Hangarback Walker

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Hangarback Walker

Artifact Creature — Construct

Hangarback Walker enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it.

When Hangarback Walker dies, create a 1/1 colorless Thopter artifact creature token with flying for each +1/+1 counter on Hangarback Walker. (Dying is being put into the graveyard from the battlefield.)

, : Put a +1/+1 counter on Hangarback Walker.

Spell_Slam on This Is Going To Hurt

1 day ago

Good list! I got some ideas for my own, so thanks!

In terms of enablers, Keen Duelist and Descent into Avernus are quite strong. Walking Ballista (and to a lesser extent Hangarback Walker) also makes a great enabler in the early game or a giant threat in the mid/late game. Cryptolith Fragment  Flip is great as a ramp spell that fixes and also enables casting Rakdos. I am also playing Insolent Neonate, which has worked out surprisingly well, though there may be better options out there. I see you're not running Heartless Hidetsugu, which I think is a must-have for this deck. It makes dumping out your hand and killing every opponent trivially easy.

When it comes to payoffs, I really like playing as many colourless cards as possible to really take advantage of Rakdos. I see you're missing Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Emrakul, the Promised End in your top-end. In terms of other colourless cards, I like Duplicant as a potentially free removal spell, Wurmcoil Engine for the value, Myr Battlesphere for early damage output and Steel Hellkite as a flying threat that can wipe out huge chunks of the board.

When it comes to coloured payoffs, I stopped playing cards that cost more than or in their costs, as they wouldn't play well with the Rakdos discount. I do like Sheoldred, Whispering One, Knollspine Dragon and Balefire Dragon.

With Whip of Erebos and Exquisite Blood in the deck, is seems like Sanguine Bond would be a great include as a combo finisher.

In terms of cuts, Lightning Bolt seems like an easy one to let go. I stopped playing haste-givers because I found myself playing creatures post-combat most of the time anyways, so something like Rising of the Day could be an easy cut. Read the Bones seems like a really weak card that could be replaced with better card draw or recursion (Necropotence?). I see the combo with Tectonic Hazard and Death-rattle Oni, but that seems pretty niche otherwise and could be replaced with more reliable/repeatable enablers instead. Spawn of Mayhem seems pretty awkward in this deck, as you'll rarely be able to cast it before turn 4 even with Spectacle (and we know what turn 4 is for! :) ). The triple-black on Bloodletter of Aclazotz and Dread Cacodemon are pretty restricting, in my opinion. Indulgent Tormenter seems very unreliable and probably not worth the cost.

Jet Medallion and Ruby Medallion are not at their best here, as they reduce colourless costs instead of adding mana, which means that with Rakdos out they may not even do anything.

IrishPaddys on Necronomicon | Teysa Karlov | Primer

3 months ago

What's your thoughts on Illustrious Wanderglyph? Seems to fit in the same spot of Ophiomancer without the stipulation of not having a token already so can build up faster but has the issue of making it's tokens and or artifact creatures out of range for Skullclamp and fighting for a 5 drop slot. Best reason I can see is if we want an a backup aggro plan specially if we still include Hangarback Walker as it'll buff it's tokens too.

Darb_the_Bard on Buttercup: Princess Bride

4 months ago

Another interesting thing to note is that Hangarback Walker would also be illegal with Jegantha because the symbol is duplicated.

bensprout on All That Glitters [Primer]

4 months ago

Check out Hangarback Walker Could get Very out of hand.

wallisface on Is Leyline binding worth it?

5 months ago

Leyline Binding is very powerful, but if you think its likely to be removed, then you have to be conscious of what you’re taking. At either end of the spectrum, exiling a Hangarback Walker is permanently killing it, where as exiling a Hornet Queen is giving your opponent a chance to get a strong etb they can trigger again.

But, its more complicated than that. Leyline Binding is currently one of the absolute best forms of removal, and there’s a bunch of reasons for this. Comparing it to Spell Queller doesn’t seem fair:

  • Spell Queller existed in creature decks where it would often end up trying to exile a killspell - which means that the opponent just had to kill the Queller and you would have felt really blown-out. There’s nothing close to that kind of feel-bad outcome from Leyline Binding. Binding exists in control or grindy decks looking to buy themselves time to “win by default” - they can either protect the Binding easily, or assume that by the time its removed the game is already soo far in their favour that it doesn’t matter.

  • Queller is a whopping 3 mana, Binding is effectively 1 (or 2 in a pinch).

  • Queller, being a creature, is trivially easy to remove compared to Binding, a high-mana enchant. Added to this, as Queller was in creature-based builds, it was actively beneficial for your opponent to remove it regardless of whether a spell was under it - there’s nothing inherently beneficial to removing Binding other than getting your spell back… in fact taking time off to removal an enchantment likely plays into the control-players hands.

  • Just added to the above, a massive swath of decks have absolutely 0 ways to deal with enchantments in their mainboard. Most of these decks are unlikely to bother sideboarding-in enchantment removal either.

  • Queller being unable to remove high-powered threats like Fury, Solitude, or our friend Leyline Binding is all-too painful.

  • Queller having to remove cards when they’re cast is very different to Binding being able to remove them whenever you deem appropriate.

Now, Queller is still a fine card, I still run it in one of my decks, but it’s no Leyline Binding. Binding is super powerful because it can remove almost any threat for a single mana, is one of the hardest card-types to remove itself, and is played in decks that aim to mitigate its downsides through control and/or card-advantage.

Binding is one of the strongest removal cards, but does take some deck-building consideration… perhaps your personal build isn’t a good home for it?

tenchito on Myrs Dance for Grapeshot

6 months ago

Puedes agregar Scrap Trawler y eliminar Hangarback Walker, de esta forma tu combo no solo se limita a Grapeshot sino que también puedes hacer el combo con Perilous Myr, además, puedes agregar Impact Tremors y aumentar las posibilidades.

tenchito on Myrs Dance for Grapeshot

6 months ago

Puedes agregar Scrap Trawler y eliminar Hangarback Walker, de esta forma tu combo no solo se limita a Grapeshot sino que también puedes hacer el combo con Perilous Myr, además, puedes agregar Impact Tremors y aumentar las posibilidades.

Andromedus on Progress and Poverty

9 months ago

wallisface Whether this deck ever places in any tournaments remains to be seen, but I'm not about to throw the concept out in favor of making just another scales or taxes deck. If I wanted to do that the copy/paste function would have saved me a lot of time.

I'll answer much of this when I get the description written on how to pilot it. To hit an easy one: Anointed Peacekeeper is a replacement effect, not an ETB trigger, so Hushbringer has no effect on it.

Regarding Hushbringer hitting only three decks in the meta, based off MTG Goldfish data this assertion simply isn't true. In addition to hitting Scam (Dauthi Voidwalker, Seasoned Pyromancer, Grief, Fury), Omnath (Endurance, Omnath, Locus of Creation, Fury, Solitude, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines), and (both Jeskai and Azorius) Control (Solitude, Wall of Omens, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines), it also hits Creativity (Archon of Cruelty), Hammertime (Kor Outfitter, Stoneforge Mystic), Temur Rhinos (Fury), Living End (Architects of Will, Grief, Subtlety), Mono-Green Tron (Wurmcoil Engine), Yawgmoth (Young Wolf, Blood Artist, Strangleroot Geist, Endurance, Geralf's Messenger), and Scales (Hangarback Walker, Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp, Arcbound Ravager).

So the decks that Hushbringer doesn't touch are Burn, Murktide, Underworld Breach, and Domain Zoo.

The top 15 decks represent exactly 80% of the meta (per MTG Goldfish), with the four above decks that Hushbringer doesn't touch representing 21.5% of the meta. So assuming Hushbringer has no impact on the missing 20% of the meta not represented by the top 15 decks (definitely untrue, Death and Taxes, Eldrazi Tron, Merfolk and Amulet Titan being four obvious examples that Hushbringer hoses just off the top of my head, but let's pretend) it still prevents something in 58.5% of meta competitive decks.

Granted it's not a great card against all of those decks, but it still disrupts something, while sitting on a 1/2 flying lifelink body.

Regarding those decks that Hushbringer's static ability doesn't impact at all, four quick points:

  1. She can be an excellent chump blocker or damage trader in a deck with 4x Giver of Runes when the opponent lacks trample, plus lifelink is naturally strong vs burn.
  2. Not all +1/+1 counters are created equal, you get a lot more mileage on a lifelink flyer than on most other creatures, especially if you're trading.
  3. Those four decks are generally hosed by other aspects of the deck (by design), i.e. Archon of Emeria hoses Murktide, as does much of the list, frankly. That's not to say it always beats Murktide, but it does hold its ground respectably (at least in my playtesting).
  4. Our sideboard is designed to help us most vs our weaker matchups, and since it's white it's a pretty solid toolkit. I do think the sideboard could probably be further improved.

In general, since we're trying to deny value and slow down the game, we're looking for mana dumps and value engines that help us grind ahead. The +1/+1 counter engines help us do that, and when placed on a lifelink or vigilance creature punch above their weight.

If you think it's a garbage deck concept then that's fair. I've playtested vs a handful of the top competitive archetypes with surprisingly good results, but it may be that despite my best efforts I'm just no good at piloting other decks. In any case I'll entertain feedback that helps it do what it's meant to do better, but I'm not looking to create just another deck that everyone's seen a million times except with a slight two-card tweak just so I can call it innovation. I hope that makes some sense.

When I get a description written up I hope to make things a bit clearer. Undoubtedly the deck isn't for everyone, and may not ever end up on a meta list. That's ok.

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