[Primer/Deck] Pox

[feline]

http://i.imgur.com/rDdR7u6.jpg

If you like disruptve strategies, eliminating cards from your opponents hand, destroying their lands, making them sacrifice their creatures, & eating away at their life total while essentially controlling the game state with your resource attacking playstyle, then a Pox deck type strategy might be just what you're looking for.

1) Playing Pox
2) Successful decklists & trends
3) Card choices
3a) Maindeck
3b) Sideboard
4) Price guide
5) Awesome links
6) Previous Pox thread http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?4300-Deck-Pox special thanks to Clark Kant (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/member.php?2686-Clark-Kant)
7) 20 match ups

1) Playing Pox:
You ultimate goal is to kill your opponent, in order to achieve that goal playing Pox, you want to take control of the board state to win the game. The avenue you'll take to do this will be in the form of the best disruption that Swamps have to offer. Against any deck, discard spells will remove vital cards from their hand, Land destruction will keep decks cut off from their larger spells & narrow their options in the gameplay, & creatures that hit the battlefield will be kept under control with multiple ways to make them sacrifice a creature. As far as the kill condition, once you've spend the first few turns destroying their hand & board state, you will win over the course of the following turns taking their life down with Nether Spirit, Mishra's Factory & Cursed Scroll, while continuing to prevent them from doing too much of anything relevant with your disruption that your deck is so full of.

Alot of your spells will be a "2 for 1" or even, potentially higher (Like Liliana of the Veil for example)
~Speaking of Liliana of the Veil, eating their hand apart and making them sacrifice creatures so much, this card can easily tick up against many opposing strategies in Legacy, getting to the point of a "soft lock." An example being that they keep a creature in hand, only to have it discarded, or put it into play, only to have it sacrificed, the whole deck compliments Liliana, & Liliana compliments the decks strategy as a whole very well, Liliana of the Veil can be noted as the card that finally brought recent Pox decks to the level of success they have had since the printing of the 1BB Planeswalker.
~Hymn to Tourach can nail 2 cards in their hand.
~Smallpox can nail an opposing land, creature, & card in hand, while you'll be ditching something like Nether Spirit, a useless card, or have an empty hand already. As far as sacrificing a creature yourself, your deck is setup to benefit further from such effects, since the Nether Spirit just comes right back on the upkeep, & Mishra's Factorys are only creatures when animated.
~Cursed Scroll can eat multiple creatures when the opposing strategy is filled with cheap creatures, not to mention that Nether Spirit can also do the same thing just by blocking & coming back every turn.

The emphasis here is the card advantage, this deck is setup to be disruptive, & play some of the most effective Swamp tapping cards you can throw at your opponent in the format that is Legacy.

Early game: Start out doing what Pox does best, disrupting the game state as much as possible, focus on eating away at their hand with your discard, keep their creatures down with your "make them sacrifice a creature" effects that Pox is so full of. Use your Nether Spirit as a blocker that can potentially take out opposing creatures just by blocking, worst case scenario it prevents damage like a wall that never goes away since it reanimate's itself on the upkeep.

Mid game: Stabilizing the board state, if you have a Liliana of the Veil at this point this is where it will start ticking up now that your opponents resources are dwindled by your strategy, continue keeping creatures off the board and cards out of their hand, Liliana is especially good here against combo decks, if you get it to the mid game and drop the planeswalker, it can prevent them from gaining too many cards in hand, sometimes you can get them to the point of having no cards in hand entirely, if that's the case, most combo decks at this point, especially storm combo based decks, will be under control & all you have to do is finish them off for the win.

Late game: Continue keeping control of the board state, the opponent can top deck stuff, but since some of your disruption is in the form of Land Destruction, they may not even be able to play their later game bombs because they just don't have the resources. As far as your side of the board, whenever you get the chance & the board state remains under your control, do 2 damage to them getting their life total down toward 0, whether it's with Nether Spirit and Mishra's Factory in combat, or a Cursed Scroll activation at the end of their turn.

History: Variants of Pox have been in Legacy as far back as it being called type 1.5, Mono Black being the most popular builds. For the more current incarnation of Pox, sometimes known as "Liliana Pox" in today's Legacy, we go back to the end of 2011, when Reid Duke piloted Pox with Liliana of the Veil for the Legacy portion of an SCG Invitational, going 5-1-1 in the Legacy portion:

2) Successful decklists & trends: from here http://www.starcitygames.com/pages/decklists/ & http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/formato.php?format=Legacy&page=1
2011:
9th place - Greg Russell - SCG Seattle (184 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=39816) Loam Pox
3rd place - Reid Duke - SCG Invitational (316 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=42691)

2012:
15th place - Jason Brinkman - SCG Atlanta (191 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=43057)
16th place - Michael Greene - SCG Atlanta (191 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=43069)
4th place - Ali Antrazi - SCG Washington DC (234 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=43395) Loam Pox
10th place - Paul Telkamp - SCG Richmond (118 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=43739)
6th place - Enric Bertran - 4º torneo Lliga Catalana Legacy - Esplugues (103 players) (http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=8176&iddeck=59636) B/W Pox
28th place - Kurtis Frazier - SCG St Louis (223 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=47833)
14th place - Dustin Cristos - SCG Las Vegas (223 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=48041)
16th place - Christopher Powell - SCG Providence (175 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=50045)
13th place - Shawn Riggin - SCG St Louis (162 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=50533)

2013:
24th place - Sean Nguyen - SCG Las Vegas (142 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=53612)
13th place - John Prather - SCG Seattle (261 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=55308) Loam Pox
12th place - David Nolan - SCG Cincinnati (277 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=58830) Loam Pox
1st place - Roberto Tomelleri - Brescia, Gods of Olympus (116 players) (http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=11979&iddeck=87740)
12th place - Matthew Everitt - SCG Providence (268 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=61014)

2014:
6th place - Xavier Muntada - LCL 2014 - January (147 players) (http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=12711&iddeck=93228)
8th place - Chris Arnold SCG Invitational (361 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=65499) Loam Pox
5th place - Joshua Edelstein SCG Worcester (290 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=69791) Loam Pox
13th place - Cary Austin SCG Columbus (259 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=76023)

2015:
10th place - Kurtis Fraizer SCG Columbus (162 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=78242)
16th place - Jason Deiss SCG Denver (80 players) (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=95889)

3) Card Choices:

3a) Maindeck: (average #, when ran)
Hand Disruption:
Inquisition of Kozilek (4) With the low mana curve of Legacy, this card almost always hits something, making it an almost perfect 1 mana discard spell.
Hymn to Tourach (4) 2 for 1, at random, & can even hit lands and slow the opponents opening hand down.
Thoughtseize non traditional Usually in sideboard when ran, other discard preferred because of the -2 life with Thoughtseize.
Duress non traditional Usually in sideboard when ran.
Raven's Crime non traditional Seen in rogue lists.
Funeral Charm non traditional Seen in rogue lists.

Creature Disruption:
Innocent Blood (4) Probably the best converted mana cost 1, creature removal available, doesn't target, great synergy with so many sacrifice a creature to the opponent effects.
Cursed Scroll (3) 2 damage to a creature, or a player's life total, acts as both removal & a kill condition.
Spinning Darkness (1-2) non traditional Usually in the sideboard, but sometimes there's a copy in the maindeck.

Land Disruption:
Sinkhole (4) Slow them down, cut them off of a color, answer problematic lands, etc. Can even cut them out of casting spells completely with so much Land Disruption in Pox.
Wasteland (4) Uncounterable nonbasic land hate.
Ghost Quarter non traditional seen in rogue lists.
Rishadan Port non traditional seen in rogue lists.

Multiple disruption from 1 source:
Pox (1-2) Even though the deck is called Pox, since the inclusion of Liliana of the Veil, the card Pox itself is usually just a 1 of in the deck when ran.
Smallpox (4) Your deck is setup to fully take advantage of "Pox" like effects that hit both players, almost always affecting them much more than it affects you.
Liliana of the Veil (4) Recurring discard, can be recurring creature removal as well, & even "ultimate" to cut the opponents remaining permanents in half.
Ratched Bomb non traditional Usually in sideboard when ran.
Powder Keg non traditional Usually in sideboard when ran.

Other permanents:
Nether Void Usually only a 1-2 of when ran, as a lockout taxing affect.
The Abyss Usually only a 1-2 of when ran, & more in the sideboard than maindeck.
Crucible of Worlds non traditional seen in rogue lists, can allow recurring Wasteland's / Mishra's Factory's.
Sensei's Divining Top non traditional seen in rogue lists.

Mana sources:
Dark Ritual (4) A turn 1 Liliana can be alot of pressure against some decks, or turn 1 Hymn to Tourach + Inquisition of Kozilek, as an example.
Swamp (8-12) Whatever your land base, you'll want a minimum 24 lands.
Bojuka Bog (4) non traditional seen in few maindecks, basically a swamp that comes into play tapped, that can also give game 1 graveyard hate.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (4) Make your Wastelands & Mishra's Factorys produce Swamp mana.

Creatures:
Nether Spirit (2) Reanimates itself when it's the only creature in your graveyard.
Mishra's Factory (4) make a 2/2 for 1 mana, also taps for 1 colorless.
Mutavault non traditional seen in rogue lists, Factory preferred for it's +1/+1 when 2 in play.
Bloodghast (4) non traditional seen in fewer lists, though has tricks with Landfall mechanics.
Gravecrawler (4) non traditional seen in rogue lists.
Filth non traditional seen in rogue lists.

Other kill conditions, though less traditional:
The Rack non traditional seen in rogue lists.
Tombstalker non traditional seen in rogue lists.
Bitterblossom non traditional seen in rogue lists.

Color splashes: non traditional, as most lists now are mono black/Liliana Pox.
Loam Pox: References for those that may want to splash green.
Pernicious Deed Board sweeper, doesn't hit Planeswalkers.
Maelstrom Pulse Removal that can 2 for 1 against multiple permanents of the same name.
Abrupt Decay Uncounterable removal, a B/G Legacy staple since printed in Return to Ravnica.
Crop Rotation Tutor for land, usually for versions running The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.
~Dredge/Loam/Entomb tricks:
Dakmor Salvage Dredging land.
Darkblast Dredging removal.
Life from the Loam Dredging "Crucible of the Worlds."
Cabal Pit Removal with Threshold, recurrable with Life from the Loam.
Syphon Life Abuseable kill condition with Life from the Loam.
Worm Harvest Abuseable kill condition with Life from the Loam.
Entomb Tutor for any card to the graveyard, like a Nether Spirit.
Vampire Hexmage Tricks with "Dark Depths."
Volrath's Stronghold Can Entomb it to the graveyard, get it into hand with Life from the Loam, cast it, put Vampire Hexmage on top of your library, draw it, play Dark Depths, Vampire Hexmage, now you have a 20/20 indestructible.
Dark Depths Tricks with "Vampire Hexmage."
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale Prevents opposing creature based decks from overrunning you like Goblins / Affinity / Elves that get out so many creatures so fast.
~B/G Lands:
Verdant Catacombs
Bayou
Barren Moor

B/W Pox: References for those that may want to splash white.
Lingering Souls 2 1/1 flyer's, whether to block opposing creatures or as a kill condition, also has flashback.
Swords to Plowshares Legacy staple removal for a single W mana.
Vindicate Destroy any permanent.
~B/W Lands:
Flagstones of Trokair
Marsh Flats
Scrubland

3b) Sideboard:
~Graveyard Disruption:
Leyline of the Void Starts in play from the opening hand.
Extirpate "Split second" Graveyard hate, almost uncounterable.
Nihil Spellbomb Graveyard removal that cantrips for a card.
Surgical Extraction Graveyard removal that removes all copies from the opponent.
~Hand Disruption:
Thoughtseize Usually not maindeck because of the -2 life.
Duress More common over Thoughtseize, almost all decks have pleanty of non-creature, non-land targets.
~Creature Disruption:
Ensnaring Bridge against larger creatures, Show and Tell decks, but also effective against creature decks because Pox can empty its hand fairly quickly.
Engineered Plague against tribal decks.
Perish against Green creature based decks.
Spinning Darkness "free" to cast against non-black creatures, +3 life & creature removal can help against fast decks.
Infest -2/-2 to all creatures for 3, effective against swarm/overrun type creature decks.
Smother Spot removal, prevents regeneration.
The Abyss Recurring removal.
Dystopia Recurring removal against Green & White permanent based decks, whether it's creatures like Maverick/Death & Taxes/Elves, or Enchantments like Enchantress.
Karakas Loam Pox A target for Entomb to Life from the Loam
~Other Disruption:
Krosan Grip Loam Pox Split Second Artifact/Enchantment hate.
Pithing Needle A cheap alternative to stop things like Planeswalkers, Equipments, or other artifact, creature based activations.
Ratchet Bomb "Sweeper" against non land permanents based on Converted Mana Cost.
Powder Keg "Sweeper" against Artifacts & Creatures based on Converted Mana Cost, doesn't hit Planeswalkers or Enchantments.
Nether Void A "taxing" effect that can lock the opponent out of the game after establishing control of the game state.

4) Price guide of more common Pox cards: As of March 2013 (For the most current prices, click on the link of each card) High-Mid-Low according to http://magiccards.info/ & http://magic.tcgplayer.com/all_magic_sets.asp
$50.00+ average:
The Abyss (http://magiccards.info/lg/en/34.html) $199.00 $185.16 $171.20
Nether Void (http://magiccards.info/query?q=nether+void&v=card&s=cname) $175.00 $134.10 $119.99
Thoughtseize (http://magiccards.info/query?q=thoughtseize&v=card&s=cname) $69.97 $64.11 $58.49
Wasteland (http://magiccards.info/tp/en/340.html) $55.95 $49.16 $38.00

$20.00 to $50.00:
Liliana of the Veil (http://magiccards.info/query?q=liliana+of+the+veil&v=card&s=cname) $41.97 $37.62 $34.98
Sinkhole (http://magiccards.info/un/en/38.html) $18.44 $30.86 $44.98

$10.00 to $20.00:
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (http://magiccards.info/pc/en/165.html) $24.98 $15.67 $13.50

$5.00 to $10.00:
Cursed Scroll (http://magiccards.info/query?q=cursed+scroll&v=card&s=cname) $10.98 $8.58 $6.95
Inquisition of Kozilek (http://magiccards.info/query?q=inquisition+of+kozilek&v=card&s=cname) $9.95 $7.64 $6.42
Bloodghast (http://magiccards.info/query?q=bloodghast&v=card&s=cname) $7.97 $6.22 $5.05
Extirpate (http://magiccards.info/query?q=extirpate&v=card&s=cname) $10.29 $6.34 $4.99

$2.00 to $5.00:
Nether Spirit (http://magiccards.info/query?q=nether+spirit&v=card&s=cname) $5.14 $3.87 $2.99
Mishra's Factory (http://magiccards.info/4e/en/181.html) $4.04 $2.86 $1.75
Pox (http://magiccards.info/ia/en/46.html) $5.04 $3.75 $2.65
Powder Keg (http://magiccards.info/ud/en/136.html) $5.15 $2.64 $1.49
Perish (http://magiccards.info/tp/en/41.html) $4.62 $2.80 $1.80

$1.00 to $2.00:
Innocent Blood (http://magiccards.info/query?q=innocent+blood&v=card&s=cname) $2.88 $2.07 $1.38
Hymn to Tourach (http://magiccards.info/fe/en/13.html) $2.00 $1.43 $1.04
Ratched Bomb (http://magiccards.info/query?q=ratchet+bomb&v=card&s=cname) $5.99 $1.42 $0.86
Leyline of the Void (http://magiccards.info/query?q=leyline+of+the+void&v=card&s=cname) $2.69 $1.59 $0.86
Engineered Plague (http://magiccards.info/ul/en/51.html) $2.06 $1.18 $0.25

$1.00 or less average:
Pithing Needle (http://magiccards.info/query?q=pithing+needle&v=card&s=cname) $2.05 $0.81 $0.48
Bojuka Bog (http://magiccards.info/query?q=bojuka+bog&v=card&s=cname) $0.75 $0.35 $0.22
Dark Ritual (http://magiccards.info/ia/en/8.html) $1.53 $0.90 $0.50
Smallpox (http://magiccards.info/query?q=smallpox&v=card&s=cname) $1.00 $0.27 $0.05
Duress (http://magiccards.info/query?q=duress&v=card&s=cname) $0.62 $0.17 $0.02
Spinning Darkness (http://magiccards.info/query?q=spinning+darkness&v=card&s=cname) $0.49 $0.19 $0.04

Swamp (http://magiccards.info/rtr/en/260.html) $149.98(Guru) $7.98(Unhinged) $5.99(Unglued) $5.99(Beta) $1.00(Zendikar) $0.03(Basic)
http://i.imgur.com/yyJg8Zv.jpg

5) Awesome Links: In relation to Pox & Legacy
Price trends of singles:
http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Ice_Age/Pox

Pox articles/reports/etc:
2013:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/26010_Video--B-G-Pox-In-Legacy.html Video, Pox, Starcitygames (Reid Duke)

2012:
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/24933-Abrupt-Decay-And-Legacy-Pox.html Article, Loam Pox update for Return to Ravnica (Reid Duke)
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?23409-3rd-place-Dragonsleague-Gorizia-with-Bg-LoamPox&highlight= Tournament report, B/G Pox, 3rd place of 36 (Cthuloo (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/member.php?21804-Cthuloo))
http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/legacy/23731_Legacy_Week_Pox.html Article with notes on both Liliana Pox & Loam Pox (Reid Duke)
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_loam_pox_with_ali_ai.html Deck Tech from SCG Washington DC (Ali Antrazi)

2011:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/23288_Introducing-Mono-Black-Pox-In-Legacy.html Article after Pox top 8, 5-1-1 Legacy portion, SCG Invitational Charlotte (Reid Duke)
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_monoblack_pox_with_r.html Deck Tech from SCG Invitational Charlotte (Reid Duke)

Pox decklist sources:
Starcitygames.com Pox decklists (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?t%5BT2%5D=3&event_ID=&feedin=&start_date=2002-11-03&end_date=2013-03-24&city=&state=&country=&start=1&finish=32&exp=&p_first=&p_last=&simple_card_name%5B1%5D=smallpox&simple_card_name%5B2%5D=&simple_card_name%5B3%5D=&simple_card_name%5B4%5D=&simple_card_name%5B5%5D=&w_perc=0&g_perc=0&r_perc=0&b_perc=0&u_perc=0&a_perc=0&comparison%5B1%5D=%3E%3D&card_qty%5B1%5D=1&card_name%5B1%5D=&comparison%5B2%5D=%3E%3D&card_qty%5B2%5D=1&card_name%5B2%5D=&comparison%5B3%5D=%3E%3D&card_qty%5B3%5D=1&card_name%5B3%5D=&comparison%5B4%5D=%3E%3D&card_qty%5B4%5D=1&card_name%5B4%5D=&comparison%5B5%5D=%3E%3D&card_qty%5B5%5D=1&card_name%5B5%5D=&sb_comparison%5B1%5D=%3E%3D&sb_card_qty%5B1%5D=1&sb_card_name%5B1%5D=&sb_comparison%5B2%5D=%3E%3D&sb_card_qty%5B2%5D=1&sb_card_name%5B2%5D=&card_not%5B1%5D=&card_not%5B2%5D=&card_not%5B3%5D=&card_not%5B4%5D=&card_not%5B5%5D=&order_1=date+desc&order_2=&limit=50&action=Show+Decks&p=1)
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/tipo.php?format=Legacy&archetype=Pox&page=1

Legacy metagame:
http://www.starcitygames.com/pages/decklists/
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/formato.php?format=Legacy&page=1
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?24023-40-Tier-Legacy-Decks-Lists-Singles-Prices-etc-To-be-updated-regularly(started-2012)

For more on B/G Loam Pox: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?7835-Deck-BG-Pox Though started in 2007, it is more dedicated to B/G Pox builds, & saw some revival after the printing of Abrupt Decay with Return to Ravnica.

6) The previous Pox thread: http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?4300-Deck-Pox by Clark Kant (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/member.php?2686-Clark-Kant), special thanks to Clark Kant & everyone that filled the thread with valuable Pox discussion over the past 6-7 years.

[feline]

7) 20 match ups: (Based mostly on decks that have performed with some level of consistent, higher placings since Return to Ravnica Legacy)

01) RUG (Moderate-Heavy playtesting recommended, a more common match up)
Pre sideboard They are a tempo based aggro deck, their goal is to take you down before you can establish control of the board. Disrupt them as much as you can in the beginning, they will attempt to fight back with Daze & Spell Pierce taxing counters, while swinging with their cheap creatures like Delver of Secrets & Nimble Mongoose. The most vital spells against them is your creature removal, so spend your discard on them first, once their hand is out of counters or even empty, start eating their creatures away with your control. Also be mindful at all times that they have access to burn spells, so do what you can to keep your life total out of burn range, once you're at 3 or less they can finish you off with a Lightning bolt even after you establish control. Also if you're maindecking Bojuka Bog you will have an even greater advantage against RUG since they want "threshold" & "card types" in the graveyard for Goyf & Mongoose.
Post sideboard Spinning Darkness is a decent card to bring in against this match up since they are basically "free" to cast, primarily to use against delvers, since it can't target a Nimble Mongoose, while Tarmogoyf's toughness may require tricks with doing additional damage with either Nether Spirit blocking or a Cursed Scroll activation. They may bring in something like Ancient Grudge to destroy your Cursed Scrolls & 2 for 1 them when you cast a second.

02) Stoneblade (Moderate-Heavy playtesting recommended, a more common match up)
Pre sideboard They are a more control type deck, their goal will be to establish control of the board, while netting card advantage with Stoneforge Mystic, Snapcaster Mage, Jace, the Mind Sculptor & potential sweepers like Engineered Explosives. They will try to take you down with either Batterskull or Lingering Soul tokens in addition to their other creatures, & sometimes even a Jace ultimate. Disrupt them from the beginning, as the goal with most opponents playing Pox, attacking their hand is the way to start burning your discard on their vital spells. The combination of Land / Hand / Creature disruption is more effective against control type decks like Stoneblade, even if they bounce a Batterskull back to their hand, they have to pay 5 to replay it by itself, and you can even prevent that by reducing their lands so much. Jace can be a bit annoying since most of the time you'll only be swinging for 2 when you first start attacking, as it will require more than 1 Factory or Nether Spirit or Cursed Scroll activation to take out Jace, so try not to let Jace come into play by getting it out of their hand. Making them play everything or discard it, then trying to control the board state with all your removal, also watch out for Swords to Plowshares against your Nether Spirit.
Post sideboard More disruption like Duress is a good sideboard move against Stoneblade, cutting them off from important stuff early, & preventing them from keeping vital instants/sorceries in hand. They will likely bring in Sword of Feast and Famine because of it's pro-black, +2/+2 & since you're a mono black deck, they know you won't likely be able to destroy it, as a Stoneforge Mystic target, & try to play around your discard by either using their own, or backing it up with counterspells if you try to make them discard their Stoneforge Mystic Equipment in hand.

03) UW control variants (Moderate-Heavy playtesting recommended, a more common match up)
Pre sideboard There are a couple ways to go about this deck as of recent, some do Counterbalance Sensei's Divining Top, some also run Rest in Peace Helm of Obedience as their win condition, others have a more miracle focus & run more Entreat the Angles in addition to Terminus. This match can be a bit trickier because they have alot of enchantment / artifact options that you can't answer directly once they make play, & against your kill conditions, Cursed Scroll can be answered by Engineered Explosives, & they can do both Swords to Plowshares & Terminus to put Nether Spirit & Mishra's Factory on the bottom of your deck, or just remove them from the game. Attack their hand as much as possible to prevent them from getting their enchants into play, especially if they're running Counterbalance. If they are stuck in top deck mode without a Top in play, you will be in the best position to keep swinging against them because they will have to top deck an answer over the course of turns.
Post sideboard Pithing Needle if you are running it is very good here, as it can stop Jace, Helm of Obedience, & Sensei's Divining Top alone. They will likely bring in more artifact hate on your Cursed Scroll's alone with Disenchant type stuff. They also might have a Path to Exile and/or a 4th Terminus in the sideboard, since they usually only maindeck 3, and their other removal is less effective against you like Supreme Verdict. Another card to note is Detention Sphere since it is ran in some builds, and that can answer Nether Spirit properly, & even multiple copies of Cursed Scroll if you get 1 or more in play.

04) BUG aggro (Moderate playtesting recommended, a more common match up)
Pre sideboard They are an aggro deck, by namesake of course that should be obvious. Anyhow, They run disruption in the form of discard, counterspells & some removal like Abrupt Decay, while their creatures are things like Delver of Secrets Deathrite Shaman Tarmogoyf & sometimes even Tombstalker, more midrange versions will run even Dark Confidant & Shardless Agent for tricks with Ancestral Vision or just their regular cheap spells that give them a freebie to cast like Hymn to Tourach as an example, or just one of their other creatures. Use your disruption early to cut into their aggro strategy, then establish control of the board with your removal, they don't have burn so the battle is almost entirely on the permanents in play. If you're maindecking Bojuka Bog it will help keep Tarmogoyf smaller & Deathrite Shaman from some of it's fuel for eating at your life if it sticks in play. Also if you're maindecking Bojuka Bog it can eat their Deathrite Shaman fuel & shrink their Tarmogoyf's, also cutting off the "delve" reduction cost for Tombstalker.
Post sideboard They will likely bring in something to properly answer your Nether Spirit's, anything from traditional graveyard hate, or something like Scavenging Ooze that also doubles as a threat. They also might have Jace, the Mind Sculptor in their sideboard for a late game strategy against slower decks or the mirror match, & might bring in 1-2 against you.

05) BUG control (Moderate-Heavy playtesting recommended, a more common match up)
Pre sideboard Being a control deck, your disruption that takes their hand & lands will be more effective. This is where you'll find BUG lists that have a higher focus on planeswalkers, so they will have Jace, & their own Liliana's as well. As far as their creatures, Deathrite Shaman & Tarmogoyf are so good they are even found in control decks of BUG variants. They also might have Vendilion Clique. Since their creature focus isn't as much as BUG aggro/midrange strategies, you will have an easier time controlling the combat phase from taking you down, so they may start to try & tick up a Jace since your might not have any threats right away, at worst, they will be preventing damage because you'll have to swing into a Jace +2'ing every turn, to prevent it from using it's ultimate on you. Also if you're maindecking Bojuka Bog it can eat their Deathrite Shaman fuel & shrink their Tarmogoyf's.
Post sideboard Duress if it's in your sideboard gives you more disruption against a deck that usually holds cards in hand. Pithing Needle hits their planeswalkers & Deathrite Shaman abilities. Also similar as BUG aggro, they will likely bring in something to properly answer your Nether Spirits in the form of graveyard hate like Surgical Extraction.

06) Jund (Moderate playtesting recommended, a more common match up)
Pre sideboard One of the newer decks with more recent success, Jund is another aggro match up with a focus on the best green Tarmogoyf, redLightning Bolt, & black Thoughtseize available in the format from a mid-range type aggro deck. This is also one of the homes for Dark Confidant However you have so much creature removal, what really matters is the fact that if they get you low enough they can finish you off with top deck burn, but luckily they aren't a fast aggro deck like zoo or burn. Spend the first bit disrupting them accordingly, while Nether Spirit & Cursed Scroll can kill enough of their threats like Dark Confidant, Deathrite Shaman & Bloodbraid Elf. Also to note they run their own Liliana of the Veil so drop your own without losing it to a creature, since Bloodbraid Elf has haste, it can come out and swing right at your own Liliana, before they kill it & then drop their own. Also to note, some version of Jund might run Punishing Fire & Grove of the Burnwillows, but with a focus on Land Destruction, you can prevent the recurring life gain from Grove. Also if you're maindecking Bojuka Bog it can eat their Deathrite Shaman fuel & shrink their Tarmogoyf's.
Post sideboard Spinning Darkness from the sideboard, & Perish can be decent to bring in here because it kills nearly all of their creatures, except for Dark Confidant. They will likely bring in something like Ancient Grudge to deal with your Cursed Scrolls, & some sort of graveyard hate like Surgical Extraction to remove your Nether Spirits properly.

07) Dredge (Combo, Light playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard Unlike most combo type match up's, this is one that is actually a harder game 1, if you are maindecking Bojuka Bog you will have a better edge -vs- not having them maindeck, but aside from that, making them discard is something they can benefit from, while making them sacrifice creatures is almost useless against things like Bridge from Below in the graveyard. Because there's almost no way to establish true control against this deck because they will eventually swarm you, & your disruption means little if anything at all, game 1 is the hardest, but like most decks in the format, game 1 is always the hardest against dredge, this is a match that will rely more on your sideboard for proper graveyard hate.
Post sideboard Ensnaring Bridge is good here if you're sideboarding it to prevent them from swarming you with their 2/2's, & Pox can fairly easily empty it's hand fast enough. Leyline of the Void Tormod's Crypt Surgical Extraction, whatever your graveyard hate is, bring it in & try to prevent them from dredge, if it's extraction, removing all copies of things like Bridge from Below is another good strategy. For them, they will probably do 1 of 2 things, either run a "transformational sideboard" that turns into Enlightened Tutor & Grindstone + Painter's Servant with Unmask back up, the other option is to bring in stuff that answers artifacts / enchantments with things like Nature's Claim, while their discard in Cabal Therapy can hit your spell cast graveyard hate like Extraction.

08) Maverick (Light playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard They are an aggro deck with a focus on hate bears & utility, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben can be annoying since it makes everything that's not a creature, or just about everything in your deck, cost +1, so try to get it out of their hand early, if they drop it however, it can still be answered with Cursed Scroll so drop that early as well so it doesn't cost 2 to play. As far as everything else, against your non basic lands they have tricks with Wasteland & Knight of the Reliquary so your Factories won't stick if you don't answer a Knight of the Reliquary. As far as their other strategy like Mother of Runes Gaddock Teeg they will be less effective since your stuff is all under 4 mana cost, & your creature removal is in the form of sacrifice. They can also answer Cursed Scroll with Qasali Pridemage and Nether Spirit with Scavenging Ooze / Swords to Plowshares.
Post sideboard Spinning Darkness from the sideboard, & Perish is awesome against this deck with so many green creatures. Engineered Plague naming humans can also help since it hits Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Noble Hierarch & Mother of Runes & even shrink Knight of the Reliquary -1/-1. They will likely increase their removal for Nether Spirit / Cursed Scroll if they're running Path to Exile & more artifact hate in their sideboard.

09) Ad Nauseam Storm (ANT/TES) (Combo, Moderate playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard They are a combo deck, though aside from a turn 1 kill from their side, you can still interact with them, disrupting them hard from the beginning with discard. Eat their hand apart as much as you can, aside from that, they will try to combo off & being a storm combo deck, the more cards in their hand, the higher chance they have of going off. They also will have access to Past in Flames so even after ripping their hand apart they can still try to cast this, so keep pressure on their resources so they can't even cast it. Also if you're Bojuka Boging maindeck, it can help prevent flashback shenanagins from the opponent. Liliana of the Veil is good here at putting them into topdeck mode, & once it resolves, it can prevent them from truly recovering with an essential "soft lock" that keeps making them discard every turn.
Post sideboard Duress from the sideboard helps the most since your primary goal is to keep them from going off & attacking their hand, forcing them into top deck mode remains key. They will likely not change too much since their sideboard is mostly wish targets & stuff for opposing counterspells, so your discard will remain effective.

10) High Tide (Combo, Moderate playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard They are a storm like combo deck, but don't require as many cards in hand, just High Tide & [cards]Time Spiral & a number of Islands in play, they will run more disruption unlike other faster combo decks in the form of more counterspells like Flusterstorm & Force of Will, while also being able to tutor for them. Land disruption in addition to discard is very effective against High Tide combo decks, because they need a minimum of Islands in play in order to go off. Resolving a Liliana of the Veil is also very good here, if you get them low on cards & keep making them discard, it can keep enough pressure that prevents them from combo'ing, since they need a minimum of 2 cards in hand (High tide/Time spiral) to go off.
Post sideboard Duress from your sideboard is perfect against a deck with no creatures. They will possibly side in more Flusterstorm to use against your disruption, but you have so much disruption that they will be forced to go off as early as possible, & if your disruption hits hard enough, they won't even be able to do that. Also with so much discard, the option to Surgical Extraction or Extirpate after making them discard a vital card to the graveyard like Cunning Wish, Time Spiral, or High Tide, however they will likely sideboard a High Tide in case of that possibility.

11) UR Delver (Light-Moderate playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard They are an aggro deck with a focus on Burn & Counterspells like Lightning Bolt & Spell Pierce as some examples. They also run Price of Progress so be careful about your nonbasic land count & if you get low, you may want to hold a wasteland untapped so you can target your own non basic in response to reduce damage you take, your non basic's being Wasteland/Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth/Mishra's Factory. As far as their creatures go however, they are weaker and all killable with a blocking Nether Spirit or a Cursed Scroll activation. Try to prevent them from getting your life total too low, so they don't just top deck a burn spell late game & steal a win after you establish control of the board & start attacking.
Post sideboard Spinning Darkness from the sideboard, & they will likely bring in something to deal with your Nether Spirits properly like Surgical Extraction if they are in their sideboard. Aside from that, they will be focused the same as previous, trying to burn you down & counter vital spells, so you just have to disrupt them early against their hand, & control the board state with your sacrifice a creature effects.

12) Show and Tell variants (Sneak/Omni) (Combo, Moderate-Heavy playtesting recommended, a more common match up)
Pre sideboard They are a combo deck that can potentially go off as early as even turn 1, but more likely turns 2-4, the later the more likely. Luckily however, your "Sacrifice a creature" effects are very good here when resolved, because they will focus on resolving things like Show and Tell to put a single creature bomb into play like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn / Griselbrand. After that they will back it up with counterspells, so they will likely try to fight back the discard you throw at them early. If they drop a Griselbrand off of the Show and Tell it will likely draw them a ton of cards, & if they drop either bomb from a Sneak Attack it will come out swinging. So you still need to focus on preventing them from casting their combo that is Show and tell / Sneak attack. Land disruption is also helpful here, especially since they run sol lands like Ancient Tomb & need blue mana in order to use Brainstorm Ponder Preordain as well as Show and Tell itself. The difference between Sneak & Show & Omnitell is that 1 version runs Sneak Attacks, the other runs Burning Wish & Omniscience, but their primary overall goals are basically the same, cheat something big into play & use it to kill.
Post sideboard Ensnaring Bridge is good here if you're sideboarding it. Duress is a good card to bring in from the sideboard, if they get stuck with one of their bombs in hand, they can't drop it if they can never cheat it into play with their Sneak & Show's, in which is an actual name for that version of the deck. They will likely bring in Leyline of Sanctity since lists commonly run the Leylines in their sideboard, especially useful against a heavy discard strategy like pox. If it's Omnitell then their sideboard will be more Wish dedicated, so their sideboard in options will be more narrow as they may not be able to fit Leyline's into their sideboard, focusing more for the anti-counterspell match up.

13) Reanimator (Combo, Moderate playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard They are a fast combo like deck, similar to Show and Tell, except their goal will be to get a bomb into the graveyard with stuff like Careful Study & Entomb, then put it into play with Exhume Reanimate & Animate Dead. Hit them early with as much discard as you can, preventing this from happening, after they are pushed into top deck mode, they can still combo if they topdeck an Entomb or have to discard a Creature to the graveyard with your own disruption, so be careful with Liliana of the Veil / Hymn to Tourach but even if they get a creature to the graveyard, it means little if they can't reanimate it. Also if you're maindecking Bojuka Bogs it will give you an increased edge against the deck.
Post sideboard Ensnaring Bridge is good here if you're sideboarding it. Graveyard hate is the obvious choice here, whether it's Leyline of the Void, Tormod's Crypt or Surgical Extraction. From their sideboard Iona, Shield of Emeria will likely come in if they're not maindecking it already, and of course, naming black if it resolves.

14) Elves (Combo, Moderate playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard They are a combo deck, however, they have a focus on casting lots of elves, so after ripping Glimpse of Nature / Natural Order / Green Sun's Zenith from their hand, which is the combo elements of their deck, it will just be an army of elves you have to deal with, so after attacking their hand, prevent them from swarming you with your creature disruption. They have alot of elves, though they are lower in their power/toughness, even a small army of 1/1's can do some damage, so Cursed Scroll, Nether Spirit, & making Mishra's Factorys into 2/2's to block will help keep them down.
Post sideboard Spinning Darkness from the sideboard, & Perish is the most popular card that comes in against elves from a swamp deck with that option, & being a tribal deck, Engineered Plague naming Elves can really set them back. For them, they might bring in more to answer your Cursed Scrolls in the form of artifact hate, & since many elf lists have been splashing black since Return to Ravnica Legacy, it might be in the form of Abrupt Decay.

15) Merfolk (Light playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard The second tribal deck on this list, Merfolk focuses more on getting out "Lords" that make eachother bigger, however you have enough creature disruption that you can prevent them from getting too big. They will also have Mutavault & Aether Vial so they can cheat a Merfolk into play at any time based on the number of counters on it, & have access to animating the land, which sharing creature types, fits in perfectly with Merfolk's +1/+1 to other Merfolk abilities on most of their Fish. Their back up will be counterspells like Daze & Force of Will, and card draw like Standstill. Use your disruption early to hit their hand and keep them off of too many creatures, also getting out a Nether Spirit or a Cursed Scroll is very effective since it can eat their Fish by either blocking or just taking them out directly, by themselves, the Merfolk are basically 2/2's.
Post sideboard Spinning Darkness from the sideboard, & Engineered Plague is decent here, but since their Merfolk make all other's bigger, it negates the effect, but at the same time, it helps keep them in check so your Nether Spirits / Cursed Scrolls / blocking Mishra's Factory's can actually take them out -vs- them being out of range & too big, while further helping prevent that with "sacrifice a creature" effects. Since most decks have some graveyard hate in their sideboard, & your Nether Spirits keep coming back, they might bring in something to deal with them properly, but other than that the deck will be the same overall.

16) Goblins (Moderate playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard The last tribal deck on this list, and probably the hardest battle to go against. Unlike the other 2 which you can gain proper control over and force them into top deck mode while controlling the board state, Goblins have a focus on massive card advantage & huge swarming, so 1 for 1'ing creatures isn't as effective, & hitting their hand only goes so far when they keep refilling it with Goblin Ringleader, so if you can, make them discard Ringleader's early, as well as Goblin Matron since it will net Ringleaders & play them off of that. They can dump alot of goblins into play in a single turn alone via Goblin Warchief & Aether Vial. Turn 1 they also have the option with Goblin Lackey so don't let it connect and drop free goblins into play, but with a heavy focus on creature disruption, it shouldn't be hard to keep early Lackey's from hitting.
Post sideboard Engineered Plague is a definite effective sideboard to come in, since the vast majority of their goblins will be 1/1's. They might bring in a Goblin Chieftain from the sideboard to fight that strategy, as well as possibly Surgical Extraction if they're running it as a proper answer to your Nether Spirits.

17) Belcher (Combo, Moderate playtesting recommended)
Pre sideboard They are a combo deck, but as far as combo decks go that are so explosive, they are THEE combo deck, if they are on the play, you're likely dead, if they're on the draw, then you can hit them with discard, so eat at their hand as much as you can, this deck above all other combo decks has more of a turn 1 combo focus over all the others you'll likely see in the format, if they swarm out a bunch of 1/1 goblins, it will be hard to recover. The key cards to make them discard are Burning Wish Goblin Charbelcher & Empty the Warrens. Keeping their hand as close to empty as you can is the best route of success against this deck, just like against most other storm type combo decks.
Post sideboard Duress helps here, Engineered Plague can name goblins as well, but duress can hit Goblin Charbelcher in addition to affecting Burning Wish & Empty the Warrens. They will likely not change much sideboard because they have a wish focus, backed up by stuff for blue decks counterspells, not so much a heavy discard focus.

18) Zombardment/Zombies (Light-Moderate playtesting recommended, however a less common match up)
Pre sideboard This deck has a focus on abusing Cabal Therapy Goblin Bombardment and Carrion Feeder with things like Gravecrawler Bloodghast and Lingering Souls, because of Landfall tricks with Bloodghast, it will be a bit harder to answer, but you still have Scroll, Factory & Nether Spirit to deal with it. Gravecrawlers as well even though they can keep coming back, but later game they can cast 1, then a number of them from the graveyard, as well as making as many as 4 1/1's from a single Lingering Souls, giving them a potential swarm strategy, so once you disrupt them as much as you can in the beginning, try to kill them before that happens without being too overly aggressive, the main focus keeping disruption up with your land/hand/creature removal. Also if you're maindecking Bojuka Bogs that will help against their deck since they utilize the graveyard on a higher level than most decks.
Post sideboard Graveyard hate like Leyline of the Void Surgical Extraction & Tormod's Crypt are useful here, preventing them from gaining too much advantage with flashbacking so much from their graveyard. They will likely bring in something to deal with your Cursed Scrolls in the form of artifact hate like Disenchant. As well as the possibility of their own graveyard hate since you can keep recurring your own creature from the graveyard via Nether Spirit.

19) 12 post (Moderate playtesting recommended, however a less common match up)
Pre sideboard They are basically a half combo/half ramp deck, so against the combo, focus your discard on their stuff like Show and Tell & their ramp like [cards]Primeval Titan, Land disruption is huge against this deck because they love Cloudpost, & they can't cast the 10+ mana cost Eldrazi bombs if they can't pay for them. They don't run much beyond that, it's just a heavy focus on getting out posts & dropping Eldrazi into play, so keep eating their resources accordingly.
Post sideboard Ensnaring Bridge is good here if you're sideboarding it. Based on the list that won San Diego earlier in 2013, they will likely bring in something like Chalice of the Void & maybe even Flusterstorm to help fight the early discard.

20) Pox The mirror match! (Moderate playtesting recommended, however a less common match up)
Pre sideboard If this actually happens, though not likely, the main thing to remember is that you're both playing the same deck, with a same strategy, so you have to out play them, & hope you get a little luckier with your draws than the opponent, neither side will get their kill fast. Luckily if you get out a Nether Spirit first, they won't be able to answer it properly. Also to note, you want to get out Liliana of the Veil early, so you can potentially get it up high enough to ultimate & cut them off of their resources if they start getting alot of permanents into play. Try to be the aggressive deck since they can't answer your Scrolls / Nether Spirits properly.
Post sideboard Remember that what you do, they will likely be doing too, however you still have to be able to answer opposing creatures from their graveyard, so you still want to bring in your graveyard hate regardless. As far as opposing Cursed Scrolls go, while you can even control their other kill conditions like Cursed Scroll with Pithing Needle

[Polish Tamales]

Thanks so much for doing this! I was looking for an updated guide for a while now!

[Sughayyer]

Great primer! Could you add more bw and bg lists as examples? Also you could mention cards like worm harvest, syphon life, etc.
Excelent primer nonetheless

[slave]

Kickarse primer Feline.
Onya for devotin' all the time and effort.

I especially love the costs section - what a great idea for all the people who may wish to construct a budget version of Pox.
Cheers Feline.

[Megadeus]

When I played Pox for a short time I ran a Bloodghast and a Nether SPirit. Seem like a decent idea?

[feline]

Great primer! Could you add more bw and bg lists as examples? Also you could mention cards like worm harvest, syphon life, etc.
Excelent primer nonetheless

I was only able to find very few B/G Pox lists that had success at larger events (100 or so players+) that finished in the top placings, since this deck is more uncommon i did top 32 instead of top 16 and they were still hard to come by, though at the request, I did a re-hit with a lower threshold, like 80+ instead of 100+, and I still didn't find any additional B/G pox lists to the ones already noted. Forgive me if things came off the wrong way but I try to note stuff based on success since these are in the established section. As far as B/W pox, those lists were even harder to come by at top 32 or higher.

Also Bloodghast & Nether Spirit are both noted.

Also Worm Harvest/Syphon Life noted for it's tricks with Life from the Loam in the B/G pox as a kill condition. ^.^

[entreri_fans]

another awesome primer!

[FTW]

This is an incredible, very thorough primer. Bravo!

[feline]

Thank you, it's my 4th one in the past week, after doing High Tide / Belcher / Zoo as well, currently I'm working on one for Stax,-EDIT-submitted, that makes 5!

[berksowl]

feline, could you offer up what you think might be an optimal mono-black decklist for the NW regional or national event meta right now?

Basically, I've put aside BG Pox and Armageddon Stax, so I'm down to one deck option. But I'd like to have another one to play, one that I'm somewhat familiar with, and I think a mono-black pox deck could be just the ticket. I'm just not sure what makes most sense right at the moment.

[feline]

Pox would be the most optimal mono black decklist, just based on performance of decks that are mono black, the gate hasn't had near the success Pox has. I also have my own Liliana Pox deck, the reason I've done these primers is because I wanted something updated for decks I play, I didn't do Dredge or Goblins however because Hollywood & Gobolord have been on top of those forums and kept it updated ^.^ Props to them for doing that, everyone loves updated stuff.

If it helps, my personal list when I play pox at a more local level is
8 swamp
4 bojuka bog
4 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
4 mishra's factory
4 wasteland
4 dark ritual
3 cursed scroll
4 inquisition of kozilek
4 innocent blood
4 hymn to tourach
4 sinkhole
4 smallpox
4 liliana of the veil
3 nether spirit
2 pox

As far as playing it on a larger scale tourney I just don't play it there, I always play High Tide, but if I was to push for pox on that level it'd be something along these lines, I'd also possibly experiment with tombstalker or something for a faster clock, or even splash green for pernicious deed / abrupt decay & maybe even maelstrom pulse & tarmogoyf, though I can't say I'd go that fast, I haven't toyed with the deck on that level.

also I love Spinning Darkness against creature based decks, so I'd definitely continue to have them in the sideboard, along with some graveyard hate & Duress from the sideboard as well since it's great against combo match ups. I also like [cards]Dystopia but I think it's just preference for elves & maverick which show up a bit more at the local game store I go to.

In either case, I can't say I'd run this for sure because I just haven't gone so far with the deck as to push it at the Open series, but this is what I do play locally, I hope that helps ^.^

[Cthuloo]

I was only able to find very few B/G Pox lists that had success at larger events (100 or so players+) that finished in the top placings, since this deck is more uncommon i did top 32 instead of top 16 and they were still hard to come by, though at the request, I did a re-hit with a lower threshold, like 80+ instead of 100+, and I still didn't find any additional B/G pox lists to the ones already noted. Forgive me if things came off the wrong way but I try to note stuff based on success since these are in the established section. As far as B/W pox, those lists were even harder to come by at top 32 or higher.

Also Bloodghast & Nether Spirit are both noted.

Also Worm Harvest/Syphon Life noted for it's tricks with Life from the Loam in the B/G pox as a kill condition. ^.^

I know it's a a bit outdated ad not a big tournament, but I did post a report some time ago here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?23409-3rd-place-Dragonsleague-Gorizia-with-Bg-LoamPox&highlight=). Anyways, you already did a very good job, the only possible card of interest that I see missing is Drop of Honey.

[feline]

Added, noted, & thank you ^.^

[Cthuloo]

Added, noted, & thank you ^.^

Thank you for the enormous amount of work!

[Chatto]

Question: can Deathrite Shaman be considered? With the absurd amount of spells it's ability to nab some life can be devastating. Or maybe it's inclusion is more of a B/G Loam Pox thing :)

[Sughayyer]

@chatto
probably not. It has no synergy at all with smallpox, pox, innocent blood and pernicious deed. Unless you are willing to sacrifice the optimization of the deck to add more loaming, witness, volrath's stronghold. I did it and it's bad, you'll have one half of each strategy.

I played a list similar to cthuloo,s list, but without cursed scrolls and only 3 life from the loam. I ran 1 worm harvest and 2 grisly salvage since it is effectively a tutor, and once we control the board (usually with 2 or 3 spells since they are so devastating) we need to kill fast or else we run the risk of allowing our opponents to recover.

[bruizar]

feline, you are such a rogue player, I think I'm a fan :p

EDIT:

I think there is something to say for multiple Nether Spirits combined with Relic of Progenitus. Relic is great against Deathrite Shamans. Deathrite Shaman is good at screwing with your Nether Spirit (if DRS lives). Relic of Progenitus is good at combating DRS and controlling your own Nether Spirits (getting rid of multiples). Relic also cantrips just like Nihil Spellbomb.

[feline]

feline, you are such a rogue player, I think I'm a fan :p

Um, what? lol, I actually do push more rogue/fringe decks than I do tier 1 strategies, but what makes you say that? lol

[Chatto]

@chatto
probably not. It has no synergy at all with smallpox, pox, innocent blood and pernicious deed. Unless you are willing to sacrifice the optimization of the deck to add more loaming, witness, volrath's stronghold. I did it and it's bad, you'll have one half of each strategy.

I played a list similar to cthuloo,s list, but without cursed scrolls and only 3 life from the loam. I ran 1 worm harvest and 2 grisly salvage since it is effectively a tutor, and once we control the board (usually with 2 or 3 spells since they are so devastating) we need to kill fast or else we run the risk of allowing our opponents to recover.

That makes sense. Thanks for the reply :)

@ feline: great job! I had to mention this earlier :)

[bruizar]

Um, what? lol, I actually do push more rogue/fringe decks than I do tier 1 strategies, but what makes you say that? lol

Just the quality of the stuff you worked out for Spiral Tide and Pox, as opposed to choosing to put that work into something like blade control, sneak/show or RUG (not saying these decks are bad, just saying they are rogue).

[Cthuloo]

@chatto
probably not. It has no synergy at all with smallpox, pox, innocent blood and pernicious deed. Unless you are willing to sacrifice the optimization of the deck to add more loaming, witness, volrath's stronghold. I did it and it's bad, you'll have one half of each strategy.

I perfectly agree, it's definitely not worth it. You could consider it as a sideboard option against control and graveyard-based combo decks, where you are usually boarding out most of the symmetric disruption, but I would still prefer something more gamebreaking.




I played a list similar to cthuloo,s list, but without cursed scrolls and only 3 life from the loam. I ran 1 worm harvest and 2 grisly salvage since it is effectively a tutor, and once we control the board (usually with 2 or 3 spells since they are so devastating) we need to kill fast or else we run the risk of allowing our opponents to recover.


I've dropped the scrolls too, since then. I often had hard times activating them properly due to still having multiple cards in hand with Loam. I tried Worm harvest in the past, but was generally dissatisfied: due to repetead use of Life Frm the Loam, you usually end up with too few lands in the graveyard to effectively abuse it. I has to be said, though, that the deck still lacks a 100% effective win condition, so different alternatives, even if not fully optimal, may have their merits in different circumstances. As for grisly salvage I don't know, it appears to me that we don't have valuable creature targets to abuse it the fullest, but it's possible that your list includes some worthwhile targets.

[berksowl]

The BG Pox lists started cropping up a lot more just after Abrupt Decay was available, which makes sense. Abrupt Decay, Maelstrom Pulse, Pernicious Deed, Life from the Loam, possibly Sylvan Library or Mirri's Guille, Worm Harvest, cards like Choke or Krosan Grip in the board -- this all is good stuff to have in a Pox deck, if you get it when you need it.

But the Loam engine is awkward in some ways. Darkblast and Raven's Crime help, but otherwise there is sometimes trouble knowing when to draw and when to dredge. One needs to draw a Liliana, or a Hymn to Tourach, or an Inquisition or a Thoughtseize or an Innocent Blood. I played Mirri's Guile in my list, which helped a bit to know when to draw or dredge. But the balance never seemed right with the BG deck. The pox effects, removal and discard never seemed quite potent enough to get me to a point where my win-cons (Nether Spirit, Factories, Cursed Scroll, Worm Harvest, or Vengeful Pharaoh if I was feeling really degenerate) would work.

The mono-black list hopefully will be more consistent. The last time I played a mono-black deck, it was The Gate, and before that it was a discard deck with no land destruction other than Wasteland and Pox. So I look forward to actually playing with Sinkhole.

One thing I like a lot about this deck is that with the discard, it makes Ensnaring Bridge or my preference Noetic Scales a nice option in the main. With the lack of activated creature abilities, Cursed Totem is a good card that shuts off a lot of annoying sh*t. And so then along with the Edict effects, there are lots of ways to deal with Mongeese and Geists of St. Hexproof, as well as Progenitus or Emrakul or Griselbrand.

Not too sure about the combo matchups though, despite the discard.

[Sughayyer]

@cthuloo

I don't have "good" targets for salvage. But as I said, I use it to find a win-con oafter the board is dominated. I use it mostly to throw stuff in the gy, plain and simple. After I get my grip in the game, I don't need decay, liliana, etc, loam, crime syphon life worm harvest and darkblast all work from the gy, and bloodghasts MUST be on the gy for optimal use. That's why I'm using only 2-of. But I admit, I need to test more.

@berksowl:
you ALWAYS draw unless you are setting up/already set up a raven's crime lock, need more lands to recover from a smallpox/pox, or are finishing your opponent (via ghast, harvest, syphon life) - or need a darkblast.
Some people wrongly play bg pox thinking that it works like Aggro Loam, and it does not. Loam is only a powerful card, not the center of this deck. We must build and play in a way that grave hate affetcs us minimally, if at all.

[CRich3]

I haven't played Pox in 2 years. But I tested a fun version last night. It's hard to play this deck without relyin on your graveyard. I think the ability to play from your graveyard is what made pox so strong.

[Sughayyer]

I haven't played Pox in 2 years. But I tested a fun version last night. It's hard to play this deck without relyin on your graveyard. I think the ability to play from your graveyard is what made pox so strong.
true that the gy is a powerful resource, but by diversifying our win-cons we protect ourselves from extirpate effects, and by not dropping out our library into the gy all at once (that's what I meant talking about the dredgeing effects) we are able to recover from RiP effects.
And with top as card selection, we have some card selection and thus we can try to control the table even in the face of a leyline of the void.
To be short: it is ok to rely on the graveyard after we secure our position, and there are ways of dominate the game without the use of loam/dredge effects.

[lyracian]

@ feline: great job.
Nice to see a Pox reboot over here.

You do have a spelling mistake -

Ghost Quarter non traditional seen in rogue lists.
Rishadan Port non traditinoal seen in rogue lists.

[feline]

@ feline: great job.
Nice to see a Pox reboot over here.

You do have a spelling mistake -

Tell me where the spelling mistake is then so I can fix it ^,^

[Sughayyer]

Tell me where the spelling mistake is then so I can fix it ^,^

Actually I think he meant Ghost Quarter: unusual etc
Rishadan port: unusual etc
that is, the colomns were missing.
Otherwise it could be "ghost quarter *is* unusual etc", that is, missing the verb.

[feline]

Actually I think he meant Ghost Quarter: unusual etc
Rishadan port: unusual etc
that is, the colomns were missing.
Otherwise it could be "ghost quarter *is* unusual etc", that is, missing the verb.

it says "non traditional" not "unusual etc" im not sure I follow the error there, checked but everything looked find, other than "traditional" being mispelled once.

[Cthuloo]

you ALWAYS draw unless you are setting up/already set up a raven's crime lock, need more lands to recover from a smallpox/pox, or are finishing your opponent (via ghast, harvest, syphon life) - or need a darkblast.
Some people wrongly play bg pox thinking that it works like Aggro Loam, and it does not. Loam is only a powerful card, not the center of this deck. We must build and play in a way that grave hate affetcs us minimally, if at all.

I think this deserves a big quote. It's a really important point: you are not abusing Loam, you are using it. The deck works perfectly fine without.

[berksowl]

I think this deserves a big quote. It's a really important point: you are not abusing Loam, you are using it. The deck works perfectly fine without.

Yeah, thanks for this. That makes a lot of sense, and I could see that saving someone (like me) a lot of time and aggravation learning this the hard way. Unfortunately (or fortunately, maybe, if I'm right that the mono-black version of Pox is going to be more consistent), I've traded out of my Loams and Deeds and some other essentials and have just the mono-black option to play just now.

[Sughayyer]

Monoblack is fine I think.

Let's use this thread to cover all pox variants, because this way more information will be shared, and more ideas will be born.

I'd like to post my bg list, it is by no means definitive, I'm still working on it. I'll give a quick explanation about the "strange" choices.

3 thoughtseize
1 raven's crime
4 hymn to tourach
- I would sure like to run the 4th seize, but there's enough space in the sideboard for that if needs be. I'd rather commit with 4 1cmc discard and 4 hymns. Raven's crime may seem bad, but it can soft lock your opponents. Hymn helps to deplete their resources.

4 innocent blood
4 smallpox
- these cards are core to the deck, and a single smallpox often wins games.

3 liliana of the veil

2 sensei's divining top
2 grisly salvage
3 life from the loam

these are for card selection/advantage. I am happy when I see 1 salvage, when I see the second I feel miserable. In this deck, it is effectively a tutor: most cards work from the graveyard (the number of cards that work from the grave increases post-board)

3 abrupt decay
-cheap, all-catching targetted removal

4 bloodghast
1 worm harvest

the kill conditions I have chosen. I surely would like to test something like nihilith, but it has no recursion, and recursion is a powerful trait of this deck.

lands (26)

4 mishra's factory
4 wasteland
4 verdant catacombs
2 marsh flats
3 bayou
1 forest
1 cabal pit
1 bojuka bog
4 swamps
2 barren moor

Sideboard options include extirpate, pernicious deed, duress, syphon mind.

I would like to include 3 mox diamonds, but 1) I don't know if it's needed 2) I don't know what to take out.
Also, deathrite shaman is one of the few cards that can harm us, but he can do a lot of damage if unchecked.

[Sughayyer]

Anybody else is trying to do things with pox?
Has the excitement waned?
I playtested for a few hours today and I faced the following problem: I can control the board quite fast, but even with the 2xgrisly salvage and 2xtops sometimes I just brick on useless cards (usually lands... A lot) and my opponent recovers. If I cut on lands I'll probably cut on mishras, since the deck needs 4 wastelands and I can't cut color sources anymore. Maybe -1 mishra +1 top/salvage?

[Infectious]

I posted a tournament report if anyone's interested:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?25774-2nd-with-Pox-not-quite-a-Mox-Ruby-%28MTG-Deals-46-players%29

2nd with Pox, 46 players at MTG Deals. Not quite a Mox Ruby, but still a fun day.

Edit: Added the deck in case you don't feel like clicking over.
The deck:
13x Swamp
4x Wasteland
4x Mishra's Factory
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

4x Dark Ritual
4x Innocent Blood
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Smallpox
4x Sinkhole

2x Cursed Scroll
2x Trinisphere

2x Nether Spirit
2x Tombstalker

4x Liliana of the Veil


The Sideboard:
2x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Pithing Needle
2x Ratchet Bomb
1x Chains of Mephistopheles
2x Mindbreak Trap
2x Engineered Plague
4x Leyline of the Void

[Cthuloo]

Anybody else is trying to do things with pox?
Has the excitement waned?
I playtested for a few hours today and I faced the following problem: I can control the board quite fast, but even with the 2xgrisly salvage and 2xtops sometimes I just brick on useless cards (usually lands... A lot) and my opponent recovers. If I cut on lands I'll probably cut on mishras, since the deck needs 4 wastelands and I can't cut color sources anymore. Maybe -1 mishra +1 top/salvage?

This deserves a long answer, a premise, and an excursus on the general position of the deck in the metagame.

Premise: I plan on going to GP Strasbourg and would have loved to bring Bg pox with me since it's the deck I best know and love. I had next to zero playtesting in the last months, so I took the chanche to bring an experimental version of the deck to a big tournament this Sunday. I went quite well up until round 5, where I punted and missed a win on the last extra turn, scooped to my opponent since I was already feeling exhausted, proceeded to lose miserably the next round and dropped. So what's the point? Well, I will share my thoughts in a nice list format:

The deck can have a devastating early game, but it doesn't ever seal the deal. Plus, the awkward manabase makes stumbling a concrete possibility. Sensei's Top helps a lot, but it adds another layer of complexity (see next point).
The deck can have a solution for every problem, but each solution is different and may be arbitrarily convoluted.
Similarly, you can play around every kind of hate, but this requires perfect proficiency too

Summing up: you almost never have easy wins. This can be definitely too mentally taxing. A few examples, I'm loving bulleted lists today:


I lost a game against UW miracle where at some point I had him at one land and zero cards in hand by topdecking useless stuff for 6 turns in a row.
I defeated 2-0 a spiral tide opponent bombarding him with discard and denial, but it still took me a long time to win, and there was always the possibility of me bricking a few turns and him coming back in the game
The most egregious one: I had 3 tight games against BGW Junk. In game three I played around deathrite shamans, extirpates, kotrs, vindicates and an elspeth and arrived to a point where I could win on my last extra turn against a complicated board condition, but misplayed a smallpox.

I think the stars (a.k.a. the metagame) are not right at the moment, probably something more streamlined can be better. And this is when I come to congratulate with Infectious and start thinking about going monoblack. Less flexibility, but more raw power and less stressful plays might be the way to go. By the way, I tried Sinkholes again after a long time, and they were possibly the best news of the day. Starting from Infectious' list I would try something like this:

The deck:
9x Swamp
4x Wasteland
4x Mishra's Factory
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2x Rishadan Port
1x The Tabernacle at Pendrel's Vale

4x Dark Ritual
4x Innocent Blood
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Duress
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Smallpox
4x Sinkhole

2x Cursed Scroll
2x Trinisphere

2x Nether Spirit
2x Tombstalker

3x Liliana of the Veil

The rationale is (look, another list!)

More land denial > less land denial
More discard > less discard
More solid manabase > less solid manabase (mine could still be on the verge of being unstable)
Less graveyard shenanigans > more graveyard shenanigans
Faster finisher > slower finisher
More profiting from land denial > less profiting from land denial (I'm loving trinisphere)


I think I'm going to test this. A tentative sideboard could be:

3x extirpate
1x nihil spellbomb
1x chain of mephistopheles
1x massacre
3x engineered plague
1x perish
1x virtue's ruin
2x ratchet bomb
2x pithing needle

I'll let you know how it goes.

[Sughayyer]

It seems fair - monoblack has less recursion BUT because of that, more redundancy - thus, more consistency.

[RogueBuild]

Pox has the same 2 problems (1 semi-small, 1 huge) today it has had for the 18 years since it was printed.

1) The semi small problem is finishing the game. Oddly enough this has gotten worse as time has gone on, not because our options got worse, not because other decks have gotten so much better, but because our control options have gotten so much better. In the old days Pox was 4 sinkholes, 4 Hymns, 4 Pox, 4 Terror (or something long those lines) and a bunch of cheap creatures supported by often with NShadows and AshGhouls (yes, I'm talking way way back before may of you were playing magic). It played a lot more like Gate then Pox of today. Now, I personally personally prefer the heavy control Pox of today over the Pox of the early days but while packing all that control into a deck we need to keep something in mind: Control Cards Do Not Win Games, Damage Does. So the solution has to be finding that balance of control card count Vs ability to kill.
Liliana is amazing and gives the deck a versatility it desperately needed, but she can not win a game.
With the exception of Mishra, lands do not win games. And yet lands and other mana effect cards make up just slightly less than 50% of the deck.
Unless you are playing with Megrim, discard does not win games.

You can empty their hands, blow up all their lands, remove their graveyards but if you don't have a threat to swing with when they are on the ropes you are just begging them to come back and kick your ass. We have an absolutely horrid topdeck. The average Pox deck has between 5-7 threats, that is roughly 1 in 10. Pox needs to run more threats, BUT, they cant be creatures that interfere with you playing your own cards (this is why I have always opposed TStalker).


2) This is the bigger problem and if you can solve this, problem 1 is reduced. Pox is at its heart a control deck, but unlike nearly every great control deck in the history of Magic, Pox isn't U, U/? or ?/U. Why is U the holy color of control players? Well counterspells has a lot to do with it, but just as important is draw. The 3rd rule of Magic: Draw More, Win More. The problem isn't that black doesn't have any draw abilities, they problem is they tend to kill us. LotL is draw engine, but in Pox it is a bad one. Unless your plan is to win with VHexmage/DDepths LotL is really just a digging machine for lands and 1 or 2 grave effects, meanwhile you give up drawing a card in order to dig. If you wanted to use LotL as your draw engine you really need to retool the entire deck to work around that.


Rather than give my solutions for each of these problems I figured I would see what everyone else thinks of the problem 1st and how they approach solving them. How you approach problem #2 will greatly impact problem #1.

[Sughayyer]

Pox has the same 2 problems (1 semi-small, 1 huge) today it has had for the 18 years since it was printed.

1) The semi small problem is finishing the game. Oddly enough this has gotten worse as time has gone on, not because our options got worse, not because other decks have gotten so much better, but because our control options have gotten so much better. In the old days Pox was 4 sinkholes, 4 Hymns, 4 Pox, 4 Terror (or something long those lines) and a bunch of cheap creatures supported by often with NShadows and AshGhouls (yes, I'm talking way way back before may of you were playing magic). It played a lot more like Gate then Pox of today. Now, I personally personally prefer the heavy control Pox of today over the Pox of the early days but while packing all that control into a deck we need to keep something in mind: Control Cards Do Not Win Games, Damage Does. So the solution has to be finding that balance of control card count Vs ability to kill.
Liliana is amazing and gives the deck a versatility it desperately needed, but she can not win a game.
With the exception of Mishra, lands do not win games. And yet lands and other mana effect cards make up just slightly less than 50% of the deck.
Unless you are playing with Megrim, discard does not win games.

You can empty their hands, blow up all their lands, remove their graveyards but if you don't have a threat to swing with when they are on the ropes you are just begging them to come back and kick your ass. We have an absolutely horrid topdeck. The average Pox deck has between 5-7 threats, that is roughly 1 in 10. Pox needs to run more threats, BUT, they cant be creatures that interfere with you playing your own cards (this is why I have always opposed TStalker).


2) This is the bigger problem and if you can solve this, problem 1 is reduced. Pox is at its heart a control deck, but unlike nearly every great control deck in the history of Magic, Pox isn't U, U/? or ?/U. Why is U the holy color of control players? Well counterspells has a lot to do with it, but just as important is draw. The 3rd rule of Magic: Draw More, Win More. The problem isn't that black doesn't have any draw abilities, they problem is they tend to kill us. LotL is draw engine, but in Pox it is a bad one. Unless your plan is to win with VHexmage/DDepths LotL is really just a digging machine for lands and 1 or 2 grave effects, meanwhile you give up drawing a card in order to dig. If you wanted to use LotL as your draw engine you really need to retool the entire deck to work around that.


Rather than give my solutions for each of these problems I figured I would see what everyone else thinks of the problem 1st and how they approach solving them. How you approach problem #2 will greatly impact problem #1.

About the problem #2 - Pox is usually played empty-handed: hence the use of cards like cursed scroll, and also the reason that people run nether spirit instead of bloodghast on monoblack. However, one thing is true, as I said before: pox' disruptive strategy is explosive and powerful, but it is temporary - my biggest problem was that I neither could mantain control forever nor find a game-ender threat.

[RogueBuild]

benefits from playing "empty handed" and drawing more cards are not mutually exclusive. If CScroll is the argument against using card draw then I remind: 1) you that you are playing cards that cause you to discard any card anyway (Small Pox and Liliana), more card options that let you discard extra land (Raven, WHarvest, Syphon Life); 2) you have a mana curve that all but stops at 2 with a small handful of 3 drops; 3) CScroll, by its self is not reason enough to not draw more cards. It is not like you are running a bunch of Hellbent cards.


pox' disruptive strategy is explosive and powerful, but it is temporary - my biggest problem was that I neither could mantain control forever nor find a game-ender threat.

Thank you for supporting the very premise of my post. you need more game-enders and an increased ability to draw them.

[Sughayyer]

Yeah we are talking about the same thing. I didn't play the monoblack since a long time, it still looks more consistent than bg (due to all reasons we already said), but it still hits those walls you said.
There is an inherent attribute to Black that is: you CAN drw cards, but this has a cost in life. But, with this heavy disruption, do we care about life loss? And adding effects like phyrexian arena (or whatever draw card you remember of) won't dillute the strategy? (since it looks like all the cards are essential)

[feline]

I just know that when I did research over Pox over the past couple of years, there were very few B/G Pox lists, while there were alot more mono black pox lists, however there was just enough from B/G lists that I was able to find a couple that had success. It does seem like Loam Pox would be better suited but overall it just hasn't had the performance.

Also the mono black pox was somewhat propelled after it had success at the invitational by Reid Duke at the end of 2011, so the people playing mono black pox might have gone up since then making the appearances of both sides a little more skewed, as in if enough people "jumped ship" and pushed for just Liliana pox at that point, the number of Loam pox players that remained was lower than it was before the Invitational that put Liliana pox in a bit of a spotlight.

[Koby]

I just know that when I did research over Pox over the past couple of years, there were very few B/G Pox lists, while there were alot more mono black pox lists, however there was just enough from B/G lists that I was able to find a couple that had success. It does seem like Loam Pox would be better suited but overall it just hasn't had the performance.

Could this be at all related to Pox being widely considered a budget / pet deck, rather than an archetype that is developed to obtain good win %ages across multiple matchups? I suspect that Pox is underdeveloped in Legacy because there is not much rewarding plays the deck can make, and is picked up more for nostalgic reasons rather than competitive reasons.

[Hardcore]

Pox is not about control.


Any list that does not run 3-4 Pox is flawed.


The Rack - Hymn - Pox - Pox = Win

[Koby]

Pox is not about control.


Any list that does not run 3-4 Pox is flawed.


The Rack - Hymn - Pox - Pox = Win

That's a very polemic way of saying "I play a pet deck".
In the past, this may have been true. I feel as thought with the printing of Liliana of the Veil, Pox has the opportunity to move into uncharted territory.

[feline]

Could this be at all related to Pox being widely considered a budget / pet deck, rather than an archetype that is developed to obtain good win %ages across multiple matchups? I suspect that Pox is underdeveloped in Legacy because there is not much rewarding plays the deck can make, and is picked up more for nostalgic reasons rather than competitive reasons.

That too, alot of times a deck gets "propelled" a bit to a boost after someone somewhere has success with it, while up to that point it's seen as an uncommon strategy.

There is also the "long time legacy decks" that probably keep decks like Pox, Stax, High Tide, Burn, Mud, Goblins, Fish, Elves etc going, just because they've been a strategy for so long and somewhere someplace, someone will always enjoy those strategies of their preference, personally I have a pox / stax deck because, they are so different, and I know they aren't top tier strategies, they are just my "fun but still viable" Legacy decks, so for local game store, smaller weekly events, I play them there.

-edit- & yes, since the Liliana Pox, the actual card Pox itself, has been at most a 1 or 2 of in the maindeck, if it's still ran at all.

[RogueBuild]

Nothing makes a deck popular faster then a few high profile wins. But confusing or attempting to correlate "good" with "popular" only leads you to false assumptions such as:

The deck is the only thing that matters.

Good decks are always popular.

Bad decks are always unpopular.


There are players out there that good enough that they could pilot a ham and cheese to a top 8 win. And players out there so bad they couldn't win a draft if you let them play a type 1 deck completed with power 9.

If you want to know what the real power and weaknesses to any give deck are and how it compares to other decks you really need to do the testing yourself, you need to test against a large number of different decks, piloted by different people that are highly skilled with them, and they need to people you do not normally play against.

In short all you know for sure when you look at placings is how Deck A performs in the hands of Pilot X. That has no bearing on how it will preform int he hands of Pilot Y, or how Pilot X will do with Deck B.

So the point is, if you want to play Pox and try to develop it, then work on it, but do not confuse its success or lack-there-of by people not you as evidence of its power (or lack-there-of) in your hands.


now we can move back to discussing the deck itself...

[berksowl]

I see people using the term "tier deck" to describe what Pox is not. I don't have anything nice to say about so-called tier decks, except that a lot of people play those decks. When really smart people (like Reid Duke or Ali Aintrazi) play Pox decks, they do well.

[Hardcore]

I would advice anyone who wanted play control to build, our buy, a counterbalance deck. Black simply lack the tools for the job. Liliana can't compensate for not having the blue cantrips and counterspells.
The classic plan of the surviving the first turns and then stabilize is not viable for black. It must do the opposite: make a mess of the early game and use that to defeat your opponent.

When I returned to magic last year it was because I realized the potential of the pox effects as the next step in disruption. With the ever increasing power levels in magic the old discard was not good enough. However, I never saw it as control.

[Sughayyer]

Hardcore I saw your day if the disease list (that is nothing more than a pox that tries to win fast). Care to post it in here for more discussion?
+++no offense alert for the next paragraph+++
One more thing, don't say things like "the rack+hymn+pox+pox=win" since a) if you do the match you'll see you can't cast all those cards even if they're on your starting 7 and b) on dreamland dark horizons is the bestestest deck of the world (mana, mox, hymn, bob, vindicate on land, gg)

[Cthuloo]

Pox has the same 2 problems (1 semi-small, 1 huge) today it has had for the 18 years since it was printed.

1) The semi small problem is finishing the game. Oddly enough this has gotten worse as time has gone on, not because our options got worse, not because other decks have gotten so much better, but because our control options have gotten so much better. In the old days Pox was 4 sinkholes, 4 Hymns, 4 Pox, 4 Terror (or something long those lines) and a bunch of cheap creatures supported by often with NShadows and AshGhouls (yes, I'm talking way way back before may of you were playing magic). It played a lot more like Gate then Pox of today. Now, I personally personally prefer the heavy control Pox of today over the Pox of the early days but while packing all that control into a deck we need to keep something in mind: Control Cards Do Not Win Games, Damage Does. So the solution has to be finding that balance of control card count Vs ability to kill.
Liliana is amazing and gives the deck a versatility it desperately needed, but she can not win a game.
With the exception of Mishra, lands do not win games. And yet lands and other mana effect cards make up just slightly less than 50% of the deck.
Unless you are playing with Megrim, discard does not win games.

You can empty their hands, blow up all their lands, remove their graveyards but if you don't have a threat to swing with when they are on the ropes you are just begging them to come back and kick your ass. We have an absolutely horrid topdeck. The average Pox deck has between 5-7 threats, that is roughly 1 in 10. Pox needs to run more threats, BUT, they cant be creatures that interfere with you playing your own cards (this is why I have always opposed TStalker).


2) This is the bigger problem and if you can solve this, problem 1 is reduced. Pox is at its heart a control deck, but unlike nearly every great control deck in the history of Magic, Pox isn't U, U/? or ?/U. Why is U the holy color of control players? Well counterspells has a lot to do with it, but just as important is draw. The 3rd rule of Magic: Draw More, Win More. The problem isn't that black doesn't have any draw abilities, they problem is they tend to kill us. LotL is draw engine, but in Pox it is a bad one. Unless your plan is to win with VHexmage/DDepths LotL is really just a digging machine for lands and 1 or 2 grave effects, meanwhile you give up drawing a card in order to dig. If you wanted to use LotL as your draw engine you really need to retool the entire deck to work around that.


Rather than give my solutions for each of these problems I figured I would see what everyone else thinks of the problem 1st and how they approach solving them. How you approach problem #2 will greatly impact problem #1.

The critics are spot on, despite being, unfortunately, not new. I will try to address your points (and partially respond to what has been said thereafter).


You say this is the smallest of the two problems, but I'm going to disagree on that: IMHO this is the biggest problem that pox has to face. There is quite a number of viable win conditions, 'ghast, stalker, worm harvest, syphon life, hex/depths, terravore... you name it, I've tried it. Unfortunately, none of them fits smoothly with the gameplan of the deck. Bloodghast is too slow and doesn't block, stalker has no sinergy with your removal package, worm harvest is overcosted... the point is, we have no Jace. We have no Entreat the angels. In one way or the other, we have to compromise. Win conditions are dead draws until we get complete control, and this impacts greatly our game. If Liliana could actually close games, I'd think the deck would be much better positioned (Liliana is still awesome, of course).
You can go around point 1 by more card drawing, of course. This is what the Bg version does well, in my experience. It's more flexible and versatile, and you should not underestimate the ability of drawing lands. Lands can be exchanged for cards by Liliana and smallpox, or simply by being a Barren Moor or a Cabal Pit. The tradeoff is that the deck becomes less consistent, requires finer tuning to beat the metagame and it's horribly hard to play. It's one of the hardest decks I've ever played, full of hidden sinergies and with a nightmarish decision tree. Playing 99% sorcery speed means you have to plan for many turns in advance, usually. I've had quite good results with the deck in small tournaments ( and I'm a beast during playtesting), but for the big ones, you sometimes just need some easy wins.


A possible solution to problem 1) is the lockdown. If you manage to establish a permanent semi-lock you then are free to wait for whatever win condition you're playing. This is why I'm liking trinispheres in Infectious' list, and why I think land denial is particularly powerful in this moment. It allows you to capitalize on the initial tempo gain due to your barrage of disruption, by gaining a long term advantage. Anyways, I'll do some testing and hopefully come out with something that works.

[Koplinchen]

I can not agree more with this. Pox discards both hands but your opponent almost always topdecks better cards. I did see sweet list with 4 grave crawler 4 mutavault 2 mishra 2 cursed scroll... it might be the way.

[Cthuloo]

I can not agree more with this. Pox discards both hands but your opponent almost always topdecks better cards. I did see sweet list with 4 grave crawler 4 mutavault 2 mishra 2 cursed scroll... it might be the way.

I don't really se how gravecrawler can be better than bloodghast. Neither blocks, and the 'crawler doesn't ever have haste and has arguably a worse recursion constraint. In any case, it's probably a decent win condition, but not better than anything we already had.

[Hardcore]

Pox have PLENTY of win conditions. Buy if you insist on wanting full control before employing them you are gonna lose. I say it again: POX IS NOT A CONTROL DECK.
At least not of the classic UW type. Trying to emulate it is quite futile.

[Chatto]

I agree that there are wincons, but are they fast enough after the initial onslaught of Pox?

[Infectious]

@ Roguebuild
Regarding your second point, if you had to call pox either control or aggro or combo, then yeah I'd lump it into control, but I'm closer to Hardcore's view that Pox isn't just a control deck. It's something different, it's a disruption deck. And you don't have to draw cards to gain card advantage. Pox knows that lands will be going to the grave, and gets to plan accordingly. Pox knows everyone will be discarding, and hand sizes will be small, and gets to prepare in advance. We gain advantage not from playing card draw (although you could with things like sign in blood), but from things like cursed scroll (small hand size enables it, recurring targeted artifact damage), Nether Spirit (discarded to a lil it's like getting a 2/2 that says play me for free, draw a card, and I can't die), hymn (2 for 1), lil (dump my hand so that her +1 doesn't hurt me, or have a cursed scroll so she helps me stay at 1 card to keep it active), or even just smallpox when we have no other cards in hand or creatures in play.

"Lock down" is something that can happen, because lots of decks play with tons of fetchlands and few actual lands, and we're afforded cards like trinisphere and nether void, but I think having that be the majority focus of a pox build is being too narrow.

Regarding your first point, I totally agree that a good number of win conditions is a great idea. Ideally the win conditions get to double as something else (mishra as land, cursed scroll as removal, nether spirit as a free card and amazing blocker, etc). I'd say Tombstalker is one of the MVPs of the deck. I think of pox more as a disruption deck than true control, and once I've staggered someone I want to close the game out quick, and not give them a bunch of turns to draw out with answers. Legacy decks are so powerful (brainstorm, fetch, ponder, fetch, I just looked at 80% of my deck) that I don't think we can hope to completely dictate the flow of the game. A 5/5 flier for 2 mana? Sign me up. Sure he might sometimes hit the grave before a Nether Spirit, but from personal experience it's almost never a problem. I'm often wanting to put a 3rd in because of how easy he is to cast and I want to ensure I get at least one. Casting 2 in a game isn't out of the question either. It's also very very rare that I've got a Tombstalker in play, that hasn't been killed, and I'm holding a smallpox/innocent blood that I look at and think "omg I have to cast this, crap it's going to cost me a tombstalker." But maybe I am just a lucky guy.

@ Cthuloo
I agree on bloodghast. I want to love him, I've tried playing him many times, but he's just too narrow. Maybe in a pox heavy deck (2-4 big pox) he supplements some of your racks, but I just don't think he does enough.

[Infectious]

Another idea I was toying with was Chalice of the Void. We don't have anything at 0, so it could be something we drop 1st turn to hurt storm, belcher, LED dredge, Affinity, MUD, etc (all decks we're weak against), and personally I had very little at the 1cmc stop and could turn that weakness into a strength by playing Chalice at 1 (hurting other decks way more than it hurts me, which is right in line with Pox mentality).

Not sure it's the right card, but I think it's the right kind of card to be thinking about.

[Mr. Froggy]

Pox won the last Legacy tourney at my LGS last week. I wasn't there, but I think he went 4-0, or 3-0-1

[Koplinchen]

I don't really se how gravecrawler can be better than bloodghast. Neither blocks, and the 'crawler doesn't ever have haste and has arguably a worse recursion constraint. In any case, it's probably a decent win condition, but not better than anything we already had.

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=9270&iddeck=67683

I fully get your point but it would be worth to try it out. I think it allows you to go more agressive. Both GC and BG have their merits - I like the idea of Dark Ritual, Inquisiton, 2 zombies and kill him fast.

[RogueBuild]

@ Roguebuild
Regarding your second point, if you had to call pox either control or aggro or combo, then yeah I'd lump it into control, but I'm closer to Hardcore's view that Pox isn't just a control deck. It's something different, it's a disruption deck. And you don't have to draw cards to gain card advantage. Pox knows that lands will be going to the grave, and gets to plan accordingly. Pox knows everyone will be discarding, and hand sizes will be small, and gets to prepare in advance. We gain advantage not from playing card draw (although you could with things like sign in blood), but from things like cursed scroll (small hand size enables it, recurring targeted artifact damage), Nether Spirit (discarded to a lil it's like getting a 2/2 that says play me for free, draw a card, and I can't die), hymn (2 for 1), lil (dump my hand so that her +1 doesn't hurt me, or have a cursed scroll so she helps me stay at 1 card to keep it active), or even just smallpox when we have no other cards in hand or creatures in play.

"Lock down" is something that can happen, because lots of decks play with tons of fetchlands and few actual lands, and we're afforded cards like trinisphere and nether void, but I think having that be the majority focus of a pox build is being too narrow.

Regarding your first point, I totally agree that a good number of win conditions is a great idea. Ideally the win conditions get to double as something else (mishra as land, cursed scroll as removal, nether spirit as a free card and amazing blocker, etc). I'd say Tombstalker is one of the MVPs of the deck. I think of pox more as a disruption deck than true control, and once I've staggered someone I want to close the game out quick, and not give them a bunch of turns to draw out with answers. Legacy decks are so powerful (brainstorm, fetch, ponder, fetch, I just looked at 80% of my deck) that I don't think we can hope to completely dictate the flow of the game. A 5/5 flier for 2 mana? Sign me up. Sure he might sometimes hit the grave before a Nether Spirit, but from personal experience it's almost never a problem. I'm often wanting to put a 3rd in because of how easy he is to cast and I want to ensure I get at least one. Casting 2 in a game isn't out of the question either. It's also very very rare that I've got a Tombstalker in play, that hasn't been killed, and I'm holding a smallpox/innocent blood that I look at and think "omg I have to cast this, crap it's going to cost me a tombstalker." But maybe I am just a lucky guy.

@ Cthuloo
I agree on bloodghast. I want to love him, I've tried playing him many times, but he's just too narrow. Maybe in a pox heavy deck (2-4 big pox) he supplements some of your racks, but I just don't think he does enough.


Pox is control by default. It clearly isn't a combo deck and if you call it aggro, it is the slowest aggro deck out there.

I wont debate TombsS, I've done it numerous times in the past, you can go look it up. For here I will just say it is bad because it makes the deck clunky and is just as likely to be killed by you as by your opponent.

Getting a hard lock with this deck is hard enough in the 1st place, but even if you do, what did you cut to put something like Trini in? threats or disruption? remove threats and now it is harder to get the kill before they find a way to recover. Remove disruption and it will be even harder to get the lock in the 1st place.

I never said you needed to draw to gain card advantage, I said you needed to draw to find the threats in order to finish the game. Card draw is ALWAYS good. If you can't get card draw some form of deck manipulation will be used.
That being said, LotL doesn't do enough for you in this deck. Maybe if combined with STop, like a number of the top finishers listed on the 1st page did, but alone, there just is not enough in this deck to activate from the grave to make it be enough. If you wanted to make this a solid draw engine than I would say you need to rework the deck. Some changes would be to add GraveC and BloodG and more Retrace cards as automatic inclusion, but now you are looking at something more like a very old school Pox deck from 18 years ago (which does have some advantages).

What exactly do you gain by having an empty hand? EBridge works great! But it isn't a staple and I would rather remove creatures from the field then let them sit and wait until the bridge is killed. CScroll doesn't require you have an empty hand, only that it is easier to use with few cards in hand. 1 card works just as well as 4 lands. Pox isn't exactly known for holding cards so in all likelihood if you are holding a bunch of cards 4 or 5 rounds into the game, they are likely land, after all lands and mana sources make up almost 1/2 the deck. Liliana, you don't gain an advantage by having 0 cards in hand, you simply don't have to pitch something, that again, could likely have been another land (we have plenty).

So, in short, generating card advantage will only get you so far if you cant find a threat to kill the opponent with.

[Hardcore]

Ankh of mishra is fun and Desolation too. It would require running chrome mox and Dakmor salvage.

[Cthuloo]

@ Roguebuild

It's clear that we are missing at least one piece to play the control role properly. The Bg version (with SDT, yes) plays it better, but it's way too convoluted. Comparing to UW miracle, where they just have to sit back and wait until they can drop a Jace or assemble countertop, it's horribly complicated. You have to work twice for the same result.

The monoblack version plays more like a tempo deck, unleashing a burst of disruption in the first turns to gain an edge. In this sense smallpox is the ultimate tempo card, setting the board one or sometimes two turns back. And up to this point the deck does its job egregiously. Arrived at the mid-game, there are three options:

Play the control role up to the end
Place a lockdown
Use the tempo to ride a threat to victory


The first option is the toughest, since the deck naturally topdecks rather badly. If you go this route, you have to include a way to produce massive card advantage. The other two look more viable to me, and this is where Tombstalker is relvant. It has no sinergy with a full control game play, of course, since it's fragile and blanks some of our cards (creating some virtual card disadvantage), but it capitalizes on the tempo gain, and, for once, forces our opponent to be the reactive one and find an answer quickly, instead of slowly circumventing our gameplan. I would like something better, too, but this is what we have and what we can work with, and it can still be enough.

@ Koplinchen

Thanks for the link, but honestly I'm still unconvinced. I could try it out, I guess, probably there's some merit to it.

[Obscurus]

Hi there!
I've been playing the mana denial version of pox for some time now and I found the green splash to be very strong. The grand mistake most people make with the splash in my opinion, is to think that if you splash, it has to be for many, many cards... that is not true!
The single card that really makes the deck better is Abrupt Decay. While Life from the Loam is a good addition, it rarely is better then Crucible of Worlds, if you want this effect, mainly because you can be color screwed sometimes and it does cost you mana turn after turn (or at least every other turn)

This is the list I had some (local) success with so far. Feel free to criticise or ask questions about it:

Mainboard

2 Cursed Scroll
3 Mox Diamond
1 Crucible of Worlds

2 Abrupt Decay

4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
1 Life from the Loam
4 Sinkhole
4 Smallpox
3 Innocent Blood

2 Nether Void

4 Liliana of the Veil

2 Swamp
4 Bayou
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Marsh Flats
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Rishadan Port
2 Ghost Quarter


Sideboard

1 Abrupt Decay
3 Engineered Plague
2 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Extirpate
3 Pithing Needle
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Nihil Spellbomb


I can second that Pox is not a typical "control" deck, but it is a Lockdown deck. It looks to establish a situation in which the opponent has to topdeck the right combination of cards in sequence to be able to get back into the game all the while we are destroying his board and hand. Coming back under a Nether Void/Liliana of the Veil lock is near to impossible.

[RogueBuild]

I have to wonder if part of the difference in our views comes from our different play styles and how it effects our general board positions. For me to do a turn 1 (on the draw) Smallpox is commonplace, blowing up my own single land. I rarely have more then 3 lands in play. It doesn't matter much how long into the game we are I tend to cap out at 3. If I have 4 lands I am either about to cast Smallpox, Wasteland something, or I have 2 Mishras in play.

For people playing things like Trini or NVoid for a [very soft] lock style deck or if you are playing with CScroll, 3 lands really is not enough for you. Means playing something like LotL is an absolute must because you become more mana dependent then I am.

IMO the use of Trini a NVoid doesn't help. If you wanted to play a purely abusive LD deck (which Pox is only about 6-8 cards away from being) then Trini and NVoid would be great to use, but in Pox, which incorporates as much discard as LD, I would say they are not needed. Plus other then Mishras and any discard-able creatures you pitched early the roadblocks you put in place to stall your opponent also stall you. Of course if you have 5 lands in play and only draw 1 card a turn that likely doesn't matter too much. But the Cards still take up space and adds turns to set-up.


As I see Pox, it is a control deck for about the 1st 4 turns (+/-1). By turn 5-ish we are entering top-deck mode which means we need to already have a threat on the board that can swing because with a deck that is about 42% land (and about 10% threat) only half of what you draw is going to allow you to try and maintain board position. At this point it doesn't really matter what you call yourself, control, lock, aggro, or a pile of lands and a few other things, because you are now just fighting to keep your opponent off balance long enough for your 1 or 2 threats (likely smaller in size) to finish the game.

[Oiolosse]

I have to wonder if part of the difference in our views comes from our different play styles and how it effects our general board positions. For me to do a turn 1 (on the draw) Smallpox is commonplace, blowing up my own single land. I rarely have more then 3 lands in play. It doesn't matter much how long into the game we are I tend to cap out at 3. If I have 4 lands I am either about to cast Smallpox, Wasteland something, or I have 2 Mishras in play.

For people playing things like Trini or NVoid for a [very soft] lock style deck or if you are playing with CScroll, 3 lands really is not enough for you. Means playing something like LotL is an absolute must because you become more mana dependent then I am.

IMO the use of Trini a NVoid doesn't help. If you wanted to play a purely abusive LD deck (which Pox is only about 6-8 cards away from being) then Trini and NVoid would be great to use, but in Pox, which incorporates as much discard as LD, I would say they are not needed. Plus other then Mishras and any discard-able creatures you pitched early the roadblocks you put in place to stall your opponent also stall you. Of course if you have 5 lands in play and only draw 1 card a turn that likely doesn't matter too much. But the Cards still take up space and adds turns to set-up.


As I see Pox, it is a control deck for about the 1st 4 turns (+/-1). By turn 5-ish we are entering top-deck mode which means we need to already have a threat on the board that can swing because with a deck that is about 42% land (and about 10% threat) only half of what you draw is going to allow you to try and maintain board position. At this point it doesn't really matter what you call yourself, control, lock, aggro, or a pile of lands and a few other things, because you are now just fighting to keep your opponent off balance long enough for your 1 or 2 threats (likely smaller in size) to finish the game.

I agree with your assessment. I am building Pox and have play tested for about a year as I've accumulated the cards. The more I tinker with it the more I want it to be Lands//Land Destruction.The problem, as stated previously by others, is the slooooow kill time. I think i should just build the most durdly deck ever with the intention of never losing but never winning.

[Cthuloo]

I have to wonder if part of the difference in our views comes from our different play styles and how it effects our general board positions. For me to do a turn 1 (on the draw) Smallpox is commonplace, blowing up my own single land. I rarely have more then 3 lands in play. It doesn't matter much how long into the game we are I tend to cap out at 3. If I have 4 lands I am either about to cast Smallpox, Wasteland something, or I have 2 Mishras in play.

For people playing things like Trini or NVoid for a [very soft] lock style deck or if you are playing with CScroll, 3 lands really is not enough for you. Means playing something like LotL is an absolute must because you become more mana dependent then I am.

IMO the use of Trini a NVoid doesn't help. If you wanted to play a purely abusive LD deck (which Pox is only about 6-8 cards away from being) then Trini and NVoid would be great to use, but in Pox, which incorporates as much discard as LD, I would say they are not needed. Plus other then Mishras and any discard-able creatures you pitched early the roadblocks you put in place to stall your opponent also stall you. Of course if you have 5 lands in play and only draw 1 card a turn that likely doesn't matter too much. But the Cards still take up space and adds turns to set-up.


As I see Pox, it is a control deck for about the 1st 4 turns (+/-1). By turn 5-ish we are entering top-deck mode which means we need to already have a threat on the board that can swing because with a deck that is about 42% land (and about 10% threat) only half of what you draw is going to allow you to try and maintain board position. At this point it doesn't really matter what you call yourself, control, lock, aggro, or a pile of lands and a few other things, because you are now just fighting to keep your opponent off balance long enough for your 1 or 2 threats (likely smaller in size) to finish the game.

Would you mind posting a reference list? If I had it right you play no scroll, no lock and no stalker, what's in in their place? Thanks!

[Sughayyer]

Maybe I'm speaking nonsense' but if we want to go the "tempo" route, maybe dark rituals must become moxen, and we'd need things like nihilith and tombsatalker - and possibli a combination of bloodghast and dakmor salvage. The rest being abusive cards as smallpox, hymn' seize (yeah seize instead of iok 'cause you'll want to take ANYTHING) and big ol' pox. Also, crucible of worlds. Thus we can create a momenum where for a few turns our creatures will outclass anything they can do, thus providing the win.

[Chatto]

I like the idea, it's worth the try. Not really sure how i would be building the deck, but for now I'm going to proxy the deck a little.

[Hardcore]

So, I played in a major legacy tournament this Saturday. Gothcon is one of the biggest gaming events here in Sweden, and iirc we were 78 players.

It was hard to find the last cards for my deck; You could think Innocent Blood was mythic rare!



4 Bloodghast

4 Tombstalker

4 Nihilith

2 Nether Spirit

4 Smallpox

4 Inquisition of Kozilek

4 Pox

4 Duress

1 Buried Alive

4 Innocent Blood

3 Darkblast

20 Snow-covered Swamp

2 Dakmor Salvage



SIDEBOARD



4 Surgical Extraction

2 Powder Keg

3 Hymn to Tourach

3 Jinxed Idol

3 Perish



I went 2-3 drop, and did not get as much info on the deck as I would like too.

My first opponent was a friend. He played some kind of BGW mystics and Abrupt decay. Should have been okay, but I got mana problems in both duels, and to add insult to injury I never drew any pox card.


After that I met another loser like me, but he won because he played Affinity. Dark blast is a good card against myr and frogmite. What killed me was a */* fatty that gave other creatures +1/+1. Powder Keg could have been real bombs if I drew one.


My third opponent was unlucky.

He seemed to play the Gate which is weaker. First game he get two Liliana and two bitterblossom in play. However I dredge into bloodghasts and beat him down.

The second duel is harder. My opponent push my health down to 1 point (i may have helped with a pox, or two:-)) I have a Tombstalker in play and he a bloodghast in the graveyard. I must start attack to win but it is a gamble to do so. I put him at four life and then decide to play Hymn to Tourach. My opponent discard his remaining hand; two swamps... He fail to top deck and scoop.

A win is good for morale and I go to fourth round with confidence.


BR Delver deck with goblin guides. I let goblins do too much gamage to me and lose the first duel. In the end my boys are too big for him to handle. (He even played Fireblast to kill a Nihilith!).

So, 2-2. I would get boosters as prize if i could manage to finish with only two losses. Alas, bad luck would stop me in the next round.


I do not know what deck my opponent played in round five, but he had Hero of Bladehold, and, IIRC, chalice of the void. I win the first duel, but next I draw 6 lands and a Pox. I mulligan to six and get same stuff. I eventually stop at four with no lands in my hand. If my opponent would go slow i could recover. Precisely the time when he should not play turn two mystic for batterskull.

Duel three I get crappy cards, while my opponent play two mystics for two batterskulls. I can’t keep up with my pox effects and spot removal and concede.


I am not terribly sorry for not winning :) and treasure the experience and ideas I got.



Things learned:

Given I have no tutor effects it make sense to have four each of the most important sideboard cards. After the tourney I bought two more powder kegs. Kegs could be due for a renessaince; the tendency is to play low cost cards in legacy, and that make the Kegs quite fast.

If i had won my first round the odds of facing combo would probably been higher. Still, four Duress and four IoK could be too much. Playing just five of them would still mean a good chance of having one in my starting hand. If I should have them in main deck to start with, however...

Speaking to friends I realised I have overlooked the interaction of Dredge effects and Sensei’s Divining Top. Previously I thought i needed fetch lands to play that card, but dredging away unwanted stuff should be equally effective. (I would also have bought Mishra’s Bauble for testing purposes, but the store that held the event has a crappy inventory).
With Top or Bauble it is even possible to play darkblast three times in one turn! Wild Nacatl beware!

Card draw. I actually played Phyrexian Arena in my creature less Pox builds last year. The trick is to win before the minimal life loss become a concern. Here we are helped by the weird Pox effects. Playing pox when at 20 or 19 life still result in you ending up at 13, right? Thus drawing from arena can be virtually free. If at 16 you will end up at ten, as you also will when at 15. etc.

Liliana and Arena is a nice pair too.

Edited

[Chatto]

@ Hardcore: some questions regarding your manabase: It looks very solid (being all black-producing lands), but you never wished for more than 22 lands? Also, no Wasteland: did you ever missed those? I can imagine dropping Sinkhole (although, for me, those are one of the reason to play Pox :-) ), but Wasteland could be very helpfull. A last question: what would your decklist look like right now, after you have implemented your thoughts?

[Hardcore]

I have not had the opportunity to fine tune the mana base:(

As for wastelands, I find them too expensive, and second, I belong to the camp that see them as spells.
In other words, if I play wastelands I need to remove something else. But sure, Sinkhole and wastelands are effective, however you commit yourself to a certain direction in your deck design. You can do well without them I think. After all, while many decks have wastelands you all ready have twice as much landdestruction in spells alone.

As for how it looks now:... Correction: WILL look!


4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith
4 Bloodghast
2 Nether Spirit

4 Smallpox
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood
4 Hymn to Tourach

4 Dark Ritual
3 Darkblast
2 Spinning Darkness

2 Sensei’s Divining Top

17 Swamp
3 Dakmor Salvage


SB

4 Powder Keg
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Perish
4 Duress


I know a guy that have a Dakmor Salvage, so that card is quite safe bet I will play three of.
Spinning Darkness is a maybe. (Frankly my local store is crap) Sideboard? Still, with all the dredge I may be able to run them maindeck.
I have only two divining tops, but I figure that is ok for a testing.

The sideboard is not finished however. I simply ran short of ideas and put in 4 duress. Any suggestions for substitutes are welcome:)

And Akuta, born of Ash is another mythic rare. To worthless to have in store stocks apparently:P I think one or two may be all right in the deck (I am always looking for ways to increase creature count)

[Slag]

I have not had the opportunity to fine tune the mana base:(

As for wastelands, I find them too expensive, and second, I belong to the camp that see them as spells.
In other words, if I play wastelands I need to remove something else. But sure, Sinkhole and wastelands are effective, however you commit yourself to a certain direction in your deck design. You can do well without them I think. After all, while many decks have wastelands you all ready have twice as much landdestruction in spells alone.

As for how it looks now:... Correction: WILL look!


4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith
4 Bloodghast
2 Nether Spirit

4 Smallpox
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood
4 Hymn to Tourach

4 Dark Ritual
3 Darkblast
2 Spinning Darkness

2 Sensei’s Divining Top

17 Swamp
3 Dakmor Salvage


SB

4 Powder Keg
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Perish
4 Duress


I know a guy that have a Dakmor Salvage, so that card is quite safe bet I will play three of.
Spinning Darkness is a maybe. (Frankly my local store is crap) Sideboard? Still, with all the dredge I may be able to run them maindeck.
I have only two divining tops, but I figure that is ok for a testing.

The sideboard is not finished however. I simply ran short of ideas and put in 4 duress. Any suggestions for substitutes are welcome:)

And Akuta, born of Ash is another mythic rare. To worthless to have in store stocks apparently:P I think one or two may be all right in the deck (I am always looking for ways to increase creature count)

There is a thread called "Day of Disease" that discusses a pox build that is almost identical to yours. It uses chrome mox instead of dark ritual, but runs the aggressive creatures. I've played the deck in a couple of small tournaments to average finishes. I think the strengths of the deck are a fast clock and the ability to use Sensei's top and dakmor salvage as a reliable engine. For the second tournament I replaced Nihilith with Gatekeeper of Malakir, which was at least more reliable to get into play.

[Sughayyer]

There is a thread called "Day of Disease" that discusses a pox build that is almost identical to yours. It uses chrome mox instead of dark ritual, but runs the aggressive creatures. I've played the deck in a couple of small tournaments to average finishes. I think the strengths of the deck are a fast clock and the ability to use Sensei's top and dakmor salvage as a reliable engine. For the second tournament I replaced Nihilith with Gatekeeper of Malakir, which was at least more reliable to get into play.

Hardcore was posting on that thread, but I don't see how pox players will benefit from having all different variants of the deck placed in different threads since it's essentially the same. A few people here in The Source helped me se that point.

We will benefit more from bringing pox ideas and discussions here instead of scattering through the forum.

[Slag]

Hardcore was posting on that thread, but I don't see how pox players will benefit from having all different variants of the deck placed in different threads since it's essentially the same. A few people here in The Source helped me se that point.

We will benefit more from bringing pox ideas and discussions here instead of scattering through the forum.

Correct; you'll notice I didn't indicate he should post in that thread so much as I just mentioned it. Regardless, I like the way the more aggressive pox plays, but I think nihilith is a little unwieldy. Tombstalker and bloodghast are both very easy to put into play, Nihilith requires a very specific sequence of events to unsuspend. Even something like phyrexian negator would be easy to cast with the mana one can expect to have when playing the deck.

[Sughayyer]

Nihilith is easier to put in play that you think, but I understand your point perfectly.
Tomorrow is the testing day and I'll spent A LOT of hours testing 2 decks, and pox will be one. I'll let you know my findings.

[Hardcore]

anvil of bogardan look interesting if one play with the creatures and dredge spells like I do.

[Oiolosse]

anvil of bogardan look interesting if one play with the creatures and dredge spells like I do.

Anvil is a neat card but it makes combo much, much better which Pox has trouble with as is. I mean, not just combo but shit, control as well. Since Pox is in it for the long game I would avoid the Anvil.

[Hardcore]

Tourney report

Went 3-1 today at the local gaming den.


4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith
4 Bloodghast
2 Nether Spirit

4 Smallpox
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood
4 Hymn to Tourach

4 Dark Ritual
3 Darkblast
1 Kaervek's spite

2 Sensei’s Divining Top

18 Swamp
2 Dakmor Salvage


SIDEBOARD

4 Powder Keg
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Perish
3 Duress


My first opponent played affinity. Not the best matchup pre-board. Best topdeck pf the day when I dredge back my Dakmor salvage and the two cards that is put inot the graveyard are bloodghasts!. Since my opponent was at less than 10 life I play the land for landfall and attack with ghasts.
The third duel my opponent empty his hand on turn one. Nothing I can do to such fast start so i scoop.
1-2

Next comes a RUG player that got third place at the big legacy tourney at Gothcon last saturday. He remarked his deck type had a hard time vs Pox and it appears to be so. I have tons of creature removal. Darkblast killed his insects and Grim Lavamancer with ease. I replaced my rituals and hymns for Kegs and perish for even more hate.
2-1

A second RU player make an error first duel and give victory away. He play too safe and don't finish me off when he have the opportunity, forgetting I can play big Pox to reverse my fortune. He almost got there with Nivmagus Elemental. Thunderous Wrath was another surprise in his deck on turn two.
My SB was just the Kegs since he didn't play green.
2-0

Fourth and last oppenent plays NO elves. First game he get fatty in play and would have swung for lots. However I respond and use Dark Blast to kill a Quirion Ranger, and suddenly his DRS are small enough to be blockedand killed by my tombstalker. So fatty attack alone and do 8 damage. I lose the duel. To much DRS activity.
I put Perish and Kegs in from sideboard. Perish win me the next duel, and innocent blood and Darkblast the third.
2-1

Summary: Top is nice, and two seemed enough for now. Dark rituals were often replaced when sideboarding; The duels tended to drag into mid game.
The lone Kaervek's spite was just card #60. It will be replaced with something better.
Second note on the rituals:they do make it easier to cast tombstalker.

[EdsonDettoni]

Please, can someone say why lists don't use the 7-8 poxes?

[Sughayyer]

Please, can someone say why lists don't use the 7-8 poxes?

the lists that use only smallpox are the lists where few attrictions are better than a great catastrophe.
But for monoblack I think there has to be a number of big pox.
***
Tomorrow I'll post my list and thoughts on it. It is very similar to hardcore's

[feline]

Liliana of the Veil basically replaced Pox because it does most of the same stuff, and can recur discard/creature sacrificing over and over depending on the situation.

[Hardcore]

Please, can someone say why lists don't use the 7-8 poxes?

I recall not liking drawing smallpox when I was playing Liliana pox. They ruined my own game to much.
This point to what define a proper Pox deck: if you like, need, and love your pox cards then you have a pox deck. Otherwise you play black control, which is different.

[EdsonDettoni]

the lists that use only smallpox are the lists where few attrictions are better than a great catastrophe.
But for monoblack I think there has to be a number of big pox.
***
Tomorrow I'll post my list and thoughts on it. It is very similar to hardcore's


Liliana of the Veil basically replaced Pox because it does most of the same stuff, and can recur discard/creature sacrificing over and over depending on the situation.


I recall not liking drawing smallpox when I was playing Liliana pox. They ruined my own game to much.
This point to what define a proper Pox deck: if you like, need, and love your pox cards then you have a pox deck. Otherwise you play black control, which is different.

Thanks for the answers. It seems, like @feline said, than Liliana replaced Pox, at least in control oriented versions of the deck. But the sinergy problem, wich @Hardcore is talking, still remains.

Pox and Smallpox have all the elements of a certain kind of control: (i) disrruptive, (ii) card advantage, and (iii) tempo-denial. But no one have yet find a competitive formula.

[Sughayyer]

Thanks for the answers. It seems, like @feline said, than Liliana replaced Pox, at least in control oriented versions of the deck. But the sinergy problem, wich @Hardcore is talking, still remains.

Pox and Smallpox have all the elements of a certain kind of control: (i) disrruptive, (ii) card advantage, and (iii) tempo-denial. But no one have yet find a competitive formula.

tempo plays require aggro follow-ups, otherwise it's durdling - a trategy proven to be frustrating for the player since you always "almost" win.
We are trying to get this deck working, make it competitive. Can it be a tier 1 deck? I don't know, probably not unfortunately. Can it be a good, solid deck? Yes, it can. I'll post my list in the following post 'cause my phone doesn't like long texts

[Sughayyer]

Well, here goes the list I used for testings and the reason for the card choices.

creatures:
4 bloodghast
4 nihilith
2 tombstalker
I found tombstalker rather hard to cast, that's why I dropped it to 2. However I felt I was very threat-light. Need to change this.

discard suite:
4 thoughtseize
4 hymn to tourach

I don't think these need explanatins

pox cards:
4 innocent blood
4 smallpox
3 pox
3 liliana of the veil

I found myself almost never casting the big pox - either i simply didn't need it or the game was already lost.

acceleration:
4 dark ritual

I said something about mox on an early post, but this deck needs every card. Also, rituals ca nve VERY explosive and we need that. Thi "unfairness" costs a card, but we need to have an unfair start to maximize our chances - either so we can get too much ahead or so we can do more work to leave the opponent behind. It also helps resolve key spells you need after you cast a pox/smallpox and get your lands destroyed.

other:
1 crucible of worlds
1 phyrexian arena

crucible was a bad idea. The deck doesn't want to wait long enough to force a concession via wastelock.
phyrexian arena is interesting. However at 1 each, t's hard to say if it was just luck that it worked.

manabase:
4 wastelands
3 dakmor salvage
15 swamps

Considerations:

I'll take the crucible away, it is only marginally synergic withthe deck's strategy. This is not lands.deck, we don't kill by forcing a concession due to "I can't play any more spells, I'll get hit by 2 till I die". So crucible goes out.

Maybe 22 lands is too much. I'll try cutting 1 swamp. Again, I could try -2 swamps +1 cabal pit, but I don't want crucible here, so cabal pit would be a bad swamp that can be wasted and eventually be useful if things turn out right. So that's not gonna happen.

I also need to up the threat count, maybe +1 tombstalker.

Fitting in 2 tops would be nice as well, instead of the phyrexian arena.

Sideboard as follows:
3 duress
1 faerie macabre
2 surgical extraction
1 extirpate
2 infest (any deck that relies on swarms)
3 pithing needle
1 darkblast
1 dismember
1 crucible of worlds (again, never used this).

[Hardcore]

If you want to play wasteland in a land slot, rather than spell slot, then you should play Urborg.

Also, Darkblast rocks! Hard to say what is best: The Dredge ability (dredge 3!), which make playing tombstalkers easy, or they way it is brutal against creature decks. Last tourney i use it to kill more than i can remember. More than a dozen creatures for sure.

[Hardcore]

I can add that Darkblast, and Dakmor salvage, also has good synergy with spinning darkness. A welcome help vs burn.

[Sughayyer]

If you want to play wasteland in a land slot, rather than spell slot, then you should play Urborg.


I ran 22 lands total for that reason, since my mana needs usually stop at 2, with few exceptions - and there's dark ritual too.

If I should add mishras, then urborg would be an obligatory card... probably 3 of.

[EdsonDettoni]

Tourney report

Went 3-1 today at the local gaming den.


4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith
4 Bloodghast
2 Nether Spirit

4 Smallpox
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood
4 Hymn to Tourach

4 Dark Ritual
3 Darkblast
1 Kaervek's spite

2 Sensei’s Divining Top

18 Swamp
2 Dakmor Salvage


SIDEBOARD

4 Powder Keg
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Perish
3 Duress


My first opponent played affinity. Not the best matchup pre-board. Best topdeck pf the day when I dredge back my Dakmor salvage and the two cards that is put inot the graveyard are bloodghasts!. Since my opponent was at less than 10 life I play the land for landfall and attack with ghasts.
The third duel my opponent empty his hand on turn one. Nothing I can do to such fast start so i scoop.
1-2

Next comes a RUG player that got third place at the big legacy tourney at Gothcon last saturday. He remarked his deck type had a hard time vs Pox and it appears to be so. I have tons of creature removal. Darkblast killed his insects and Grim Lavamancer with ease. I replaced my rituals and hymns for Kegs and perish for even more hate.
2-1

A second RU player make an error first duel and give victory away. He play too safe and don't finish me off when he have the opportunity, forgetting I can play big Pox to reverse my fortune. He almost got there with Nivmagus Elemental. Thunderous Wrath was another surprise in his deck on turn two.
My SB was just the Kegs since he didn't play green.
2-0

Fourth and last oppenent plays NO elves. First game he get fatty in play and would have swung for lots. However I respond and use Dark Blast to kill a Quirion Ranger, and suddenly his DRS are small enough to be blockedand killed by my tombstalker. So fatty attack alone and do 8 damage. I lose the duel. To much DRS activity.
I put Perish and Kegs in from sideboard. Perish win me the next duel, and innocent blood and Darkblast the third.
2-1

Summary: Top is nice, and two seemed enough for now. Dark rituals were often replaced when sideboarding; The duels tended to drag into mid game.
The lone Kaervek's spite was just card #60. It will be replaced with something better.
Second note on the rituals:they do make it easier to cast tombstalker.


Well, here goes the list I used for testings and the reason for the card choices.

creatures:
4 bloodghast
4 nihilith
2 tombstalker
I found tombstalker rather hard to cast, that's why I dropped it to 2. However I felt I was very threat-light. Need to change this.

discard suite:
4 thoughtseize
4 hymn to tourach

I don't think these need explanatins

pox cards:
4 innocent blood
4 smallpox
3 pox
3 liliana of the veil

I found myself almost never casting the big pox - either i simply didn't need it or the game was already lost.

acceleration:
4 dark ritual

I said something about mox on an early post, but this deck needs every card. Also, rituals ca nve VERY explosive and we need that. Thi "unfairness" costs a card, but we need to have an unfair start to maximize our chances - either so we can get too much ahead or so we can do more work to leave the opponent behind. It also helps resolve key spells you need after you cast a pox/smallpox and get your lands destroyed.

other:
1 crucible of worlds
1 phyrexian arena

crucible was a bad idea. The deck doesn't want to wait long enough to force a concession via wastelock.
phyrexian arena is interesting. However at 1 each, t's hard to say if it was just luck that it worked.

manabase:
4 wastelands
3 dakmor salvage
15 swamps

Considerations:

I'll take the crucible away, it is only marginally synergic withthe deck's strategy. This is not lands.deck, we don't kill by forcing a concession due to "I can't play any more spells, I'll get hit by 2 till I die". So crucible goes out.

Maybe 22 lands is too much. I'll try cutting 1 swamp. Again, I could try -2 swamps +1 cabal pit, but I don't want crucible here, so cabal pit would be a bad swamp that can be wasted and eventually be useful if things turn out right. So that's not gonna happen.

I also need to up the threat count, maybe +1 tombstalker.

Fitting in 2 tops would be nice as well, instead of the phyrexian arena.

Sideboard as follows:
3 duress
1 faerie macabre
2 surgical extraction
1 extirpate
2 infest (any deck that relies on swarms)
3 pithing needle
1 darkblast
1 dismember
1 crucible of worlds (again, never used this).

Well, I'm still worry about consistency problem. So I have three comments about your lists:

(i) Tombstalker and Nihilith have no sinergy with the Poxes, because they will be discarded, or removed, and thats no sense.
(ii) (Maybe this is a mistake) Discard (Hymn to Tourach) sometimes seems to be too much in addition of land destruction (poxes and sinkhole): why discard if he or she can't cast as effect of land destruction?
(iii) What I like of your decklists, is than they are aggro-tempo oriented, and that brings clarity.

+++

In order to keep developing this fun deck, I was tinking in the concept of Poxes: Are control cards, because they give (i) disrruption, (ii) card advantage, and (iii) tempo-denial.

But is a problematic card, cause it also affects you. So to take advantage of the card, one have to construct all the list in order to sinergize with Poxes. Assuming than a decklist with Poxes always will be (i) disrruptive, it is usefull to note than it is almost impossible combine the (ii) card advantage with (iii) tempo-denial with competive results. So maybe is a good approach separate Pox lists in two strategy lines:
(a) mid-range control, focus in card advantage, and
(b) "aggro"/Tempo Pox, focus in tempo-denia,l analogous to the Mark Le Pine's "Speed Red".


(a) An example of the midrange control Pox:

13 Swamp
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland

4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Innocent Blood
4 Inquisition of Kozilek

2 Crucible of Worlds
3 Ratchet Bomb
3 Cursed Scroll
4 Dark Ritual

1 Entomb
1 Nether Spirit
1 Bloodghast
1 Tombstalker


(b) An example of the "aggro"-tempo-denial Pox:

13 Swamp
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland

4 Sinkhole
4 Smallpox
4 Pox

4 Innocent Blood
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Thoughtseize
4 Dark Ritual

4 Entomb
4 Bloodghast
1 Nether Spirit


So, tell me what you think. Would be better or worse than the common Pox lists?

[Sughayyer]

@EdsonDettoni

In theory all this works. In theory.
The problem is, hand disruption will not win alone. Neither will land destruction.
A single well-timed threat can render the deck's control strategy useless, because we lack card selection. We get around the consistency problem through redundancy, but we are open to useless draws - if you devote about 60% of your deck to the pox-like control, chances are that you'll have a lot of dead draws past the first 3-4 turns. At that point pox already controlled the table, but these lists take so long to kill that allow te opponent to recover. If you want to go the slow durdle route, go BG.It's better at that.
If you want to go "no friends" route, go bw. It gives you even vindicate, a multi-purpose removal.

I'lll explain why there's no problem on the lack of synergy from nihilith and TS with the pox cards:
Look at how hard are those guys to get into play. If you suspend nihilith you'll have no worries about killing him - he's suspended and any card that you play will only help him go down faster. As for TS, when you cast him, you have already controlled the game (i mean it's delve 6, you must have cast at least 6 spells to get him down for 2 mana) . What I mean is: after either of these are on the field, you dont't NEED to keep on casting pox, smallpox, innocent blood, etc. If the occasion happens, you'll pinch bloodghast for the discard/sacrifice. That's why we pick creatures with evasion (fear/flying) - we set up the first few turns, get a dude online, and finish them off in 4/5 turns (at worse). At that point most things your opponent play will be irrelevant.

[OmniStrata]

(ii) (Maybe this is a mistake) Discard (Hymn to Tourach) sometimes seems to be too much in addition of land destruction (poxes and sinkhole): why discard if he or she can't cast as effect of land destruction?


This point was made by Pox winning pilot Reid Duke himself.
"Knight of the Reliquary might be a powerful topdeck, but if they don't have the mana to cast her right away, she's a sitting duck for an Inquisition of Kozilek or even a Liliana +1!"

Pox is truly the ultimate expression of top deck killer. For opponents who think they can save themselves from me with a good topdeck, I question them doing it with 1 or no lands on the field. Liliana means their hand should never fill with cheap cmc cards anyway and they be kept unable to cast their 3+ mana spells.

I'd never build a pox deck without land kill AND targeted discard anymore.

[Hardcore]

@EdsonDettoni
(i mean it's delve 6, you must have cast at least 6 spells to get him down for 2 mana) .

It says "cards" actually, not spells (unlike Spinning Darkness). So playing Pox works even more in our favour since our own destroyed lands also counts^^

[Sughayyer]

It says "cards" actually, not spells (unlike Spinning Darkness). So playing Pox works even more in our favour since our own destroyed lands also counts^^

I'm aware of that, it was just an example - I mean we won't cast stalker before pox anyway, and if we do, we shouldn't need to cast pox (usually)

[Smea.gol.lum]

Hey guys,
I want to share some aspects with you:

1)I took Pox to GP Amsterdam and scrubbed out pretty early because I was buried in the card advantage of blue decks featuring Snapcaster Mage several times.
Often it came down to me playing Liliana of the Veil and my opponent casting a Snapcaster Mage EOT in order to bring Liliana back to 2 counters (in the end killing it).
The Mono-black-lists only run sorcery speed removal and are thus weak against creatures like Snapcaster Mage and Vendilion Clique.

2)Another big issue is the inability to deal with non-creature permanents like Counterbalance etc.

3) In other cases I wasn't able to deal with 2 creatures simultaneously because my opponent sacced his little dude for Innocent Blood/ Smallpox while beating me with his big dude.

4) Sometimes a Tempo-deck could beat me because all my removal in a removal-light hand was countered and Delver was ridden to victory.

This all leads to the inclusion of 1 card: Abrupt Decay. It was mentioned some posts ago and is a must-include in this deck in my opinion because it solves all the aforementioned problems at once.

Sensei's Divining Top is also very strong in a deck whose goal is to achieve Top deck mode.

I'm in favour of a light green splash adding Abrupt Decay and Loam:

4 Smallpox
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Life from the Loam
3 Sinkhole
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Cursed Scroll
2 Nether Spirit

4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
7 Fetchlands
3 Swamp
4 Bayou
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

SB:
2 Crop Rotation
1 Karakas
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Cabal Therapy
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Pithing Needle
2 Spinning Darkness
2 Extirpate
1 Surgical Extraction

Not sure about Loam without cycle lands!

Comments welcome!!!

[Hardcore]

@Smea.gol.lum

Darkblast is the answer to your problems. It is instant speed which will surprise your opponents, it can be cast in response to the triggered abilities of snapcaster and clique when they come into play, it can be cast twice in your turn, and even three times if you have card draw like top. It is a pain for elves stompy. It kills so many creatures in the format, and will continue to do so; because the mana curve in the format is so low and that is linked to the creatures toughness.
Cheap casting cost equals low toughness.
It is a 50 cent card were Life from the Loam and Abrupt Decay are 10$ cards.
To name a few good things...

I have three main deck and they are among my most valued cards. In fact it is better than sword to plowshares

[Hardcore]

Also, against counterbalance you have lots of options, but it depend on what is the problem: Terminus or counterbalance?

[Smea.gol.lum]

Darkblast is much more narrow than Abrupt Decay. It doesn't answer Goyf, Knight of the Reliquary and many more creatures while only killing 2-toughness-creatures like a flipped Delver with card disatvantage.
It doesn't do anything against Chalice of the Void, Jitte, Counterbalance, Crucible of Worlds, Sylvan Library, Aether Vial etc.
It can also be countered which plays a huge role, because there are many occasions in which a key creature has to come off the board like a Stoneforge Mystic with FOW backup that would vial in Batterskull otherwise.

[feline]

This did hit at the beginning of the year, though a smaller tournament (53 players) it hit the top 6, landing on 5th http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=9909&iddeck=72255
It's the closest thing I could find to todays date using the Council, the other 8 or so pox lists since have been mono black.

Nick Panagakos - Jan 5th 2013 - Cyborg One Super Legacy 2 (Doylestown, PA)
Creatures [1]
1 Nether Spirit
Instants [8]
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Dark Ritual
Sorceries [17]
1 Worm Harvest
2 Life from the Loam
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Sinkhole
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
Enchantments [2]
2 Pernicious Deed
Planeswalkers [4]
4 Liliana of the Veil
Artifacts [2]
2 Cursed Scroll
Lands [26]
2 Barren Moor
3 Marsh Flats
3 Swamp
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bayou
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
Sideboard [15]
2 Pithing Needle
1 Zuran Orb
4 Engineered Plague
2 Leyline of the Void
2 Extirpate
2 Spinning Darkness
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Maelstrom Pulse

[Hardcore]

Darkblast is much more narrow than Abrupt Decay. It doesn't answer Goyf, Knight of the Reliquary and many more creatures while only killing 2-toughness-creatures like a flipped Delver with card disatvantage.
It is narrow since it only target creatures, but that is what people will use to kill you with unless they play combo.
If it doesn't kill the Ghoyf it will the smaller guys letting you use nnocent blood and smallpox to maximum effectiveness. Also, it is NOT card disadvantage.



It doesn't do anything against Chalice of the Void, Jitte, Counterbalance, Crucible of Worlds, Sylvan Library, Aether Vial etc.

Well They are not really problems for us. Chalice is rarely played and your important spells cost two or more.
Jitte is useless without creatures, same with vial.
The rest are often lost to discard, or Lilianas ultimate.


It can also be countered which plays a huge role, because there are many occasions in which a key creature has to come off the board like a Stoneforge Mystic with FOW backup that would vial in Batterskull otherwise.
That is situation dependant. Also if you do your draw phase trick to kill MSF your opponent will be tempted to counter it, that is a good bet. However it is risky for him aas it may leave him open for your smallpox.

[Sughayyer]

I could add to all that hardcore is saying the following statement:

If you want a control deck, do not play pox. Nor monoblack, nor bg, not even bw.
There are control decks that work on board control. These are Truffle Shuffle, Train Wreck, BUG landstill (deedstill). All of these can abuse graveyard recursion, play slowly (either take too long to kill or attempt to put fat guys/planeswalkers into play) and probably offer what you are searching for.

Nowadays the pox deck works VERY differently than it used to be, and it's perfectly fine, since decks and strategies evolve.

EDIT: Just an example: waay back, the great creatures were Vampire of Sengir and Serra Angel. Those had a high cmc. Today, we see tarmogoyf. 2 mana. KTR - 3 mana. Delver of Secrets/Insectile Aberration - 1 mana. Take too long to kill your opponent and you are bound to see him recovering. When that happens, you're back at stage 0 of your gameplan.

You can also try a lockdown strategy, but that's a different deck altogether - see how many cards Lands use to support it's strategy. Same for Stax.

I hope it wasn't all too confusing.. it's late at night in here and I'm sleepy.

[Sockosensei]

I finished second overall at my local last night (15 players) with 2 wins and 1 tie.

Having enjoyed the recent discusion of this pox variation and that, I decided "Screw it! I just want to run an 8-Pox build and hit all resources mercilessly." Usually I run lists that use the graveyard but don't depend on it. This time though I went all in with a variation of Greg Russell's list linked in the primer.

I'm missing Tabernacle and Vindicate so I ran Maze of Ith and Liliana in their slots. I also swapped in one Entomb for a Crop Rotation. Sideboard was put together right before heading out the door

4x Barren Moor
1x Bayou
3x Overgrown Tomb
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Cabal Pit
1x Marsh Flats
2x Maze of Ith
4x Mishra's Factory
1x Nantuko Monastery
2x Polluted Delta
2x Scrubland
1x Swamp
2x Verdant Catacombs
4x Wasteland

4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Life from the Loam
4x Pox
4x Sinkhole
4x Smallpox
3x Liliana of the Veil

4x Mox Diamond
3x Crop Rotation
1x Entomb

1x Nether Spirit
1x Worm Harvest

Sideboard (15)
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Pithing Needle
3 Oblivion Ring
1 Raven's Crime
4 Can't remember



Games were
1-1 vs a homebrew Trading Post control-combo deck.
2-0 vs Jund
2-0 vs High Tide

I also played a few practice games after,
2-0 vs Dreadstill
1-1 vs MUD.
3-0 vs RUG, all on the draw

The deck leans on Mox Diamond for its early plays, running fewer one-drops (no Inquisition, Thoughtseize, or Innocent Blood) in order to run slower but more devastating effects.
Mox Diamond is a card I'd never quite understood, but it's absolutely sick in this style of Pox--and almost essential. Liliana had SOME games where she did heavy heavy lifting, but I really missed having the versatility of Vindicate or Abrupt Decay in the main.

Nantuko Monastery made a very respectable finisher with 4 land tutor effects and the ability to dredge into it with Loam.
I was fortunate not to run into serious gravehate.

I can't necessarily say it's the strongest way to build Pox, but that was the most fun I've had playing pox.

[Hardcore]

Congrats! I have brought newly built decks to tourneys and it never get better than 2-2.

[Sockosensei]

Congrats! I have brought newly built decks to tourneys and it never get better than 2-2.

Hey thanks! I got pretty lucky with match-ups and didn't face the worst gravehate.

Playing the deck was enough fun that I nearly bought the Tabernacle I've been staring at for months on display at the store.
As we all know, 8-Pox builds are strong against decks running fewer, but high quality creature threats. The Tabernacle (with Crop Rotation) would help loads vs decks that try to spam the board with fodder to protect the better creatures from edict effects.

I had several games that were like
T1 Land, Mox Diamond, Hymn
T2 Land, Sinkhole
T3 Pox, discarding Life from the Loam
Dredge into Factories, Wastelands, ...



The biggest issues I notice are
1) Where to fit Abrupt Decay if not running Vindicate (or perhaps running both)
2) Sucks if you can't hit that first Loam. More dredge, dig, or tutor needed.
3) I'd like another win condition I can dredge into. Dredging loam and hitting Nether Spirit or Worm Harvest is productive.

Looking at
White: Vindicate, Lingering Souls, Nantuko Monastery, Ethersworn Canonist, maybe Sorin, Oblivion Ring (Side).
Blue: Intuition, Creeping Tar-Pit, Academy Ruins-->Artifact win condition, maybe a singleton Memory's Journey.

[Hardcore]

Akuta, born of ash should work well with Loam.

[EdsonDettoni]

You all convinced me than in mirange control, loam pox is better (you can splash it white, obvius). The card advantage is huge.

I'm more interested in discuss about aggro tempo-denial.


@EdsonDettoni

The problem is, hand disruption will not win alone. Neither will land destruction.
A single well-timed threat can render the deck's control strategy useless, because we lack card selection. We get around the consistency problem through redundancy, but we are open to useless draws - if you devote about 60% of your deck to the pox-like control, chances are that you'll have a lot of dead draws past the first 3-4 turns. At that point pox already controlled the table, but these lists take so long to kill that allow te opponent to recover. If you want to go the slow durdle route, go BG.It's better at that.
If you want to go "no friends" route, go bw. It gives you even vindicate, a multi-purpose removal.

I'lll explain why there's no problem on the lack of synergy from nihilith and TS with the pox cards:
Look at how hard are those guys to get into play. If you suspend nihilith you'll have no worries about killing him - he's suspended and any card that you play will only help him go down faster. As for TS, when you cast him, you have already controlled the game (i mean it's delve 6, you must have cast at least 6 spells to get him down for 2 mana) . What I mean is: after either of these are on the field, you dont't NEED to keep on casting pox, smallpox, innocent blood, etc. If the occasion happens, you'll pinch bloodghast for the discard/sacrifice. That's why we pick creatures with evasion (fear/flying) - we set up the first few turns, get a dude online, and finish them off in 4/5 turns (at worse). At that point most things your opponent play will be irrelevant.

About the card selection, thats why I include 4 Thoughtseize. And Hymn of tourach is obvius a great and devastating card in firsts turns. Maybe playing without the acceleration of Dark Ritual it is not so bad. As someone said, it always get out for SB.

About the finishers and evasion. Tombstalker it is hard to cast, sometimes it must be discarded by pox effects, and is vulnerable to contermagic. Nihilith it is not vulnerable to counter magic, but is still too slow as top deck; and it is problematic to be castind before pox, wich makes it vulnerable to that. But I agree it is better.


This point was made by Pox winning pilot Reid Duke himself.
"Knight of the Reliquary might be a powerful topdeck, but if they don't have the mana to cast her right away, she's a sitting duck for an Inquisition of Kozilek or even a Liliana +1!"

Pox is truly the ultimate expression of top deck killer. For opponents who think they can save themselves from me with a good topdeck, I question them doing it with 1 or no lands on the field. Liliana means their hand should never fill with cheap cmc cards anyway and they be kept unable to cast their 3+ mana spells.

I'd never build a pox deck without land kill AND targeted discard anymore.

"I get it. It is very clever". But that is about a midrange control pox.


@Smea.gol.lum

Darkblast is the answer to your problems. It is instant speed which will surprise your opponents, it can be cast in response to the triggered abilities of snapcaster and clique when they come into play, it can be cast twice in your turn, and even three times if you have card draw like top. It is a pain for elves stompy. It kills so many creatures in the format, and will continue to do so; because the mana curve in the format is so low and that is linked to the creatures toughness.
Cheap casting cost equals low toughness.
It is a 50 cent card were Life from the Loam and Abrupt Decay are 10$ cards.
To name a few good things...

I have three main deck and they are among my most valued cards. In fact it is better than sword to plowshares

Darkblast seems to be a good discover. And it can be fetch by Entomb.

[Sughayyer]

Darkblast seems to be a good discover. And it can be fetch by Entomb.

You said you wanted to go aggro-tempo... wouldn´t entomb be too slow in such a shell?

About the creatures, once more:
tombstalker being countered - the deck plays a lot of discard, if you have already poxed them they´ll probably have spent the counter on that OR they got no counters. remember that counterspells require mana to cast (wich you are destroying) or another card from their hands (in the case of FoW). Also, Nihilith can be stifled afther the last suspend counter is removed, for that matter.


For a while I played a bgw pox that used lingering souls, bloodghast and mishras as kill conditions. It NEEDED to hit a dredge spell to work properly, though,and I gave up on it.

[EdsonDettoni]

You said you wanted to go aggro-tempo... wouldn´t entomb be too slow in such a shell?

About the creatures, once more:
tombstalker being countered - the deck plays a lot of discard, if you have already poxed them they´ll probably have spent the counter on that OR they got no counters. remember that counterspells require mana to cast (wich you are destroying) or another card from their hands (in the case of FoW). Also, Nihilith can be stifled afther the last suspend counter is removed, for that matter.


For a while I played a bgw pox that used lingering souls, bloodghast and mishras as kill conditions. It NEEDED to hit a dredge spell to work properly, though,and I gave up on it.

Entomb brings for 1cc to the board Nether Spirit and Bloodghast; it is like an option to dredge.

You are right about counter magic and Stifle.

[Hardcore]

Iirc Nihilith cannot be stifled, but it can be countered.

[abetman]

Hey guys, I don't really know if someone already suggested Tainted Aether for this deck. I was thinking this could be an alternative since I am unable to afford Nethervoids or The Abyss. Thoughts?

Thanks :)

Here's a draft of what I was planning on running:

Creatures - 1
1 Filth

Instants - 6
4 Dark Ritual
1 Spinning Darkness
1 Soulspike

Sorceries - 22
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Innocent Blood
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Sinkhole
4 Smallpox
2 Raven's Crime

Enchantments - 3
2 Tainted Aether
1 Painful Quandary

Planeswalkers - 2
2 Liliana of the Veil

Artifacts - 3
3 Phyrexian Totem

Lands - 23
14 Swamp
1 Cabal Pit
2 Bojuka Bog
1 Tomb of Urami
3 Wasteland
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sideboard
2 Pithing Needle
3 Engineered Plague
2 Leyline of the Void
2 Extirpate
2 Spinning Darkness
2 Perish
1 Tainted Aether
1 Damnation

[Hardcore]

Abyss and nethervoid are played because people think they are cool, and can afford to buy them. They are not necessarily the best cards for you.

Tainted Aether is bad because it is conditional, and painful quandary will be played too late to have much of effect. They both have the advantage of being immune to abrupt decay.

The filth have no use with so few creatures in your deck. Besides it is also conditional: if your opponents have swamps, And you have creatures that can attack, THEN...

Phyrexian totem is nice, but cost too much to use.

Unless you want to play Liliana fast you have not much need for dark rituals. You are not running Pox either and won't have so much mana problem that you need rituals.

Soul Spike is a sideboard card against Storm decks.

Raven's crime is nice and suggest you should run The Rack as kill condition. Four of them. Too many Pox players make the mistake of playing Just one or two.
One can get very fast kills with multiples of the track in play

[Hardcore]

Also, if you want to be mean and cruel try add four ankh of mishra to your deck. With all the land destruction they will be nasty.

[abetman]

Thank you! Your feedback is most appreciated.

I haven't been able to test the build I posted yet but would be making your suggested changes.

I am also considering leaning towards the discard pox build. Although at the moment I don't have access to Pox and Lili 3-4

[Chatto]

I was wondering if Death Cloud Goes well with a Mox Diamond-build. I would think so, but what are your opinions? Sure, it costs more, but it give me the feeling of being able to be precise.

[Tao]

Iirc Nihilith cannot be stifled, but it can be countered.

"When the last is removed, cast it without paying its mana cost."

If you use Stifle on that trigger the Nihilith will stay in Exile indefinitely.

[Hardcore]

It is in the exile zone so I am not sure you can target the card with anything. I have no idea but will keep looking.


However, Digging in rules I found that suspend does not use the stack. Easy to overlook.

[dunk]

Suspend uses the stack like anything else but Morph and you can just Stifle the ability that says "when the last time counter is removed, you may put this spell on the stack" or something similar.

[abetman]

Here's my discard pox proposed build. Hopefully I'd be able to test it within the week.

Creatures - 4
4 Bloodghast

Spells 22
2 Raven's Crime
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Inquisition of Kozilek (blackmail)
4 Funeral Charm
4 Smallpox
4 Innocent Blood

Permanents - 10
2 Liliana of the Veil (working on getting 2 more)
2 Phyrexian Totem
3 Shrieking Affliction
3 The Rack

Lands - 24
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Pit
3 Wasteland
16 Swamp (I don't own factories)


Sideboard
1 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Extirpate
4 Duress
2 Infest
3 Perish
2 - free slot - Needles?


I'm also thinking if wasteland is really necessary for this build.

[EdsonDettoni]

Hey thanks! I got pretty lucky with match-ups and didn't face the worst gravehate.

Playing the deck was enough fun that I nearly bought the Tabernacle I've been staring at for months on display at the store.
As we all know, 8-Pox builds are strong against decks running fewer, but high quality creature threats. The Tabernacle (with Crop Rotation) would help loads vs decks that try to spam the board with fodder to protect the better creatures from edict effects.

I had several games that were like
T1 Land, Mox Diamond, Hymn
T2 Land, Sinkhole
T3 Pox, discarding Life from the Loam
Dredge into Factories, Wastelands, ...



The biggest issues I notice are
1) Where to fit Abrupt Decay if not running Vindicate (or perhaps running both)
2) Sucks if you can't hit that first Loam. More dredge, dig, or tutor needed.
3) I'd like another win condition I can dredge into. Dredging loam and hitting Nether Spirit or Worm Harvest is productive.

Looking at
White: Vindicate, Lingering Souls, Nantuko Monastery, Ethersworn Canonist, maybe Sorin, Oblivion Ring (Side).
Blue: Intuition, Creeping Tar-Pit, Academy Ruins-->Artifact win condition, maybe a singleton Memory's Journey.

Your deck is great. Congratulations. 8-Pox is the truth.

About "biggest isues":
1) I don't know what to say, but you will know it after testing (very obvius).
2) + 1 Entomb (to use Crop Rotation is a refreshing idea).
3) Sinegized win conditions for Pox, I only know in black: Nether Spirit, Bloodghast, Gravecrawler + Mutavault, Akuta, Born of Ash, and Nim Devourer (not so good, but attacks 4).



Here's my discard pox proposed build. Hopefully I'd be able to test it within the week.

Creatures - 4
4 Bloodghast

Spells 22
2 Raven's Crime
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Inquisition of Kozilek (blackmail)
4 Funeral Charm
4 Smallpox
4 Innocent Blood

Permanents - 10
2 Liliana of the Veil (working on getting 2 more)
2 Phyrexian Totem
3 Shrieking Affliction
3 The Rack

Lands - 24
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Pit
3 Wasteland
16 Swamp (I don't own factories)


Sideboard
1 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Extirpate
4 Duress
2 Infest
3 Perish
2 - free slot - Needles?


I'm also thinking if wasteland is really necessary for this build.

My observations:

-1 (or -2) Raven's Crime. Difficults landfall for Bloodghast.
- 2 Funeral Charm (at least). Have you considered Wrench Mind or Nezumi shortfang?
(-4 bloodghast) if you are not running manlands, why not use Ensnaring Bridge on main?

[iamfrightenedtoo]

I love Funeral Charm, It really does a lot, especially when getting your opponent into top deck mode. It really only has two abilities, unless you plan on using it with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth with a late game finisher.
I have been toying with a one of Words of Waste, but I main deck Ensnaring Bridge, and use Words of Waste along with Liliana to keep my hand empty for Ensnaring Bridge.

I used to fight against Wasteland, but its a 60 dollar uncommon for a reason. In Legacy, lands are an obvious premium, and Wasteland is really the best form of land destruction.

I dont really play Pox competitively, I take it to tournaments, and love it, but I really cant bring myself to play anything but 8-Pox. It is impossible for me.

[Sockosensei]

8-Pox is the truth.

Big Pox was crushing last week.:cool:
Since Liliana was printed I've heard it said that she replaces Pox. I very much enjoyed having both.
Having so many cards I don't mind discarding, running 29 land to rebuild, and Loam-Wasteland for a soft lock make it feel that much better.

I posted earlier that, "I can't necessarily say it's the strongest way to build Pox." What I meant was that it has major vulnerabilities--namely gravehate. The raw power of the deck is awesome, and much of that is tied in with Pox.



About "biggest isues":
1) I don't know what to say, but you will know it after testing (very obvius).
2) + 1 Entomb (to use Crop Rotation is a refreshing idea).
3) Sinegized win conditions for Pox, I only know in black: Nether Spirit, Bloodghast, Gravecrawler + Mutavault, Akuta, Born of Ash, and Nim Devourer (not so good, but attacks 4).


1) I hope so. Russell's original list had 3 Vindicates, which I look at as a the flex slots for the moment.
2) I ran a 3/1 Rotation-Entomb split last week. I'd consider a 2/2 or even 4 Entombs (like Ali Aintrazi's build) except I recently sold off the rest of my Entombs!
3) I think I'll add 1-2 Bloodghast. They can be played for mana if need be, and they come in for free.
I looked at Akuta, but having to sac a swamp--even with Loam-- is a big price.



Abyss and nether void are played because people think they are cool, and can afford to buy them. They are not necessarily the best cards for you.
No doubt they're expensive and they require a bit of building around. They're way more than just cool inclusions, though; Nether Void is one of the strongest, most abusive cards I've ever seen.

[abetman]

My observations:

-1 (or -2) Raven's Crime. Difficults landfall for Bloodghast.
- 2 Funeral Charm (at least). Have you considered Wrench Mind or Nezumi shortfang?
(-4 bloodghast) if you are not running manlands, why not use Ensnaring Bridge on main?

-i'll try cutting down on crimes and see how it feels
-i was thinking of charm as a double duty card as a x/1 creature kill. Instant speed discard also comes in handy :)
-no, I didn't even think about wrench mind.
-brigdes is a good defensive card. Too defensive that I'm thinking I may also miss the chance to swing with totems and ghasts if there's a chance.

[Hardcore]

Words of waste + Phyrexian Arena for modern, perhaps?

[abetman]

Words of waste + Phyrexian Arena for modern, perhaps?

Isn't words of waste illegal for modern? Its a good card to include for the discard route though.

[Hardcore]

You are right; the filter must have been bugged.

Oh well, here is another card that may have potential:
Delirium Skeins. I see it as Pox for modern. With recurring creatures and dredge cards it could be powerful.

[Sughayyer]

I tested a modern pox deck, played it onyl a few times but won them all. Maybe we ca nbring that to legacy with some changes.
The list:

3 thoughtseize
3 inquisition of kozilek
1 raven's crime

4 smallpox
3 abrupt decay
1 darkblast

3 liliana of the veil

4 bloodghast
4 lingering souls
1 eternal witness
1 worm harvest

1 unburial rites
3 life from the loam
4 grisly salgave

lands:

4 verdant catacombs
4 marsh flats
2 overgrown tomb
1 godless shrine
1 horizon canopy
1 forest
1 dakmor salvage
1 treetop village
2 tectonic edge
1 ghost quarter
8 swamp

I think one of the main factors it worked is because nobody expected it.
Caould we adapt that into legacy?

[EdsonDettoni]

-i'll try cutting down on crimes and see how it feels
-i was thinking of charm as a double duty card as a x/1 creature kill. Instant speed discard also comes in handy :)
-no, I didn't even think about wrench mind.
-brigdes is a good defensive card. Too defensive that I'm thinking I may also miss the chance to swing with totems and ghasts if there's a chance.

1) nice.
2) ok.
3) You are right.

[Hardcore]

Another Tuesday tourney. Only got 2-2, but the deck perform well. An unexpected problem turned up in the counter-top deck, however. The original deck is supposed to be very strong against it, but mine is weak.


4 Bloodghast
4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith
2 Nether Spirit

4 Smallpox
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood
2 Wrench Mind

3 Darkblast
4 Dark Ritual

2 Sensei’s Divining Top

18 Swamp
2 Dakmor Salvage

SB


4 Powder Keg
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Perish
3 Surgical Extraction

I guess it's the lack of wastelands and Sink Holes that makes the match-up, vs counter-top, worse than it should be.
There is room in the deck for new cards to rectify this; the Wrench Minds was mostly a way to fill up the numbers due to lack of ideas.

Also, I am wondering if the rituals are needed. They don't win games.

[Hardcore]

To make it easier to figure out the weak cards and find replacements I tried rate them:

Darkblast
Smallpox
Sensei’s Divining Top
Pox
Bloodghast
Tombstalker
Dakmor Salvage
Dark Ritual
Nihilith
Innocent Blood
Hymn to Tourach
Nether Spirit

The Top is high on the list, Hymn to Tourach is not.
I guess that shows my thinking on discard, that it is not very powerful any longer. Not like the pox effects are.

The Nether spirits are simply win conditions. As such they can be replaced by anything.

Lastly the Dark rituals. While they allow casting expensive spells, when you have destroyed your own lands, rituals do not any longer equals "swamp, Ritual, negator, Go!"

Of course, now I need to find better replacements.

[Chatto]

I like the fact you rate SDT rather high on your list. Would you state that SDT would be a permanent in Pox? Did you had the feeling it gave the deck an edge?

[Hardcore]

I recall keeping a one-land hand, something I would not normally do, because I also had a top.
It was like having serum powder:laugh:

Still, not proper card draw, and it is not as good filter effect as that which is employed by blue decks.
However it give you a feeling you have control over your draws. This is an illusion because you lack the blue manipulation elements.

Were it comes in handy is mid-and late game when you have failed to kill the opponent and need find more threats.
Phyrexian arena is probably better, but the game plan is not exactly to win by card advantage. Casting cost is also high, btw.
I well keep my two for now, and see no reason to ever have four.

I wouldn't be surprised if you get equally good results with Mishra's bauble that the original deck designer did.

[OmniStrata]

To make it easier to figure out the weak cards and find replacements I tried rate them:

Darkblast
Smallpox
Sensei’s Divining Top
Pox
Bloodghast
Tombstalker
Dakmor Salvage
Dark Ritual
Nihilith
Innocent Blood
Hymn to Tourach
Nether Spirit



I'm kind of surprised those 3 are on the bottom considering they're probably the strongest cards in the deck as far as my rating goes. Practically all lists run 4 Bloods, 4 Hymns, and 1-2 Spirits. Why are they so bad if they're considered Pox staples?

[Hardcore]

The purpose of this rating exercise was to improve the deck in the same way you do your sideboarding: figure out what cards are weakest and what substitutions would be stronger.
Remember: all the cards are strong, the list merely reflect their worth in my deck design.

Innocent blood is low because it not a win con and just do one thing. Of course, since it so good at the only thing it does AND I need lots of creature kill, they will remain in my deck. Same can be said for hymn to Tourach except that it is not a card you want to draw when in top deck mode, unlike innocent blood. (bad top deck and being not a creatures kill is the main reasons for looking for replacements for it)
I would happily replace both by four more smallpox!

Nether spirit is there to increase the creature count. As a win con he is to weak:/but numbers matter more. Of course, even he will be replaced by better cards if I find any

One could think that without hymn and duress that the deck would be more vulnerable to combo, right? But that depends on the design of the whole deck. Also, it may be a design decision to make the deck stronger against non combo. (I am thinking of omniscience as the primary combo threat)

[Hardcore]

Here is what I consider the core of the original Days of Disease deck:


4 Bloodghast
4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith

4 Smallpox
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood

3 Darkblast

2 Dakmor Salvage
18 Swamp


This is 47 cards. Not tourney legal no matter how try look at it. Pity, 16% Pox effects had been quite nice.
So, from here I can go two ways; either increase the number of cards, but keep the proportions of categories, or take the opportunity to be creative.
I have 13-14 slots to fill with brutality so the later seem more fun!

I will continue this post later on, but in the meantime I am interested in hearing any crazy idea you guys got^^

[OmniStrata]

Here is what I consider the core of the original Days of Disease deck:


4 Bloodghast
4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith

4 Smallpox
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood

3 Darkblast

2 Dakmor Salvage
18 Swamp


This is 47 cards. Not tourney legal no matter how try look at it. Pity, 16% Pox effects had been quite nice.
So, from here I can go two ways; either increase the number of cards, but keep the proportions of categories, or take the opportunity to be creative.
I have 13-14 slots to fill with brutality so the later seem more fun!

I will continue this post later on, but in the meantime I am interested in hearing any crazy idea you guys got^^

Well, I wouldn't say it's crazy, but your land count is extremely low running 8 Pox. Even with the Salvages, CITP is very dangerous in Legacy. If you're not in a combo meta, forgoing targeted handkill is nice but ultimately, Hymn to Tourach is mandatory. Why? Well, Pox is a card advantage deck in a different flavor from Blue. Instead of Ancestral Recall or Concentrate or Divination, we use 8 Pox and Hymn to Tourach since we're spending less cards than them. Unfortunately, the blue adv. (hard draw) vs. Pox Advantage (Cards binned) has a better performance late game.

So, we need permanents on the field to lock our opponent. Liliana of the Veil comes to mind and Trinisphere or Nether Void. Since we can't use hard draw, we need to punish their topdeck.

Your advocating an aggro Pox by this list so I'd go the Land Destruction route. Why? Suspend / play a threat on turns 1-2 using Dark rit or hard casting, then start going after their land hard with Sinkholes, Poxes, and Rancid Earth. If all goes well, they'll be dead before they can topdeck a land to stabilize.

Land Destruction Pox threat to consider? Epochrasite. He can come out turn 1-2 and comes back with a vengeance from Innocent Blood/Poxing.

[Hardcore]

Citp?

[Zinch]

Citp?

It is a mistake, it's CIPT (Comes Into Play Tapped)

[Chatto]

I really dig the idea of using Epochrasite, never heard of the card before (not suprising, there are too many sometimes) I would also try Mox Diamond, love the idea to go all the way. Instead of Rancid Earth I would opt for Ghost Quarter, backed with Life from the Loam. Note that this is just a rough list: I would like to add some Liliana's for instance.

4 Bloodghast
4 Epochrasite

3 Life from the Loam
4 Pox
4 Smallpox
4 Sinkhole
4 Hymn

2 Top
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Mox Diamond

2 Ghost Quarter
3 Bayou
4 Wasteland
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Verdant Catacombs
8 Swamp

[OmniStrata]

I really dig the idea of using Epochrasite, never heard of the card before (not suprising, there are too many sometimes) I would also try Mox Diamond, love the idea to go all the way. Instead of Rancid Earth I would opt for Ghost Quarter, backed with Life from the Loam. Note that this is just a rough list: I would like to add some Liliana's for instance.

4 Bloodghast
4 Epochrasite

3 Life from the Loam
4 Pox
4 Smallpox
4 Sinkhole
4 Hymn

2 Top
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Mox Diamond

2 Ghost Quarter
3 Bayou
4 Wasteland
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Verdant Catacombs
8 Swamp

Do not run G/B Pox without Abrupt Decay. It address the things mono-B can't handle. I used to run a Loam Pox with it but discovered myself durdling too much with the Dredge. If I wanted lands to come back, I have to say Crucible of Worlds is superior. At least you won't end up dredging precious disruption cards while doing so.

Let me know how this list goes after fighting a few people with it. I never did get G/B to work. Heavy creature rush down meta forced me to go the mono-B route and I found it to be much more consistent. That and Mono-B gets FAR better use of Dark Ritual and Liliana whereas the Green splash doesn't.

From what other people have posted, (Ali Aintrazi's article comes to mind) Cursed Scroll and Life from the Loam do NOT like each other at all. Be wary of that. ^_^

[feline]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/5294139 4th list down, gotta love seeing that. ^.^

[Hardcore]

Another interesting primer
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=483236

old thread here:

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=158085

[Sockosensei]

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Digital/MagicOnlineTourn.aspx?x=mtg/digital/magiconline/tourn/5294139 4th list down, gotta love seeing that. ^.^

Glad to see that Reid Duke still carries some love for the Smallpox.
Hardcast Batterskull is a cute addition, but he'd better hope he doesn't dredge it away by accident.


Edit: I tried it on Tapped Out. That is a painfully slow build, even by grindy Pox standards, unless you happen to get your lone Batterskull. I'm surprised he doesn't have Bured Ruin to get it back in case he accidentally dredges it away.

[Chatto]

Another interesting primer
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=483236

old thread here:

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=158085

Yeah, I already read some of the discussions. On some issues they have some interesting point of views.

Also love the writting about the math behind casting Pox in the old threat :)

So one thing: Hymn vs Targeted Discard... Opinions?

Edit: anybody ever heard of Tarmopox in Modern? For reference: http://www.mtgtop8.com/archetype?a=194&meta=51

[Hardcore]

Looks like ordinary BG Pox. Not sure how good it is ( I don't play modern).

[Hardcore]

4 Bloodghast
4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith
3 Geralf’s Messenger

4 Smallpox
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood
3 Wrench Mind

3 Darkblast
4 Dark Ritual

18 Swamp
2 Dakmor Salvage


I am currently thinking on this configuration for a bigger tourney this saturday.

SDT was a bit clunky, especially that all cards I find are good cards;). I rather play real card draw because in some match ups it is more important to draw more threats than the opponent can find answers.

Geralf is like a Soul Spike on legs. I have played that card before in my old deck, and, while not a Griselbrand, people tend to complain that he is hard to get rid off. The card offers me a way to easier kill someone using pox only, if that situation arise. (Ensnaring bridge and all that)

Wrench mind is extra discard vs anythinbg but dredge. I figure it helps the combo and Blade match ups.

Sideboard:

I have seven cards that are less useful vs combo and control; Innocent Blood and Darkblast. I would probably keep the blast as they help me get ghasts and Tombstalkers into play. So this give me four slots for fun things like... Duress? It hits both arche types hard.

I don't need extra vs burn. Duress works there too, btw.

I think I will play at least three Perish. Maybe four. It is too unfair not to play if one got the cards.


Graveyard hat vs dredge. I got surgicals, and they will do for now. Also Powder Kegs vs Affinity. Note that I do not specifically expect these two deck types to appear, but if they should i would be screwed:P

That's it. I figure the SB is like at 60% optimization, and could be improved a lot. Therefore are other ideas for the Sideboard much welcome!

[OmniStrata]

4 Bloodghast
4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith
3 Geralf’s Messenger

4 Smallpox
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood
3 Wrench Mind

3 Darkblast
4 Dark Ritual

18 Swamp
2 Dakmor Salvage


Sideboard:

I have seven cards that are less useful vs combo and control; Innocent Blood and Darkblast. I would probably keep the blast as they help me get ghasts and Tombstalkers into play. So this give me four slots for fun things like... Duress? It hits both arche types hard.

I don't need extra vs burn. Duress works there too, btw.

I think I will play at least three Perish. Maybe four. It is too unfair not to play if one got the cards.


Graveyard hat vs dredge. I got surgicals, and they will do for now. Also Powder Kegs vs Affinity. Note that I do not specifically expect these two deck types to appear, but if they should i would be screwed:P

That's it. I figure the SB is like at 60% optimization, and could be improved a lot. Therefore are other ideas for the Sideboard much welcome!

I'd recommend Leyline of the Void with a Dark Rit config. No other deck bins cards as fast as Pox does. The ONLY decks I ever have problems with are those that utilize the grave. Be it Lavamancer, Threshold, Crucible of Worlds, Life from the Loam, etc. Bar none, there is no better GY killer than the Leyline which saddens me as nobody wants the [must be in opening hand] stipulation. I suppose the other options I find as my 5th GY hater is Nihil Spellbomb or Tormod's Crypt. I run Perish as a 2-of. My other Creature hate is 2 Spinning Darkness and 1 Tainted Aether in the sideboard. (T. Aether is funny vs. decks that flood *see dredge* and aether vial)

Trying to implement hard draw in Pox is like trying to have your cake and eat it too. Blue is known for pricey but *hard* card advantage. Standstill, Ancestral Visions, Concentrate, Accumulated Knowledge, Fact or Fiction, etc. This card advantage is "Draw advantage". Pox's advantage is what I'd call "toast" advantage. You toast cards that are expendable or returnable to Poxes and your opponent loses real cards. Hymn to Tourach is a solid example. Nether Spirit is tempo/card advantage as well in the face of non-exile removal.

Double edged sword however, as that means your deck on the whole is weaker per card than other decks, but you should get more advantage and quality from your spells, despite them having weaker power levels.

[Hardcore]

Actually I will run a list with no rituals. I upped the land count to 24 instead and that feels good (when I goldfish at least). Feline made a good suggestion.

Nihil spell bomb seems like one could play one or two main deck even.


Maybe I should buy four leylines. But they seem too focused on anti-dredge.: /

[Hardcore]

Last Saturday i attended a legacy tourney that was held as side event for a world championship qualifier (Olle Råde won that one btw) .

We were only 14 players, and everyone seemed to play combo:p
My result sucked but I don't mind much; the experience is valuable. I played this deck, which is much like the other I have posted here except the increased land count.


4 Bloodghast
4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith
3 Geralf’s Messenger

4 Smallpox
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Pox
4 Innocent Blood
3 Wrench Mind

3 Darkblast

22 Swamp
2 Dakmor Salvage


SB

4 powder keg
3 perish
2 surgical extraction
2 leyline of the void
4 duress


My first opponent played Cloudpost I think (Emrakul,crop rotation and all that).
My mistakes was in not realising that 1. He run no counters, and the implication of that, and 2. That every turn I play pox and discard is a timewalk for him. I counted to much on pox effects to slow him, but actually drawing a pox would have been devastating. Smallpox didn't do the job.

I think I met Dredge next.
He won the first game.
In the second he played cabal teraphy and forced me to cast my surgical extraction on
Golgari grave troll. I would have preferred to remove ichorid and bridge from below, still, it was enough to stop him.
Third game I started with a leyline in play. My poor opponent could only beat down with imps, and scooped the cards when Tombstalker got serious about it.
He told me that since he saw surgical game two, he reasoned that I had no leylines and boarded out his enchantment hate!
My randomness won it for me.

Next i met a met a local player that attended with his ANT. It didn't go that well despite all my discard.

1-2, and opponent four played Stoneblade control = 1-3

I played an extra game vs the control player and forgot tell the judges I would drop, so I played also in the last round. I figured it would be over quickly either way:P

Opponent five played some kind of artifact combo. I saw Metalworker so perhaps it was what is called MUD?
Anyway, only Null Rods would have stopped him.


Conclusions on performance so far: My deck work well vs Creature based decks like Elves and RUG. Even decks that include SFM for batterskull.
Batterskull can be managed if my opponent do not run counterspells.

BW control can dig after answers to my win conditions because they are creature based. Knowing if my opponent have counterspells is important so I don't play pox into one. Then again i boarded in my Duressses against the stoneblade player, and ripped his hand apart. He still won.

Cloudpost can die to better deck and better strategy.

I am thinking on speed as being key against these two decks. But my creatures are not that fast...

[OmniStrata]

Pox's original design was to give you decent matchups game one. By having no targeted discard game 1, the combo/control decks cut you in half. I'd recommend ditching Geralf's Messenger and 1 tombstalker for 4 Inquisition of Kozilek.

Pox does NOT have to be fast. But it needs lock pieces. Trying to design it closer to an aggro deck (more than 10 threats) causes Pox to cut you down quite hard as well.

Lock pieces I've used well in the past is Trinisphere, Tainted Aether, Engineered Plague, Leyline (woot leyline win gg), and Liliana of the Veil.

Also, you're playing against counterspells incorrectly. My Magic buddy/coach clearly pointed out that by waiting to 'play around' counterspells, you sell precious turns to your opponent. Does that mean I play into Daze all the time? You bet your arse...

The vast majority of counter spell decks do not run more than 12 counters from what I can recall. Pox supposed to run almost 20 MUST COUNTER spells. Inquisition, Hymn, Sinkhole, Smallpox, and Pox. Force of Will is a joke. Ask anyone with FoW what it's like to get Hymned after it. Not fun ^_^

Black supposed to be the most 'honest' color. LoL. ALWAYS call an opponents bluff and MAKE him counter your spells. Since all of your spells are 2cmc or less, you'll be on the winning end in all cases. That and watching an opponent's island disappear for a turn for Daze brings a smile to any pox player's face running Sinkhole.

[Hardcore]

Yeah, I have run spot discard before to good effect, and may do so again.

As for UW control it doesn't matter trying to force it; they have to much cantrips to dig for answers.
A big creature may attack once or twice before getting removed. Meanwhile the control player build up his mana for Jace. GG

I have phyrexian revokers that I may substitute for the messengers. They die to all my sacrifice effects, but that is OK if one think of them as timewalks on legs.

Another idea is to play Hatred. Against non-blue combo this is should be quite safe.

I may make another try with profane command. I didn't realise you can choose
The same effect twice. Spending four mana to kill two SFM is nice.

[OmniStrata]

Yeah, I have run spot discard before to good effect, and may do so again.

As for UW control it doesn't matter trying to force it; they have to much cantrips to dig for answers.
A big creature may attack once or twice before getting removed. Meanwhile the control player build up his mana for Jace. GG

I have phyrexian revokers that I may substitute for the messengers. They die to all my sacrifice effects, but that is OK if one think of them as timewalks on legs.

Another idea is to play Hatred. Against non-blue combo this is should be quite safe.

I may make another try with profane command. I didn't realise you can choose
The same effect twice. Spending four mana to kill two SFM is nice.

Cantrips can't save you from Pox. You're running 8 of them. The reason they have answers is cause you chose the creature route instead of the *can't be sacrificed and dodges pox fx* threats. Rack/Shrieking Afflictions is superior with all your discard. Your fear is misplaced. They're losing a card, a creature, and a land. They have to cantrip THREE TIMES to recover.

They will cast Jace if you let them build mana, so I suggest removing 1 Pox and 3 Wrench Mind for 4 Sinkholes (or 4 Rancid Earth as its threshold is its only saving grace for 1 more cmc)

Pithing Needle won't die to sac effects. ^_^

You say you hate counterspells but think of Hatred? I'd say not to go that route if counters and burn even exist in your meta. The original Pox thread specifically stated that the deck works best with 8-10 threats with the rest being a barrage of disruption. Running creatures to run Hatred doesn't make it a traditional control Pox anymore but an Aggro Pox. Sadly, it's never done well in other people's experience as well as my own.

I don't think you can use the same effect twice. It says "choose two" but I'm not a judge so I'm not certain. Spending 4 mana is very unlikely in an 8 Pox deck.

The card list you've posted is Aggro so little things like Bloodghast won't cut it. For the sake of speed, you'll be playing Pox arse-backwards. Play/suspend threats first. Consider workhorse threats that can be played (cheated) for 2 mana or less:

Epochrasite
Nihilith
Tombstalker

All of them hit hard and work well in certain time frames. Epochrasite is excellent turn 2-3 and then you start Poxing them to death. Nihilith should be cast asap and after several Poxes should be the only thing on the field turn 5-6. Tomby is Tomby. ^_^

[Hardcore]

I went 2-1-1 today. As usual I stomp on Canadian ***** and Elves combo. My only loss was to storm.

I think I will focus my sideboard to fight combo, which is the weak match up. Thorn of Amethyst,, phyrexian revoker, Duress, leyline of the void etc.

[OmniStrata]

Damn. The 3 most pronounced weaknesses in Pox are Graveyard Use (countered by Leylines), Burn (countered by faster disruption/Sun Droplet ^_^), and True Draw (Concentrate, STANDSTILL!, Divination)

One of my friends built a budget form of Landstill. Standstill is insane. I know to break it early but I'm wondering if there's a way to punish it. After extensive searching, I only found Underworld Dreams, but it seems kind of awkward for what it does, though I'm sure that Ad Nauseum decks would love to see it turn 1 via dark ritual... :cool:

Any ways to punish someone for 'excessive drawing' that Pox can deal with?

[necba]

Damn. The 3 most pronounced weaknesses in Pox are Graveyard Use (countered by Leylines), Burn (countered by faster disruption/Sun Droplet ^_^), and True Draw (Concentrate, STANDSTILL!, Divination)

One of my friends built a budget form of Landstill. Standstill is insane. I know to break it early but I'm wondering if there's a way to punish it. After extensive searching, I only found Underworld Dreams, but it seems kind of awkward for what it does, though I'm sure that Ad Nauseum decks would love to see it turn 1 via dark ritual... :cool:

Any ways to punish someone for 'excessive drawing' that Pox can deal with?



What do you think about : Chains of Mephistopheles ?

[Hardcore]

A counter is not always the right way to go. Using card draw yourself may be better, for example.
Another plan is beat down with Mishra's factory. Great vs standstill!

Misinformation is a something I would like to try.

[Cthuloo]

Damn. The 3 most pronounced weaknesses in Pox are Graveyard Use (countered by Leylines), Burn (countered by faster disruption/Sun Droplet ^_^), and True Draw (Concentrate, STANDSTILL!, Divination)

One of my friends built a budget form of Landstill. Standstill is insane. I know to break it early but I'm wondering if there's a way to punish it. After extensive searching, I only found Underworld Dreams, but it seems kind of awkward for what it does, though I'm sure that Ad Nauseum decks would love to see it turn 1 via dark ritual... :cool:

Any ways to punish someone for 'excessive drawing' that Pox can deal with?

This is weird. Standstill.deck are usually good matchups for pox. If you have the usual waste+factory package, alongside bloodghast or nether spirit, a resolved standstill is at least 50/50 if not slighlty in your favor.

[OmniStrata]

This is weird. Standstill.deck are usually good matchups for pox. If you have the usual waste+factory package, alongside bloodghast or nether spirit, a resolved standstill is at least 50/50 if not slighlty in your favor.

Not sure what's weird about it. The matchup becomes even game 2 when I can Leyline his Crucible of Worlds recursion. Game one I MIGHT win if I can keep him off his 3rd land to prevent the crucible from ever hitting the field but it's hard.

I do run Mishra's / Waste and Cursed Scroll to shoot his manlands, but that crucible! lol. Liliana of the Veil definitely pulls weight no question but again, the hard draw, is there anything besides Underworld Dreams?

Reid Duke himself said he feared the UW match with things like Land Tax etc. This is just as nasty. Thanks for your input btw.

[Hardcore]

You assume you can play underworld dreams before he play standstill, and that it will not be countered. Also,do you really want it in main deck?

[Lighning Bebbi]

I was testing the deck a little.

My current list looks like this:

Deck (60)
4x Mishra's Factory
4x Wasteland
4x Swamp
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3x Polluted Delta
3x Bloodstained Mire
2x Bayou
1x Nether Spirit
2x Crucible of Worlds
2x Cursed Scroll
3x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Dark Ritual
2x Abrupt Decay
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Smallpox
3x Sinkhole
3x Innocent Blood
1x Thoughtseize
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Liliana of the Veil

Sideboard (15)
3x Thorn of Amethyst
2x Pithing Needle
3x Ensnaring Bridge
3x Engineered Plague
3x Surgical Extraction
1x Krosan Grip

Any thoughts? Thanks for your help!

[Chatto]

4x Mishra's Factory
4x Wasteland
4x Swamp
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3x Polluted Delta
3x Bloodstained Mire
2x Bayou

Are you sure to play 23 land? Lot of double black, why not the 4th Urborg? Maybe a little more green sources?


1x Nether Spirit
2x Crucible of Worlds
2x Cursed Scroll
3x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Dark Ritual
2x Abrupt Decay
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Smallpox
3x Sinkhole
3x Innocent Blood
1x Thoughtseize
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Liliana of the Veil

Seems solid, but a lot of double black...

Also, do you really need three SDT? I rather would -1 SDT and +1 Innocent Blood. Why one Seize?


Sideboard (15)
3x Thorn of Amethyst
2x Pithing Needle
3x Ensnaring Bridge
3x Engineered Plague
3x Surgical Extraction
1x Krosan Grip

Maybe something like Perish, Dystopia? Green aldo gives you Pulse, Deed, Loam... No love there? Than again, SB are always meta-choices.

On other news: finally got my hands on two Nether Void, thanks to a little bit of trading and a little bit of cash :))

[Hardcore]

Don't see the need for dark rituals. Replace them with dark blasts and swamps for more early game creature removal and consistency.

[OmniStrata]

You assume you can play underworld dreams before he play standstill, and that it will not be countered. Also,do you really want it in main deck?

I run Dark Rituals so it is possible, though unlikely. With 8 Discard main deck that can be cast before I hard cast Dreams, I'm quite confident it's chance of getting countered is low.

Main deck? Probably not. The majority of people in my meta don't run hard draw often, though one other person runs howling mine. I do admit, 3 mana is steep for this enchantment's effect.

For Lightning, your Dark Rituals when topdecked can help fuel Cursed Scroll, however, as Hardcore says, I'd rather run Dark Rit in a monoblack version of the deck for color consistency. For land, I'd go with 24-26 land with more Bayous, Verdant Catacomb, and a single basic forest. 4 Urborgs? You've got 8 colorless manas sources, that demands the full playset.

[Chatto]

With only three green cards I don't see any reason not to play DR. Yes, they could be replaced with better suited cards: Deed, Pulse, Loam for instance. Maybe even Mox Diamond for manafixing. If you want to go green, play more green, but with this few cards... DR ain't that bad

[Hardcore]

To have the ability to interact with the stack, or at least cast spells on opponents turn, is important. Unfortunately this is not one of the strengths of the color black. Still, there are a few cards that at the very least can make your opponent stumble at the wrong moment.

The following cards are instants, and cost B or less.

Misinformation. This card looks good, literally, which is the main reason I will test it tomorrow. However it does some crazy things against my poor match-ups like combo and UW control.
Those decks rely on cards not suddenly move around at the wrong moment. For example, when the storm player activate LED after playing Past in flames he expect the rituals to be in his graveyard, and not on top of his deck. Then there is the typical blue cantrip deck. Brainstorming becomes a time walk if all the see is cards that was in the graveyard a moment ago. Preferably expensive cards, or those of marginal value like Daze.

It is also nice vs Dredge.

Next is Archive trap.
A blue spell that can be cast for zero mana if your opponent search his library the same turn.
Iirc that is what you do when fetching, right?
Or play enlightened Tutor. Or use any of the many search effects that exist in legacy today.
The idea with this spell is the same as above; to disrupt the opponents timing. Main advantage is the casting cost of nil,nada,zero. The surprise value should be great first time.

Funeral charm. This card need no presentation. It has several useful abilities but those are weak on their own. What makes it worth playing occasionally is that it is the only instant speed discard there is, afaik. To force a combo player discard a card at the wrong time, for him, can make "all the difference in the world, Mr Freeman".

Disruption is not only discard and counterspells. Misplacing peoples stuff tend to make them upset too.

[OmniStrata]

To have the ability to interact with the stack, or at least cast spells on opponents turn, is important. Unfortunately this is not one of the strengths of the color black. Still, there are a few cards that at the very least can make your opponent stumble at the wrong moment.

The following cards are instants, and cost B or less.

Misinformation. This card looks good, literally, which is the main reason I will test it tomorrow. However it does some crazy things against my poor match-ups like combo and UW control.
Those decks rely on cards not suddenly move around at the wrong moment. For example, when the storm player activate LED after playing Past in flames he expect the rituals to be in his graveyard, and not on top of his deck. Then there is the typical blue cantrip deck. Brainstorming becomes a time walk if all the see is cards that was in the graveyard a moment ago. Preferably expensive cards, or those of marginal value like Daze.

It is also nice vs Dredge.

Next is Archive trap.
A blue spell that can be cast for zero mana if your opponent search his library the same turn.
Iirc that is what you do when fetching, right?
Or play enlightened Tutor. Or use any of the many search effects that exist in legacy today.
The idea with this spell is the same as above; to disrupt the opponents timing. Main advantage is the casting cost of nil,nada,zero. The surprise value should be great first time.

Funeral charm. This card need no presentation. It has several useful abilities but those are weak on their own. What makes it worth playing occasionally is that it is the only instant speed discard there is, afaik. To force a combo player discard a card at the wrong time, for him, can make "all the difference in the world, Mr Freeman".

Disruption is not only discard and counterspells. Misplacing peoples stuff tend to make them upset too.

I ran both Misinformation and Funeral Charm. Charm is a monster vs. 1 mana drop decks. Elves, Lackey, Bob, Hierarch, (not DRS :(), Unflipped Delver, etc. give charm great killing potential. Using Charm on Nether Spirit to chump a 4 toughness creature is awesome 1 for 1. Top decking something? [FUNERAL CHARM, end of Draw step!] Aww, could have used that land huh? ^_^

Misinformation I'd use after a few smallpoxes and sinkholes since they're going to discard their most expensive cards to the poxes, putting them back is like a Triple time walk. No more land for 3 turns? Sure ting ^_^

Archive trap I would not recommend. The vast majority of Legacy Decks like having big graveyards. Threshold, Lavamancer, Re-animator, combo decks using PiF, etc. I'm sure it'd cut down any rogue decks that avoid GY use but I don't think those exist in Legacy. Heck, even Zoo wouldn't mind a bigger Goyf.

[feline]

Don't know how I missed this at first, but somehow I did, glad I double checked, anyhow, it's about a week later than it should be, but updated with a new pox list, this time a Loam Pox list, though still mostly swamp's more than anything else, in either case, congrats to John Prather who made the top 16 at SCG Seattle with this:
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=55308
Creatures (1)
1 Nether Spirit
Planeswalkers (4)
4 Liliana of the Veil
Lands (25)
2 Swamp
2 Barren Moor
4 Bayou
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Marsh Flats
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Spells (30)
2 Cursed Scroll
1 Mox Diamond
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Dark Ritual
1 Entomb
4 Hymn to Tourach
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Life from the Loam
1 Raven's Crime
4 Sinkhole
4 Smallpox
2 Thoughtseize
Sideboard
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Pithing Needle
1 Zuran Orb
3 Engineered Plague
2 Leyline of the Void
1 Spinning Darkness
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Maelstrom Pulse

[Tiago_B.]

Hi. ive been away from MTG for some time, but recently my old friends from highschool invited me for a tournment.

They know all the cards i had back then, so they know i would take affinity or burn and they will sideboard against those decks.
Unfortunatly for them, i made a Pox deck when i was in university, so im going to take it.

Im expecting combo(that guy always plays combo, prolly Dragonstorm with discard), Elves, Goblins (this guy is very skilled), Burn, MonoWhite control (gain life / defend then spam beaters / decree of justice for wincon, real gay), and maybe affinity.


This is my list:

[3 Planeswalkers]
3 Liliana of the Veil

[7 Creatures]
4 Bloodghast
2 Tombstalker
1 Nether Spirit

[24 Spells]
4 Dark Ritual
4 Innocent Blood
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
2 Smother
1 Pox
1 Syphon Life


[4 Artifacts]
4 The Rack

[22 Lands]
4 Mishra’s Factory
18 Swamp

~~~~~~~
Sideboard
~~~~~~~
3 Null Rod
3 Ratchet Bomb
1 Syphon Life
1 Damnation
3 Infest
4 Leyline of the Void


I think i need to work it a little. I would rather take Spinning Darkness instead of syphon life but i dont have them. I do have a ton of other black cards like despise, go for the throat, shriekmaw, cabal therapy, BoB (i just dont run it cuz tombstalker), etc etc
I can also splash white if i want.

I think i need mostly:

Instant removal.
E. Plague instead of infest.
A solid answer for combo decks.
Some kind of life gain (sun droplet?) because Syphon Life is bad without Loam.
Im also worried Bloodghast wont be strong enough.
Is Necroplasm worth a slot?

Any thoughts?

[Chatto]

@ Tiago_B:
- I never really liked Nether Spirit with other creatures, but that's just me.
- I really recommend the 4th Liliana, she can be Beast.
- E. Plague is in my opinion much better than Infest: same cmc and stays on the field.
- Dark Ritual can be good, but others here have dropped it in favour to some more action.

Just my thoughts.

------

So I played a tournament today, 26-something attended. Five rounds with a top 8.

The list:

Creatures (1)

1 Nether Spirit

Spells (25)

1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Life from the Loam
3 Thoughtseize
3 Innocent Blood
4 Sinkhole
4 Smallpox
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Inquisition of Kozilek

Other spells (4)

2 Nether Void
2 Cursed Scroll

Planeswalkers (4)

4 Liliana of the Veil

Land (26)

1 Ghost Quarter
1 Forest
1 Bloodstained Mirre
3 Bayou
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
4 Swamp

Sideboard (15)

1 Dystopia
2 Hymn to Tourach
2 Engineered Plague
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Extirpate
2 Leyline of the Void
2 Pithing Needle
2 Perish


I played against the following (didn't make extended notes)

R1 Jund:

I know him from the regular gatherings on friday-evening and know what he plays.

G1: He just lands a Bob and Library and walks all over me with cardadvantage. I did manage to get rid of some cards, but it was just too much.
G2: I just take the game, blowing lands and creatures away. Cursed Scroll and Liliana land, ensuring me the board stays clear and I can go for the kill.
G3: I make sure no creatures can attack, using E. Bridge. We went to time, him only having a Bob. I try to stall and it looks like I'm going to, but then he rips a Pulse from the top and I am done.

L, 1-0

R2 Team America:

Of the same group of guys who play every friday night.

G1: I draw like a champ, killing Delver(I. Blood), Delver (I. Blood), Goyf (Decay) and Delver (I. Blood). After that I start controlling the board by going for lands with Waste-Loam Engine, Sinkhole. Liliana takes care with cards in his hand, while Cursed Scroll and Factories take me home.
G2: Pretty much the same as above.

W, 1-1

R3 RUG

Yet again an regular of friday night testing!

G1: RUG does what RUG does best; landing little nasty creatures and countering almost everything that threatens their winning position.
G2: He boards in Sulfuric Vortex and lands it while I have the better boardposition. I just can't find an answer and die horribly...

L, 1-2

R4 Elves!

A new guy I never met. He just got his deck together.

G1: he plays some, I kill some. I take care of all his land, but can't get rid of all the manadorks he had landed. Eventually I can't keep up (no threat, no removal) and he lands Glimpse, playing this beast giving all his creatures +x/ +x for each creature he control. Ouch...
G2: I take care of all the little nasty Elves, eventually landing a Scroll which keeps the board clear. Everything went really really slow. This was a really weird game, for he could have landed a Proggy. Yet he was new to the game and did the following:

Boardstate was the following: he had Cradle, Cavern, Concordian Crossroads and two Elves (Nettle Sentinal and manadork). I had three+ land (two were Factories), Scroll and a Lilly in my hand (along with some other cards). He taps, but then decided to attack first. I block with Factory, giving it +1/ +1, killing it. Then he plays Order, saccing his manadork dropping Proggy and declares to attack again. I pointed out his misplay and he then gave me the turn. I then drop Lilly (making him sac Proggy)E. Bridge and with the help of three Factories and Scroll.

G3: E. Plague, Scroll, E. Bridge and Lilly do what has to be done: kill Elves.

W 2-2

R5 RB, don't know exactly what it really is

The pilot is also one of the guys I test my deck with, so we know what to expect.

G1: I start to poorly, but manage to keep up for some while. Eventually he just keeps pounding into me, while I lack answers and defence...
G2: Same as above, but I manage to take over the board on one life... The inevitable happens and he rips burn from the top...

L 2-3

All in all, I really dig Loam-Pox. Some thoughts:

- Nether Void is just too slow. I sided it out every round. Going to replace them with Sensei's Divining Top.
- Ghost Quarter is nice, but didn't really gave me a good feeling. I only used once or twice, one time killing my own land to find a desperately needed Swamp! Going to drop it for a second Pulse
- Going to replace IoK with Hymn: just want to rip that hand :-p Maybe go the classic way: 3 IoK and 4 Hymn, with Thoughtseize in the board.
- Going to replace Nether Spirit and I. Blood for 4 Deathrite Shaman: manadork after Sinkhole,Waste or Smallpox, but also four extra wincons (if they stay in the field that is). Of course it will sometimes get killed by Smallpox, but hey! just trying something new here :-) Some of the guys I know from tournaments came up with this idea and I must say: I like it. Not sure if it will work, though.
- SB will also change:

1 Duress
2 Perish
2 Engineered Plague
2 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Pithing Needle
3 Pernicious Deed (really missed this card...)
3 Extirpate

[Hardcore]

Hi. ive been away from MTG for some time, but recently my old friends from highschool invited me for a tournment.

Im expecting combo(that guy always plays combo, prolly Dragonstorm with discard), Elves, Goblins (this guy is very skilled), Burn, MonoWhite control (gain life / defend then spam beaters / decree of justice for wincon, real gay), and maybe affinity.


This is my list:

[3 Planeswalkers]
3 Liliana of the Veil

[7 Creatures]
4 Bloodghast
2 Tombstalker
1 Nether Spirit

[24 Spells]
4 Dark Ritual
4 Innocent Blood
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
2 Smother
1 Pox
1 Syphon Life


[4 Artifacts]
4 The Rack

[22 Lands]
4 Mishra’s Factory
18 Swamp

~~~~~~~
Sideboard
~~~~~~~
3 Null Rod
3 Ratchet Bomb
1 Syphon Life
1 Damnation
3 Infest
4 Leyline of the Void


I think i need to work it a little. I would rather take Spinning Darkness instead of syphon life but i dont have them. I do have a ton of other black cards like despise, go for the throat, shriekmaw, cabal therapy, BoB (i just dont run it cuz tombstalker), etc etc
I can also splash white if i want.

I think i need mostly:

Instant removal.
E. Plague instead of infest.
A solid answer for combo decks.
Some kind of life gain (sun droplet?) because Syphon Life is bad without Loam.
Im also worried Bloodghast wont be strong enough.
Is Necroplasm worth a slot?

Any thoughts?

Lifegain is not neccessary, but you need removal to avoid being overwhelmed by creatures.

If you have confidants then you should run them instead of tombstalkers. They are expensive as hell for a good reason!

Smother is not that awesome. Neither is Syphon Life. You won't have much need for Dark rituals either.

-2 Tombstalker
-2 Smother
-1 Syphon Life
-4 Dark Ritual

+1 Pox
+2 Swamp
+3 Darkblast (awesome card, especially vs delvers, Lavamancer and elves. To mention a few. Works very well with Dark Confidant and Bloodghast. It also works well with spinning dorkness. Or to be more precise; you need dredge abilities to run spinning darkness at all.)
+3 Raven's crime (to maximise effectiveness of liliana and The rack)

For sideboard:

-1 Syphon Life
-1 Damnation (it cost too much to cast)

+1 Infest (four copies of this card is good. There is nothing called overkill in winning)
+1 Ratchet Bomb perhaps? Not unreasonable to run four copies. You have nothing else to against enchantments like Rest in peace and Sulfuric Vortex.

[Hardcore]

@Chatto

If you play Loam and wasteland you don't really need Sinkholes. It would be more effective to replace them with two Entomb to make the engine start faster. Of course, you lose tempo by using a land to destroy a land, rather than use a sorcery,but this is not a tempo deck after all.

I recommend Darkblast for you too. You need more creature defence. DB do kills the Confidants that cost you the first game. (Also, GREAT synergy with loam!)

Next you need to kill your opponent faster, which means more win conditions need to be added to the deck.
The Rack is always nice with discard, especially with Raven's crime (that work well with loam).

so, out:

2 Nether void and 4 Sinkhole. I am not sure how good Cursed Scroll is. It is in a way Liliana of the Veil in artifact form.

In:

2 Entomb, 2 raven's crime and 4 The rack

A difference of mere two cards, but that is easy to fix for you:)

[Tiago_B.]

I hope this new list seems better. Thanks for the insight from you guys, and specially Ballinmd for helping me out.

[3 Planeswalkers]
3 Liliana of the Veil

[5 Creatures]
3 Tombstalker
2 Abyssal Persecutor

[23 Spells]
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
4 Innocent Blood
2 Shrieking Affliction
2 Go for the Throat


[7 Artifacts]
3 The Rack
3 Cursed Scroll
1 Ratchet Bomb

[22 Lands]
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Mishra’s Factory
17 Swamp

SD:

3 Ratchet Bomb
3 Infest
4 Pithing Needle
?


Is the land count too low?
Animate Dead is kind of an experiment, could be reanimate or exhume instead, or something else more 'usual' in Pox decks, like LD (Choking Sands or Rancid Earth). I will be facing aggros mostly so its decent i guess.
Should Cabal Therapy become 3 for 3 IoK?
I know i should run BoB instead of stalkers since i have tops.

EDITED After changes. Added Percy, took out Tops, Animate Dead, Contagion.

[Hardcore]

@Tiago,

I love Contagion. But the sad truth is that is not as good as it used to be:frown: when I ran it in my Necro deck back in the days. Darkblast simply is better because contagion can only be a "1 for1" effect, but one Darkblast can shut down a whole deck (for example Elves).

Animate Dead is something of a Meta choice. However you will find you usually rather draw something else than that card. This is the case with all cards that are conditional and were you have no way to influence conditions.

Cabal therapy need bloodghasts and similar recurring creatures be used at maximum efficiency.
Otherwise you are not using the card to its full potential.

You don't need BoB to run tops, but you do need run some fetch lands.

Thats all for now. Gotta run!

[Lucienx5]

I'm Christopher Powell and my deck is posted on here for SCG 12' Provinece


Creatures (5)
1 Filth
4 Gravecrawler

Planeswalkers (4)
4 Liliana of the Veil

Lands (25)
11 Swamp
2 Mishra's Factory
4 Mutavault
4 Wasteland
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Spells (26)
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Innocent Blood
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Sinkhole
4 Smallpox
1 Nether Void

Sideboard
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 The Rack
2 Tombstalker
3 Engineered Plague
3 Leyline of the Void
2 Spinning Darkness


I read in some of these posts that Pox's late game need work and I feel that my decklist provides something pox is much in need of, a clock.
Being able to play a turn 1 recurring beater applys more pressure to an opponent and can bring a close many games earlier on then a triditional list.
I seem to win many more games with the 6 manlands and 4 creatures then with 1, maybe 2 copies of a creature more suited for blocking (Nether Spirit).
I have recently made a small adjustment to the list to add a 2nd Nether Void over the Filth. While Filth is good and all i just seemed to have the game won already before i binned my 1 copy of him, but I'm sure he'll find his way into the sideboard. The most optimal play with the deck is often leading with an Inqusition first and the Gravecaller 2nd to scope out potental threats. Keep in mind that the Gravecaller can still be played turn 1 if you have no Inqusition or via Dark Ritual.

In it's Star City Games run I lost round 3 to Ant Tendrils where my opponent won the die roll and won the games 1+3 before I could even draw a card. Game 2 I won with turn 1: Swamp, Dark Ritual, Inqusition, Hymn to Torach, turn 2: Swamp, Gravecaller, Dark Ritual, Liliana. Needless to say, he did not do so well... but we know how strong he finished. I also lost round 7 to mono-green Vengevine Elves, I did not see Vengevine until game 3 and I even had 2 Engenerred Plagues out but he bagged the Vengevines until he could bin them then pretty much discarded 2 elves to beat face... it was a sad match and i didn't bring in my graveyard hate in layline of the voids cause I did not suspect Vengevine. I have ADD and play less well as the night rolls in.

I won rounds against mono-blue control Feat. Jace 2.0 where I inadvertently deduced that I had a 2nd use for sideboard in The Rack, I Figured out that I can sent The Rack's damage straight to Jace which was most likely responsable for winning me the match. It was very satisfying watching my opponent Fateseal himself to dig for an answer he would never find. I won against Red Deck Wins using a priority rule to bring back Gravecallers and beat to the face while leaving him with no more then 2 land all game. By the way the priority thing I did was animate Mutavalt retaining priority, when i had prioriy and the "zombie" mutavault I cast Gravecaller from my Graveyard also retaining priority, so the only time he could bolt a creature was after I have had another so he wasted one lightning bolt before giving up realising that there was nothing he could do to stop me from getting 3 Gravecallers in play. I also played against RUG Delver which was a walk in the park for me, turn 1: Ritual, Inqusition, Hymn that ripped 2 land on the play and followed up with a turn 2 Sinkhole. The one delver he got on the table was not longed for this world and again Gravecaller beats get there.

Several of my opponents comented postively on my deck so i figured i would post on a pox forum to find out what other people thought. I am also aware of the E. Plague/Mutavault interactions and in matches where they are brought in i bring with them Racks and Tombstalker as a "just in case" messure.

Any and all sugestions are welcomed. And By the way, playing this list in a Loam Pox scenario list is very fun being to dredge all my creatures to play pretty much, but I can't seem to get the compisition perfect. I have come in 4th place with it 4 or 5 times but my local store only pays out to 3rd place or better without splits. Thanks a bunch

[Hardcore]

Thanks for sharing!

I wanted to find room in your main deck for The Rack. It is a very good card that help diversify your win conditions and thus reduce your vulnerability to hate. I would suggest replacing your mishras with The Rack. They don't have synergy with grave crawlers.

Next I would also try squeeze DarkBlast in there. Instant removal is not only needed (because you have none), but give you the means to do nasty combat tricks!
Oh, the dredge ability also has synergy with some zombies...:cool:
Not sure what to replace, but the nether voids don't seem to be the cards for a deck with faster clock.

[Lucienx5]

Thanks for sharing!

I wanted to find room in your main deck for The Rack. It is a very good card that help diversify your win conditions and thus reduce your vulnerability to hate. I would suggest replacing your mishras with The Rack. They don't have synergy with grave crawlers.

Next I would also try squeeze DarkBlast in there. Instant removal is not only needed (because you have none), but give you the means to do nasty combat tricks!
Oh, the dredge ability also has synergy with some zombies...:cool:
Not sure what to replace, but the nether voids don't seem to be the cards for a deck with faster clock.

I can't cut the factories because I really need my land count to be 25, some games I side out 1 land and even that really affects my base significantly. Plus the 2 factory can pump mutavault and give me 2 extra creatures that can block if needed. But darkblast is a card worth considering. Maybe I'll take out the second nether void for it, I still wanna keep 1 in cause every time I nail it down I have won that game. I also made a smaller change in swapping out 2 swamp for 2 cabal pit. So far they haven't hurt me at all cause I usually get them with urborg support and they give me some type of out against certain decks.

[Hardcore]

I can see you have mana issues;11 swamps and four Urborg is not much when you need double black on turn two play any of the twelve spells thatt require that.
My guess is also that you don't like playing smallpox,right? You need to revise your mana base Imho.

[Lucienx5]

I can see you have mana issues;11 swamps and four Urborg is not much when you need double black on turn two play any of the twelve spells thatt require that.
My guess is also that you don't like playing smallpox,right? You need to revise your mana base Imho.

I get that my mana base appairs a little shakey but I have never had much of a problem with it, I alway manage to open with either 2 black sources or an urborg opening hand. I can see how I may just be very luckey in that but I only mull 1 in every 9-10 hand to mana probs. I am also able to keep a spare hand or 2 that's loaded with just a single swamp but multiple gravecallers, inquisitions, or a ritual with some action. And I

[Lucienx5]

I can see you have mana issues;11 swamps and four Urborg is not much when you need double black on turn two play any of the twelve spells thatt require that.
My guess is also that you don't like playing smallpox,right? You need to revise your mana base Imho.

I get that my mana base appairs a little shakey but I have never had much of a problem with it, I alway manage to open with either 2 black sources or an urborg opening hand. I can see how I may just be very luckey in that but I only mull 1 in every 9-10 hand to mana probs. I am also able to keep a spare hand or 2 that's loaded with just a single swamp but multiple gravecallers, inquisitions, or a ritual with some action. And I play small pox often with little difficulty on my own behalf it was big pox that I hated to cast, so I pulled it out.

I've come in second with this deck locally and with a long string of top 4 splits. 12 post remains to be a huge problem for the deck having only won 1 in every 5 games or so. I alway get the post player to like 3- life then glimmer post to ruin my day. I joked about adding and did add false cure to stop that endgame strategy and it does work but there is very little else the card works for and the 12 post player plays infrequently that I always could use something else. But it is fun.

[Hardcore]

Contamination is also a card that have potential vs decks dependent on their lands. Note that it not only make lands produce black mana solely, but also limit the amount to one B!:laugh: That should be murder for ramp decks.

[Chatto]

so, out:

2 Nether void and 4 Sinkhole. I am not sure how good Cursed Scroll is. It is in a way Liliana of the Veil in artifact form.

In:

2 Entomb, 2 raven's crime and 4 The rack



I like the idea, but I rarely use the 'Loam'-engine. To me it's just to fragile. I think you'r right about Cursed Scroll, but don't really understand what you mean with it being a Lilly in artifact form: it has won me games, Lilly made me control the game to a certain degree.

I am currently testing Shaman and it takes some skill playing the card. Sometimes you have to sac it to Smallpox, but in the end it's really nice to have a manaramp, damagesource and lifegainer. If he sticks, he's a house! For example: T1 swamp, Shaman, T2 Wasteland, Sinkhole/ Hymn... GG! And yes it has occured on several occasions :-)

[Hardcore]

If you want green for the shaman there is Riftstone Portal. I haven't played that myself, because I am mono B, but it is a land you don't mind dredge or pox into the gravyard!

[Hardcore]

Like Chatto I see the need for faster killing. Given that I run creature pox my need will be fulfilled by negators, which I got yesterday by mail.


4 bloodghast
4 Tombstalker
4 nihilith
4 phyrexian negator

4 smallpox
4 inquisition of kozilek
4 pox
2 duress

18 swamp
2 dakmor salvage
3 darkblast
4 innocent blood
4 dark Ritual


I may add a fourth Darkblast to the sideboard, to help clear the way for the negators

[beez]

Like Chatto I see the need for faster killing. Given that I run creature pox my need will be fulfilled by negators, which I got yesterday by mail.


4 bloodghast
4 Tombstalker
4 nihilith
4 phyrexian negator

4 smallpox
4 inquisition of kozilek
4 pox
2 duress

18 swamp
2 dakmor salvage
3 darkblast
4 innocent blood
4 dark Ritual


I may add a fourth Darkblast to the sideboard, to help clear the way for the negators

this looks like a really fun list hardcore. i may give it a spin after the course of my exploration of a discard pox deck i am working on.

[beez]

for those of you who use the graveyard heavily how do you deal with the graveyard hate people board in?

[beez]

also hardcore, what do you board in against control and combo with that list and sideboard?

[Hardcore]

My sideboard is massively against combo.


4 thorn of Amethyst
4 phyrexian Revoker
4 leyline of the void
3 perish


Note: the SB is untested and not tuned yet.
I am however quite certain the direction is correct;
The deck can easily handle creature threats, except for a hard cast Emrakul! In the later case I will rely on speed to win before that happen.
Perish is possible to do without. Diabolic edict could be a better choice (given that darn Emrakul).

[Hardcore]

for those of you who use the graveyard heavily how do you deal with the graveyard hate people board in?

Unlike, for example Dredge, the game plan rarely revolve around the graveyard to a degree that make hate crippling. It is like boarding in chains of mephistofeles versus Esperblade and expect an auto win; they just quit finesse around with cameos, play batterskull and win.

For pox it means not playing Bloodghast from the graveyard, but hard cast it. Like creatures normally should.:laugh:

But watch out for RIP + Helm combo!

[OmniStrata]

for those of you who use the graveyard heavily how do you deal with the graveyard hate people board in?

I'd rather go the non-graveyard route. If you run a Pox.dec that barely uses the yard; i.e. No Crucible of Worlds or Life from the Loam; You can defeat decks that actually side in GY hate since the hate becomes dead. That's Virtual Card Advantage.

My decklist uses only Nether Spirit from the Yard and the board has Tomby if I find my foe doesn't run GY hate game 2. They most likely won't.

For things that can kill GY hate in mono black, you've only got a tiny handful of options.

Gate to Phyrexia: Conditional artifact hate that shows up early.
Duress: For non-Leyline GY hate
Creature GY hate? DRS, Yixlid Jailer etc: Pox doesn't care, they're gonna sac it anyway lol.
Leyline of the Void, Planar Void, Enchantment GY hate: Ratchet Bomb and a Surgical Extraction on the Pithing Needle/Artifact kill on the GY hate you made them discard. aka VERY HARD to deal with.

Again, Pox shouldn't need the yard to get its job done. It's neither Loam (unless you want it to be) or a Dredge based deck. That and I hate dredging with it without SDT which then wants fetchlands which then makes you soft to stifle and well... It's a nasty can of worms... :eek:

[Chatto]

(...)

Again, Pox shouldn't need the yard to get its job done. It's neither Loam (unless you want it to be) or a Dredge based deck. That and I hate dredging with it without SDT which then wants fetchlands which then makes you soft to stifle and well... It's a nasty can of worms... :eek:

I agree! I just deny them land and/ or cards in hand. Just because I play LotL doesn't mean I depend on the GY. The only time I play LotL is when I really need the Wasteland to destroy a land to keep my opponent off balance or to get a Factory back. Dredging is another thing I rarely do. Other than that, DRS depends on the GY, but backed up with Discard, 4 Abrupt Decay and 2 Pulses (along with 3 Deeds in the board) I don't see any GY sticks for long...

I was thinking of dropping the Cursed Scroll and adding Nether Void again. Just to supplement the 'Denial Plan'. Landing one after killing of land and hand is just brutal. It does bring me back to 8 Wincons.

DRS can just give me a little edge over my opponent to keep the upper-hand. Later on it can use all spells as damage-source. Mind you, DRS can do damage even with an Ensnaring Bridge on the table, which in my opinion is pretty sweet
:-)

[beez]

yeah, you guys decks seem to have some resiliency against gy hate, but some of the loam pox builds seem to really use them a lot, so I was wondering how they dealt with it. I try to use enough graveyard to be helpful but not enough to tempt them to use graveyard hate. Also Leyline of sanctity in the Show and Tell decks is showing up so much now it has gone from being a fairly easy win with all the pox sac effects and discard, to being unfavorable to a low creature pox deck like mine. it is another argument for trying an aggro pox build like hardcore's sometime. or going back to a more land-destructy build. i do love pithing needle on the board for pox a lot though.

i wonder if sideboarding Fleshbag Marauder would help any against show and tell, or whether it would even work or be useful for the slot in general.

[beez]

Here is what i have been running recently. Shrieking Affliction has made me feel like discard pox is more viable than it was. Having 8 rack effects goes a long way in adding consistency to it. I find it has a pretty good midgame and typically comes from behind to win. Whereas I used to have trouble doing enough damage to finish them off before whatever soft lock i had on them dissolved, now a big pox and 3-6 damage a turn in rack effects plus whatever spirit/ghast/scroll/factory damage may occur.

4 pox
4 Smallpox
4 Lilliana
4 innocent blood
4 inquisition of Kozeliek
4 hymn to tourach
4 raven's crime
4 the rack
4 shrieking affliction
1 nether spirit
1 cursed scroll
1 bloodghast

4 urborg
4 mishra's factory
2 dakmor salvage
12 swamp

[beez]

I do like the idea of boarding in Tombstalker. That is clever.

[beez]

Maybe you guys are right. Dystopia against leyline. But without discard against counters it may be hard to cast and maverick can tutor up a cat to hate it unless you have a sac effect at the ready.

[Hardcore]

@beez, LoS is not a card that is particularly good vs pox. The odds are not great that they will have it in their hand at start. If so, what can they do? Take a Mulligan? That is perfectly all right when you want a leyline of the void in play vs Dredge. It almost guarantee a win. LoS, otoh, is to avoid being target of discard spells and an awful way to achieve that.
After all by boarding the enchantment they already weaken their deck for you. Then, because of its high casting cost, the SnT player is quite committed to doing a Mulligan if he fail to have it at start. As you can see that is a free hymn for you. If he was on the play you can respond with swamp + dark Ritual + POX to reduce him to two card in hand, no lands and a useless enchantment in play. Oh, and at 13 life, or less.

Ps. Dystopia sucks. Get The Abyss instead. Or sphere of resistance.

[feline]

I did sideboard Dystopias but, when I made the deck Maverick was alot more popular overall, and locally it was just ridiculous up here, the local metagame at the time would sometimes have a Maverick deck in the room for every 4-5 players, and at an Open back in July 2012, there was as much Maverick as there was RUG, it was just absurd!

[Chatto]

@ Hardcore: Dystopia sucks indeed (I had it in my SB, but never used it), but only because of the cumulative upkeep. It does destroy permanents, so thats pretty good. Other than that, the Abyss is far better against creature-based decks and it doesn't have cumulative upkeep :-)

Another card to consider, if you play Bg Loam, is Golgari Charm: three effects in one card. Pretty good if you ask me.

[beez]

Yeah they pretty much do have to mill to it and they need to save Forces for sac effects and the edicts i bring in addition to the innocent bloods in the main board. And since the only white permanent they would have is the leyline and no way to recast it, a dystopia for one turn could be all i need with my more discard build. I do see the drawbacks as you explain them.

[beez]

Distopia is probably a bit slow for elves though isn't it?

[Michael Keller]

@ Hardcore: Dystopia sucks indeed (I had it in my SB, but never used it), but only because of the cumulative upkeep. It does destroy permanents, so thats pretty good. Other than that, the Abyss is far better against creature-based decks and it doesn't have cumulative upkeep :-)

Another card to consider, if you play Bg Loam, is Golgari Charm: three effects in one card. Pretty good if you ask me.

Dystopia doesn't destroy permanents - it forces players to sacrifice permanents. Which is, coincidentally, very important. It also doesn't target, unlike The Abyss which does.

Additionally, I like how you're all saying the cards sucks and to just play The Abyss when both are completely different in functionality from the other. One hits non-creature permanents, which is easily more of a problem for mono-colored decks than ones that opt to run green.

The cost of Dystopia is also more attractive than the four-mana requirement for The Abyss in an attrition-based war, which is honestly much more prohibitive than playing Dystopia and paying three to five life over the course of three to five turns.

[Chatto]

@ Hollywood, about non-targeting saccing permanents instead of destroying them; my bad, I knew that one. It just came out the wrong way (had my birthdayparty last night) In a Mono Coloured Pox deck this can be of great value, indeed, but when splashing Green like I do there are better options. That is one reason why I think it is bad card choice. The second one is the lifeloss, as mentioned before. I understand that it uses are broader and you can land it faster, but again IMHO those arguments only stick when playing mono-coloured.

@ beez: against Elves I would use Perish. The sheer speed of the deck makes Dystopia too slow and after the boardsweep you should have enough to keep them under your thumb. I know it effects all green creatures, so to me it can be a kind of shitty as well.

[Hardcore]

Dystopia is too slow in probably all situations that matter (unless you can cast it on turn one with a Ritual) A show and tell deck will be ready to go off at the time he must sacrifice his leyline. Hence my advice to just play pox effects (you don't want give your opponent time walks, right?)

Abyss or Ensnaring bridge. Whatever works with Show and tell. It isa different kind of answer for LoS.

[Michael Keller]

I'll be running my version of Pox at Jupiter Games this Saturday.

[Chatto]

Nice! I'm looking forward to read your report and decklist! Good luck and hopefully you will be victorious :-)

[Michael Keller]

I'm going super old school.

[beez]

I'm going super old school.
Do It!! I'm going to play mine in a small casual local tournament.

[Michael Keller]

The build I'll be playing attacks opponents' hands more than anything else. I think in a combo-centric meta, hand disruption is an incredibly underrated aspect of controlling and winning games. With that being said, however, the route I'm taking is a bit less conventional and will probably raise more questions and eyebrows than dropping jaws and spinning heads.

I also happen to believe that Pox - in any incarnation, budget or powered - is incredibly well-positioned in today's general meta. Have you guys seen what decks have been winning?

[beez]

The build I'll be playing attacks opponents' hands more than anything else. I think in a combo-centric meta, hand disruption is an incredibly underrated aspect of controlling and winning games. With that being said, however, the route I'm taking is a bit less conventional and will probably raise more questions and eyebrows than dropping jaws and spinning heads.

I also happen to believe that Pox - in any incarnation, budget or powered - is incredibly well-positioned in today's general meta. Have you guys seen what decks have been winning?

I agree. I do well against combo with discard pox and the printing of shrieking affliction. I miss the extra land destruction but don't miss getting sinkhole dazed and wasteland stifled. As i said sneak and show running leyline of sanctity gives me pause so i'll be interested to see what you use and how you do. One of the rhings i love about pox is that since it is somewhat fringe there are many ways of approaching it as we can see from this thread which makes it a very interesting archetype.

[Michael Keller]

For as much as I want to go the route of land destruction, I will be eschewing the targeting aspect of that in favor of ripping apart my opponents' life totals with The Rack. Obviously, land destruction in a deck with The Rack isn't overly effective, but I think it works just fine here. My version is really more semi-suicidal, which obviously has its merits and disadvantages. But this is more of an experiment than anything else, and the most important thing to realize here is that most people are hardly prepared to deal with Pox strategies these days.

Because I am firmly going the mono-black route, I will be restoring the archetype to a more classic variation of the deck with more of the actual card Pox.

I will also be trying out Oppression.

[beez]

Oh hell yeah. 3Mc. Great idea. That would work well in my 8x rack too. I wonder how i could fit it in. Good luck with that.

[Chatto]

Mono Black are almost always make a choise between LD-focused, with Nether Void main, or handdisruption, with the Rack as a 4 of, these days. Seeing as you are going to fit in Oppression I would drop LD almost altogether, making more space for hard handdisruption. With hard handdisruption I meaning also no Raven's Crime, which ask for Crucible or Loam. Also as a Wincon I would suggest three Cursed Scroll.

That's all for now, got to run! Sure am eager to see your build!

[feline]

In pushing High Tide specifically, one thing I do not want to go against is a mono black pox list that has an even heavier focus on discard than it already does, too much of it can rip your hand to nothing, then you never recover with a Liliana in play.

[beez]

if the opponent doesn't side in grave hate i can make Raven's crime VERY annoying with the Shrieking afflictions in as well. And it is a small victory alone for them to waste side cards having to combat only 4 Raven's Crime and 1 Nether Spirit so they don't get screwed by it. During the usual grindy midgame with a Rack or Affliction or two in even with no Lilliana I just try and keep three black sources in play, ideally an Urborg a Factory and a Swamp. Sometimes if i have the luxury i lay down a fourth in case i need to pox. Otherwise any land I draw I get I just retrace it and they die to the racks and afflictions rather quick after that. If a Cursed Scroll is online too that is icing too. Perhaps I should add another scroll. 4 Duress are in the board just for a little extra speed and pain if necesary. I wonder how a singleton Oppression as Hollywood came up with would fit in. Bloodghast gone from this build now though I love him dearly.

[OmniStrata]

Dystopia doesn't destroy permanents - it forces players to sacrifice permanents. Which is, coincidentally, very important. It also doesn't target, unlike The Abyss which does.

Additionally, I like how you're all saying the cards sucks and to just play The Abyss when both are completely different in functionality from the other. One hits non-creature permanents, which is easily more of a problem for mono-colored decks than ones that opt to run green.

The cost of Dystopia is also more attractive than the four-mana requirement for The Abyss in an attrition-based war, which is honestly much more prohibitive than playing Dystopia and paying three to five life over the course of three to five turns.

The abyss doesn't exactly target either per se. The enemy chooses what to sacrifice. I found 2 excellent cards that do what they do for the same or less cmc.

Instead of Dystopia, I ran Culling Scales in the board. Though it can't hit Leylines, I'm not concerned with them. Leylines aren't win cons. It does generate massive card advantage with Nether Spirit and can serve as a lock piece vs. decks that don't run 4+ cmc mana permanents.

The Abyss < Tainted Aether. My friend beat my skull in time and again with Dredge. Token generating decks also don't care about Abyss. But anyone hit by Sinkhole that is creature based cries very bloody tears when I slam this turn 3 by Dark Rit or turn 4. On an enemy board that's stuck on 2 lands and 1 creature, it's auto win practically. I run cursed scrolls and factories so I'm not concerned.

[lyracian]

Because I am firmly going the mono-black route, I will be restoring the archetype to a more classic variation of the deck with more of the actual card Pox.
I will also be trying out Oppression.Should be good against Combo decks. I love playing the Rack; what are your thoughts on shriking affliction?


I'm going super old school.What Gypsy Pox with Bottomless Pit?
I look forward to reading about how you do.



The Abyss < Tainted Aether.
Funny how the same cards keep getting discussed. The Abyss kills one (non-artifact) creature each turn. Its only real weakness is you can not use it and Nether Void together as they are both World Enchantments. Tainted Aether does nothing to my Delver since I can sack my Island and keep hitting you with it every turn, it also does nothing if Delver (1 CMC) is already on the table...

[Infectious]

The build I'll be playing attacks opponents' hands more than anything else. I think in a combo-centric meta, hand disruption is an incredibly underrated aspect of controlling and winning games. With that being said, however, the route I'm taking is a bit less conventional and will probably raise more questions and eyebrows than dropping jaws and spinning heads.

I also happen to believe that Pox - in any incarnation, budget or powered - is incredibly well-positioned in today's general meta. Have you guys seen what decks have been winning?

Personally I've found the exact opposite. Speaking in wild generalities; when there's lots of combo, rack + hand disruption is weaker. It's too easy for them to rip something off the top that you can't account for, or brainstorm to protect. Combo decks are also expecting hand disruption, and if they aren't set up to survive it they definitely address it in the board. Against combo I've had the best luck with more control (land destruction and trinisphere). Against agro/mid range is where I've had the most success with rack, where the hand disruption is supplemented with something like funeral charm that can pull double duty of either dealing with the bodies that hit the table or the cards let in their hand.

[beez]

All great points to consider. I like discard pox rack and affliction because it kills them off faster than i was able to before , but cutting down on the sometimes ball crushing land destruction makes me very nervous. Like you say with such cheap decks around i would have to add trinisphere as well to make that more consistently useful.

[Hardcore]

+1

Combo decks usually" go off" and up until then they can keep all their cards in hand. Creature based deck, otoh, need to play theiir creatures and spells because how else do they win?
This plays into your plan.

[Michael Keller]

I know Reid Duke put a lot of work into doing well with Pox, and I can see why B/g would be a suitable choice. However, the madman in me wants to cremate my opponents' hands. I think the discard aspect of Pox is one of the founding strategies that made it so powerful.

Oppression and Liliana are two very different beasts a Pox variant uses, for those wondering. Casting Dark Ritual turn one into Liliana against Storm really isn't nearly as spectacular as powering out an Oppression, which would by itself crucify fast combo - or any combo for that matter. Oppression punishes players for casting spells in the worst humanly way possible, which is why I like it so much. Cards like Chains of Mephistopheles punish players for drawing extra cards, which to me is rather meh. Spells are what progress the game state, and I think you definitely get more value out of something like Oppression than Chains for the simple fact that it alone will dictate how your opponent plays the rest of the game out.

Casting spells is easily more common in a given game of Magic than drawing extra cards, which is why I like it so much.

The land destruction aspect of Pox is nifty, but cards like Sinkhole and Wasteland have always concerned me in the mono-black variations of the archetype. I think punishing an opponent's hand and Racking them is far better than trying to win an attrition battle with either of those two cards. An early Deathrite Shaman is a perfect foil to both strategies, which is why I don't think they're necessary in the build I'm going for.

And Cursed Scroll will definitely make it in as at least a three-of.

[OmniStrata]

Funny how the same cards keep getting discussed. The Abyss kills one (non-artifact) creature each turn. Its only real weakness is you can not use it and Nether Void together as they are both World Enchantments. Tainted Aether does nothing to my Delver since I can sack my Island and keep hitting you with it every turn, it also does nothing if Delver (1 CMC) is already on the table...

I have Liliana. If I need Tainted Aether to stop Delver, something's very wrong. I use it as a sideboard vs. very fast decks that attempt to drop multiple threats per turn. Liliana can't stop that but unless you're rushing me with Delver and 4 other creatures, Aether is still stronger. However it is true that it won't save you if there's already 3+ threats on the field, then again, neither will The Abyss.

I also like that you'll sac your island. I'm assuming this is a threshold-like list? My Wastelands, Sinkholes, Smallpoxes and Poxes applaud your decision ^_^

[OmniStrata]

...
Oppression and Liliana are two very different beasts a Pox variant, for those wondering. Casting Dark Ritual turn one into Liliana against Storm really isn't nearly as spectacular as powering out an Oppression, which would by itself crucify fast combo - or any combo for that matter. Oppression punishes players for casting spells in the worst humanly way possible, which is why I like it so much. Cards like Chains of Mephistopheles punish players for drawing extra cards, which to me is rather meh. Spells are what progress the game state, and I think you definitely get more value out of something like Oppression than Chains for the simple fact that it alone will dictate how your opponent plays the rest of the game out.

Casting spells is easily more common in a given game of Magic than drawing extra cards, which is why I like it so much.

The land destruction aspect of Pox is nifty, but cards like Sinkhole and Wasteland have always concerned me in the mono-black variations of the archetype. I think punishing an opponent's hand and Racking them is far better than trying to win an attrition battle with either of those two cards. An early Deathrite Shaman is a perfect foil to both strategies, which is why I don't think they're necessary in the build I'm going for.

And Cursed Scroll will definitely make it in as at least a three-of.

I run the Scroll as a 2-of. The 3rd one is a Pox for me. I don't believe the discard aspect of Pox is what made it so strong. Lots of black decks in the day had Duress + Hymn and that was already plenty. But I did attempt a discard heavy build with Rack and even squeezed in Funeral Charm, Raven's Crime, and Wrench Minds.

The true strength in Pox has to be the massive card damage it deals. Letting your foes keep their lands means when they're in top deck mode, they'll simply cast their top decked spells and your discard becomes dead-draw. Foes stuck on 2 land or less may end up getting stuck if they also need mana for instants to cast at end of turn. Clogging the hand means your discard stays relevant.

Some will argue "what's the point of your foe keeping spells they can't cast?" When they top deck that 1 land they need to recover, you'll really wish you made them discard that 'useless' spell of theirs 1 turn prior. Legacy lives and dies on "If only I 'X' that last turn!" One of the reasons why I like Pox. You deny them whole turns by casting it ^_^

[lyracian]

I also like that you'll sac your island. I'm assuming this is a threshold-like list? My Wastelands, Sinkholes, Smallpoxes and Poxes applaud your decision ^_^It would be a bit pointless to sac the creature. Counter-Burn and Carpet Bomb decks have plenty of counter magic to deal with your other spells however they can not win without a threat. Tainted Aether is not good at stop them; The Abyss, Ensnaring Bridge and even Nether Void are much better at stopping them.

[beez]

I would hope that I would have stripped them of a couple of counterspells by then. though as someone pointed out awhile ago the problem with Tainted Aether is that they get to choose and they will usually make the worst choice for you. Still in theory it is so nasty that it is very tempting to try. I just havent been able to be satisfied with it enough past test draws to use it in a real game. Also the 4mc is a big problem if you are not running Dark Rituals.

[Barsoom]

@Hollywood

Can you share your list? i think after so much speaking we are all curious now; personally i don't own Sinkhole so i play The Rack Pox version, so my interest is double.

[beez]

My Rack list is on pg. 10. I have to admit Hollywood had a great idea and I am going to replace my Bloodghast with Oppression. Makes much more sense in my discard Pox build, though I want to try the ghast in some of the aggro and loam decks people have listed here for fun. I think it would be better there.

I of course would like to see Hollywood's list too I but I respect if he would rather give it with the full tournament report later instead.

[Michael Keller]

Yeah, I'll be providing the list after the tournament.

I'm not saying my list is optimal by any means, but it absolutely wrecks combo - which is what I'm going for.

[Chatto]

Yeah, I'll be providing the list after the tournament.

I'm not saying my list is optimal by any means, but it absolutely wrecks combo - which is what I'm going for.

And it will wreck combo, no doubt about that :-) I think we all have a certain idea of how your deck will look like. I am particulair curious about your wincons and how it will play against all those other decks on a tournament in overall.

[Hardcore]

Yesterday I had less success, with my Negator deck, than I wished.
I lost to BUG Cascade, Cloudpost and Dredge. Still, I don't get upset over such a minor setback:cool: The experience will only help me improve the deck.

4 Bloodghast
4 Tombstalker
4 Nihilith
4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Smallpox
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Pox
2 Duress
4 Innocent Blood
3 Darkblast
4 Dark Ritual
18 Swamp
2 Dakmor Salvage


Negator was ok, but the spot discard did nothing against these decks. I also needed more consistent mana base (yeah, mana problem with 20 lands and four rituals. wtf?:eek:)
I will replace the discard with four Hymn to tourach and more swamps.
Note: the idea behind one mana discard is to not be totaly screwed when facing fast combo.

What stops this deck is cards like Batterskull. I need a good answer to that:mad:

[Megadeus]

Ill be playing a GB Pox build tomorrow night that I will be borrowing from my buddy. Only question I have is what is best vs tribal like decks? I have 2 E Plagues in the SB. Will that be good enough? I see a lot of Folk, Gobs and usually at least one Elves deck.

[Hardcore]

Hardly enough in that kind of environment. More mass removal FTW. Also consider running some in Main deck.

[Hardcore]

Braids Pox, anyone?


4 bloodghast
4 gravecrawler
4 geralf's messenger
4 braids, cabal minion

4 smallpox
4 hymn to Tourach
4 pox

19 swamp
3 dakmor salvage
3 darkblast
4 innocent blood
4 dark Ritual

[lyracian]

I would hope that I would have stripped them of a couple of counterspells by then. though as someone pointed out awhile ago the problem with Tainted Aether is that they get to choose and they will usually make the worst choice for you.I have found in games against Delver decks it seems to come down to if I can kill that first turn Delver. If they draw enough other creatures/countermagic to stop my Sacrifice effects I tend to lose. Tainted Aether does nothing to stop the clock that is already on the table. It might slow them down but for the most part it is just a card they can ignore where as Cursed Scroll, The Abyss and even Ensaring Bridge are cards they have to deal with.

[Chatto]

@ Megadeus: EP won't safe you. Indeed some massremoval like Deed or even Damnation should do the trick. E-bridge also works, while Cursed Scroll helps you mob up the board and gives you the game.

@ lyracian: I tend do agree, but giving them hell through discard helps a lot. Then again, it remains a difficult MU.

[Cthuloo]

Ill be playing a GB Pox build tomorrow night that I will be borrowing from my buddy. Only question I have is what is best vs tribal like decks? I have 2 E Plagues in the SB. Will that be good enough? I see a lot of Folk, Gobs and usually at least one Elves deck.

Plagues are fine vs tribal, but, if you want to go that route, play at least a third copy. I prefer a different and more varied choice of answers, though. My usual anti-aggro weapons are:
- pernicious deed
- tabernacle
- elephant grass
- drop of honey
- perish/virtue's ruin/massacre
They have the advantage of being in general more flexible.

[beez]

Drop of Honey...That looks like a niiiiice card. Looks great for the Loam builds.

[beez]

I did some playtesting with Oppression in the mono black discard Pox build. It seemed good. I think two seemed about the right number for it. I was always happy to draw it but be able to play it after I'd emptied my hand. Same with Cursed Scroll, Dakmore Salvage, and Bojuka Bog: 2x each. All great situationally but I don't want to be flooded with them. An arguement could be made for 3x Oppression if you have some Shrieking Afflictions to double up on the Rack effects.

[OmniStrata]

I have found in games against Delver decks it seems to come down to if I can kill that first turn Delver. If they draw enough other creatures/countermagic to stop my Sacrifice effects I tend to lose. Tainted Aether does nothing to stop the clock that is already on the table. It might slow them down but for the most part it is just a card they can ignore where as Cursed Scroll, The Abyss and even Ensaring Bridge are cards they have to deal with.

Tainted Aether is played after a lock is established. Kind of like how you play Standstill or Nether Void when you have board advantage. However, if low cmc permanents are an issue, Culling Scales has my vote. Better with a Nether Spirit out and practically perfect in an LD based list since keeping them off a 4 mana permanent shouldn't be impossible.

I guess I should say that with 4 Liliana's in my main deck, a 4 mana enchantment (The Abyss) that does her job to ME on my upkeep doesn't sound good for my deck/playstyle. Using Nether Spirit as my only creature that comes into play when I choose does wonders with Tainted Aether or Culling Scales.

With many people going the discard route, I'd suggest Noetic Scales. Excellent synergy with Racking+Oppression effects and provides perfect defense better than Ensnaring Bridge. Necrogen Mists, though slower than Oppression was an older card I used to decent effect before I went to the LD/Discard hybrid route.

[Megadeus]

@ Megadeus: EP won't safe you. Indeed some massremoval like Deed or even Damnation should do the trick. E-bridge also works, while Cursed Scroll helps you mob up the board and gives you the game.


How about 1 deed main, 1 deed side, 2 E Plagues side, and an ensnaring bridge main? Also I play Wurm Harvest to clog the board as well.

[Chatto]

I'm trying something completely different, for I'm determent to use Nether Void and Deathrite Shaman in Bg Pox. It's just a thing (a craving if you will) right now. I think you should check the following link:

http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=4222&d=224658.

It has two Deeds and a Worm Harvest main and four (!) E-Plague in the side. I would definitely change the sideboard for your meta (something you always have to do of course), but other than that I think the deck looks really sweet.

On E-Bridge: I don't like it main, but maybe it is better in an aggro-infested meta.

Again, right now I'm determent to play Nether Void and Shaman. Come to think of it, the list presented could be a really good starting point for me as well :-)

[Chatto]

I don't know if people here picked up the following: Revenge of the Necromancer. It's a card you can vote on and if it wins will be printed in an upcoming set.

http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/features/ymtc247_7.jpg

Right now it's in the finals! You can still vote on it http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/248d

It could be a potential card for our beloved Pox, once we know it's casting cost :-)

[Hardcore]

It sucks. Maybe if you could begin with the card in play...

[Chatto]

Now now, those are some strong words :-)

Indeed, it really depends on how the card will turn out (and of course the cmc), but how sick could this be: get rid of a threat and get something in return! Along with The Rack to do some damage...

Of course this purely hypothetical, but maybe (just maybe) it could be something. But lest not forget to be patient and see what WotC will make of it. And you could be right, Hardcore: maybe it just plain sucks :-)

[Hardcore]

The problems are two: it is conditional because it need another card to function. (it is actually double conditional because it also require that the opponent have cards in his hand to discard).
Second it says 'discard', not sacrifice, which would have made it better for us that run pox effects. Also: even if your opponent have no cards in hand he will have lands and creatures to sacrifice.

Third: the effect is not only random for you, but the opponent have occasionally opportunity to choose what you well get; Liliana and the pox effects leave it to him to decide what to discard.

Thus the card is triple crap, but it would all be OK if the card was renamed: "Goblin Necromancers revenge"

[OmniStrata]

The conditions the card requires are many, but in Hybrid Pox, this thing could be downright devastating. Sinkhole/Wasteland builds will clog their hand up for Liliana to keep this card pumping the advantage. Hymn to Tourach?! May I draw 2 cards, gain BBBB, or gain 2 zombies (4 damage) OR ANY COMBINATION OF THESE 3?!

The entire core of Pox is a different way to gain card advantage other than "Draw more then them" blue style.

If this thing costed just B or BB, I'm sold. Would I run a playset? Probably? But WHY? IT SUCKS! The idea of gaining 4 damage worth of creature from a hymn to tourach or a Liliana + Inquisition setup would be too freakin' Godly for 2 cmc or less. This card rewards you by doing what Pox normally does AND can KILL your opponent.

But if it's more than 2 cmc, then nope, I'd say quck it since the conditions to be met, as was mentioned, are stupidly high.

What's kind of awesome is that your opponent decides how you will kill them. He's very likely going to want to keep his lands if you're the standard Pox deck (Sink/Waste). If he discards creatures, you'll simply murder him so he'll probably keep those (then Liliana makes him discard them or sac them when they see play). At best he'll probably throw away his removal since aside from Exile, your deck doesn't care. You'll draw more cards to disrupt him that much further. Hymn is king here.

Liliana's Ultimate let's your opponent decide, does that make it terrible? Every enemy I've fought has never ever jumped for joy when I split their permanents and gave them a very nasty catch 22. One of my friends runs an old school Legacy MUC that plays Fact or Fiction. Nobody has ever split his cards in such a way that he's ever cursed under his breath. What's wrong with damned if you do/don't scenario?

Oh would 2 of these on the field give me 4 zombies if I Hymned two creatures? :eek:

[beez]

I agree. Could be good if the cmc 'price' is right.

[Hardcore]

Well, the best case scenario is always awesome.

It occurred to me that you could playtest it already, Omnistrata. No need to wait until it is printed. Let us assume cc BB to start with. Should be interesting!

[beez]

Or try it with BB as well as with the more likely 1BB to see how much difference it makes. Anything more would be unplayable or a maybe one like tainted aether.

[lyracian]

Well, the best case scenario is always awesome.
It occurred to me that you could playtest it already, Omnistrata. No need to wait until it is printed. Let us assume cc BB to start with. Should be interesting!
I thought about doing the same. However if turns out to be as good as I think it could be and then they print it at CMC 3 I would be gutted. In six months we should know what the card is going to be and then I would start play testing while waiting for it to be printed.


Oh would 2 of these on the field give me 4 zombies if I Hymned two creatures? :eek:Sure each one would trigger for each creature discarded.

If Revenge is printed at BB then I am going to try replacing "The Rack" with it and see how that plays. Its only downside is that you then need the opponent to play creatures for it to actually act as a kill condition. I think the extra card draw against spell based decks should let you find your Cursed Scrolls, Mishra's, whatever in time to actually close out the game.


The problems are two: it is conditional because it need another card to function. (it is actually double conditional because it also require that the opponent have cards in his hand to discard).Second it says 'discard', not sacrifice, which would have made it better for us that run pox effects. Also: even if your opponent have no cards in hand he will have lands and creatures to sacrifice.Third: the effect is not only random for you, but the opponent have occasionally opportunity to choose what you well get; Liliana and the pox effects leave it to him to decide what to discard.Thus the card is triple crapIt may be random, but I do not think it is that random. Storm Decks are mostly spells; Jund/Maverick is mostly Creatures, once you know what your opponent is playing you can predict the most likely effect. If they discard lands they are playing into your game plan of resource denial and so long as you have other cards in hand you should be able to use that two black (sinkhole/hymn/smallpox) or even some of it (cursed scroll). "The Rack" works for winning the game so long as you can keep there hand empty which requires discard. Sure you can play discard then drop the rack and deal 6 damage before there hand is back up to three cards but "The Rack" does nothing if you can not get them below 3 cards. Revenge should help you establish a lock quicker and once you have a lock you build up card advantage through either Zombie Tokens or actual card draw for a win condition.

[Chatto]

Ahaa! More positive vibes, how nice :) I'm not going to playtest it, untill I know the cmc.

It will be a long waot and hopefully worth it...

[theillest]

Yeah, I'll be providing the list after the tournament.

I'm not saying my list is optimal by any means, but it absolutely wrecks combo - which is what I'm going for.
How'd this go?

[ActionJunkie]

Revenge of Necromancy really depends on your list.

If you are running the full x4 Liliana of the Veil (which is very doable as you discard extra to herself) and multiple Raven's Crime then even @ 2cc, it should be fine. However RoN @ 3+cc requires more constent discard for the "engine" to work.

I do like how Revenge of Necromancy is both an engine (a very good one with creatures/cards > 50% of the time) and is also stackable unlike many other enchantments.

I'm definitely keeping 'the Rack' in my list... I also run 2-3 'Shrieking Affliction' and skip the resource denial (Sinkhole/Nether Void) but of course keep Smallpox... and run Bloodghast.

[OmniStrata]

Well, the best case scenario is always awesome.

It occurred to me that you could playtest it already, Omnistrata. No need to wait until it is printed. Let us assume cc BB to start with. Should be interesting!

The other posters stated it'd hurt like hell if we assumed a cmc and turned out wrong. One of my magic buddies has low hopes and thinks the card maybe overpriced garbage at about 4cmc. [shudder] Bloodchief Ascension and Liliana's Caress come to mind as having big drawbacks, low cmc, and moderately powered.

The way I see it, if Wizards does print it that high, it'd be unplayable in Legacy save for dedicated slow slow counterspell decks that sit with as many cards in their hand as they can. (as if those exist lol)

I think I won't count my chickens before they hatch and we'll all see. If it became 3 cmc, non-land destruction flavors of Pox probably couldn't run it unless they're hoping to rack / shrieking their foes into keeping cards in hand. Liliana's been the best thing to ever happen to Pox and probably never will be surpassed. But we can always hope to be wrong right? ^_^