Much Abrew: Hollow One (Modern)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! A little while ago, four cards were unbanned in Modern, and we've played three so far in Splinter Twin, Mox Opal (in Lantern Control), and Green Sun's Zenith (in Siege Rhino Maverick). Well, today, the time has come for us to play the fourth card, Faithless Looting! While a bunch of different decks are playing the double-looting sorcery, for us, the choice of Faithless Looting deck is simple. It has to be Hollow One, an iconic former Budget Magic deck that fell off hard once Faithless Looting was banned. Is the plan of playing a bunch of free 4/4s on Turn 1 back on the table thanks to the Faithless Looting unban? Let's spin it to win it and find out!
Much Abrew: Hollow One
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we ended up 2-3 with Hollow One, sadly leaving the kids hungry for Treasure Chests. If you look at our matches, I'm pretty sure we could have realistically went anything from 1-4 to 4-1 with the deck. We got crushed by Goblins thanks to some nutty draws, but our other two losses were super close, losing to Kaalia of the Vast, of all things, from Reanimator and dying on the draw Turn 3 to Amulet Titan with a Blood Moon in hand. The good news is that we crushed Energy, which is encouraging since the deck has been on the upswing recently, and overran Jeskai Control. All this is to say, even though a 2-3 record doesn't sound exciting, a lot of the games were super close and could have swung the other direction if things went just a little bit differently.
As for the deck, it's very similar to the old pre-banning Hollow One decks. The biggest upgrades are Detective's Phoenix and Fear of Missing Out. Phoenix is incredible in the deck, giving us a way to send our Hollow Ones or Vengevines to the air to avoid blockers. Meanwhile, Fear of Missing Out felt okay. In some situations, it was great (like when it's discarding a Blazing Rootwalla to trigger a Vengevine on Turn 2). In others, it mostly felt like a filler-level card. It was almost responsible for us stealing a win against Reanimator thanks to its extra combat steps, although sadly, our opponent had a second Goryo's Vengeance in hand to ruin our day.
The biggest takeaway from this league, though, is that Arena of Glory is incredible. We're playing the full four copies in our deck, and it felt fine as a way to haste in creatures to deal the last few points of damage. But it was even more impressive from our opponent's deck. Our Goblins opponent used it to haste in a Warren Instigator (a card I mostly forgot about since no one plays it) on Turn 2 to put Goblin Matron and Siege-Gang Commander into play, which basically just ended the game. And then, in our last match, Arena of Glory let our Reanimator opponent steal the win with Kaalia of the Vast by putting Griselbrand into play tapped and attacking. While I think we all knew the card is good, these games really showed its power, not just as a random value free-roll in the mana base but also as an actual focal point of a deck.
So, should you play Hollow One in Modern? Despite the middling record, I think the answer is still yes. The deck is unique, I find it fun to play, and while it's naturally a high-variance deck thanks to the random draw and discard, it is really powerful when things go right, and embracing the variance is a large part of the fun of playing with Hollow One! The deck can do some wild things if you're willing to trust the Magic gods, even in 2024 Modern!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
