[Primer/Deck] Pox

[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.
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.