Okay, it's time to unveil the first incarnation of my Pox 2.0 deck. But first, I want to cover what prompted me to begin messing with the deck and why the list is going to raise some objections.
What is Pox?
Pox is a black disruption deck similar to, but not exactly, a control deck. Unlike a true control deck, Pox is not capable of controlling the board or shaping and maintaining a favorable board position for long periods of time. Instead, the deck attempts to throw so much disruption at its opponent that that player is kept off balance while the Pox player wins. Pox therefore seeks to be a highly proactive deck, attacking its opponent's hand, lands, and creatures in order to thwart their eventual victory.
What are the benefits of Pox?
Like its cousin Pikula Homebrew, Pox is a very versatile deck that isn't strategy-specific. In other words, unlike a control deck like, say, Psychatog, Pox doesn't stop your opponent's game plan, but rather prevents them from carrying it out in the first place by denying your opponent the basic resources he or she needs to win. However, unlike other resource-denial or prison decks, Pox is built to benefit from symmetrical resource destruction by running cards that are immune to it (Phyrexian Totem) or can be recurred (Nether Spirit). Furthermore, it has a major leg up on Homebrew by being monocolored and therefore less prone to an opponent's mana disruption.
One other thing that bears mentioning is that Pox is a very versatile deck in terms of design. Outside of a few key components (see below), the deck can be tailor-made to wreck a given meta or broadened enough to take into an open field.
What are the problems with Pox?
There are a few big problems with Pox, some of which pertain to the namesake card and some of which are endemic to this type of deck. I'll go over them one by one, backing them up with my observations from playing and testing the deck quite a bit.
1) No card draw or manipulation. The deck is a fearsome beast if it hits all the right draws, but it tends to run out of steam in the mid-to-late game and thereby loses its ability to apply pressure to your opponent. If your opponent can recover, you will lose. Unfortunately, as the deck is monoblack, there are very few options for card drawing that play well with the rest of the deck.
2) Russian Roulette is a dangerous sport. When you play Pox, you're gambling on a few things - one, that you've done a thorough enough job supressing your opponent that he or she can't come back before you kill him or her, and two, that he or she won't draw into some miracle card in the next few turns and either remove your threats or otherwise stop your attack. If that happens, you've made it that much easier for your opponent to win. Casting a Pox is almost always suicidal against Goblins unless you are holding multiple Infests or have several Engineered Plagues in play.
3) The "Three Mana Rule." Every card in the deck costs three mana or less to play, for a number of reasons. First, it allows you to absolutely abuse Dark Ritual. Second, you will also be forced to sacrifice lands to a Pox. Having a low curve allows you to keep going after a Pox without having to wait for additional lands. However, it does limit your options in terms of what cards can be added - remember the old saying: CMC's over three, stay away from me!
Black's Anatomy, or what the insides of a Pox deck look like.
Pox can largely be broken down into a few main chunks: your core disruption suite, your win condition, and metagame tuning.
Core Disruption Suite:
-Sinkhole: kills lands dead, costs two mana, next.
-Hymn to Tourach: no one likes to be on the receiving end of random discard. Hand suppression works wonders, and this card lets you 2-for-1.
-Smallpox: a new addition, but a good one. Good either early game to slow an opponent down, or after a Pox, to get rid of whatever was left standing on the other side of the table.
-Pox: duh. The deck is kinda, you know, named after this card. It would kinda be, you know, important.
-Wasteland: Nonbasics are rampant in this format. This is a fun and exciting way to deal with them.
-Duress: Useful against every deck in the format but Goblins and a handful of others. If you have a lot of Goblins in your meta, this should probably go in the SB, but you MUST run it somewhere.
Win Conditions: (NOTE: this can differ by build and builder preference. I'll list the most common ones here)
Nether Spirit: discard itself to Pox, then comes back for more. Also an infinite chump blocker. If the board is clear, he can go on the offensive for 2 damage a turn.
-Mishra's Factory: it's a land, so you could lose it to Pox, but you should be sacrificing tapped Swamps to Pox, not manlands. It's also difficult for an opponent without Wasteland to get rid of as it is not always a creature and can recur itself via Crucible of Worlds.
-Chimeric Idol: have nothing to do with your mana? Why not just activate this and swing for three? Or use it as a "surprise" blocker when you're tapped out. The 3/3 body makes it fairly durable.
-Phyrexian Totem: it's like Negator, except it doesn't automatically die to your symmetrical removal. It's also a mana source, which can help if you're land-light.
-The Rack: some Pox builds focusing on discard strategies run this. Personally, I think it's too slow and conditional, but that's just me.
Other things / Meta things:
These are cards common to most Pox decks, but they aren't absolutely essential like the previous two categories. Still, they are very important to your strategy and are highly recommended.
-Crucible of Worlds: you'll be sending a lot of your own lands to the graveyard, and this helps to ease the pain. It also allows you to pull of neat tricks like Wastelock (tm) and Nether Factory (tm).
-Dark Ritual: the bread-and-butter of mana accelerants. Run it, and run four of it.
-Innocent Blood: Thresh is a major force in the format and this card is essentially a one-mana Cruel Edict against that deck. Also deals with a first-turn Lackey.
-Infest: useful for Goblins and weenie decks. Partners well with Engineered Plague.
-Funeral Charm: also useful against Goblins. It's very versatile, but rarely impressive.
-Midnight Charm: from the new PC set, this is basically a Funeral Charm that is better against an aggro meta than Funeral Charm is. Midnight Charm can nuke turn one Lackeys or save you from a SoFI-wielding Sea Drake with equal ease. Funeral Charm is probably better in a combo and Goblins meta because it'll never be dead.
-Tomb of Yawgmoth: Also a new addition from the PC set, this card makes all your colorless lands not so colorless anymore. Useful for smoothing out mana issues and it's (almost) better than a basic Swamp.
-Shrouded Lore: timeshifted Forgotten Lore from PC. It can get mana-intensive, but being able to "flash back" Hymn or Pox can be good. Crucible will allow you to get lands out of your graveyard so your opponent's choices are limited to things you actually want to recur. This warrants testing.
There are more cards, but I won't go into them. Suffice it to say, any card that's either black or an artifact, costs three mana or less, and is a legitimate answer to a problem in your meta can be included in the deck.
A Few Notes on the Deck
1) Pox is mono-black for a reason. Yes, it could splash for green for Deed and a LftL card advantage engine. Yes, it could splash for white for Vindicate and Swords, and better win conditions. BUT doing so makes your mana base weaker, as it opens you up to Wasteland disruption on your secondary color. It's bad enough fighting through Wastelands on your Factories, but being kept off a key color is bad, bad news. Also, there are very few things that black cannot do with sufficient cajoling that would require a splash.
2) The worst card in Pox is Pox, and the best card in Pox is Pox. In the right matchups, Pox is a bomb that can cripple your opponent beyond means of recovery. In the wrong matchups (Goblins), Pox speeds your opponent's clock up and costs you the game. The card may be the namesake card of the deck, but sometimes the correct decision is to side out your Poxes for games two and three. This is especially true against Goblins. If you run Engineered Plague and Powder Keg in your maindeck or sideboard, these are much better cards to play than Pox because you should never cast Pox against a Goblins player unless you are already ahead and are reasonably certain that they don't have any savage topdecks waiting for you. That's a lot of qualifiers for one card. In short, maximizing maindeck Poxes is not the best decision, but between the maindeck and the 'board it helps to run three or four.
3) On a slightly less primer-ish note, I need help testing both my build and new PC cards that could be helpful: Midnight Charm, Shrouded Lore, Tomb of Yawgmoth, maybe Extirpate. There aren't many Legacy tournaments around here this time of year, so if we want matchup data and a final, optimized decklist, I'll need help. Feel free to post your matchup data in this thread and I'll compile it in this post.
Now it's time for the moment you've all been waiting (or scrolling down) for: my latest take on the deck.
Sample Build, by me
4 Wasteland
3 Mishra's Factory
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
11 Swamp
3 Nether Spirit
4 Dark Ritual
4 Innocent Blood
4 Sinkhole
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
4 Infest
3 Phyrexian Totem
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Pox
SB:
2 Pox
4 Duress
3 Powder Keg
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Oppression
Sensei's Divining Top acts as card selection and, combined with fetches, it actually does well as a way to keep yourself from running out of steam in the late game. One thing that seems contentious is the inclusion of said fetchlands. They provide a few important functions in this deck: 1) they thin your library out, which is good...you don't want to start topdecking lands in the late game, 2) they make SDT a good card, and finally 3) they bring fresh cards to the top when you aren't impressed with your draws. With a lower Pox count in this deck, the life loss is not so much of an issue.
The addition of Shrouded Lore to the maindeck would enable the deck to continue to apply pressure in the late game even after playing a lot of key spells...think of it as a "mid-air refueling." Who wants to start testing it?
Matchup Analyses and Sideboarding Strategies
~under construction~
EDIT: expanded my post (primer much?) and updated it with my latest random thoughts. Keep the discussion going.
Last edited by Aggro_zombies; 01-23-2007 at 06:01 PM.
I realize it's all the rage for its massive power, and it's new and awesome, but Extirpate would not be my first choice of Graveyard haters in Pox. Pox already waxes ecstatic against combo and control, Extirpate's strong suits.
Ebony Charm seems much better suited to this task, especially in your build with Phyrexian Arenas, as not only can it empty graveyards, it can also create a two-point life swing with its drain effect, which is crucial when both players life totals are frequently below 10. It can even let a Nether Spirit or Factory swing through for an unblockable 2-3.
Originally Posted by majikal
Aggro Zombie, I don't want to be harsh but I don't see the point of your post.
Your list is not very different from the others, and you didn't even tested it! Plus I don't learn anything here that I didn't already know.
I know that. However, I felt I needed to cover my bases because I was introducing two potentially contentious changes to the deck - a decrease in the number of maindecked Poxes and Phyrexian Arenas as card draw. And I haven't tested the list yet due to a lack of tournaments and a lack of time, which is why I was asking for help.
Eh, I don't really like Arena In Pox. With it, Fetches, Pox, and small pox, You just seem to lose just a bit too much life to my likings. I've been running Top in my build of Pox, and find it much preferable, as I think Card manipulation is much more useful to the deck than outright card draw. Also, your decklist, as far as I can see, does nothing to shore up Pox's weakness to Goblins, which, in my opinion, is the biggest thing keeping Pox from being Tier.
I actually think Aggro Zombies build looks solid.
Yes Pox is a powerhouse but it really isn't that good against this decks weakness, so cutting it might not be a bad call.
I do however think Expirate is unneeded, this deck does fine against control and combo. I love that Arena keeps you packed with disruption, hate the lifeloss though. If only Bottled Clostier costed 3 mana.
If you're running Totem, I actually like Midnight Charm B (possibly even as much as Funeral Charm)
Instant
Choose one - Midnight Charm deals 1 damage to target creature and you gain 1 life; or target creature gains first strike until end of turn; or tap target creature.
Both First Strike and tapping are great with Negator on a stick. And it can kill lackeys like Funeral Charm did. If only it could compete with instant speed discard.
I didn't test the arena, but i am already short in life points without it, so I will probably not test it. I am also pretty comfortable with the top.
Aggro zombie, I posted a list that use the top and don't use 4 Pox but 3. It must be from page 10 to 12.
I agree. I am always so low at life that I run 1 or 2 Zuran Orb in the sideboard sometimes.
Zuran Orb + Crucible also adds a mana to your pool if you have no lands in the graveyard and haven't played one that turn.
Anyway the point of this post is not to suggest Zuran Orb, but I think Arena is too painful for us.
- ERDjinn
I've seen a couple of cards in the upcoming Planar Chaos set that would reall fit nice into Pox decks:
Tomb of Yawgmoth
Legendary Land
All lands count as swamps
This is great to turn mishras and wastelands into swamps (and even fetchlands if you don't want to break them taking one damage), and also lets you tap cabal pit without taking damage. There is also a minor advantage, but that sometimes could be handy: since your opponent's lands are swamps too, you can use the swamwalk ability of funeral charm to make Phyrexian Totem or other creatures unblockable. I would run a couple.
Eradicate/Root of Evil (name is still unclear)
Instant - B
Split Second
Remove target card in an opponent's graveyard from the game. Search that opponent's graveyard, hand and library for all copies of that card and remove them from the game.
I wouldn't run this maindeck, but it can be SAVAGE as a sideboard cards against many decks that rely on single, specific, cards, like Iggy Pop or solidarity. Since the deck easily discards/destroy many cards, you can have a lot of interesting targets for this cards. Even just removing nonbasic lands could be nice, and if used in such a way could even be considered maindeck (but I think sideboard is the best choice).
There is also an old card I'm thinking of, which has never been taken in consideration:
Peat Bog
Land
Peat Bog comes into play tapped with two depletion counters on it.
Tap, remove a depletion counter from Peat Bog: add BB to your mana pool. If there are not depletion counters on Peat Bog, sacrifice it.
This land can be dropped on turn one and let you easily have 3 mana turn two. In a build not running rituals, and so with less turn one plays, the comes-into-play-tapped problem is lessen. But the good side of it is that it's the land you always want to sac to pox or smallpox: this way it's just a land which taps for BB with almost no drawback. If you also run crucible, it seems even more interesting. However, its high unreliability makes it very questionable; I would probably try it only in a list which decided not to play dark ritual.
As far as my build goes, I've tried to splash it for white. Yeah, I know that makes the mana base more vulnerable, but vindicate is just too hot: it acts as sinkhole, or can destroy a nasty creature, or even those damn artifacts, first of all artifact mana and the hatred VIAL. Sure, you can run sinkhole, which is better at removing lands, or play innocent blood which is cheaper at removing creatures, or powder keg which is slow but can take out artifact, and other things. But vindicate can do ALL of them.
So, if we run vindicate, we need some white mana source: mox diamond is an excellent mana source, can't be stripped by a wasteland, and speeds up mana development. A couple of scrublands plus some fetchlands are also needed.
Fetches, Mox diamond and a less stable manabase all call crucible (which is, anyway, a very good card in pox, making us recover easier and letting us discarding lands to pox without really losing them).
Crucible calls for Mishra Factory.
Mishra calls for Phyrexian Totem instead of the antisynergic Idol.
So, more or less, the build I'm thinking about (including the above Planar Chaos cards) is:
MANA:
3 Swamp
4 Fetch
2 Scrubland
2 Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Cabal Pit
4 Wasteland
3 Mishra
4 Mox Diamond
4 Dark Ritual (I see some prefer to take them out, but they seem too useful for casting quick disruption or crucible/totem. Taking them out however would let us improve the threat density)
POX: 8
4 Pox
4 Smallpox
REMOVALS:
4 Vindicate
(I feel like running also Sinkhole is overkill)
DISCARDS:
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Funeral Charm / Duress
I generally prefer Charm, since it can remove creatures too and also makes an instant discards, thus preventing the opponent from using LftL for a turn. It has also some synergy with Tomb of Yawgmot. It is, however, one of the cards you most likely side out for better cards: it is very versatile for the first game, but you can usually put in better ones for the post side games.
OTHERS:
4 Phyrexian Totem
2 Nether Spirit
2 Powder Keg
4 Crucible of Worlds
Yes, four is a lot, but both the mana base and the utility lands benefit from it, and after all you can discard any unused one to (small)pox.
SB (just and idea thrown there):
2 Powder Keg
4 Root of Evil/Estirpate
4 Innocent Blood or Infest
3 Engineered Plague
2 Spinning Darkness
Cabal therapy and oppression both could be good. Cabal Therapy in particular is good with Spirit or Mishra+Crucible, and it's terribly good together with Estirpate because both make you see opponent's hand and call good cards with both of them.
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Malhavoc, your list is decent, though I'd probably drop a Phyrexian Totem for another Nether Spirit. 4 Totem is just plain overkill in my opinion, and I've had little to no problem with the third Nether spirit usually.
The problem with Peat Bog is that when you tap it for BB the second time, you have to sac it. So [I think] if you used it to cast (Small)Pox you would have to sac another land as well, which sucks. Plus it comes into play tapped. The deck's repertoire of spells are 3cc or lower anyway, so the boost is negligible, and if you really wanted accel [a point I'll get to later] you can run Ritual anyway.
Anyway, I've also been trying out Tomb of Yawgmoth, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet. Here's what I've proxied up, which is more conventional, for lack of a better term, than the previous lists:
15 Swamp [I wouldn't go below 17 total B-producing lands with Pox costing BBB]
2 Tomb of Yawgmoth [the other 2 B-producers]
2 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
3 Nether Spirit
3 Crucible of Worlds
4 Pox
4 Smallpox
4 Innocent Blood
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
Well, those are the first 53 cards. I'm still undecided on what to put in the final 7 slots, and the problem mainly lies in the question: Ritual or No? With Ritual, the last 7 cards would probably be:
4 Dark Ritual
3 Phyrexian Totem [better with Factories than Chimeric Idol, and the deck needs the extra offense]
But without Ritual, the deck just opens up to lots of other possibilities. Adding 1-2 more land [probably 1 Tomb and 1 Factory], then there are still 5 slots to screw around with. Powder Keg, Infest, Phyrexian Totem, Cursed Scroll, Phyrexian Arena, Sensei's Divining Top, Funeral Charm, etc have all been mentioned before and could all be fit into the remaining slots. What I've tested the most has been:
+1 Tomb of Yawgmoth
+1 Mishra's Factory
2 Phyrexian Totem
3 Powder Keg
As expected, it's a lot more stable with 25 lands and board control [Keg, but I could easily run Infest in its place], but Ritual is just... Ritual. It can be crazy good or just be dead in your hand. Plus Tomb is much more juicy as a 3-of with 7 non-Swamps to Swampify. Any input? Should I go with explosiveness [Ritual] or stability [more land + board control]? Maybe even go for stability in the main deck and adding Rituals in the sideboard [or vice versa, Rituals main and extra land and board control in the sideboard]?
I think Tomb of Yawgmoth (as a 2x or 3x) let us run a complete set of wastelands and mishra, which is simply wonderful. What is more debatable is the acceleration: mox diamond/ritual/both/nothing. Using diamond would make me run for some vindicates as well. Particularly if we don't have vindicate, powder keg seems really necessary to take down opponent's mox, vial, and a bunch of artifacts/creatures.
Personally, I wouldn't cut ritual: it's just too good to have a starting boost, which I like to use to cast some disruption or a crucible, which otherwise it's not easy to cast after poxing.
I've tested phyrexian arena already, but it's usually just too painful: if cast at the beginning of the game, we usually don't survive long enough to it. And even cast later, it's very risky. Maybe skeletal scrying, which is more easy to "control" and can also remove multiple spirits in the yard.
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Im wondering if Nights Whisper would be worth the cards. I did fall in love with Confidant in the deck but hes very vulnerable as a draw engine and negates the spirit plan. Try that if your meta is very control heavy. My list is somewhere in the thread.
Powderkeg is the better I think. The most important things to kill are usually @ 1 mana anyways. It kills Mongoose which is nice, altho we have many ways to do so already.
Now playing real formats.
Aggro zombies, if you had problems with your life total, I'd rather cut the fetchlands [which do nothing, really] rather than go down to 2 Pox - you should have at least 3. And 4 Pox is, of course, the best. Maybe 0 fetchlands, 4 Pox, 2 Arena? Or 3 Pox, 3 Arena if you really like it in the deck.
I tested Skeletal Scrying a few weeks ago and it worked fine, but often did so in situations where I was already in a superior position. If you have the mana to cast a significant Scrying [x>2], means that you already have lots of gas to play whatever you topdeck anyway, and having extra Spirits in the graveyard often means that you misplayed them in the first place.
Night's Whisper was in my pre-Time Spiral [thus Smallpox-less] Pox deck, and it worked fine. The lifeloss sometimes became an issue, but you have to expect that. Personally, though, I think card quality is almost strictly better than draw in this deck, so if I had to put in such cards I'd rather go with Top or Lose Hope than Scrying or Whisper. There's no life loss, and post-Pox you only have resources for one spell a turn anyway, so making sure it's a good one is a nice plan to have.
By the way, why is this deck still in New and Developmental? 13 pages into the discussion, and with general consensus on what the deck wants to do and what the core set of cards are, it's hardly new or any more developmental than some decks in the Open forum, which are of similar or even less stature than Pox. Aggro zombies' post at the top of this page is a good starting point [although I have some reservations about his list], and we just need some solid matchup information [not just "smashes control/combo, does okay but may have problems vs aggro, dies to gobs"] and we're [hopefully] good to go.
The deck has been sitting in New and Developmental since Small Pox was released to us. Before that there was an existing pox thread in the Open Forum. Dont ask me where it went or why it was demoted. We in the thread all know the deck needs to be moved but unfortunatly no one has the power to do so aside from the people leaving it here in the N&D. PM someone, lets get our deck rolling. I mean it is shaping into tier one isnt it?
Here is my recent list.
Land 23
4 Wasteland
3 Mishra's Factory
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
10 Swamp
1 Tomb of Yawgmoth
Creatures 3
3 Nether Spirit
Utility 9
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Phyrexian Totem
3 Crucible of Worlds
Pox Stuff 25
4 Dark Ritual
4 Innocent Blood
4 Sinkhole
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Smallpox
3 Powder Keg
3 Pox
SB: 15
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Duress
3 Extirpate
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Oppression
Im going 3 and 3 with the poxes. Smallpox is better against aggro whereas Pox sucks, since aggro is the weaker matchup we need to accomidate. I didnt like the feel of only 2 Pox because I never drew it. Powder Keg is an absolute must have against Aether Vial and Needle. It also does a great job of clearing moxen as well. It gets the edge in over Infest which is too dead against alot of decks. It does nothing agaisnt Stompy decks, Thresh, or any type of combo. Im going with Top as my 'draw'. Fetchlands go with Crucible to help the deck shuffle. The deck couldnt handle the life loss of arena and Im not sure Im ready to lose Nether Spirit to play Confidant. I wish I could fit the Duress in the maindeck but I cant find room and as mentioned the aggro match is bad enough.
Now playing real formats.
Bane, how has the goblin match been going without infest or e.plague?
I'd have to disagree with you a bit here. 4 Pox is not the best...in fact, I would go so far as to say that the worst card in Pox is Pox. The card has a tendancy to backfire on you and playing it against Goblins is downright suicidal. Pox is bad in general against decks able to quickly recover their board positions - namely, Goblins (one Ringleader post-Pox and you're screwed), Thresh (Chain-o-Cantrips will make up for any card disadvantage they incur unless you completely destroy their manabase), and some combo decks (Iggy is notoriously resilient to Pox...in fact, they welcome the opportunity to dump things in the yard). Playing Pox against these decks is just asking to lose, as it will often do more harm to you in the long run than it will do to them. That's why I've cut the number of maindeck Pox down so much - the deck can be sufficiently disruptive without playing its namesake card, although Pox is so good in some matchups that I'm reluctant to cut it entirely.
Also, after testing with some friends, I've determined that Phyrexian Arena is a bit of a liability, Pox or no. It has the unfortunate tendancy to backfire against Goblins and is too slow against combo decks like Solidarity. For the time being I'll be going back to using SDTs until I can come up with something better.
Also, I have the feeling this is still here because it dies horribly to Goblins. Consistently losing to the most prevalent deck in the format isn't really a good thing. If we can fix the Goblins matchup, a strong case to move it to Open can probably be made.
Aggo Zombies - For a card engine, I ended up splashing Green for Sylven Library, and 2 Copies of LftL with 3 Cyclers. It could have been because I really wanted to abuse Uba Mask in the board, but it's worked out fine.
[3. LocalDefense]: English is under attack!
This is indeed the main problem with Pox and why it's still here. The other problem is the majority of the people posting a lot of random decklists showing off their new tech card they're using and explaining why it makes Pox so much better while said "tech" doesn't really actually help against this deck's maind problem, Goblins.
I'll just let the 4 Pox thing go and stand corrected on the matter. I've actually gone down to 3 and found the deck less a tightrope walk, but I wouldn't go down to 2.
The thing with the deck is that it thrives on being able to just disrupt your opponent unrelentingly, and needs a critical mass of disruption to do so. Already we've seen problems finding slots for threats [6-7 being the absolute minimum, and already borderline untenable], card draw or deck manipulation [SDT + fetches being the current choice], and goblin hate, and the huge disruption suite is what's being cut down. I see going down to 3 Pox as an option... but what else? Cutting Duress?
Things to consider [lots of questions here]:
1. Threats
With Tomb of Yawgmoth, are we really compelled to run Mishra's Factory, or are Chimeric Idols just simply more solid [3/3 > 2/2, and artifact hate is still far less prevalent than nonbasic hate]? If Factory, then do we still run Totems?
2. Card draw / deck manipulation
Top + Fetches test well, but is the lifeloss going to be an issue, especially as there may be times where you are forced to crack a fetch just to get the mana you need? And if it is an issue, won't the more powerful immediate effect of Night's Whisper be a better choice?
3. Goblin / Aggro Hate
What to maindeck, and what to sideboard? Kegs seem to be the better maindeck choice because of their general usefulness, but Infest is better against Gobs, which is THE problem matchup. What else? Utility things like Lose Hope/Funeral Charm? Or do we go all out and maindeck Plagues [and maybe Kegs as well] and have additional Infests SB? And what do we cut for additional maindeck aggro hate?
Tons of questions there. And there's still my love/hate thing with Dark Ritual. I have them back in the deck, but I may take them out again before long.
EDIT: And once we've settled those above things, what do we prioritize? Do we accomodate all these options [as bane and Aggro zombies have], and cut down on the disruption? Is it worth watering down the deck's strength [albeit admittedly not by much]?
Last edited by jebus; 01-24-2007 at 08:45 AM.
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