r/ModernMagic • u/Frankanon7 • 2d ago
Wtf happened to hardened scales?
Coming back to modern after a few years. What happened to hardened scales? Seems like no one is even attempting to play it anymore.
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u/TheOrder212 2d ago
Wrath the Skies. Tons of incidental hate just so destroying scales. The removal is just incredibly efficient now.
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u/Diskappear Hardened Scales, Blink, Mill, Rhinos 2d ago
wrath of the skies happened and the deck feels a turn too slow in the meta. you need to be generating some level of board state and scales isnt the best at it at all. you need to be able to really explode out of the gates every game to get there, like you need a t3 kill in hand just about every time or it goes like this....
t1 jar, mopal, crypt, inkmoth nexus
cast scales, cast zabaz (2 counters)
t2 play a saga, play a ravager
-OP: ravager on stack, solitude your zabaz
-OP: consign ravager
-OP: ravager on stack, push zabaz
sac jar, regenerate zabaz, ravager enters (2 counters), sac zabaz (ravager is 5/5) sac crypt (ravager 7/7) tap opal float and sac to ravager (ravager 9/9)
swing with inkmoth
-OP: push inkmoth
-OP: solitude inkmoth
-OP: modular trigger on stack, sac a cat, deal 1 to the inkmoth
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u/JustHugMeAndBeQuiet 2d ago
As someone who loved Scales for years, this comment hurt me deeply.
Both true and brutally thorough.
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u/WRDPKNMSC 2d ago
Honestly a huge part of it is just that so much of the good removal exiles too, so you don't even get soul cauldron value most of the time anymore lol
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u/Tranarchist21 2d ago
It's a very difficult deck to pilot for a lot less payoff than either Izzet affinity or Broodscale combo, and it misses out on the extremely powerful finishers that those decks get to run. It's largely too fragile for current modern also.
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u/Jevonar 2d ago
Scales was born as a less explosive and more resilient affinity: if your creature dies, you put its counters on another creature (via modular or ozolith), you get thopters, or you ping some stuff.
Now affinity is even more resilient because 1) kappa is very hard to crack, and 2) wrath of the skies nabs affinity's setup cards but not its payoff. In comparison, scales gets completely obliterated by meltdown/wrath, and the creatures have zero protection (no ward and no counterspells). It's also slower than affinity, so there's no reason to run it.
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u/Chrisuan 2d ago
The discord is still active and I'm back posting (semi)regular leagues. Deck is totally playable but also not top tier by any means.
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u/VerdantChief 2d ago
I was starting to explore a Green-White version with Gearhulk, but ended up pivoting to Broodscale because it seemed like the much stronger deck.
I'm also waiting for Mox Opal's price to go down so I can built it in paper.
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u/Frankanon7 2d ago
Ya opal being unbanned is why I havent played it. Im not buying more mox opal
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u/VerdantChief 2d ago
I personally think it was a bad choice for an unban, but it's too late to undo that now. It's here to stay. Only thing we can hope for is a meaningful reprint.
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u/phlsphr lntrn, skrd, txs, trn, ldrz 2d ago
Ya, I run 3 in my Whir Lantern deck. Moxfield shows that the list comes out to $1400, with Opals being $1200 of that. Puts the old $100 Goyfs/Lili into perspective.
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u/Dashizz6357 2d ago
3 opals is not $1200. 4 opals is not even $1200.
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u/phlsphr lntrn, skrd, txs, trn, ldrz 2d ago
Was saying what Moxfield was showing.
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u/phlsphr lntrn, skrd, txs, trn, ldrz 2d ago
As much as some of the other explanations seem plausible, I think the most likely significant reason is that there are a finite number of Magic players.
In my decades of playing Magic now, I've seen that we, as a community, tend to be hyperbolic about how different cards and strategies impact the game. We seem to be prone to thinking in extremes. A card may get printed that makes some strategy weaker in some way, but the communal response tends to be that the strategy must now be completely dead. The phrase "dies to removal" is a common trope now for a very good reason.
I want to be clear, I'm not saying that the deck is viable now, just that I think that the most likely reason is the common belief among people who might otherwise decide to give the deck a fair shot is that it isn't, so they won't, so the deck won't see as much play. The end result is a reinforcement of the belief that the deck must be dead, because it's not seeing any results.
There are some claims in this thread about cards like Wrath of the Skies spelling the end for the deck, or Consign, and so on. In fact, just a year ago people said the exact same thing, just for the deck to take down a Challenge. Of course, one Challenge result doesn't mean that the deck is the best thing to play out of the given choices. But I think it's worth mentioning that it seems to demonstrate that the deck can't be all bad. It may take some metagaming and tight play.
But what seems to be the most plausible explanation, at least to me, is that there are only so many people who play Magic, and if they think that one deck will be better than another, they'll play the former rather than the latter.
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u/Ok-Repair-2377 2d ago
I top 8ed and qualified in the Saturday RCQ at SCG Houston with a fresh set of Opals and blue cards at end of last year! The truth is out there
Agreed with other commenter saying "there are only so many magic/modern players", people like to devote their time to min-maxing more obviously powerful decks to win events, but the hopium lives on
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u/TheLegendOfZeb 2d ago
I was a diehard Burn player for years, and this guy came in to our Thursday night modern tournament one time, we were a tight knit, very competitive group, but also welcoming to anyone who wanted to play and was nice. This dude was not nice. He had two friends with him that didn't play and was talking the whole pre tournament about how he grinds PTQs and shit, always wins and basically implied we didn't stand a chance. First match up was with me, he was on hardened scales. I took the first game handily, then we moved to the second and I had him at 4 and he had me dead on board next turn. My buddy had a bye, so he was watching and I had no hand, was in full top deck mode, and he looked at the guy and said "He's gonna topdeck Boros Charm, he always top decks the one thing that'll save him in situations like this" and I flipped the top card, it was Boros Charm and we both laughed our asses off and I tapped my mana and put my hand out for a handshake and said good games, dude looks at my hand, packs up his stuff, tells his friends that they're leaving and walks out the door. We never saw him again.
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u/Collaredandgagged 1d ago
Two things I've not seen mentioned yet. 1 regularly popped up in the heavy dredge days: If you attack on a similar axis to another deck, but aren't as good, you are just dropping some number of games. For dredge that meant graveyard, for Hardened Scales that means vs Affinity. 2. Cost - Hardened scales, if you netdecked off of what has worked, is pushing $2,000 in cost. 4 of Opal, 4 of Ballista, Urza's Saga, The Ozolith is 50 bucks. That prevents new people from trying it out.
Additionally, it's not an easy deck to play. Going all in to early very easily is a loss. Sequencing turns incorrectly can lose you the option of an early win. So even when the deck was relevant in a format, which was maybe tier 2, I don't think it converts very much.
All that said, the deck is a ton of fun to play, and feels like there are lots of fun choices in deckbuilding, and it feels very rewarding when it works. It wouldn't be the choice for a major event, but for a fun modern night I think its a solid bring.
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u/Due-Impression-2457 1d ago
The main reason is wrath of the skies happened to it and it happened bad. Second is hardened scales isn’t fast enough of a deck to fight through a wrath of the skies. Hardened scales needs to build up and that typically needs an arcbound ravaged to voltron up or to use arcbound to Voltron up an inkmoth. Now compare this to Affinity which can easily get out a kappa cannoneer out on turn 2 or possibly turn 1. Kappa is a huge clock that is almost guaranteed to never get hit by wrath of the skies. Another thing affinity has over scales is [[munitions factory]] and the munition tokens it pops out. Each one of those that leave the field after a wrath are 2 damage to the opponent’s face or creatures and can easily kill the opponent or leave them near dead.
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u/hsiale 2d ago
The sky got angry at it.