Hangarback Walker in Vintage MUD

[MTGFan]

Ok, so I'm more of a Legacy player personally, but I've played a fair bit of Vintage online and know a thing or two about the format still, but I'm kind of out of the loop regarding recent MUD lists. I've seen people play 4 Hangarback Walker alongside 4 Arcbound Ravager and while I understand why you might want to combine the two, I'm puzzled as to whether or not playing Hangarback Walker is actually the best possible option of all the ways to build MUD.

Can someone who has had success with Hangarback Walker in MUD tell me why it's good enough to play over all the other options that were being played? And also, why is it not being played in Legacy MUD lists (yes, I know Workshop makes the Vintage MUD strategy far superior, but still - most of the other creatures used are similar across both lists, so why not Walker if he is successful in Vintage)?

[JACO]

Can someone who has had success with Hangarback Walker in MUD tell me why it's good enough to play over all the other options that were being played? And also, why is it not being played in Legacy MUD lists (yes, I know Workshop makes the Vintage MUD strategy far superior, but still - most of the other creatures used are similar across both lists, so why not Walker if he is successful in Vintage)?

Hangarback provides another cheap but flexible and powerful threat in Vintage, and fares very well against Ingot Chewers and especially the mirror. This is why you'll notice a number of lists pair Hangarback with Arcbound Ravager in particular, as these tactics are very good in the mirror (being more aggressive, rather than wasting space on more lock componentry), as well as being very good against both Dack Fayden and Ingot Chewer (Arcbound Ravager enable lots of tricks in particular).

The reason it hasn't caught on in Legacy is because Legacy lacks a lot of those same threats and lines of play you commonly see in Vintage. Rarely is anyone trying to steal your threats with Dack Fayden in Legacy (outside of some of the Ancient Tomb-based Tezzeret decks). Rarely will you run into the artifact mirror in Legacy. You're more likely to play against multi-color Delver decks or Miracles in Legacy, which is why it's much better to just jam Forgemaster + Wurmcoil + multiple Sundering Titans in nearly every Ancient Tomb-based Legacy artifact deck. The cards you'll square off against and the lines of play you're likely to see are just much different, which necessitates a choice of different threats.

[gkraigher]

I completely disagree Jaco, Hangarback Walker is great in Legacy.  It's not played in Legacy because no one creates decks and takes chances in Legacy.  The player base is downright terrible compared to the brewers in Vintage.

Here is a list I've run with great success in Legacy.  I don't play online and I don't travel.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/11-09-15-affinity-legacy/

4x Ancient Tomb
4x Arcbound Ravager
4x Chalice of the Void
4x City of Traitors
4x Cranial Plating
2x Crucible of Worlds
2x Darksteel Citadel
4x Hangarback Walker
4x Inkmoth Nexus
4x Lodestone Golem
4x Memnite
4x Mishra's Factory
4x Mox Opal
4x Phyrexian Revoker
4x Steel Overseer
4x Wasteland

sideboard:
3x Coercive Portal
3x Grafdigger's Cage
3x Surgical Extraction
4x Thorn of Amethyst
2x Umezawa's Jitte

take note of how there are ZERO 1CC cards in the main.  

As for Hangarback Walker in Vintage:  It is great with Ravager.  Ravager is awesome in Vintage because it gets arounds cards like Dack Fayden and Bridge from Below.  Hangarback Walker grows tremendously when the games are taking a long time, and are slowed down because of Sphere effects.  Ravager and Hangarback Walker are also exponential, much like Monastery Mentor.  

In Legacy, Hangarback/Ravager miss being able to sacrifice excess moxen and dying artifacts, so the only way to make the two of them playable is to also include Steel Overseer.  Which simply hasn't been figured out by anyone else who plays Legacy, and that doesn't surprise me, because Legacy players are generally good technical players but terrible (and by terrible I mean unoriginal, awful, lousy, lazy, and pathetic readers of net decks) builders.  Proof of that lies in the 0 new creative decks that top 8 Grand Prix Seattle and the 0 innovation that has happened in the format, while Vintage can't get 1 deck from a top 8 to carry over from one major event to another.  Hey legacy players, net decking a stock list and changing 5 of the 75 cards is not innovation. 

Legacy is dead because the people who play it suck, period.  

[gkraigher]

Moreover, there are 3 modern decks that have legacy implications that no one cares to build:

Field of dreams/Lantern control
Amulet bloom/thawing glaciers
Grishoalbrand


Best not to try those and just sleeve up nimble mongoose again.