The newest hotness in Legacy Dark Depths technology is a blend of Modern Hogaak and Golgari Depths, creating a marriage of legendary giant creatures. This deck has been crushing Magic Online the past few weeks, making Top 8 of the Legacy Challenge four weeks in a row. I have put it through the ringer myself and have some initial thoughts on its current standing.
AnarchistAbe Hogaak Depths MTGO Legacy Challenge Top 8
| Creatures (19) 4 Elvish Reclaimer 4 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis 3 Satyr Wayfinder 4 Stitcher's Supplier 4 Vampire Hexmage Spells (12) 4 Cabal Therapy 4 Thoughtseize 4 Crop Rotation Artifacts (3) 3 Mox Diamond | Lands (26) 2 Bayou 1 Bojuka Bog 4 Dark Depths 1 Dryad Arbor 1 Forest 3 Khalni Garden 1 Sejiri Steppe 1 Swamp 4 Thespian's Stage 4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 3 Verdant Catacombs 1 Wasteland Sideboard (15) 2 Abrupt Decay 2 Assassin's Trophy 3 Force of Vigor 1 Karakas 2 Pithing Needle 3 Surgical Extraction 1 Sylvan Safekeeper 1 Veil of Summer |
The most important advantage is that you gain the additional angle of attack from the graveyard in Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. You get this recursive threat in Hogaak that you don’t really get in regular Depths decks outside of playing copies of Life from the Loam. This diversifies your threats against obvious anti-Depths hate cards in sideboarded games, forcing your opponent to deal with both a land-based combo and graveyard combo.
The mill creatures are extremely important for this additional angle of attack. Sticher Supplier is the cheapest way to enable Hogaak, while Satyr Wayfinder can help you find any land, coming close to the value of the more dedicated land tutors while also providing fuel needed to cast Hogaak. Combined with Khalni Garden and Dryad Arbor, you are basically immune to Diabolic Edict effects.
Unfortunately, while the mill creatures fuel your Hogaaks, they can also mill your important bullet lands or expose combo pieces, giving your opponent a window to break up your combos. Additionally, other graveyard hate becomes more effective in order to cut off this angle. So, in becoming diverse you actually end up becoming mediocre at both strategies.
Cabal Therapy is the main discard spell of choice due to the synergy with the creature-based mill in the deck. All of your graveyard enablers give you additional looks at finding disruption as well as supplying the body to sacrifice to the flashback cost. But I have found this card to be very high variance in a deck that only needs to force your opponent to stumble a little to capitalize. Even the savviest Legacy players will make an educated guess and still not hit off this card without knowing what is actually in the opponent’s hand. I was always partial to Thoughtseize and Duress as its super important to make sure you hit the most important cards in your opponents hand. I also found you don’t always have infinite resources to convoke out Hogaak and sacrifice to therapy multiple times isn’t a luxury you can afford.
So are these (in my opinion) mediocre changes worth the payoff? Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis is a card that has been dominating Modern. Similarly, in Legacy, eight to 10 power of trample damage on Turn 2 or 3, backed up with disruption, will often be more than enough to get the job done. Having trample is a relevant ability because there are some board states where Marit Lage can be chump blocked into oblivion, preventing it from taking over the game.
The major downsides of Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis is a lack of any sort of built in protection and the fact that it’s legendary. This means that the best targeted removal against a Marit Lage token—Karakas and Swords to Plowshares—also hit Hogaak. I see this as a major problem because when you build these decks you really want your combos to be broken up in different ways to throw your opponents off. The way you accomplish this in Legacy Dark Depths is through lands and graveyard needing completely different points of interaction. In the end, your payoffs are completely destroyed by two cards that were already a big problem for Dark Depths decks.
On that note, the Hogaak package means moving a lot cards to the sideboard and requires some major trims there. Abrupt Decay is just such a catch-all in game ones giving you outs to Blood Moon, Ensnaring Bridge, and racing with opponents’ creatures like Delver of Secrets. You lose important cards like sweepers and planeswalkers in order to shore up one of the worst matchups, Death and Taxes.
It’s safe to say at this point I don’t think Hogaak that is the truth in Legacy Dark Depths—the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze in my opinion. Here is roughly how I would build Depths currently.
Legacy GB Depths Test Deck
| Creatures (14) 4 Elvish Reclaimer 4 Dark Confidant 2 Sylvan Safekeeper 4 Vampire Hexmage Spells (14) 4 Abrupt Decay 2 Duress 4 Thoughtseize 4 Crop Rotation Artifacts (4) 4 Mox Diamond Enchantments (1) 1 Sylvan Library | Lands (27) 3 Bayou 1 Bojuka Bog 4 Dark Depths 1 Forest 1 Sejiri Steppe 1 Swamp 4 Thespian's Stage 4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 4 Verdant Catacombs 1 Misty Rainforest 2 Wasteland 1 Ghost Quarter Sideboard (15) 1 Assassin's Trophy 1 Force of Vigor 1 Karakas 2 Pithing Needle 3 Surgical Extraction 2 Liliana, The Last Hope 2 Plague Engineer 1 Duress 2 Hymn to Tourach |
Given that Hogaak Depths is trying to prey on how low the format is on Swords to Plowshares and Karakas, I would do the same in shaving copies of Sylvan Safekeeper. I am super high on Elvish Reclaimer. a card that I felt was the best add in the Hogaak version of the deck. Elvish Reclaimer adds to both your plan A and B at the same time and functions as additional copies of Crop Rotation and a 3/4 beater. Plague Engineer is the kind of card I really miss having in my deck in the Hogaak version, as there are so many matchups where having access to this card will swing boards in your favor. The last new card I have been messing around with is Force of Vigor. I’m seeing a lot of Blood Moon stompy and this is the kind of card that would single handedly take care of Blood Moon boards and create a 20/20 out of nowhere.
I think this non-Hogaak version of the deck is battle-tested and proven. I think the only reason to not play it is how susceptible Dark Confidant is to Wrenn and Six‘s minus ability. I think your plan A is so good at making a 20/20 token that the matchup is still good and you can shore up the new matchups where Dark Confidant isn’t good with your sideboard. I think it’s also possible to play a pile of Sylvan Scrying to play extra into that plan in Game 1 while keeping the removal spells and elements that already made this slightly slower version of deck good in the first place.
Please check out the other articles I have written on Golgari Depths for more history and look out for a matchup guide in the future!
Revisiting B/G Depths in Legacy
B/G Depths for Eternal Weekend
Top 8’ing with B/G Depths at Eternal Weekend