Deck and Sideboard Guide 3/1/2024

Hello hello hello everyone, and welcome back to Modern. We had a shake-up in the format with Leyline of the Guildpact increasing the power of Zoo, as well as “Rainbow Rhinos”. Additionally, both UR Murktide and BR Scam have been on the decline. Otherwise, the format looks largely the same with the top of the format: both variants of Rhinos, Living End, Amulet, and Yawgmoth. Generally, I’m fine with this meta. Very happy with the Rhinos matchups (both variants) and reasonable against Yawg. Living End and Amulet remain quite challenging, but we are seeing a lot of lists trim or cut their Force of Vigors entirely.

While I think Hammer’s spot is generally fine, I do believe there is a notable shift in what the list should look like, which I will break down momentarily.

***Disclaimer: make sure to adjust your mid-match decisions based on the specifics of any list you face and use this as a guideline, rather than a hard and fast rule! Sometimes vibes > guide.***

Without further ado, here is my recommended configuration for Hammer right now:

Decklist:

Sideboard Guide

Why the big changes? Not Mono-White? Blue Splash? What???

- First of all, I’ll address the elephant (or rather “elemental”) in the room. Why no Solitude?

When I first added it to the deck back in early 2023, Solitude was added primarily to fight against Yawgmoth, RB Scam, Amulet Titan, and Murktide. So, if Yawg and Titan are 2 of the top decks, why remove them now? Let’s break down how each matchup has changed:

• Yawgmoth: Solitude is still very effective in the matchup, but with the deck gaining enough meta share, we are able to slot very targeted hate into the sideboard (see Cursed Totem). Additionally, with Surge of Salvation, it is much easier to pick your spot and go for the kill.
• RB Scam: Solitude means that if they ever went for an early 4/4 Fury they would often just fold to a Solitude. With the banning of Fury, this is simply not a play pattern that exists. Solitude is still an excellent tool, but no longer what I would call “necessary”.
• Amulet: Solitude has always been respectable in the matchup, but with the addition of The One Ring and small tweaks to their combo routes, they are able to push through a single Solitude without too much trouble.
• UR Murktide: Thanks to the rise of Yawg, we are seeing 3-4  Stern Scolding become more standard in Murktide lists. While tagging a Ragavan, DRC, or Murktide can swing the game, the reality is that Solitude is simply much less likely to resolve now.

With all that in mind, I looked to see what a list without Solitude would look like, and also if splashing was worth revisiting. While I looked at every splash and its pros/cons, I ultimately settled on blue being the best option. Black primarily offered Bowmasters and Discard spells, neither of which were very appealing. Red offered cool tools like Alpine Moon and Wear//Tear. Green offered mostly a pile of disenchants in Haywire Mite, Nature’s Claim, Boseiju, etc.

Blue had a few interesting classics like Spell Pierce, Lavinia, etc, but it also had a brand new shiny toy that people were really hyping up in the form of Cryptic Coat. While I was originally quite skeptical of the Coat, it performed miles better in testing. Additionally, I had seen some people try out Failure//Comply with strong finishes, but had largely written it off.

I tried to keep in mind during this testing of “does what I’m adding with this splash color outweigh the cost of being softer to blood moon and running fewer canopy lands?” If I had come to the conclusion that the splash didn’t meaningfully improve the most popular matchups, then I wouldn’t be recommending it.

Notable blue cards:

-Cryptic Coat - This card has overperformed in a lot of ways. It is like what people always wanted Invisible Stalker to be. It is a solid body on its own, provides evasion, and can even grind out longer games by returning it to your hand and re-deploying it. Another thing to note: both Sigarda’s Aid and Paladin allow you to move the Coat. Aid lets you flash it in, create a free 2/2, and then move the Coat to another creature with the trigger. Puresteel Paladin grants the “equip 0” ability to the Coat, meaning that you can freely move it as long as you have Paladin in play. Coat also acts as a fair equipment that doubles as a shadowspear thanks to its evasion. That means that if SFM is almost certainly going to die, you can just grab the Coat rather than the Kaldra. Also, "Ward 2" is a lot better than it seems. T3f's ability, Solitude, and EACH activation of Yawgmoth costing 2 additional mana is a huge deal, and much more impactful than I initially thought.
***Bonus tip: If you have Stoneforge and Coat in play and are concerned about someone killing your SFM, make sure to activate Stoneforge FIRST, hold priority, and THEN return Coat to your hand. Doing so will re-deploy the Coat even if they have a Bolt/Solitude for the SFM.  

-Spell Pierce - This card is what I would call “totally fine”. While it isn’t perfect (I think you could play Mana Tithe instead for a lot of matchups), Pierce does tend to be better against Rhinos, Living End, and fighting Murktide on the stack.

-Lavinia, Azorius Renegade - I do love me some Lavinia. She does a lot, but mostly she counters the pitch Elementals, cascade spells, and severely slows down Leyline Binding. Unfortunately, the reality is that she is markedly worse than Drannith Magistrate against cascade decks, and isn’t quite impactful enough in her other use cases to justify her inclusion. She is markedly worse against the cascade decks for 2 reasons. Firstly, her 2 points of toughness means that she dies to every shock, which these decks often pack in abundance. Secondly, costing UW instead of 1W means that to play and protect her, you need 3 colored sources by turn 3 (which is sometimes a big challenge). Drannith + protection spell on the other hand is often quite trivial.

-Teferi, Time Raveler - T3f is very powerful against cascade decks in play. The issue is that you need 3 mana to play him (which typically means turn 3), and he can easily get Subtlety’ed/Force of Negationed. Additionally, he doesn’t do much against the rest of the field, and does almost nothing to forward your own gameplan. Good tool to have access to, but I’d avoid him for now.

-Failure//Comply - Now *this* was a card that I tried mostly for science, as I thought it was mostly just a worse Reprieve since it didn’t draw a card, and was slightly harder to cast. While against Rhinos and Living End, it is mostly just that. That being said, “a worse Reprieve” can sometimes be enough to win the game against either of these decks as Hammer. One thing that I noticed the more I played, was that Failure also draws a card; that card is just Comply 100% of the time. The big selling point for me picking Failure over Reprieve however, is how much better it is against Amulet Titan than Reprieve. If you Reprieve a One Ring, Dryad, or Titan, you have to kill them the following turn or you’re almost certainly losing anyway. If you Failure one of those, you can then Comply and name the most relevant card to buy yourself an entire additional turn cycle. The ceiling for this is your OP casts Summoner’s Pact and casts Titan. You Failure the Titan. Then their next turn is eaten up by paying for Pact trigger. Then you get to Comply “Titan”, and they have to wait ANOTHER turn to finally cast it.

That’s a LOT of time that 1 card bought us. And as such, I’m happy to register some number of copies.

Current Deck Configuration Notes:

-The only blue card in the main is Coat. This means that you can aggressively fetch basic plains and not be punished for it.

-0 Giver - With the addition of Coat for additional resiliency and evasion, coupled with lower numbers of Ragavans running around, I feel that Giver is fairly low right now, and would rather max out on Thopters.

-4 Thopter - Having the extra bit of speed with more Thopters is nice, and 4 has felt quite strong currently.

-1 Steelshaper’s Gift - The card offers increased combo redundancy. Additionally, the card’s value increases markedly for every piece of “fair” or utility equipment in the deck. The addition of Coat means that I’m happy to have 1-2 Gifts.

-Manabase - 7 Fetches, 2 Shocklands, 2 Fastlands, and 4 Basics (plus the mandatory 4 Sagas and 3 Inkmoths). It does not matter what Fetches you play so long as they can grab Plains, so choose whatever ones you like the most. I like the ability to fetch a 2nd blue source post-sideboard, so I like the 2nd Hallowed Fountain. Having your lands enter tapped feels really bad, but taking 0 damage is also nice so a couple Seachrome Coasts help balance that. I do not like surveil lands in Hammer because we rarely have extra mana lying around, and drawing one naturally is terrible.

Sideboard - Note that this SB went through MANY iterations, and the final version here were numbers that I tweaked to make the most sense as a 75, and cards like Ending were added because of how they slot in for multiple different matchups.

-2 Pierce - Pierce is highly flexible and slots in against a lot of decks. It is kept out of the maindeck because it’s dead in a higher percentage of game 1’s than things like Surge. Additionally, keeping it out of the main means that we can very function with 0 blue sources.

-2 March - March is predominantly for any deck with Urza’s Saga, as it is highly efficient, and can cause a game to flip on a dime. Specifically, being able to tag Saga or Amulet out of Titan can often make a world of difference. One thing to note: do not bring in March against decks like UW Control and 4C Control just because of chalice. If Chalice is the only target that you want to March under 3 CMC, leave the card in the sideboard.

-2 Ending - Prismatic Ending will often only tag mana values 2 or less, but that’s exactly why it’s here. It is very reasonable against Titan since it tags Amulet on turn 1 and prevents their nut draws. Additionally, it plays nicely against Murktide and Scam because it can tag some of their hate pieces, but more importantly can exile a Monkey on turn 1 even on the draw. Keep in mind that you can also reasonably hit 3 drops if you have a drum (looking at you Blood Moon and Dryad).

-2 Failure//Comply - I’ve already written quite a bit about this, but the tl;dr is that it’s good vs. Rhinos, Living End, and Control, and can be backbreaking against Amulet Titan.

-3 Drannith - There is a lot of Cascade right now, and Drannith is simply the best tool we have. While counter magic is solid, going too light on creatures post-board mean that it’s hard to actually close out the game.

-3 Totem - Yawgmoth is still quite popular, and this is an absolute hammer (pun intended) against them. Deploy a Totem, protect it with a Surge, and you’re absolutely winning unless you have absolutely nothing going on.

-1 Needle - Card is incredibly flexible, and I always want to have access to 1 in my 75.