I will say, I thought The One Ring was a good card, but I didn’t think it would be “break the entire meta” good.
Delighted Halfling is also really good in Yawgmoth and other Ring decks.
I was also skeptical of how good the new land cyclers would be in Living End. Turns out they are *incredibly* good.
This is all pretty bad news, and I would like to say “Thanks LotR, I hate it here.”
As such, The One Ring, Delighted Halfling, and Living End’s upgrades will be my primary focus here. The goal is to help both you and myself figure out what approach is best with Hammer going forward.
The One Ring: It is finding a home in a pile of different decks, but the biggest winners so far have been:
- 4-Color Soup Decks (Wrenn and 6, Teferi Time Raveler, Solitude, Omnath “Good Stuff” decks.)
- Big Mana Decks (Tron variants, Cabal Coffers, Amulet Titan, etc)
- Yawgmoth has also been playing it, but whether or not it sticks around in those shells has yet to be cemented.
Delighted Halfling: It is also finding multiple homes.
- 4-Color Soup Decks
- Yawgmoth
Looking at this, the big decks on the rise that we should be concerned with:
- 4C Soup - historically a challenging matchup, and still challenging, especially with the Ring.
- Yawgmoth - Very challenging with traditional (non-solitude) builds of Hammer
- Living End - One of Hammer’s worst matchups, especially with the non-solitude build)
- Tron - This deck leverages the Ring very well; historically a very good matchup for all builds of Hammer. Their new versions help make the matchup a bit closer, but we are still favored.
- Coffers - This deck leverages the Ring very well; historically a very good matchup for all builds of Hammer.
- Amulet - I have yet to see much of this deck with The Ring, but it is historically a very challenging matchup, especially without Solitude.
Now, looking at the above blurb, what kind of versions should we play?
- Solitude?
- Blue Splash?
Blue Splash:
- The main advantage here is pierce/annul. This should help against some of the Ring decks as well as reasonable against Living End.
- While this seems good on the surface, it loses a lot of value if everyone is playing Delighted Halfling. Additionally, Living End can play through it by waiting and paying for the pierce, or using a Force of Negation.
- Tron and Coffers can usually go over a spell pierce, so unless you are pressuring them, they can simply ignore the pierce.
Solitude:
- Solitude actively makes the Yawgmoth and Amulet matchups much more reasonable.
- It also helps against Living End, as it forces them to having bigger graveyards before “going off” (since you can evoke the solitude and have it brought back by Living End)
- While it isn’t always the most important card, having the Solitudes vs. 4C can be absolutely key to stopping an Omnath from burying you.
Tl;dr - If you think that people will be off Delighted Halfling, and you don’t expect much Yawgmoth or Titan, going with UW is likely correct. For any other meta, I would play the Solitude versions.