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Thread: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

  1. #1

    Rabbits&Cows (alternative pox, LD)

    Rabbits&Cows is an evil landdestruction deck that wins in a poxlike fashion, depressing our opponent has never been more enjoyable.



    Rabbits&Cows plays lots of incredibly powerful cards that are all hard to beat.
    All our cards fit together nicely, making the entire deck hard to beat.

    Almost all of our cards are too powerful, however they don't necessarily single-handedly win games, they just create unfair advantages.
    This deck is designed in such a way that it aims for very long games where the unfair advantages accumulate and the opponent must lose.

    Now, there are different ways of how a card is too powerful and this deck isn't the first go-deal-with-my-collection-of-insane-cards deck.
    However, this deck's cards are too powerful in that they create card advantage too easily while defending too well. And that makes it very hard to beat.

    The name comes from Reid reiderrabbit Duke who repopularized pox in legacy and this is my interpretation of a pox deck with creatures and my own name is Cuddlecow, so it’s Rabbits&Cows.

    OK let’s get into it!


    //Lands
    1 island
    7 swamp
    2 underground sea
    4 polluted delta
    4 marsh flats

    //Ignore cc1
    4 chrome mox
    4 dark ritual

    //Chalice
    4 chalice of the void

    //LD
    4 hymn to tourach
    3 back to basics
    4 sinkhole
    3 rain of tears

    //Liliana
    4 Liliana of the Veil

    //Creatures
    4 dark confidant
    4 baleful strix
    4 gatekeeper of malakir


    How it works:

    We start playing and we start creating card advantage as fast as we can.
    Now you may think - how can we create card advantage with accelerants? Easy - we plan for very long games and by playing accelerants, we can skip on cc1 spells, which means we top deck incredibly strong cc2-cc3 spells all day - virtual card advantage. When we use the accelerants, it's for things like T1 Bob or T1 Liliana, which undo the accelerant's card advantage by coming early - so we have no card-disadvantage plus we top deck very powerfully.
    Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking - well, the price for these awesome topdecks is drawing accelerants midgame. Nope! Because chrome mox replaces four lands. And we need just three lands midgame which we have by then, so whether we draw a land or mox doesn't make a difference anymore anyway.

    So it's only the four rituals which is a small price to pay for otherwise incredible top decks and highly explosive starts and fast moons and hymns and lilianas and bobs and chalices.... I love it! It's lots of fun try it.

    In addition we can play with chalice, hugely improving our longevity in the face of little defense from our now depressed opponent who sits in awkward silence on his chair. He attempts to not shift uncomfortably too much or give other signs of of sadness, in order to create an illusion of him being in control over his despair, but he cannot fool a Rabbits&Cows player.
    And we can even discard accelerants later to Liliana.


    How we create card advantage:
    The land destruction trades 1:1 and also creates dead cards in our opponent's hand --> card advantage.
    In long games it even creates mana advantage as well.
    If our opponent doesn't enjoy getting cut off colors by our spot-LD and fetches nonbasics, the price is Back to Basics.
    In addition, I want to note I hate expensive decks that easily lose to some casual kitchen strategy or that just work in a certain meta. Our LD, in addition to its CA, keeps the game in a state where it is impossible to escape our overwhelming power.

    Chalice of the Voidis amazing fun, shutting off half of our opponent's deck off oftentimes. It protects our creatures from swords and bolts as well, a fantastic synergy.
    Shutting off cantrips makes it very hard for our opponent to escape and it's great against many combo decks.
    Wonderful.

    Dark Confidant is pure love. Not only is he our best finisher, no, he just keeps filling our hands with love until we win or sacrifice him to Liliana if need be.

    Baleful Strix
    It's a plain improvement and is too powerful, turning into another of our cards while killing a creature for two less mana than is fair.
    Also protects Liliana from Flashcreatures.

    Gatekeeper of Malakir
    Is it a small beater with an extra effect? Think about Chainer's edict that says: Kicker : Draw a card. If that card is a 2/2 vampire you may put it onto the battlefield without paying its mana cost.
    And you always draw that vampire. That's how good Gatekeeper is.

    Liliana of the Veil
    OK.I have to admit I love Liliana. She has the best artwork ever and is sex.
    With some back-up, she becomes a 1-woman army, leading to a top deck situation while at the same time being incredible in top deck situations.
    (If the opponent isn't top-decking creatures all day, she can refill her loyalty with +1, so if he does find one it's dead. She's wickeeeeed. If the opponent isn't playing many early threats and aims for longer games, she annihilates his hand and then her ultimate is incredibly hard to stop and survive)
    Just what we're looking for with Rabbits&Cows.
    We can trade drawn lands that we don't need, and mana acceleration and extra chalices later in the game, for good cards from our opponent, or does he like discarding lands, too?^^
    If we a have a chalice out, yeah, both of us can discard crap and her -1 ability goes from awesome to neutral.
    However: Now that we have a chalice out our opponent loses many threats and can't cantrip into threats, making Liliana's -2 and ultimate extremely ferociously evil.
    Liliana is key and I wouldn't leave home without all 4.


    Mana acceleration
    I explained it earlier why it's not hurting us.

    It just makes the deck much more dangerous and fun to play with T1 Hymns and Lilianas and chalices all day.
    The extreme blowout potential, in addition to its raw grinding power, is an amazing appeal for this deck.


    Sideboard:
    An easy way to lose with this deck is by being on the draw without an accelerant. As such I like having Gemstone Caverns in the board and boarding in 4 Gemstone Caverns on the draw. Yes, Back to Basics eats them but it’s OK because we can fetch basics instead of fetching one underground sea if we have this on the starting hand, so we still lose just one land to BtB.
    Being on the play with this deck is one of the largest factors whether we win or lose.

    Chains of mephistopheles is so very good against combo and quite a few decks. Love it.


    Cards I considered:
    Daze
    Umezawa’s jitte
    Shadow of doubt
    Impulse
    Wasteland
    If I play this deck now I will always do -1 Gatekeeper +1 Jitte.

    Curious what your ideas for improving Rabbits&Cows are! Let's improve it together, it would be awesome.
    Last edited by Cuddlecow; 10-08-2016 at 11:13 AM.

  2. #2

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Disclaimer, I don't play Pox but I do love blowing up land. I think you're going to struggle with resolved permanents which given the very low curve of legacy will happen. Take your average delver deck for example. You can blow up their land sure, but that won't prevent dropping most of their threats which cost 1 mana. Similarly, an Aether Vial gets around most of your hate. Another thing Pox is generally doing is breaking the symmetry of Liliana by using recurring threats.

    Might I suggest starting with a more common Pox shell and adding in some of the elements you want to use here like BtB and/or Baleful Strix?
    Cockatrice: Bosque

  3. #3
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    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Isn't Blood Moon better than Back to Basics?

    So if you run red you just loose Baleful Strix beside the SB but lock him out of his colour. In this case you can use your LD for his basics and so he can't play even a 1 mana spell.

    You also get Raze or other cheap LD spells like Crack the Earth.
    Drakes claim to be dragons-until the dragons show up.

    The dust can count only to 50.

    Angels attacked them,............ with swords.

  4. #4

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Hey,
    Blood moon certainly is better than BtB and I want to correct the "most powerful LD-Spell" statement.
    But, I find it hard to play with two colours with Blood Moon, while with BtB it is possible (even though one can still lose to his own BtB and the manabase needs work.)

    Blood Moon in a fairly red deck, I feel is get it T1-2 or combo/bust because red doesn't have anywhere near the amount of powerhouses for control that black has, I`m thinking of Liliana, Hymn, Strix, Confidant, Gatekeeper.

    With a black list one can win easily without a back to basics, it is mainly there for the blowout potential and to keep the game in an early state where our spells are more powerful than what the opponent can play. It's a balance between cards that keep the game in an early state (LD) and the insurmountable winners (Liliana etc.).

    If you look at a normal pox list it has Hymn, Liliana, and about 16 cards that can get rid of creatures. While we have faster hymns, faster Lilianas and four strix, four gatekeeper and four chalice. Considering how many creatures chalice can prevent from resolving I feel a pox list with creatures has lots of removal as well. Put confidant on top of that, which was the main reason to play with creatures, which reveals removals all day and we have a lot of removal.


    What do you think? Is it correct or am I missing something.

  5. #5
    The Original

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    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    No i meant red instead of blue. You keep your maindeck but just switch BtB with Blood Moon and get rid of the Strix. Nothing changes in the playstyle of the deck. You use Blood Moon to blowout entire decks. Yourself need only 2-3 Black sources so with Swamps and Chrome Mox it shouldn't be a Problem. Sure you get it easier with BtB but so does the opponent.
    Drakes claim to be dragons-until the dragons show up.

    The dust can count only to 50.

    Angels attacked them,............ with swords.

  6. #6
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    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    I like the idea, but here's my suggestion:

    Cut chalice and run Trinisphere instead. If you can keep them under 3 lands you essentially lock them out of the game if they have no Vial. Players can still be cute and play into chalice to feed their Deathrites or Lavamancers, 3sphere basically says "you're screwed". If you go that route too, you could choose to cut Hymn from MD, because you really don't care then about the cards stuck in their hand you'd rather be playing more LD to further your lead or permanents.... think about it, they're at 3 land with 2 tapped down from B2B, you're at 4 land with Trinisphere in play so they can't play anything, you really wouldn't give a shit about drawing into cards like Hymn at that point it's better to just drop more LD to further your lead or drop another permanent.
    May your suffering equal your weakness
    --Ihsan's Shade

  7. #7

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Hey,
    thanks everyone for helping.

    Regarding Trinisphere: It definitely is worth testing and I see your point. However, Blood Moon is worth trying too and is of course not ideal in combination with Trinisphere, unlike with BtB.

    I want to start checking out the Blood Moon approach first but don't get me wrong, trinisphere seems amazing as well.

    If we look at the first list, we have 11 black sources under blood moon + maybe we could fetch a swamp first. This means we need to draw a quarter of the deck until we have BBB so I feel Gatekeeper has to go as well. I was thinking about adding dreadbore (red removal is nice because it hits planeswalkers and what we need most after a resolved blood moon is easily castable removal).

    Losing Strix and gatekeeper sucks but blood moon is in fact so awesome it must be tested and maybe I`m even overestimating how hard it is to cast gatekeeper. Next question is, how to finish without gatekeeper. Maybe a few desecration demon?

  8. #8
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    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Army Ants + Dakmor Salvage + Trinisphere #rekt

    Even a mild dredge with like Darkblast, Dakmor and Unearth would be kinda sweet, I'd even thought about Fulminator Mage + Unearth being pretty nasty. Personally if you're going red dude, just run Lightning Bolts and go like a tempo sligh. Bolt is instant speed and more flexible than dreadbore, and can give you more reach say you aggro them down to 6 life then double bolt, heck maybe even run a couple fireblast, why not right, your land you've been saving up's just another resource afterall. I've wanted to see someone make a sligh LD deck successful for a long time

    One strong reason to splash red though is Pyroclasm in the SB. Looking at Elves, Goblins, Death&Taxes, Grixis Tempo and even Shardless, majority of their creatures get hosed by it.
    May your suffering equal your weakness
    --Ihsan's Shade

  9. #9

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Quote Originally Posted by Cuddlecow View Post
    Hey,
    Losing Strix and gatekeeper sucks but blood moon is in fact so awesome it must be tested and maybe I`m even overestimating how hard it is to cast gatekeeper. Next question is, how to finish without gatekeeper. Maybe a few desecration demon?
    goblin rabblemaster ?

    he costs less for Bob and is castable under blood moon.

  10. #10
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    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Quote Originally Posted by puckb View Post
    goblin rabblemaster ?

    he costs less for Bob and is castable under blood moon.
    I dunno man, I'd put Bitterblossom over Rabblemaster any day if you're going that direction. Pretty much any type of removal there is will kill Rabblemaster, even tarfire or Fire//Ice, whereas blossom although more taxing on your life, it's just much more resilient to removal. The other thing is lack of evasion... one Grizzly Bear could keep a Rabblemaster at bay from attacking. I think it's a strong card, but it'd take a more dedicated deck with goblin Lords or Tanglewire to help him swing through.
    May your suffering equal your weakness
    --Ihsan's Shade

  11. #11

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Hi,
    I'm hoping for more ideas, I think this deck is nice and I played it online with more than 50% wins. Here's more info to convince you. Literally every card is very powerful and creates card advantage. Either like with strix, or causing dead cards in hand by killing one color. Of course, if the opponent fetches lost of nonbasics its harder to colorscrew with ld but look at back to basis. What I love most is that every card is very powerful but in ADDITION we have incredible blowout potential with chalice Bob etc.

    This means we have a nice matchup nearly always - pure power + nice blowouts with many of our cards, hymn, ld, liliana, everything.

  12. #12

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Rancid Earth is better than rain of tears.

  13. #13
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    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Quote Originally Posted by Blastoderm View Post
    Rancid Earth is better than rain of tears.
    Specially with Bitterblossom, Dark Confidant, Army of Ants etc.. /sarcasm

  14. #14

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    If we go mardu we have access to vindicate which is relevant

  15. #15

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Sorry if you had answered to this post, it was literally so bad I want to delete it now in the hope that some people who would otherwise stop reading here don't.
    Last edited by Cuddlecow; 08-09-2018 at 11:02 AM.

  16. #16

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Sorry if you had answered to this post, it was very bad and for people who start reading from post1 I deleted it to save them a bad read.
    Last edited by Cuddlecow; 08-09-2018 at 11:00 AM.

  17. #17

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    I wouldn't use any tokens cards as there are many decks that brings hate against tokens like Izzet Staticaster

    I would keep wastelands and sinkholes but think that a hym to tourach could discard some opening hand lands. If you want to remove sinkhole, I would use 1 crucible to recover wastelands (at least the decks I have seen they bring 1 crucible or 2) or maybe life from the loam.

    The pox decks I have seen they used to play smallpoxes and poxes and I see you are replacing them with Liliana of the veiland gatekeeper of malakir.

    I would use gatekeeper in your sideboard against emrakuls (sneak decks) and probably I would bring aether vial to cast them with no counter posibility but with your disruption cards hymn to tourach maybe you wouldn't need aether and you haven't got too many creatures in your deck so I also would cut aether.

    I don't like these cards:

    4 desecration demon
    3 pack rat
    3 ophiomancer

    I would use instead the other ones you posted one post before:

    4 liquimetal coating
    4 daretti, ingenious iconoclast
    2 kolaghan's Command

    Those cards builds a awesome combo and I would use gate to phyrexia and something like bitterblossom so if you have liquimetal coating bitterblossom gate to phyrexia
    you can convert anything in artifact, sacrifice a black Faerie and destroy any permanent of your opponent thanks to liquimetal coating that converts anything in artifact. Yeah, you need 3 pieces for this combo but it's funny :). I told you don't use anything that puts tokens because of Izzet Staticaster but if you are able to create creatures and sacrifice them with gate to pirexia with liquimetal coating then you will control the game. Maybe you could use a returning creature from graveyard like Nether Spirit. Many pox decks brings just this creature or maybe you could use Young Pyromancer so you can place tokens for every instant/sorcery spell and sacrifice them with gate to phyrexia to destroy artifacts converted with liquimetal coating or maybe you could use Artifact Mutation . You can convert anything with liquimetal coating into a artifact, destroy it with Artifact Mutation and use those tokens sacrificing them with gate to phyrexia and destroying more opponent permanents.

    chalice of the void could counter some of your spells and as you don't have many permanents I'm not sure if it worths to bring them in your deck.

    In the previous post you talk about using these cards:

    2 blood moon
    4 magus of the moon


    I would bring them in sideboard for decks with non-basics mana base

    If you are going to use sinkhole I would bring vindicate or maelstrom pulse. You could also bring Encroach but depends on what kind of deck are you facing so in many cases could be circustancial.

    You could take some cards ideas from other legacy decks pox based: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=21325&iddeck=163390

    Raven's Crime it's a discard card recyclable discarding not wanted lands.
    Pernicious Deed I love this card, the issue is that doesn't remove planeswalker but I have played against landstill and 5 color decks and everytime they casted it I lost the match. The disadvantage of pernicious is that you could destroy your moxes.
    Surgical Extraction I love this card. Any deck can bring it and it's true that a card in a graveyard probably has done its job but you can remove destroyed threats or take advantage with cards like Raven's Crime , Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek. You should think if you want your deck have a bigger discard engine.
    This deck achieved 5 of 70: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=19837&iddeck=151081
    Empty the Pits I love this card, you can use delve and put 2/2 zombies tokens, they will survive better against Izzet Staticaster but could be destroyed bypernicious, engineered explosives/ratchet bomb/powder keg of 0(you could also wear some of them, maybe ratchet bomb against opponent planeswalkers) orToxic Deluge

    I wouldn't use in general Bitterblossom or monastery mentor or anything that puts token 1/1 because many decks expect them so they will be prepared against them so if you don't use them you will have more slots for other cards.

    Regards.

  18. #18

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    This deck play both Pack Rat and Ophiomancer, I would say this is perfect for Bitterblossom/Gravecrawler/Bloodghast and Contagion.

    Maybe some equipments as well?

  19. #19

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Quote Originally Posted by Poron View Post
    This deck play both Pack Rat and Ophiomancer, I would say this is perfect for Bitterblossom/Gravecrawler/Bloodghast and Contagion.

    Maybe some equipments as well?
    I wouldn't play contagion with the creatures of the format at the moment and because it gives you disadvantage of cards. With vindicate ,maelstrom pulse you get versatility not only against creatures and I would try to add abrupt decay.

    You could try to use Cursed Scroll against small creatures.

    I'm not sure about how many and which equipments would fit in this deck. Maybe Jitte because of -1/-1 counters.

    Regards

  20. #20

    Re: Rabbits&Cows (alternate pox, LD)

    Hello,
    because LD is very slow and unreliable I decided to try something similar except without the LD. I suspect Poron meant Contamination not, Contagion, but how can I know. And that LD can work more reliably than any amount of LD spells. The idea with equipment must be examined. But first, what do you think about this list. It's just straightforward strong spells and some of them generate moderate CA, or protect the CA spells, until everyone is in top deck in the hope that by now I have enough CA to allow a win with a weak win condition or a Jace.


    //Lands
    1 island
    3 swamp
    4 underground sea
    4 polluted delta
    4 marsh flats
    4 bloodstained mire

    //Cantrips
    4 brainstorm
    4 preordain
    2 ponder

    //cc0 protection
    4 force of will
    1 snuff out

    //cc1 protection
    3 thoughtseize
    4 fatal push

    //cc2 protection
    4 baleful strix
    4 hymn to tourach

    //cc3 protection
    2 vendilion clique
    1 ophiomancer
    1 gatekeeper of malakir
    4 Liliana of the veil

    //jace wins games in long games
    2 Jace the mind sculptor


    For a LD build it is always possible to add contamination along with ophiomancers, or pack rats, or some cool GY-spells.
    I was also thinking, yeah laugh, that a small white splash with a couple arena rectors and a single Nicol bolas, planeswalker might fit in fairly nicely because though there's no reliance on the rector, it's just when we can play and sacrifice him it's really nice.

    What I like about this list is that it uses its mana on very strong spells early on and that it has so many cards preboard against combo, while still having very nice cards against creatures that also happen to be protection for win conditions or that win the game themselves.
    What do you think?

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