land (including a surveil land) - I am a known historical hater of a surveil land in Hammer, but the deck has pretty fundamentally changed with this unbanning. After playing a bunch of matches with the list, I have found that the addition of all the 0s and moxen means that there are many turns where we can potentially take 1 mana off to surveil. This is especially true post-board where you want to hold up interaction on turn 1, and then deploy 3-4 spells on turn 2 while still holding up the interaction.
***Also note that this could easily go up to 21 lands, but for right now I’m happy with 20. The 21st would likely be a Witch Enchanter or Canopy land.

Sideboard considerations

Stack Interaction

-Spell Pierce - Right now I think Pierce is the best option since it covers the widest range of options, including both spot removal as well as 3 of the Elephants referenced above. It is where I would put most of my slots, especially while the format remains in flux.

-Surge of Salvation - While I am a huge fan of this card, it is at maybe its lowest point right now. We can largely overwhelm spot removal, and this card doesn’t address any of the Elephants I mention. As such, I like some number, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a list with 0 copies depending on how the meta looks.

-Consign to Memory - An incredibly powerful card and locked at a 4-of up until Monday. With the shift away from colorless decks thanks to the Ring’s banning, and a higher focus on high-impact colored spells. Note that if Titan, Belcher, and Tron variants see an upswing, I’ll be reaching for some of these.

-Swan Song - Not a card I ever thought I’d be seriously registering in the list, but it has overperformed as both a way to hard counter a Meltdown/Wrath while still covering a wide range of threats like Persist, Creativity, Goryo’s and Twin. It is far from perfect so I’m still exploring, but I don’t hate a couple copies after seeing how well it plays in actual games. The 2/2 bird they get is annoying, but more than worth the cost of countering a haymaker.

-Stubborn Denial - This is where I will be exploring next as my supplemental pierces. Not only does Kappa turn this on by itself, but our Constructs are consistently much larger than they used to be, much faster. As such, I think Stubborn Denial is worth another look, and I’m excited to play around with it.

-Orim’s Chant - This may be our best anti-combo card right now, as it plays well at breaking up lines of play in Underworld Breach, Titan, Belcher, and the spell-based degenerate decks like Song of Creation, Storm, etc. Don’t forget that for WW you can actually prevent them from attacking as well, which most often comes up against Titan.

-Blacksmith’s Skill - This card is pretty low on my list, but it’s a strong option and is better against Meltdown/Wrath than other options.

-Flare of Fortitude - This one isn’t actually worth considering while we only have 12 creatures we can sacrifice to it, but since people have asked about it, I wanted to directly address the card.

Saga Tutor Targets

-Needle - Card is so flexible that it feels like a crime to not have access to in your 5. There are no specific targets that I’m looking to hit at the moment, but I expect that to change quickly. You can even bring one in reasonably against Twin to name Deceiver Exarch.

-Vexing Bauble - Definitely one I am most unsure of, but it is strong against Belcher, Breach, and potentially Affinity (I am less confident in that one). It also has a strong buyout in an emergency.

-Grafdigger’s Cage - For the first time in what feels like years, this card is actually quite reasonable. It’s strong against all of the graveyard decks that just opened up (Phoenix, Dredge, Persist, Goryo’s, and even potentially Frog/Oculus for their unearths), as well as any deck relying on Green Sun’s Zenith. I probably wouldn’t bring it in against Amulet Titan, but it is nice to hit both graveyards and other strategies.

-Graveyard Hate - Soul-Guide Lantern is my personal pick here, but Tormod’s crypt and Relic of Progenitus are also very reasonable options.

-Aether Spellbomb - I’m not a huge fan of this one, but if the creativity decks start playing really nasty things like Serra’s Emissary, this is a nice out that we can grab off Saga.

Hate Bears

-Lavinia - She can obviously be tough to cast, but she is also very potent. Her utility comes in a couple different ways:

• She asymmetrically counters all 0 mana spells (mox + mox enablers, mostly)

• She asymmetrically counters all free spells (Forces, Flares, anything coming off suspend/cascade)

• She stops people from casting spells ahead of curve, since they need at least as many lands as the cost of noncreatures they are casting.

The above reasons are why she is strong against a ton of decks right now, including but not limited to: Belcher, Titan, Breach, Song, Affinity (Probably). She is even reasonable against storm because it means they can’t cast Past in Flames before turn 4, and the Ral ultimate doesn’t do anything.

-Drannith Magistrate - This one is much more straightforward. Magistrate is good against any deck casting spells from anywhere but their hand. See Breach, Storm, and Cascade mostly.

-Sanctifier En-Vec - This card is super powerful against most of the graveyard decks like Dredge, Phoenix, and the BR/x aggro/midrange decks like Nethergoyf + DRC shells that have been running around. I think our deck is fundamentally favored against these shells so I don’t value Sanctifier very highly, but it is a reasonable inclusion.

Hate not-Bears

-Rest in Peace - This is like Sanctifier, except we are trading a 2/2 pseudo-evasive body for the ability to perma-nuke the yards. This means in addition to Dredge and Nethergoyf/DRC, RIP shines against UB Frog decks and Breach. If the format continues to push in a graveyard-heavy direction, I would seriously consider RIP since no card does it better.

-Disruptor Flute - No idea if I want this, but it’s a strong tool and plays nicely with the extra mana that Mopal gives us. Card is solid and will likely flex in and out.

-Cursed Totem - If Yawg and Scales comes back, I’ll reach for my Totems. Otherwise they will stay on the bench.

-Surgical Extraction - Another powerful anti-yard card, but more narrow than RIP. I like Surgical if the OP cares more about specific cards than they do about the size of the graveyard.

Removal/Interaction

-Dispatch - In the past, this one would’ve been a pipe dream, but if we are consistently turning on metalcraft as early as turn 1, then this is a very solid option to look at if we need a premier creature removal spell.

-March of Otherworldly Light - Strong against basically every Saga deck as well as being serviceable removal against cheap threats. Additionally, it also tags chalice and other hate pieces. As such, March is near the top of my list as an interaction piece.

-Portable Hole - This is an interesting one to explore since it is a reasonable removal spell which helps contribute towards metalcraft and can tap for Kappa. I’m not super impressed by it, especially since being an artifact means that people are likely to be able to kill it post-board.

-Hurkyl’s Recall - If Artifact decks (Affinity, Hammer, Lantern) become widely played, Recall is a great option to create opportunity for big attacks and blow them out.

-Prismatic Ending - Better than March against anything costing 0-2 mana outside of Urza’s Saga, but that’s the big consideration for it. Mox means that you can cast this for 3+ more reliably, but Ending is near the bottom of removal spells that I am considering.