Definitely some great red cards, Lightning Bolt, Fork Bolt, Pyroclasm, Red Elemental Blast/Pyroblast, Hellspark Elemental, Devastating Dreams, Sulfuric Vortex, Smash to SmithereensOriginally Posted by Hardcore
Dreadbore and Blightning are the best R/B cards I can think of. Rakdos Charm? Is Young Pyromancer/Cabal Therapy worth running?
Blood Moon and Sinkhole seem good together.
mm, blood moon. Would wreck Lands decks.
Pyroclasm may be the best card red can offer. Evil in conjunction with Engineered Plague.
Faithless looting and recurring creatures. ( i tend to run a few. Tombstalker.
Blood Moon works in a mono-red stompy deck. Don't want to shut off your own Wastelands, fetchlands, Urborgs, etc. Young Pyromancer would work if you had a token to sac to your Poxing. As far as red goes, it's got inferior copies of black stuff. Skullscorch, Stone Rain, Sirocco, are quick suggestions. A Wildfire-based Pox would be awesome to behold.
I like Blightning (Mind-rotting Lightning Bolt), Forked Bolt (2 for 1 Card Advantage), Rakdos Charm (synergizes and protects against all of Pox's weaknesses), Army Ants (infinite LD with Dakmor Salvage or Crucible), Ashenmoor Gouger/Shambling Remains/Goblin Deathraiders (great Power to CMC), Exava (for teh SEXAY), Fire Covenant (just awesome, especially with Spinning Darkness), Sanity Gnawers (couple with Ravenous Rats and Pack Rat for a vermin mousey Pox?) with Nezumi Shortfang (a Rack you can block and kill things with AND generate CA?)
Lots of the above are 3 cmc or less but yes, B/R Pox is most likely for the direct damage backed by big Pox life chunking.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
Aether flash with Engineered Plague and/or Night of Souls' Betrayal sounds like just plain sadism. Blood Moon means you can't run Mishra's Factories though.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
I am 98% sure that Young Pyromancer makes a token on cast, and Smallpox you sac on resolution so we are ok there.
The loss of wastelands to bloodmoon does suck which is why I suggested it with sinkhole, 2 basic swamps would allow us to cast anything through bloodmoon and since we are using bloodmoon as a Armageddon I guess losing wasteland is not that bad.
Direct burn can also help with planeswalkers which can be a weakness for pox.
Some of these ideas don't work well with each other but I definitely think there is a deck here and a metagame where this would be the correct choice.
30 sec pass at it:
4 Young Pyromancer
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fork Bolt
4 Liliana of the Veil
2 Faithless Looting
2 Blightning
2 Dreadbore
4 Sinkhole
1 Boom//Bust
4 Smallpox
2 Bloodghast
1 Blood Moon
4 Wasteland
1 Urborg
4 Bloodstain Mire
4 Badlands
3 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Polluted Delta
2 Mishra's Factory
1 Ghost Quarter
1 The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
SB:
2 Bloodmoon
3 Pyroclasm
2 Boom//Bust
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Dreadbore
2 Gamble
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
I forgot about Boom//Bust until half way through typing list, the interaction with your own fetch lands or wasteland is amazing. This is just a quick shot at a B/R list definitely need testing.
Many nice suggestions. Thanks!
I played the decklist yesterday and it was so-so. Too controlish. Lost to infect, miracles and goblins.
Ofc, made an error or two sideboarding, but still.
I really want to play chalice in the main, and have less conflicting stuff in the deck. Liliana, for example, is hard to use as i often have valuable cards in hand like smallpox.
Rakdos Riteknife looks fun. It fits the overall theme, but i wonder how practical it is.
@ Hardcore: "deja vu" feeling ! but, I'm still searching the solution to the equation.
I really don't have this issue with G/B Pox, I have more cards that I am happy to discard than other pox builds (Bloodghast, cabal therapy, life from the loam, lands, Nether spirit, etc)
I don't see the problem you are having with Liliana and Smallpox, if they have no creatures then plusing Lily and losing smallpox is fine bc lily will just answer the next creature they play, if not make them sac with Lily and ultimately there may be times where it is correct to play Liliana and pass then next turn play smallpox and use Liliana. It is not an anti-synergy it is redundancy.
As far as using Lily's ultimate I almost never do it, I would rather just keep ticking up. There is one exception to this, I use the ultimate all the time against Miracles (I have won several games against miracles when they count the number of mana producing lands in their graveyard and realize they can't win)
Rakdos Riteknife is just begging to be brewed with Goblin Sharpshooter
That is definitely a fun brew more than a practical deck or addition to a Pox deck though.
Amen to this^
We are not a blue deck and we need to stop behaving as such. "I will need this for later..." is a blue mage's way of thinking. So you cast Lily and have a Smallpox in hand. Do they have a threat? Use Liliana's -2. Do they have multiple threats? Just cast Smallpox and discard Liliana because she's not going to live and you'd have hit 3 of your opponent's cards anyway. Your threats shouldn't care about being binned and you have 24+ mana sources.
Blue mages hoard resources and useful cards 'just in case'. To live with Pox is to live "in the now". We are tempo decks. Spells we cast need to have an effect on the board right now. This is why I board out Dark Ritual 90% of the time because I usually don't fight decks that turn 1-3 kill me. But when I do I'm glad it's main decked.
Actually, for more redundancy, I could run 4 smallpox, 4 Pox, and 4 Liliana of the Veils. I'd be losing my Crucible, Engineered Plague, and Night of Souls' Betrayal for it. My meta has more creatures in it than combo or control so I can't do so. However, in a meta where creature hordes are few, that configuration would be Godly. Build for your meta and build for redundancy, then you'll have more 'expendable' cards that you won't mind discarding.
Are you going to hold that Liliana of the Veil while your other copy is on the field? Nah, +1 it away. I've discarded Smallpox to Smallpox before. It's not a hard decision. You need to make life or death decisions like choosing brands of beer.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
If you let the game drag on, a 6/2 Nether Spirit would be a sight to behold. Even moreso where after damage, you sac the knife and they lose 4 permanents...
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
It is best for control i guess, but i wouldn't mind a fifth pox effect. (Especially if it is not symmetrical...)
I will have closer to twenty creatures in my next configuration so i will have place for one riteknife to test. Should help against white.
Wouldn't Smallpox be fine as the 5th Pox effect? I remember your builds posted before with 4 Pox but no Smallpoxes. In any case, I'm curious if you're running that many creatures what they'd be. Red's low cmc trampling Bolt Elementals like Spark Elemental and Hellspark elemental would be good for the knife too I think midgame.
Pox plays hellbent a lot. I think Gobhobbler Rats would be a hilarious addition to an aggro suite. 2 mana for a 3/2 regenerator is insanity.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
Nihilith will see play, again, and Nether Spirit. Necroplasm, maybe one of. Buried alive.
BR creatures will wait. I need more red mana sources yet. Besides it is a higher priority integrating chalice of the void in the deck.
So far it seems best to just make a standard build including 1cc spells and add like three chalices.
Ie. probes+ therapies+ chalice, rather than chalice+ hymn.
Cutting off your own 1cc spells isn't needed. Chalice + Hymn + Wrench Mind + Blightning will do some heavy disruption on decks that revolve around speedy 1cmc spells. Which is most of the legacy Meta. I however don't know your meta so if you're in a slower environment, maybe Chalice won't be a good idea.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
Lands is popular, but combo less so.
You are right: i worry overly much about the speed of midrange decks. A pair of delvers can beat down hard, but that won't happen every game.
Note: was talking about my own mono B list here.
How much red mana do i need for splash? I got myself four Bloodstained Mire and one Bloodcrypt. Add a mountain and that is six sources.
Last edited by Hardcore; 05-05-2015 at 05:31 AM.
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