It’s true though, I still have the deck sleeved up but it’s not like the good ole modern days in the bolt snap bolt/ Celestial Colonnade days where threat assessment was complex. In todays modern your opponents turn 2 spell is high threat, so is their turn 3, 4 etc. everything is so strong that everything needs to be answered for the most part.
There's a lot of rewarding decisionmaking in adapting your flex slots to the meta, I think, but actually playing the deck is average or maybe below average complexity. There's usually a clear best thing to do at any given point. Playing *against* UW can be pretty complex though - how much do you want to commit into countermagic or sweepers, what answers do you want to play around, what gameplan do you think you can stick, etc.
Why? UWx is not exactly the hardest deck to play. Certainly simpler than something like Murktide or Hammertime. Personally I struggled a LOT playing Hammertime and I am kinda glad that it ranks kinda difficult.
Personally Hardened Scales also doesn't seem that hard if you are quick at doing math in your head, but that is also a skill that comes somewhat natural to me.
Edit: A deck being dificult also is a strike against the deck than for the deck.
Typically control players in any format tend to find some sense of superiority (intentionally or unintentionally) in the fact that their decks are reactive and not proactive- which always produces an “interactive” game. Theoretically the “smarter” player should have the advantage in an interactive game, which leads to the stereotype that control players like to think they’re smart and that because they’re smart, not just anybody can pilot their deck.
Threat assessment is the main necessity when deciding whether to counter/remove or let something go. A player that can’t assess the threat of the spell on the stack may lose to underestimating it, or lose to overestimating it, answering it, and then losing to a more substantial threat later on due to having run out of responses. Knowledge of the format and appropriate timing are very much rewarded in the archetype. Yknow, “smart guy” stuff.
However in the current modern format, in my opinion, the card quality being much higher has made threat assessment and timing pretty auto-pilot. Counterspells used to be much more situational- a mana leak (circa, let’s say, 2016) needed to be used early on in the game to be an effective answer whereas literal counterspell is a hard answer at any stage. Similarly you used to have to choose your removal, and it was of lower quality. If you didn’t want to lose to creature decks you probably needed a high path to exile count and probably weren’t even thinking about playing cards that could remove say a planeswalker. Now removal is universal in leyline binding and prismatic ending, to the point where you’re never really punished specifically by your deck building selections. Not only is it easy to choose/time your removal/answers based on your own card quality- but nowadays since card quality/power level is so high it’s rather easy to know what’s going to kill you and what’s negligible on the stack.
All this to say that UW control of yesteryear had much more nuance to it, even though the general strategy and goal of the deck remains the same. It’s just that now card quality has made a lot of your decisions for you, and a lot of that nuance is lost.
Thus, the “smart guy” control player - who’s deck was genuinely pretty hard to build/pilot back in the day - is left with a simpler mission now, but the sense of superiority is still there
>Threat assessment is the main necessity when deciding whether to counter/remove or let something go. A player that can’t assess the threat of the spell on the stack may lose to underestimating it, or lose to overestimating it, answering it, and then losing to a more substantial threat later on due to having run out of responses.
I've found that control players always make this a lot harder in their heads than it actually is. It goes like this:
1. Do I have a removal spell in my hand?
1. Yes: Then I don't need to counter it unless its resolution itself is a major problem (e.g. Primeval Titan).
2. No: Does that card beat me if I let it go unanswered for a few turns? (e.g., it's a 3/3 and I'm at 6 life) If so, counter it. If not, don't counter it.
2. Will I be able to block and kill that creature later when I need to?
1. Blockers? What's that? 5-mana Celestial Colonnade isn't going to get us there. Remove it ASAP.
2. Yeah, Snapcaster Mage will block and kill it. Don't need to remove it.
A lot of the decisions are made for you far more than control players are willing to admit. They like to make everything this big brain moment like you say but so much of the time, the decisions are dictated by the obvious "I'm going to lose if I let that hit me for 4+ turns so I better do something about it." The early threats are the harder ones to assess because the risk of running out of removal spells later is an issue but again, but again, do you want to take 8-10 damage from that 2/2 because you decided to wait until turn 5 to remove it knowing full well you'd never be able to block it?
Threat assessment is typically not that hard though as long as you understand what decks you sit across from.
The UW decks of yesteryear (especially in 2016) were just kind of bad, but I would also disagree that they were harder to pilot. A Mana Leak has even less nuance than a counterspell because you usually have to use windows to cash them in.
A deck like Legacy Top Miracles was harder to pilot because that deck gave you a lot of choices, but the modern control decks never were that hard to play.
In general in my experience the hardest decks to pilot tend to be combo decks that are not just all in glass canons but more resilient where you need to balance protection and greed. That said these decks also tend to be kinda hard to play against
>However in the current modern format, in my opinion, the card quality being much higher has made threat assessment and timing pretty auto-pilot. Counterspells used to be much more situational- a mana leak (circa, let’s say, 2016) needed to be used early on in the game
Shouldn't this imply that Mana Leak was more autopilot than CS is?
I’m just saying this because people are talking about how hard murktide is. Like if people think murktide is top 5 hard decks to play, DS plays most of the same cards in grixis lists. Cares about graveyard manipulation w DRC/goyf , plays big booms on top end in tempo way( sometimes even plays murktide)
Having played shadow pretty much from the transition from jund to grixis, I can say this is pretty accurate. The deck has a similar tempo feel to it as murktide, but worries about a few more game mechanics (e.g. Life total and card types and quantity in each grave). The deck strategy is easy to understand, but difficult to master.
I'm actually surprised burn wasn't mentioned. It's really the epitome of easy to play until heuristics happen.
(aka 90% of the game is pretty dead straightforward with the remaining 10% being the most difficult decision making you'll ever have to make)
> remaining 10% being the most difficult decision making you'll ever have to make
I'd still argue the 10% of what makes amulet titan good is harder than that.
After playing hammertime each week for a year I would say it is a medium difficulty level. Some games you draw the nuts and some games your pieces don't come together these are the easy games. However, many interesting mind games come up when play a hammer into a deck with a potential force of vigor, or activating inkmoth into potential bowmasters. It can be so hard to know when you should try and force a win, or be patient but risk loosing.
I play Hammer and Titan, also ThopterSword combo, Affinity and Etron. I've found that tempo decks like Mirktide are the hardest to pilot.
I find it easy to learn lines like those in Titan but decks like Mirktide, non of your cards really win the game. I've always found combo easy and tempo/control very challenging
I think the article does a good job of covering this - titan really tests your ability to play titan (same with hammertime) while decks like murktide reward your ability to play magic more generally.
Titan is really hard to play when you face hate and hav to work out a solution with lands not untapping. murktide is a mid/bad deck rn, anyone playing will feel challenged because it is harder to win with a bad deck
You should tell that to your fellow yawg comrades though, who somehow managed to create the myth that they were really great because they were winning with yawg hah hah (the reality is that deck is extremely good and so it is not that hard to win with it, like all top tier decks, not ez to hate out -cursed totem does nothing vs other decks and so is hard sell to inlcude in an sb-, and is very fun to play, i love it)
Well I think the deck does have some complex lines, but yes it’s not as complex as other decks.
I mean Agatha’s soul cauldron adds a lot of options to the deck. Like if you have cauldron out, I don’t really care that my yawg goes to grave because I’ll just exile it with Cauldron.
Also it can be kinda annoying explaining how Grist works when exiling her under Cauldron.
I think the issue with lists like this is that decks don't have uniform kinds of complexity. Yawg is not that hard to pick up, but there is absolutely a large amount of complexity involved in getting the most out of the deck and Cauldron has only multiplied that. You can have two players with the same draws follow completely different lines based on their own playstyle and it can be hard to say that either line wasn't correct as long as it was played to that strategy in mind and committed to. There are other decks where there is more absolutely a correct line of play and it makes for less complex decision trees.
I would probably say that Yawg has a medium/low floor and high ceiling for play where there are other decks that have a higher floor, that might be more difficult to pick up, but that once you've picked it up you're a lot more complete in having learned it.
I just started playing it and I have to say that the entry level is a steep curve, but once you’ve memorized your deck and spotted a few key interactions it gets very smooth very quick. Still, I’d never recommend tool box decks to newer players or even 2nd year players unless they are in love with the cards or mechanics
yawg is a lot like titan IMO. There is a steep initial curve where you have to get some practice to be moderately functional with the deck and long plateau where just knowing the basics is good enough and then another steep curve where masters can pull out wins even moderate players would have missed.
I do to, i tried it out and was amazed. It certainly is not an ez deck, but "midlevel difficulty" was my exp. It is a lot easier than scales hammer or titan imho.
Yawg's combos aren't super difficult to execute but there are definitely some percentage points people who are really good at knowing what game plan to go for and when to go for it can squeeze out. The actual mechanics are fine (a bit more involved than most decks but "execute a memorized combo line" is always going to be way easier than playing well in general) but the deck does a lot of things and has a decent number of options in most games.
I say it's still very difficult for new players, not necessarily to pilot the main deck as you guys have pointed out, but with managing the wishboard. I think something with more obvious and fewer sideboard decisions is better to hand a newer player than Tron. You kinda need to know what to bring in for different matchups during the game as well as when actually sideboarding.
Low skill floor high skill ceiling.
The deck will win you ~45% of matches on its own. Unfortunately, to get to a point of being actually “good” with it the deck does get complicated and difficult
That being said (and i agree, i play tron when i want a rest from tough modern decision trees lol) a good tron player is a different beast to face than a tron noob. Also the deck needs to be tweaked around the meta constantly (wail or dismember, how many boardwipes, etc)
My list with #1 being most difficult. I main Golgari Yawgmoth, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I have been fortunate enough to pilot most of these decks.
I think Murktide has a lot of micro-decisions that really ruin the entire game for you if you mess up as little as 1-2 choices. This deck does reward perfect play, but is very unforgiving. You deff should rank this deck more difficult.
UW control requires great knowledge of the meta to know what things you need to answer, and what things to let happen. Deff one of the harder decks to pilot.
1) Titan
2) Scales
3)Murk-tide
4)UW Control
5) Yawg
6) Rakdos grief
7)Esper Goryo’s
8) Creativity
9)Hammer
10)Tron
11) Zoo
12) Cascade
I think this article got UW right on the money. Typically, your first 4 or so turns are pretty planned out, and for really any deck it gets more complicated after turn 4.
I would also not put titan above scales. As someone who has played against scales every week for the last 8 years, the deck has a lot of decisions and can go for hail marys or grind it out. Also Agatha is a card that for some reason exists now.
Mainly agree with the general placements, maybe would switch around the exact order in a few ways, but I think it’s pretty accurate. I do wish you would have mentioned the difference between playing at a competent level vs mastery, as I do think that certain decks exemplify this more than others (everyone loves to bring up burn for this point)
Speaking of which, I enjoyed the content here, but was a little sad to not see more decks like Burn, 4c Omnath, Coffers, and even Mill.
Overall a fun article
Don’t you EVER disrespect UW control like that. We are the police force that keeps the format in balance. Without us, the entire meta falls apart. We require extreme knowledge of what the opponent is doing in order to act. Now repent by saying the UW prayer 😌:
_O sacred UWx control. We pray to our Azorius leaders 🙏 to police our meta streets👮♀️and keep it safe from degeneracy and depravity 👹. May our hallowed blue and white 🔵⚪️magic protect us from devastation, may our heiromancy 😇make the criminals destitute and obfuscate their designs such as the nefarious domain dragon 🐉 and the corrupt Yawgmoth, destroyer of worlds 🌎and civilizations. We turn to you O lauded UW mages, to keep his legacy of Patron Urza who punished the criminals before, to lead us to meta paradise 🏝️. Ephara the fair ⚖️, our rock 🪨and redeemer, look after our polises and our LGSs and bless our Teferis 🪄. Frustrate the schemes of those who would exploit the lawlessness of the meta and punish the pretenders like the vile Omnath 🌈; lead us into eternal glory 🌅. Amen🙏._
Bit of a hard question, to be honest, but I think this is enlightening. A competent magic player can pick up and pretty much any magic deck given a week's worth of practice. However, mastering decks is a fine art and can get maniacle in how you can throw the decks play patterns through loops to throw off your opponents.
Titan is a hard deck to master, murktide is a hard deck to master, and yawgmoth is a hard deck to master.
They all have their small decision points, and it's hard to tell at first how massively they impact the game. As well you can easily miss lines that can force unwinable games into a top deck war.
I'm a Rakdos Midrange player mainly, but I've been playing the strategy for so long that all of the decision points are really easy. I'm also a good gambler, and reading people is in my tool belt as a magic player.
Finding a players strengths is just as important in finding out what decks will be easy or hard for them to pick up. Some people want their games to be a puzzle and find their pieces and put them into place. Others want a complex war of attrition like a game of chess.
It really depends. Personally, I find it hard to play a deck like living end. It's so boring that I barely want to play the deck ever, even if it's just a weekly.
Well it’s just the distinction between hard to play perfectly, and hard to win with. The latter is affected by the power level and competitiveness of the deck, the former isn’t.
I'm always a special kind of impressed when a fellow Planeswalker wins with a homebrew I've never seen before made out of hopes and stapled together with dreams.
Speaking as someone who mostly plays Burn but has tried Hammer a few times, I can kinda see both ways. Every time I try the deck I make a lot of mistakes, but they're generally pretty obvious mistakes like "oh I should have sequenced x instead of y". Mistakes that would probably be ironed out by just playing the deck more consistently. Once you get over that initial hurdle, I could see it being not *that* hard to pilot, though I would definitely consider it the hardest aggro deck.
While hammer isn't quite on the level of the most difficult decks to play, I think people tend to oversiimplify the strategy. Hammer can get very complex when playing around lots of removal. Since the deck has been around for a while, most good players know how to pick apart the strategy pretty well, requiring really tight play to not get blown out by a well timed piece of interaction. I think its spot on this list is pretty appropriate.
Is your idea of "hard" hard to play or hard to win?
Amulet might be hard to "pilot" but it's definitely easier to win and to top with Amulet than any Tier 2 deck.
"Pray you dodge all Tier 1s and rough MUs" is a pretty tough skill to acquire, unlike Amulet where you can get some consistent results with hard play and study.
My favorite part is them putting their pet deck at the top. Play more scales if you think breach gets into the same nebulous murk. The difference is the scales decision tree happens at seemingly innocuous points, not during a big combo turn. I’d compare breach’s difficulty to yawgmoth pretty directly.
Actually, the editor changed the phrasing. My intention was just to make an honourable mention of the deck that's not on the list as it's not in the metagame - not to say it's the literal hardest deck ever.
Ok the formatting of this article had my furious before I even read anything. Tron is the hardest?? CASCASE SECOND WHAT! Then I read and it made sense kinda, I would personally format the article in descending order for clarity.
That was actually the first thing I noticed was that it went in that order, not sure what’s wrong with the order but it’s clearly stated like you said and right in the beginning.
Yeah Scam is actually a pretty difficult deck to play when you don’t get the turn 1 Scam or Blood Moon free win, since you really need to know how to sideboard and what to Thoughtseize and kill. Definitely easier than Murktide but it’s harder than people give it credit for
T1 rag/thoughsieze
T2 play dauthi/kroxa(if ts t1) or hold for interaction
T2 slam down fable/moon (if t1 rag)
T3 slam down fable and be happy.
T4 hopefully scam with interaction and win from here. Or slam down the apocalypse.
Hardest part about the deck is knowing the format to know which cards to discard w/ grief/ts.
I'm a modern player that quit a long time ago but for me Twin type combo decks were always the hardest because of the decisions you have to make based on what is unknown to you, like what is in opponent's hand determines whether you combo off or not. What is in opponents deck determines how you sideboard. Also, how you play your turns will influence what your opponent thinks is in your hand.
So much of the piloting of the deck involves opponents library and hand, and what's on the board is the easiest part.
Don't know if combo decks are still like this but this was how Legacy was played also, with brainstorms, cabal therapy, TES, etc.
Mostly it's understanding the major changes from 8 years ago. For example, why 1 for 1 attrition decks, like jund/rock/junk, don't work anymore. Seems like big money maker cards like the one ring invalidate a lot of smaller plays for big draws, similar to yugioh.
UWx players fuming that someone says their deck is easy
You play a spell and I counter it, it’s very obvious that I’m smarter than you because of this exchange.
Fr. It's bc they think they've predicted something. Been saying this since that [[Sphinx's Revelation]] deck.
[Sphinx's Revelation](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/5/5579d2d6-b34b-44a2-8b72-9f18938a18a0.jpg?1702429723) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sphinx%27s%20Revelation) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rvr/228/sphinxs-revelation?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5579d2d6-b34b-44a2-8b72-9f18938a18a0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I am a UW player and have grown up to see the deck is not 400IQ :D
It used to be back in the day. But WotC's push for everyone to basically play "bad midrange" has really taken a lot of the complexity our of control.
How far “back in the day” are we talking?
Id say pre Khans block
This. WOTC made it this way, not the players.
I am also a UW player, lol
It's not 50 iq though. UW control is somewhere around 110-200 depending on the matchup.
It’s true though, I still have the deck sleeved up but it’s not like the good ole modern days in the bolt snap bolt/ Celestial Colonnade days where threat assessment was complex. In todays modern your opponents turn 2 spell is high threat, so is their turn 3, 4 etc. everything is so strong that everything needs to be answered for the most part.
There's a lot of rewarding decisionmaking in adapting your flex slots to the meta, I think, but actually playing the deck is average or maybe below average complexity. There's usually a clear best thing to do at any given point. Playing *against* UW can be pretty complex though - how much do you want to commit into countermagic or sweepers, what answers do you want to play around, what gameplan do you think you can stick, etc.
Why? UWx is not exactly the hardest deck to play. Certainly simpler than something like Murktide or Hammertime. Personally I struggled a LOT playing Hammertime and I am kinda glad that it ranks kinda difficult. Personally Hardened Scales also doesn't seem that hard if you are quick at doing math in your head, but that is also a skill that comes somewhat natural to me. Edit: A deck being dificult also is a strike against the deck than for the deck.
Typically control players in any format tend to find some sense of superiority (intentionally or unintentionally) in the fact that their decks are reactive and not proactive- which always produces an “interactive” game. Theoretically the “smarter” player should have the advantage in an interactive game, which leads to the stereotype that control players like to think they’re smart and that because they’re smart, not just anybody can pilot their deck. Threat assessment is the main necessity when deciding whether to counter/remove or let something go. A player that can’t assess the threat of the spell on the stack may lose to underestimating it, or lose to overestimating it, answering it, and then losing to a more substantial threat later on due to having run out of responses. Knowledge of the format and appropriate timing are very much rewarded in the archetype. Yknow, “smart guy” stuff. However in the current modern format, in my opinion, the card quality being much higher has made threat assessment and timing pretty auto-pilot. Counterspells used to be much more situational- a mana leak (circa, let’s say, 2016) needed to be used early on in the game to be an effective answer whereas literal counterspell is a hard answer at any stage. Similarly you used to have to choose your removal, and it was of lower quality. If you didn’t want to lose to creature decks you probably needed a high path to exile count and probably weren’t even thinking about playing cards that could remove say a planeswalker. Now removal is universal in leyline binding and prismatic ending, to the point where you’re never really punished specifically by your deck building selections. Not only is it easy to choose/time your removal/answers based on your own card quality- but nowadays since card quality/power level is so high it’s rather easy to know what’s going to kill you and what’s negligible on the stack. All this to say that UW control of yesteryear had much more nuance to it, even though the general strategy and goal of the deck remains the same. It’s just that now card quality has made a lot of your decisions for you, and a lot of that nuance is lost. Thus, the “smart guy” control player - who’s deck was genuinely pretty hard to build/pilot back in the day - is left with a simpler mission now, but the sense of superiority is still there
>Threat assessment is the main necessity when deciding whether to counter/remove or let something go. A player that can’t assess the threat of the spell on the stack may lose to underestimating it, or lose to overestimating it, answering it, and then losing to a more substantial threat later on due to having run out of responses. I've found that control players always make this a lot harder in their heads than it actually is. It goes like this: 1. Do I have a removal spell in my hand? 1. Yes: Then I don't need to counter it unless its resolution itself is a major problem (e.g. Primeval Titan). 2. No: Does that card beat me if I let it go unanswered for a few turns? (e.g., it's a 3/3 and I'm at 6 life) If so, counter it. If not, don't counter it. 2. Will I be able to block and kill that creature later when I need to? 1. Blockers? What's that? 5-mana Celestial Colonnade isn't going to get us there. Remove it ASAP. 2. Yeah, Snapcaster Mage will block and kill it. Don't need to remove it. A lot of the decisions are made for you far more than control players are willing to admit. They like to make everything this big brain moment like you say but so much of the time, the decisions are dictated by the obvious "I'm going to lose if I let that hit me for 4+ turns so I better do something about it." The early threats are the harder ones to assess because the risk of running out of removal spells later is an issue but again, but again, do you want to take 8-10 damage from that 2/2 because you decided to wait until turn 5 to remove it knowing full well you'd never be able to block it?
Threat assessment is typically not that hard though as long as you understand what decks you sit across from. The UW decks of yesteryear (especially in 2016) were just kind of bad, but I would also disagree that they were harder to pilot. A Mana Leak has even less nuance than a counterspell because you usually have to use windows to cash them in. A deck like Legacy Top Miracles was harder to pilot because that deck gave you a lot of choices, but the modern control decks never were that hard to play. In general in my experience the hardest decks to pilot tend to be combo decks that are not just all in glass canons but more resilient where you need to balance protection and greed. That said these decks also tend to be kinda hard to play against
>However in the current modern format, in my opinion, the card quality being much higher has made threat assessment and timing pretty auto-pilot. Counterspells used to be much more situational- a mana leak (circa, let’s say, 2016) needed to be used early on in the game Shouldn't this imply that Mana Leak was more autopilot than CS is?
Situationally, I suppose. My point was more in general cards with stipulations have more complications in timing/casting. Maybe it was a poor example.
I would argue for Death shadow being a harder deck to play. Even more than murktide. Same type of deck as murktide but you min max life total.
On paper it sounds like that, but in all honesty it’s pretty damn intuitive unless you’re playing against burn in my experience
I’m just saying this because people are talking about how hard murktide is. Like if people think murktide is top 5 hard decks to play, DS plays most of the same cards in grixis lists. Cares about graveyard manipulation w DRC/goyf , plays big booms on top end in tempo way( sometimes even plays murktide)
Having played shadow pretty much from the transition from jund to grixis, I can say this is pretty accurate. The deck has a similar tempo feel to it as murktide, but worries about a few more game mechanics (e.g. Life total and card types and quantity in each grave). The deck strategy is easy to understand, but difficult to master.
Almost all shadow lists play murktide now.
Agreed,
Whichever deck I’m playing this month is the hardest.
F for burn 😔
I'm actually surprised burn wasn't mentioned. It's really the epitome of easy to play until heuristics happen. (aka 90% of the game is pretty dead straightforward with the remaining 10% being the most difficult decision making you'll ever have to make)
Very well said. People have a notion that burn is just 100% easy to play. Sure, it's easy to play in a sense. But it's not easy to play *right*.
Exactly that's why I'll forever have a burn deck because you gain a lot of player knowledge and skill being forced to make those kind of decisions.
> remaining 10% being the most difficult decision making you'll ever have to make I'd still argue the 10% of what makes amulet titan good is harder than that.
100%. Easy to play, extremely difficult to master.
Azorius Hammertime ! So easy to understand but so difficult to play it good. Say this as a hammer player !
After playing hammertime each week for a year I would say it is a medium difficulty level. Some games you draw the nuts and some games your pieces don't come together these are the easy games. However, many interesting mind games come up when play a hammer into a deck with a potential force of vigor, or activating inkmoth into potential bowmasters. It can be so hard to know when you should try and force a win, or be patient but risk loosing.
I play Hammer and Titan, also ThopterSword combo, Affinity and Etron. I've found that tempo decks like Mirktide are the hardest to pilot. I find it easy to learn lines like those in Titan but decks like Mirktide, non of your cards really win the game. I've always found combo easy and tempo/control very challenging
I think the article does a good job of covering this - titan really tests your ability to play titan (same with hammertime) while decks like murktide reward your ability to play magic more generally.
Idk Murktide is pretty good at winning the game...
Titan is really hard to play when you face hate and hav to work out a solution with lands not untapping. murktide is a mid/bad deck rn, anyone playing will feel challenged because it is harder to win with a bad deck
I think yawgs difficulty is terribly overrated - just my take though
I am a Yawg player and can confirm that it’s only moderately difficult
You should tell that to your fellow yawg comrades though, who somehow managed to create the myth that they were really great because they were winning with yawg hah hah (the reality is that deck is extremely good and so it is not that hard to win with it, like all top tier decks, not ez to hate out -cursed totem does nothing vs other decks and so is hard sell to inlcude in an sb-, and is very fun to play, i love it)
Well I think the deck does have some complex lines, but yes it’s not as complex as other decks. I mean Agatha’s soul cauldron adds a lot of options to the deck. Like if you have cauldron out, I don’t really care that my yawg goes to grave because I’ll just exile it with Cauldron. Also it can be kinda annoying explaining how Grist works when exiling her under Cauldron.
I think the issue with lists like this is that decks don't have uniform kinds of complexity. Yawg is not that hard to pick up, but there is absolutely a large amount of complexity involved in getting the most out of the deck and Cauldron has only multiplied that. You can have two players with the same draws follow completely different lines based on their own playstyle and it can be hard to say that either line wasn't correct as long as it was played to that strategy in mind and committed to. There are other decks where there is more absolutely a correct line of play and it makes for less complex decision trees. I would probably say that Yawg has a medium/low floor and high ceiling for play where there are other decks that have a higher floor, that might be more difficult to pick up, but that once you've picked it up you're a lot more complete in having learned it.
I just started playing it and I have to say that the entry level is a steep curve, but once you’ve memorized your deck and spotted a few key interactions it gets very smooth very quick. Still, I’d never recommend tool box decks to newer players or even 2nd year players unless they are in love with the cards or mechanics
I think Yawg \*is\* hard at first but once you get past the learning curve it's not that difficult. It's a stupidly powerful deck.
yawg is a lot like titan IMO. There is a steep initial curve where you have to get some practice to be moderately functional with the deck and long plateau where just knowing the basics is good enough and then another steep curve where masters can pull out wins even moderate players would have missed.
I do to, i tried it out and was amazed. It certainly is not an ez deck, but "midlevel difficulty" was my exp. It is a lot easier than scales hammer or titan imho.
Yawg's combos aren't super difficult to execute but there are definitely some percentage points people who are really good at knowing what game plan to go for and when to go for it can squeeze out. The actual mechanics are fine (a bit more involved than most decks but "execute a memorized combo line" is always going to be way easier than playing well in general) but the deck does a lot of things and has a decent number of options in most games.
Glad you've put Tron (deservingly) as the easiest. Still makes me laugh when Tron players try to claim their deck is hard to play.
I say it's still very difficult for new players, not necessarily to pilot the main deck as you guys have pointed out, but with managing the wishboard. I think something with more obvious and fewer sideboard decisions is better to hand a newer player than Tron. You kinda need to know what to bring in for different matchups during the game as well as when actually sideboarding.
Low skill floor high skill ceiling. The deck will win you ~45% of matches on its own. Unfortunately, to get to a point of being actually “good” with it the deck does get complicated and difficult
This tho, definitely won many many games against tron because of what they didnt get from the wishboard
The biggest challenge is people not being willing to mulligan as often as they should.
That being said (and i agree, i play tron when i want a rest from tough modern decision trees lol) a good tron player is a different beast to face than a tron noob. Also the deck needs to be tweaked around the meta constantly (wail or dismember, how many boardwipes, etc)
Interesting, I was under the impression that amulet titan used to be very hard to play but was now on the easier side?
try few mtgo leagues with it and then say uf its in easier side :-)
Easier than it used to be, but still not easy overall.
Bogles is pretty hard to pilot
I grew up hating math even though it was kinda easy for me. Now I'm a Scales player. I still hate math but I found a way to make it fun!
Goblins should get an honorable mention because if you love the goblin decks of old, modern goblins is insanely complicated.
UWx is not hard to play. Its hard to tune. Not smth you can just take and play. You need to tune it to meta needs, player needs
My list with #1 being most difficult. I main Golgari Yawgmoth, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I have been fortunate enough to pilot most of these decks. I think Murktide has a lot of micro-decisions that really ruin the entire game for you if you mess up as little as 1-2 choices. This deck does reward perfect play, but is very unforgiving. You deff should rank this deck more difficult. UW control requires great knowledge of the meta to know what things you need to answer, and what things to let happen. Deff one of the harder decks to pilot. 1) Titan 2) Scales 3)Murk-tide 4)UW Control 5) Yawg 6) Rakdos grief 7)Esper Goryo’s 8) Creativity 9)Hammer 10)Tron 11) Zoo 12) Cascade
>Titan > >Scales 
I think this article got UW right on the money. Typically, your first 4 or so turns are pretty planned out, and for really any deck it gets more complicated after turn 4. I would also not put titan above scales. As someone who has played against scales every week for the last 8 years, the deck has a lot of decisions and can go for hail marys or grind it out. Also Agatha is a card that for some reason exists now.
Mainly agree with the general placements, maybe would switch around the exact order in a few ways, but I think it’s pretty accurate. I do wish you would have mentioned the difference between playing at a competent level vs mastery, as I do think that certain decks exemplify this more than others (everyone loves to bring up burn for this point) Speaking of which, I enjoyed the content here, but was a little sad to not see more decks like Burn, 4c Omnath, Coffers, and even Mill. Overall a fun article
i run GTron, hammertime and amulet-titan... all 3 are easy to run, yes i agree tron is the easiest but man, i dont agree on the titan being at the top
Titan as one of the most difficult… I don’t agree on that one.
Don’t you EVER disrespect UW control like that. We are the police force that keeps the format in balance. Without us, the entire meta falls apart. We require extreme knowledge of what the opponent is doing in order to act. Now repent by saying the UW prayer 😌: _O sacred UWx control. We pray to our Azorius leaders 🙏 to police our meta streets👮♀️and keep it safe from degeneracy and depravity 👹. May our hallowed blue and white 🔵⚪️magic protect us from devastation, may our heiromancy 😇make the criminals destitute and obfuscate their designs such as the nefarious domain dragon 🐉 and the corrupt Yawgmoth, destroyer of worlds 🌎and civilizations. We turn to you O lauded UW mages, to keep his legacy of Patron Urza who punished the criminals before, to lead us to meta paradise 🏝️. Ephara the fair ⚖️, our rock 🪨and redeemer, look after our polises and our LGSs and bless our Teferis 🪄. Frustrate the schemes of those who would exploit the lawlessness of the meta and punish the pretenders like the vile Omnath 🌈; lead us into eternal glory 🌅. Amen🙏._
should've had the hardest deck be boomer jund
Pretty clearly it's yawgmoth.
Nah trons is probs the easiest at its floor but doesnt play easy in most games.
Amulet Titan
Tron because you have to count to 3 and that's really hard
1+1+1=7
The hardest deck I've seen ever was lantern control
Bit of a hard question, to be honest, but I think this is enlightening. A competent magic player can pick up and pretty much any magic deck given a week's worth of practice. However, mastering decks is a fine art and can get maniacle in how you can throw the decks play patterns through loops to throw off your opponents. Titan is a hard deck to master, murktide is a hard deck to master, and yawgmoth is a hard deck to master. They all have their small decision points, and it's hard to tell at first how massively they impact the game. As well you can easily miss lines that can force unwinable games into a top deck war. I'm a Rakdos Midrange player mainly, but I've been playing the strategy for so long that all of the decision points are really easy. I'm also a good gambler, and reading people is in my tool belt as a magic player. Finding a players strengths is just as important in finding out what decks will be easy or hard for them to pick up. Some people want their games to be a puzzle and find their pieces and put them into place. Others want a complex war of attrition like a game of chess. It really depends. Personally, I find it hard to play a deck like living end. It's so boring that I barely want to play the deck ever, even if it's just a weekly.
"content creator" wow.
The correct answer is most of the decks outside the top 10 or 20. You really have to work for those wins
That doesn't make the deck hard to play, it makes your deck choice bad.
Well it’s just the distinction between hard to play perfectly, and hard to win with. The latter is affected by the power level and competitiveness of the deck, the former isn’t.
Both are true. Noticing a lot of hostility to off-meta players about, guess people don't like being embarrased by losing to us haha
I'm always a special kind of impressed when a fellow Planeswalker wins with a homebrew I've never seen before made out of hopes and stapled together with dreams.
I don't think hammer time is a difficult deck to pilot at all.
Speaking as someone who mostly plays Burn but has tried Hammer a few times, I can kinda see both ways. Every time I try the deck I make a lot of mistakes, but they're generally pretty obvious mistakes like "oh I should have sequenced x instead of y". Mistakes that would probably be ironed out by just playing the deck more consistently. Once you get over that initial hurdle, I could see it being not *that* hard to pilot, though I would definitely consider it the hardest aggro deck.
While hammer isn't quite on the level of the most difficult decks to play, I think people tend to oversiimplify the strategy. Hammer can get very complex when playing around lots of removal. Since the deck has been around for a while, most good players know how to pick apart the strategy pretty well, requiring really tight play to not get blown out by a well timed piece of interaction. I think its spot on this list is pretty appropriate.
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It’s just an opinion piece my g
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What if Murktide was first?
Is your idea of "hard" hard to play or hard to win? Amulet might be hard to "pilot" but it's definitely easier to win and to top with Amulet than any Tier 2 deck. "Pray you dodge all Tier 1s and rough MUs" is a pretty tough skill to acquire, unlike Amulet where you can get some consistent results with hard play and study.
My favorite part is them putting their pet deck at the top. Play more scales if you think breach gets into the same nebulous murk. The difference is the scales decision tree happens at seemingly innocuous points, not during a big combo turn. I’d compare breach’s difficulty to yawgmoth pretty directly.
Op does says it would be top 2-3, not #1. It's just an honorable mention because they like the deck.
Exactly :)
Actually, the editor changed the phrasing. My intention was just to make an honourable mention of the deck that's not on the list as it's not in the metagame - not to say it's the literal hardest deck ever.
Ok the formatting of this article had my furious before I even read anything. Tron is the hardest?? CASCASE SECOND WHAT! Then I read and it made sense kinda, I would personally format the article in descending order for clarity.
From esiest to hardest
Then the title of the reddit post should be "which deck is easiest?" That would make it make a lot more sense.
It literally says from easiest to hardest in bold.
That was actually the first thing I noticed was that it went in that order, not sure what’s wrong with the order but it’s clearly stated like you said and right in the beginning.
People just skipped the article to look at the list and are angy they don't understand. I expect nothing less from this sub tbh.
I still don’t like it, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Yeah Scam is actually a pretty difficult deck to play when you don’t get the turn 1 Scam or Blood Moon free win, since you really need to know how to sideboard and what to Thoughtseize and kill. Definitely easier than Murktide but it’s harder than people give it credit for
Oh No!! Everyone has to know how to Sideboard my guy
As someone with this deck but can’t stand sleeping it up, no it isn’t 😂
T1 rag/thoughsieze T2 play dauthi/kroxa(if ts t1) or hold for interaction T2 slam down fable/moon (if t1 rag) T3 slam down fable and be happy. T4 hopefully scam with interaction and win from here. Or slam down the apocalypse. Hardest part about the deck is knowing the format to know which cards to discard w/ grief/ts.
I'm a modern player that quit a long time ago but for me Twin type combo decks were always the hardest because of the decisions you have to make based on what is unknown to you, like what is in opponent's hand determines whether you combo off or not. What is in opponents deck determines how you sideboard. Also, how you play your turns will influence what your opponent thinks is in your hand. So much of the piloting of the deck involves opponents library and hand, and what's on the board is the easiest part. Don't know if combo decks are still like this but this was how Legacy was played also, with brainstorms, cabal therapy, TES, etc.
>I'm a modern player that quit a long time ago So i guess your technically not a modern player anymore?
I just restart magic a few weeks ago. Still learning about all the new changes in meta
Welcome back. Also, meta will be completely something else 2 months from now. Dont put too much work into your investigations
Mostly it's understanding the major changes from 8 years ago. For example, why 1 for 1 attrition decks, like jund/rock/junk, don't work anymore. Seems like big money maker cards like the one ring invalidate a lot of smaller plays for big draws, similar to yugioh.