Originally Posted by
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.