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Thread: [Deck] Vaka Pox

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    [Deck] Vaka Pox - Legacy's Most Disruptive Deck

    First let me start off by giving props where props are due; major props to my friend and testing partner (wished to remain anonymous) who for more than seven months, was absolutely vital to developing, testing, and tweaking this deck. And major props to Aggro zombies, tylerwylie, Goaswerfraiejen, jebus, Androstanolone, bane of the living, Misobizo, Top Deck, feuerizer, Beebles for Life, Silly Metal Gat, Sea R Hill, clavio, Tacosnape, Illismus, Malhov, Blair Pheonix, erdjinn and the multitude of other sourcers, too many to name them all (and I apolisize for anyone who was left off) that posted on the N&D thread and who were critically important in this decks development, and without whom the below build wouldn’t be possible. And special major props to Top Deck, Anti American and anyone else (sorry if I left you off) who suggested Ghostly Prison.

    Vaka Pox - Post Future Sight Build

    // Lands
    4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
    4 Wasteland
    4 Scrubland
    4 Bloodstained Mire
    3 Polluted Delta
    3 Swamp
    3 Mishra's Factory

    // Threats
    4/3 Tombstalker

    // Disruption
    4 Duress
    4 Hymn to Tourach
    4 Smallpox
    4 Sinkhole
    4 Vindicate
    4 Pox
    3 Crucible of Worlds
    2 Rancid Earth
    2/3 Ghostly Prison

    // Sideboard
    2 Trinisphere
    2 Infest
    2 Ghostly Prison
    3 Tabernacle of Pendrall Vale
    3 Chalice of the Void
    3 Chains of Mephistophles

    Now that FS is readily available and on the brink of being legal, I believe this is the ideal post FS build of the deck. There was nothing wrong with the old build, but Tombstalker is such a powerful threat here that it's well worthwhile to modify the deck to incorporate it.

    But as Goblins was displaced by Iggy Pop and other combo decks as the fastest decks in the format, running Duress is a lot more important. Especially since the deck started running Tombstalker, being able to take out your opponents removal is a very powerful play.

    I am now testing cutting down to 3 Tombstalker in order to go up to 3 Ghostly Prison maindeck.

    The pro to this is that Tombstalker really works best as a three of. The con is that with only Tombstalker, the number of actual threats you run falls to a meager six.

    There were ample oppurtunities to discard away excess or early Tombstalkers before, so cutting it to three may have been been a mistake.

    But going up to 3 Ghostly Prison almost certainly isn't a mistake once Hulk is officially banned and goblins makes a comeback though, so even if I go back to 4 Tombstalker, I will cut a Duress rather than the third Ghostly Prison to make room for it.

    Here were the cards that were cut about a month or so ago...

    Dark Ritual - This was the card I cut for Duress as it was always the weakest card in the deck imho. This deck goes well into the midgame so you topdeck it far more than you see it in your opening hand, and it always made for a horrid topdeck. Plus it did nothing to disrupt your opponent which is a huge minus for this deck.

    Trinisphere - A solid card for locking your opponent from playing any spells entirely, but sometimes dysnergic with your own cards and not always the card you want to see. So I cut this for Ghostly Prison.

    Rancid Earth/Sensei's Divining Top - I'm still not completely certain whether it is better to filter into more disruption using Top, Fetchlands and Crucible, or to simply run another land destruction spell. When Trinisphere had been cut from the mainboard, I think the build tilted back in Top's favor. But once the build started running Chalice of the Void and Tabernacle in the board, it tilted back to Rancid Earth.

    I strongly recommend that people test the deck above exactly as posted before experimenting with it. Each of the changes made from the previous build were neccesary to optimize Tombstalker and the Dark Rituals that came back with it.

    Preliminary testing suggests that something close to the above build might be the optimal direction for Vaka Pox to pursue post Future Sight due to the unique ability of this particular deck to abuse Tombstalker. While every other deck tested including Red Death had little to no chance of casting Tombstalker before the fourth turn (no faster than Exalted Angel), this deck was uniquely capable of very frequently casting Tombstalker on the third turn all while having reduced the opponents to one land. This is because not only do Pox and Smallpox heavily stunt the opponent's development, but they also feed your graveyard with 3-4 cards essentially having the Poxes double as both exceptional disruption and the equivalent of a Dark Ritual when it comes to feeding delve.

    This convinced us to try pushing the deck away from locking out your opponent completely, which the old build was exceptionally apt at doing, to significantly stunting your opponent, cutting them off of white mana and then putting them on a 3-4 turn clock which they are left unable to deal with. Thus hard locks such as Crucible of Worlds (perhaps Ghostly Prison depending on how testing versus Goblins goes) and Cabal Pit due to it's dependence on threshold, were replaced with tempo boosts.

    Though I think there are better options than either, I generally think that Judge Unworthy is superior to Innocent Blood. Not only is it instant speed removal that can do cool things like kill your opponents Serendib Efreet when they block your Mishra's Factory, but it has three advantages over Innocent Blood...

    a.) Unlike Innocent Blood, it doesn't force you to sacrifice your own Tombstalker.

    b.) Its targeted removal, which works well given the huge number of choose and sacrifice effects that you already run. If your opponent has two creatures for example, you can kill their small creature with this and take out their large creature with a Pox effect. But if your opponent has multiple weenies, being able to choose and kill the most annoying one is nice.

    c.) It's similar to Magma Jet in that it's not dead versus nonaggro decks. You can always target your own Tombstalker to provide some very solid card selection. Sure you can't deal 2 damage to the head like Magma Jet can, but the fact that you can Scry for 3 rather than 2 makes up for that.

    Dark Ritual (and possibly Chrome Mox or Mox Diamond to a lesser degree, though they make the opening hands very swingy) was made significantly better by Trinisphere which was unfortunately the one card in the list below that wasn't played during testing and which proved it self to be a huge bomb, esp on the first turn when on the play. Also where as previously, games lasted on average 15 turns making Dark Ritual more frequently a dead draw than a bomb, games here can end in the first 7 turns thanks to plays such as turn 1 Fetchland, Dark Ritual Sinkhole, turn two Swamp Smallpox sac a land & discard a card, turn three Swamp Tombstalker, turn four Scrubland Vindicate attack for 5 with your opponent at one land; or turn one Fetchland Dark Ritual Trinisphere, turn three Fetchland Vindicate, turn four Wasteland Tombstalker with your opponent at one land and unable to cast even a single spell. These were actual hands during testing, not optimal hands or god draws by any means. As a rule of thumb, especially if your opponent doesn't have access to white, use up every Pox and Smallpox in your hand before casting Tombstalker, if it means waiting one extra turn to cast it.

    Nevertheless, once Trinisphere was cut from the mainboard, Duress displaced Dark Ritual due to the surge in combo decks and the decline in goblins (the one match where you often hated drawing Duress) in competitive environments as a result.

    Vaka Pox - Current Build 4/8/2007

    3 Swamp
    3/4 Scrubland
    4/3 Bloodstained Mire
    4 Tomb of Yawgmoth
    4 Wasteland
    2 Polluted Delta
    2 Cabal Pit
    2 Flagstones of Trokair

    4 Ghostly Prison
    4 Hymn to Tourach
    4 Vindicate
    4 Sinkhole
    4 Smallpox
    4 Pox

    3 Trinisphere/Sensei's Divining Top
    2 Crucible of World/Rancid Earth
    3 Nether Spirit
    4 Chimeric Idol

    Sideboard
    2 Cabal Therapy
    3 Infest
    3 Jotun Grunt
    3 Trinisphere/Crucible of Worlds
    4 Duress - Would be in the mainboard if goblins wasn't such a common problem matchup. Cutting any of the above slots for Duress significantly hurts your percentages versus goblins.

    Acclertion (Dark Ritual) was tested repeatedly, and while the turn one boost it gives you is nice, the fact that many cards such as Ghostly Prison or Vindicate can only be played one turn earlier with it and more importantly, that it forced you cut away a piece of disruption, testing proved to be much too great a price to pay. Most matchups with this deck go well into the midgame and any copies of Dark Ritual not in your opening hand had you wishing that they were whichever piece of disruption you had to cut to accomidate the Dark Rituals.

    If games ended in the first 7 turns, Dark Ritual is a great card, but most games take longer to win and Dark Rituals later on are dead draws. This plays very much like a prison deck but much more focused on mana screw and with a lot more effective prison elements imo, and this didn't run Ritual for the same reason Prison decks don't.

    Nevertheless, during testing, Trinisphere was the one card in the above list that wasn't played but proved itself to be possibly the best turn one play in the deck with Dark Ritual. So maybe the card deserves another shot.

    Latest Developments

    Maindecking Trinisphere was a recent suggestion, and upon preliminery testing proved to be a great tool against burn, combo and any deck that's mana light and relying on brainstorm (thresh, meathooks etc) to get additional lands.

    Unfortunately, the maindeck was very tight. The most cuttable slots are Crucible and Top which are most worthwhile when used together, and losing those would be a huge loss to your midgame staying power, and the land destruction package would have to be increased as a result.

    Anyways, we're in the process of testing the below build. As indicated, the change improve the matchup versus burn, combo, and thresh, but hurts the landstill, 43 lands and similar matchups against slower decks.

    -3 Top
    -2 Crucible
    -1 Bloodstained Mire
    +3 Trinisphere
    +2 Rancid Earth.
    +1 Scrubland

    Earlier Build Tested

    -1 Sensei's Divining Top
    -1 Polluted Delta
    +1 Crucible of Worlds
    +1 Scrubland

    This build on occasion wasn't able to seal the victory mid game because it was unable to keep the land destruction going. It was why it was determined that 3 Top was absolutely vital.

    Earliest Build Tested

    -2 Flagstones of Trokair
    -4 Chimeric Idol

    +3 Mishra’s Factory
    +1 Crucible of Worlds/Pox
    +2 Chimeric Idol/Phyrexian Totem/Infest


    The older build was best against landstill and other controllish decks heavy on removal. The newer build proved itself far better in testing versus fast aggressive decks (due to being able to disrupt early game without having to leave mana open for blockers) and especially goblins, which was key in pushing us to that end, in spite of losing the ability to abuse Crucible and Factory. If most of the goblins decks your meta are replaced with slower control decks, please keep the older version in mind.

    What makes Vaka Pox different?

    There were two versions of the deck heavily tested over the past seven months. One version played mana acceleration, a good bit more discard and Chimeric Idol to serve as a moderately clock. While the deck was reasonably viable, Idol was often not fast enough to win the game by the time the opposition recovered from the initial wave of disruption, and didn’t have the means to keep it’s disruption flowing through the use of cards like Crucible recursion of Wastelands and Cabal Pit, and Top + Fetchlands to prevent this recovery. The later version dropped Idol and some of the early game disruption for more powerful effects like Infest, slower more resilient threats like Mishra’s Factory recurrable through wasteland and more midgame staying power through Top. The deck was much stronger versus control but suffered considerably in the aggro matchup even with maindeck Infest.

    This build is a mix of both builds, and serves to retain the early decks potency versus fast win strategies, while retaining the later builds strengths versus slow controllish decks. Thus the major difference in Vaka Pox is that it leaves out early game cards like Duress from the maindeck for cards like Top that ensured that you can keep your land destruction flowing and win the war of attrition that occurs so often in the midgame. The white splash and locks like Ghostly Prison became better and better as the focus moved away from fast disruption in a hope to win early (proved unviable versus goblins), toward early game stabilization and a means to generate continous disruption midgame.

    Playing the Deck

    This deck is deceptively difficult to play properly. The deck is unlike any other deck and skill with any particular archeatype will not translate over to this deck. And yet the nature of the disruption makes it so that the deck can win a good number of games in spite of multitudes of play mistakes, mistakenly leading virtually everyone to believe they are playing the deck well. The best way to master the deck is to play it often with an player experienced with Pox pointing out any play mistakes made or to play both sides of the game and keep track of what you would have done had you not known the other person’s hand and analyzing why that would have been a mistake in retrospect. Only then will you learn to be able to anticipate your opponent's actions two to three turns ahead of time and plan your disruption accordingly, become very familiar with the manabases of every archeatype, keep track of how many cards you and your opponent will end up with in hand and how many lands in play the turn that you want to pox and how to maximize pox, when to top, what hands to throw back and essentially be able to come up with a full gameplan based on your opponent's very first turn.

    Matchups

    I sought out and specifically tested against good players running the decks in the metagame forum.

    The key thing to keep in mind regarding these matchup analyses is that you are effectively running 20 land destruction effects. This fact alone lets you completely mana screw your opponent by the fourth turn over 40% of the games you play and significantly disrupt them by then the remainder of the time. Once this occurs, either Top combined with fetchlands or Wasteland recursion is often enough to keep the land destruction flowing to ensure that your opponents stay mana screwed for the remainder of the game. But usually, you can win well before that thanks to Spirit and Idol.

    UGw Threshold 60-65/35-40

    This matchup in addition to random jank is one of the best reasons to play this deck. The low number of threats, combined with the low number of land, and their extreme vulnerability to your land destruction makes this matchup one you should look forward to if you don’t make any play mistakes. You play more cards that severely set them back than they play countermagic. The key here is to make sure you resolve the most important ones. This is another matchup where stupid things like walking into a Daze when you didn’t need to, not luring out a Force of Will, not saving a Vindicate for Pithing Needle if your gameplan is dependent on Crucible + Wasteland lock etc can cost you the game. Preboard, the matchup is even to only slightly to your favor, but postboard, things get nutty good for you Duress, Jotun Grunt and Cabal Therapy go along way in ensuring that you can resolve anything that helps you signficantly.

    UGr Threshold 65/35

    This is similar to UGw Threshold, but with fewer threats thus letting you force them to sac the creature you wanted them to sac with ease, with the occasionally annoying Meddling Mages replaced with Lightning Bolt (just don’t walk your Idol into it) and with the fearsome StP to get rid of Nether Spirit replaced with cards like Magma Jet or Fire/Ice that do nothing against you.

    Goblins 50/50 (You fare better against builds that splash green, white or black because of Wasteland.)

    Note: This matchup has improved considerably over the previous builds 50:50 testing results now that 3 Infests are being run in the sideboard as well.

    The prevalence of this matchup is the single greatest reason for the maindeck inclusion of Ghostly Prison and the exclusion of Duress. Unlike most aggro, Goblins used to be an exceedingly frustrating matchup thanks to them maindecking 8 cards that singlehandedly circumvent all your land destruction if left unchecked for even just a couple of turns. Smallpox can deal with first turn Lackey if you are on the play, and Vindicate can deal with Vial. But whereas they lead with one of these cards most games, your corresponding answer to that respective card isn’t always as readily available. Plus having to use your Vindicates on Vial hurts your land destruction strategy. Playskill is absolutely vital in this matchup as explained above. You must be able to anticipate both your plays and their plays as well as your life total and dozens of other variables atleast two turns in advance. If you can stabilize after their opening onslaught, you usually win. And you can stabilize with a single Ghostly Prison, or even without one if you kept them off of Lackey and Vial, you can usually stabilize with either Chimeric Idol, Nether Spirit, or Cabal Pit recursion long enough to find more Ghostly Prisons. If you can get two Prisons into play and keep them off of their splash color, you’re virtually guaranteed your win. Just make sure you keep them off their splash color (pretty easy to do) as a card like Serenity can wreck your day if you don’t have a Vindicate handy.

    43 Lands 55/45

    43 lands is the most popular of the Loam variants in my meta, and the only loam variant I’ve was able to play against enough to post matchup percentages. But I suspect that Jotun Grunt is as much a godsend versus all Loam variants as it is here. The matchup being in your favor doesn’t make even a tiny bit of sense, but that’s how it turned out. If your opponent foolishly overextends with Manabond for example, a Pox will make them cry, and if combined with a couple more ld spells, will easily win you the game. Much more commonly, a fast clock thanks to the near impossible to kill Chimeric Idol and Nether Spirit to an even greater extent backed up by Pox to mana screw them, will win you the game. But if you can’t mana screw them early thus tying them off from their blocker, the game can reach a stalemate there and won’t be decided until well the midgame. And most of the games you lose there will be lost due to a Loam Wasteland lock, and most that you win will be won because of a Crucible Wasteland lock. In such a situation Ghostly Prison and Nether Spirit are exceptional in helping you buy you enough time to find the lock pieces esp when combined with land destruction. After Loam, the key card card for them here is Exploration which when abused with Loam and Mulch to a much lesser extend can neuter your Wasteland strategy. Vindicate can be a life line here. Postboard, if you can’t keep your opponent under 4 mana, be wary of Disk taking out your Crucible and don’t overextend needlessly.

    Red Death 55/45

    Their best chance here is to disrupt/mana screw you early on (possible thanks to Hymn, Wasteland and Sinkhole), so don’t keep a mana light hand and disrupt them before they disrupt you. A ritualed out Specter or Negator (if you don’t have blockers) can singlehandedly win them the game as well if you don’t have a Smallpox handy. If they are unable to do either, you can usually stabilize with Pox effects, Spirit or Prison. Then, the fact that they have no card advantage engine, or a way to deal with Spirit, while you can readily keep the disruption and threats flowing with Top, will win you the game. If you have an Idol in play that you need, don’t forget to cut them off from red mana before making it a creature.

    Burn 50/50

    Note: This matchup improves considerably in builds that run Trinisphere in the mainboard over the tested build which didn't run maindeck Trinisphere.

    Yes I know how ludricrous claiming that Vaka Pox beats Burn half the time sounds, but that’s what the testing showed. Game 1 is usually only slightly against you, for a couple of reasons. They run only 18 lands and no card draw. Not knowing what they’re facing, a typical burn player will aim for a hand with 2 land and 5 burn spells, but many won’t throw away a hand with just one land. In addition, Hymn and even Smallpox type effects force them to discard away business spells critical to them not running out steam, all while Nether Spirit and Idol beats face. Even without hymn discarding away business spells, a decent bit of land destruction can easily ensure they never get more than one land in play at a time Game 2 and 3 turn turn very much to your favor thanks to Duress, Cabal Therapy and Jotun Grunt (great clock that’s also out of burn’s range) coming in place of chaff like Ghostly Prison and slower cards like some Tops, Crucibles, or perhaps even Wastelands (depending on the build). And these are the games that push the matchup to your favor. The percentage would be higher except that burn can occasionally recover to deal through enough damage before Idol, and even Grunt race them, if you experience a glut in your land destruction.

    TES ~50/50 - Almost certainly a favorable matchup but only ended up being even due to the many factors below.

    A big factor here I suspect is that the TES build that was tested against was testing running 4 Duress maindeck in place of 4 Xantid Swarm as a way to fight the mirror and to give the deck a way to get rid of Hymns, Duresses, and Cabal Therapies. This gave the build a huge advantage in this matchup over the traditional builds of TES. Another factor is that the build I was testing maindecked Sensei's Top over Trinisphere. And perhaps an even more relevent factor is that I am not extremely experienced playing against the TES matchup. So I wasn't sure if I picked the right cards with Duress and Cabal Therapy and my opponent wasn't willing to help me out in regards to the best cards to choose for testing purposes. Also This was all because TES combo was the only deck of all those tested not found in our playgroup (hence my inexperience against it) so far fewer matchups (during which he got multiple turn one wins, far fewer than the norm as I found out later) against it could be tested. Were any of these factors not in play, I'm certain this would be positive matchup. The combo proved to be very vulnerble postboard to Duress or Hymn followed up any additional discard via Cabal Therapy, Smallpox or even Pox buying you enough time to find Trinisphere or additional disruption.

    Solidarity

    I was unfortunately unable to find a good solidarity player to test against. I only played two games here, both preboard due to my opponents lack of a sideboard, and won both games, one to mana screw and one in which my opponent tried to combo out only to have his combo fizzle, possibly due to a play mistake. So I need to test against a more experienced player. If anyone would like to volunteer, please let me know. It seems like the matchup should be easier than TES becuase of the decks vulnerability to mana screw, dependence on getting to four lands to combo out, and effectively much wider window during which you can disrupt them.

    Enchantress 50/50

    Note: The build that was testing was not running Trinsiphere. Since Trinsiphere's inclusion, this matchup has improved considerably.

    This matchup more than any other, even Goblins, the early game is absolutely key. Most of the cards they run don’t disrupt you gameplan at all (except Aura of Silence) and they are vulnerable to all 19-20 of your land destruction spells so you have a great window to disrupt them, but you absolutely must be able to take advantage of it. You can easily take out whatever land they enchant with Utopia Sprawl to get a two for one deal. Exploration can be a problem though. The key here is to disrupt their manabase very early to keep them from getting the mana to cast Enchantress’s Presense. You can deal with Argothian just fine, but if not dealt with asap, once they start drawing cards and lands, you often lose. Fortunately though, the matchup is very winnable thanks to your ample disruption which only gets stronger post board giving you about a 50% chance to pull it off. And have one ace up your sleeve that makes the matchup fall slightly to your favor. Without an Aura of Silence, a crucible wasteland lock early enough will be enough to sometimes slowly turn the tide back to your favor and lock them up.

    RGB Survival 55-60/45-40

    Only tested versus a RGB variant. This matchup often plays out somewhat similar to Enchantress. Similar to Enchantress, they have few means to disrupt your land destruciton but you have a much bigger window to disrupt their mana base. The low land count (only 20 lands), leaves them very vulnerable. Vindicate is great for blowing up Survival if need be. This is all around a strong matchup almost entirely because of the low land count. I suspect the land count and the lack of white for Enlightened Tutor to get Survival, and only a single Squee in the maindeck is very build dependent and this build was geared to have a shot versus TES as well. I would need to find someone with a better Survival build to test against.

    Landstill (About 55/45 but this is very variable)

    Your percentages versus landstill is very variable based on the build and the landstill player. If they don’t run Swords, Nether Spirit can singlehandedly stop them in their tracks and might be enough to deck them or force them to break their own standstill to cast Swords. With swords, it's among your worst matchups. You have Wastelands and Cabal Pits to kill their factories. So if they cast Standstill before casting a Crucible. You can just wait them out with Wastelands and/or a Nether Spirit. Disruption early on or a resolved Crucible can also singlehandedly win you the game (unless they get the 4 mana for Disk). And getting a handful of goodies thanks to a Standstill waiting game can help ensure that you resolve your Crucible. In the old build of Pox that ran Mishra’s Factory as well, the matchup was very favorable. Some of the landstill builds run many cards you don’t care about such as Wrath of God, Fire and Ice, Slice and Dice and Lightning Bolt to some extent and these builds are to your favor. Other builds run Pernicious Deed along with Disk, Swords to deal with Nether Spirit and additional countermagic, and those can be challenging. The less countermagic they run, the more likely you can resolve Crucible before they can find theirs, and that’s key to this matchup.

    Deck Background

    (You can skip this section if you’re already familiar with, or have no interest in the deck’s history and recent evolution).

    Pox BBB, Sorcery

    Card text: Each player loses 1/3 of his or her life; then chooses and discards 1/3 of his or her hand; then sacrifices 1/3 of the creatures he or she controls; and then sacrifices 1/3 of the lands he or she controls. Round each loss up.

    Pox was a monoblack deck with a heavy focus on discard, land destruction, and many inherent synergies and first reared it’s head in 1995. During it’s peak several years ago, the deck relied upon cards such as Pox and Hymn to Tourach and creatures such as Hypnotic Specter and Mindstab Thrull to heavily disrupt the opponent. Pox largely remained under the radar after that, with it’s pilots slowly evolving it to incorporate newer cards such as Chimeric Idol and Nether Spirit in the mix. The main strength of the deck was that with proper tuning, it could be designed to deal with either aggro or combo decks. But when goblins began to maindeck Aether Vial, giving the deck 8 ways to ignore land destruction effects, and went on to become the most popular deck in the format, Pox became essentially unviable.

    It wasn’t until the printing of Smallpox (another answer to Lackey that was synergistic with the deck) and Phyrexian Totem in Time Spiral that interest in the deck was renewed and many people contributed to attempts to arrive at a version of the deck that was viable in the current. Below are the specific cards that renewed interest in the deck.

    Smallpox BB, Sorcery

    Card text: Each player loses 1 life, discards a card, sacrifices a creature, then sacrifices a land.

    This recent addition from Time Spiral added an additional element of both creature removal and land destruction working extremely well in a deck that was already designed to abuse Pox.

    Phyrexian Totem 3, Artifact

    Tap: Add B to your mana pool.
    2B: Phyrexian Totem becomes a 5/5 black Horror artifact creature with trample until end of turn.
    Whenever Phyrexian Totem is dealt damage, if it's a creature, sacrifice that many permanents.

    This card provided the archeatype with another win condition that is immune to Innocent Blood, Smallpox and Pox to the already steller options, Nether Spirit, Chimeric Idol and Mishra’s Factory. It seemed like it had potential, but testing shows that it the high mana investment to activate it and the inability to block makes it unappealing in a metagame with fast aggressive decks.

    And yet, it wasn’t until the addition of Tomb of Yawgmoth from Planar Choas that the old 18-20 Swamp manabases began to be abandoned…

    Urami,Tomb of Yawgmoth, Legendary Land

    Card text: Each land is a Swamp in addition to its other land types.

    This land allows this deck to mitigate one of it’s biggest problems, mainly, that running nonblack sources like Flagstones of Trokair/Mishra’s Factories and Wastelands made it sometimes difficult to cast Pox without casting four mana sources thus breaking the ability to maximize Pox by making certain you also have multiples of three in terms of lands in play and cards in hand. Up till this point, my friend and I were convinced that Chimeric Idol was hands down superior to both Phyrexian Totem and Mishra’s Factory by a significant margin, as testing showed. But Tomb of Yawgmoth provided a very strong incentive to run Mishra’s Factory and Cabal Pit, especially when it became apparent that you could get away with running a full four copies of Tomb of Yawgmoth, by saccing or discarding any extras drawn to Pox and Smallpox.

    The loss of Idol meant that the deck had a much harder time having a fast clock to accompany early disruption. This meant that the situation of it’s disruption stalling midgame had to stop, and ultimately pushed the deck in more and more of a slow controllish direction to beef up the midgame, which maindeck Top was instrumental in. In addition, where as previous builds rarely ran more than 2 Crucible of Worlds if any at all, 3 Crucibles became strong in this situation due to the multitude of ways to abuse the card, Cabal Pit recursion, Wasteland recursion, fetchland recursion with Top, and Factory recursion. Wasteland recursion itself pushed the deck to have very favorable matchups versus a wide number of matchups. A large number of matchups improved with these changes reinforcing them, but the Goblins matchup was more challenging than ever and the deck remained unviable almost exclusively because of that one matchup. Eventually, a great deal of testing of a wide number of variations caused us to arrive at the build below, one that retains all of the significant gains it made in the midgame, all while also incorporating cards that give it a positive golbins matchup.

    Card Analysis

    (This section is from a primer prepared almost five months ago for a very different build, so some of the information below is outdated).

    For a card to be considered for inclusion in Vaka Pox, it needs to get around cards such as Innocent Blood, Smallpox, and Pox and in addition needs to produce mana, disrupt the opponent, or deal damage. There is a surprisingly large number of potent cards to choose from. No one build is ever optimal for two different metagames. No card is an automatic four of, not even Pox and Smallpox. The specific card choices and numbers are heavily dependent on the particular metagame, and to a lesser degree, the preferred playstyle. Nevertheless, certain cards though they may seem strong on the surface, are in fact poor choices in this deck, and those cards in addition to getting an explanation as to why they are poor choices will be marked with a * to allow people to easily skip past them.

    The White Splash

    Vindicate - This is just about the best card to splash for in builds running 4 Sinkholes. It works as one additional piece of land destruction, one that can deal with other problem permanents as well.

    Ghostly Prison – A vital card in letting you stabilize versus fast aggressive deck, as well as stopping them from attacking entirely especially if multiples are played.

    Rule of Law – This decks worst match up is storm based combo. Running four copies of this card gives the deck a fighting chance games two and three. It can also stop Aluren dead in it’s tracks.

    Jotun Grunt – An experimental sideboard choice that proved invaluable. Not only does it give you a way to deal with Loam based strategies, opposing Crucibles at times, Threshold, Ichorid and other combo decks, but it’s an exceptional fast clock that’s a great way to try and race burn, fast combos and most any deck.

    Gerrard’s Verdict – The one other contribution that white has to offer for this deck.
    The major strike against it is that selective discard is never as strong as random discard. Occasionally, your opponents will discard cards with too high casting cost for them to have any hope of casting, or cards that are worthless against you anyways giving you no benefit from the card, and the effect seemed not powerful enough to justify those times that you will top deck this when your opponent has a decent board left and what you really needed was a piece of land destruction that doubles as removal. The card however might be a stronger answer to combo and burn than Cabal Therapy. But Verdict for example will never hit a card like Exploration versus 43land, where as a Cabal Therapy will.

    Swords to Plowshares - The life gain that your opponent gets when you Swords one of his creatures can cost games. Ghostly Prison makes additional removal, except perhaps Infest unneeded. If needed, Innocent Blood, Funeral Charm, Smother, Infest, and Spinning Darkness can deal with creatures as well without the lifegain.

    Mana

    Due to the tendency of cards like Pox and Smallpox to destroy your own lands, this deck needs to play a good bit more mana than would be indicated from a simple analysis of the mana curve.

    Swamp – Due to the heavy black dependence of cards such as Pox, Smallpox, Sinkhole and Hymn to Tourach, you will need to play a bare minimum of 18 permanent black mana sources but preferably 20, and a lot of land in general.

    Wasteland – This card may make more sense in the Disruption section as that is the general purpose this card serves. As good as this card is, the only reason to play it is if your meta packs atleast a moderate amount of nonbasic lands. The reason for this is that it is absolutely critical that your disruption begins early on with a deck like this, especially when facing a blue mage who if left unchecked will likely build up sufficient card advantage to put you in an unwinnable position, and against who your massive pseudo reset button, Pox is unlikely to resolve. And yet the only disruption element in this deck that can be cast with colorless mana is Infest, which usually is a more a turn three and later type of card, and which is often of little use against blue mages. Where as with just three swamps in play, you can usually Pox without much hesistation, but if a colorless land was played within the first three turns, Poxing early will require you to either sacrifice two lands, or use up a Dark Ritual, both of which are disadvantagous to you as well.

    Tomb of Yawgmoth – Being a brand new spoiled card that’s hot of the presses, testing with this land has been limited. But it seems to be a great way to get away with running lands that don’t produce black mana, such as Mishra’s Factory, while still enabling you to Pox early without losing more than one land at a time.

    Mishra’s Factory – This card may make more sense in the Kill Conditions section as that is generally the purpose that this card serves. As a kill condition, it’s major weakness is that uses up a land drop.

    Dark Ritual - A very solid choice. ability to set up explosive plays early on, and it's equally important ability to let you cast a threat off of just one land, after having used up some combination of Pox and Smallpox or Wasteland to nuke all of your opponents lands but leaving you with only one land in the process. Nevertheless, some players may opt to cut this card in favor of more disruption and more consistent mana sources.

    Cabal Pit - The lifeloss that this land causes in a deck that depletes it's own life total rather quickly made this a tough card to recommend in spite of it’s excellent synergy with Crucible. But the recent trend of running 4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth made the card well worth running atleast 2 copies of.

    Mox Diamond - Some suggest running these in place of Dark Ritual. It does have synergy with Crucible of Worlds and allows you to pitch Wastelands in matchups where they are not worthwhile. Even then, that this card is better than Dark Ritual is doubtful. An opening hand with 2 Swamps and 1 Dark Ritual leaves you with many more options than a hand with 2 Swamps and 1 Mox Diamond. With the former, you can opt to a play both Duress and a 3cc Threat turn one, only to follow it up with a Sinkhole or Hymn next turn and a Smallpox the turn after should they miss their next land drop indicating that they are vulnerable to mana screw, all while your Idol reduces their life total.

    Flagstones of Trokair - Only viable in versions that opt to not run Mishra’s Factory. When White is indeed splashed for cards like Vindicate, this card is easy to recommend due to it's inherent synergy with Pox and Smallpox. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in specific gives this card a significant boost.

    Chrome Mox - Some suggest running these in place of Dark Ritual. But the extreme card disadvantage it creates in a deck where it's own spells cause it to discard cards and that has no means to draw extra cards makes a very difficult card to recommend.

    Kill Conditions

    While the disruption below paves the way, these are the cards that must end the game, and unfortunately, for the deck to work well, no more than 8-10 maindeck slots should be devoted to them. This means that consistency is key, these few cards must work well every single game. A kill condition that sticks around and consistently damages your opponent each game is preferred over one that works extremely well in some games, but does next to nothing in others. This is the underlying reason why some very popular and disruptive kill conditions such as Cursed Scroll, Hypnotic Specter, and the Rack are not recommended. They are either too slow for the mana investment they require each turn, have poor synergy with many of your own cards to stick around, or simply don’t deal damage in all situations.

    Nether Spirit - The best tempo swing you could ask for. Discarding this card to Smallpox not only nets you a card over your opponent but also puts creature into your graveyard thus bringing it to play under your controller during your next upkeep, all without costing you a single mana. Not only does this creature not go away to anything short of Swords to Plowshares, but it can chump block till the end of time and also combos beautifully with Cabal Therapy and Contamination. The only disadvantage is that each time it returns to play, it has summoning sickness which makes it rather slow at times. Regardless, we would gladly run four if not for the fear of having multiple Spirits wind up in my graveyard. When initially learning to play this deck, you must get into the habit of declaring your upkeep step and making certain there isn't a Nether Spirit you could return to play at this time.

    Chimeric Idol - Chimeric Idol is a very easy card to compare with Phyrexian Totem. It has the advantage of activating for free thus allowing you to play your disruption and then attacking, and attacking when you only have two lands in play, where as Totem ties up your mana and requires three mana in order to attack.

    Phyrexian Totem - This win condition can end the game very quickly after a pox, and can be tapped to produce mana as well, allowing you to recover quicker. But when active, a surprise burn spell could cost you all of your land and probably the game. In addition, Totem takes a full three mana to activate which is a very big disadvantage since this usually means playing a piece of disruption the same turn as you attack is out of the question, as is activating Totem when you go down to two land. All in all, Chimeric Idol seems to have an advantage, due to it’s ability to block but if there is room, there is no reason not to run both.

    Kill Conditions That Should Not Be Played

    Cursed Scroll - This is likely going to be the most controversial point in this article, but a great deal of playtime went into Cursed Scroll before it was determined that the card just was not consistently good enough to beat out the above options. The reasons are multifold. 1.) The activation cost is too high. The three mana it takes to activate Cursed Scroll can just as easily activate Totem, and deal a full five points of damage rather than two. With such a high activation costs, it has the same disadvantages that make Totem less appealing, it doesn't let you cast disruption the same turn you activate it, and it also can't be used when you only have two land. 2.) The fact that you will rarely be able to activate Scroll the same turn that you play your disruption, means that unless you keep drawing lands, you only have a 50% chance of hitting something with Scroll the second time, a 33% the third time etc. The only alternative is to alternate between casting out your hand and activating scroll. 3.) Your opponent usually ends up knowing exactly what's in your hand and what to expect each time you use Scroll. They'll be able to brace for impact for that upcoming Pox, and will likely change their gameplan based on this. All this work and mana, just to deal two damage every other turn is not a very sound investment for this deck.

    The Rack - In a build dependent on mana disruption, the above options are unquestionably better. Mana screwing your opponent prevents your opponent from playing cards, which itself makes The Rack worthless. But in a build of the deck that has more in common with the budget version of the deck. This isn't a terrible win condition due to it’s low casting cost. Even then, to use it well, you would have to load up your deck with discard even more so; and you are still most likely better off with the above options which can all block and kill off weenies, a very significant aspect to making this deck work in an aggressive metagame.

    Hypnotic Specter/Mindstab Thrull/Necroplasm - These creatures harken back to years ago, at the height of Pox's success, but also back when not nearly as many noncreature alternatives existed. Now that Smallpox has become a mainstay, it’s best to abandon all traditional creatures with the exception of the very abusable Nether Spirits.

    Dark Confidant/Nantuko Shade/Phyrexian Negator/Jotun Grunt - Once again, the addition of Smallpox makes running traditional creatures less desirable and also allows you to instead run cards like Innocent Blood. Phyrexian Negator however remains a decent sideboard option in a metagame filled with combo, due to it’s ability to end games quickly after firing off several bouts of disrutption.

    Guardian Idol - Considering how little use this deck has for colorless mana, and the high activation cost for such a small creature, Mishra's Factory, Phyrexian Totem and Chimeric Idol are all far superior choices.

    Disruption

    Innocent Blood – After Infest, simply the best creature kill this deck could ask for. At a casting card equivalent to Swords, it gets around both untargetability and protection from white, all while not gaining any life for your opponents. It works well with Pox and Smallpox clearing away any creatures left behind, and also has excellent synergy with Infest, allowing you to clear away all your opponents weenies, and then force them to sac the one piece of fat they have left.

    Funeral Charm – This card is versatile enough. Not only can it kill first turn lackey, but it can also let your Nether Spirit trade with Werebear (only to return to play next turn), can deal a few points of extra damage ending the game a turn sooner than your opponent anticipated. Swampwalk can be useful at times as well, especially if your build runs Phyrexian Totem. And last but certainly not least, once you empty your opponents hand, instant speed discard can be a very potent tool.

    Infest – After Ghostly Prison, this card is the strongest weapon you have against all manners of aggro and single handedly wins games if used properly, and especially if your opponent overextends out of fear of losing their threats to your discard. It also works well with Innocent Blood and Smallpox to enable such game altering plays as clearing away all your opponents weenies, thus forcing them to sac their Exalted Angel. In an aggro meta, running these in the sideboard atleast is essential.

    Duress – In a deck that has access to a multitude of tools to deal with creatures and land but little else, and that is highly dependent on being able to anticipate your opponents future plays, Duress is a no brainer. If you anticipate facing mostly straight forward aggro, then relegating this card to the sideboard may be acceptable. But the only reason to cut this card entirely is if you play in very underdeveloped metas dominated by creatures and little else.

    Cabal Therapy - Can be flashed back using Nether Spirit, or Mishra's Factory with a Crucible in play. Has great synergy with Duress as well. If you anticipate facing a decent bit of combo, or simply have a little room to spare in your decklist, this is a solid inclusion either in the maindeck or the sideboard.

    Hymn to Tourach – This card is an absolute automatic four of. Not only does it create card advantage, but fear of it can push your oppoents to overextend, only to leave them vulnerable to a well timed Infest or Pox. Lastly it can also can cause your opponents to discard away critical lands.

    Sinkhole – In addition to providing a huge tempo swing, this card wins games. Many players design their deck to open with 2-3 land. If one of these lands falls victim to Sinkhole, another to Hymn or Wasteland, and yet another to either Pox or Smallpox, your opponents often have no real chance of winning.

    Smallpox – You can kill off both a creature and a land. Easily the best piece of disruption that black has seen in a very long time. Yes, the only time this provides actual card advantage is when a Nether Spirit is involved, or when hand is already empty. But if there is one thing that Vintage Fish has shown us, it’s that the importance of tempo should never be underestimated. This also serves to be a critical piece of the mana disruption puzzle.

    Pox – This card does everything that Smallpox does, but can do it far better, all for just one more mana. It also very quickly brings down life totals, bringing all your threats within striking range. As a very quick rule of thumb, one that will be elaborated upon in the followup article, you are best served when your lands and cards in hand are in multiples of three and when your opponent’s creatures, lands and cards in hand, are not.

    Powder Keg - This is a very powerful and versatile card, one of the few good cards that allows black to deal with artifacts including mana producers, and the card is useful against goblins, affinity and many other matchups as well. A couple warrant being run in either the maindeck or sideboard.

    Crucible of Worlds - While not disruptive in and of itself. This card can greatly supplement your disruption engine, by letting you recycle Wastelands, and by letting you play Poxes and Smallpoxes with impunity without fear of manascrewing yourself. Recycling lands pitched to Mox Diamond and reincarnating Mishra's Factories, including those that served as Cabal Therapy fodder can also be huge boons.

    Sensei's Divining Top - One of the few means to help keep the threats coming in black, without taking lifeloss. Unfortunately, this still doesn't change the fact that the deck is very tight on free slots as is. May well be worthwhile in the budget version since it has a few extra slots to spare. Of course, the addition of fetchlands can put such a build on a relatively high budget as well.

    Expirate - It yet remains unclear whether this card warrants inclusion in the deck. The card by itself rarely generates card advantage. But in a deck such as this, that easily gets cards into your opponents graveyard and that runs into a few cards in certain matchups that greatly hurt it's game plan, cards such as Exalted Angel, Standstill and Goblin Matron. Being able to remove all additional copies from the game can be a massive boon.

    Braids, Cabal Minion – Variants of this deck, utilizing it’s mana destruction core along with a card like Braids to give the deck a more Stax type feel are popping up in various forms. Many such variants opt for a white splash for Vindicate and some even run Sphere of Resistence. Of course, utilizing a creature like Braids mandates that Nether Spirit be cut and the heavy stax theme mandates that the decks plays a large number of lands utilizing cards like Mox Diamond for acceleration and Mishra’s Factories to deal damage. This in turn also makes Chimeric Idol unviable due to the inherent disynergy between Idol and Mishra’s Factory.

    Smokestack - Combos with Crucible of Worlds and Nether Spirit. But can be slow and mana intensive especially against a deck like goblins. This card is geared for a slower more controllish metagame but in those situations, it can indeed work and work well as long as you are running atleast six Crucibles and Nether Spirits.

    Blight – We certainly don’t advocate running this card, as it has its share of problems, but it can act as a budget Sinkhole replacement for some, and can supplement the land destruction route for those that find that this is the main means through which they win games. However, this card is no where near as good as Sinkhole for three reasons. 1.) Your opponent gets one last use of their land, which means that they can still save up mana to cast that Exalted Angel they've been saving up for. 2.) Your opponent can wisely choose not to tap the land and wait for you to topdeck and eventually cast a Pox or Smallpox at some point, only to sacrifice the Blighted land to that. 3.) While this is a minor point, Blight can be destroyed with a Disenchant, Naturalize etc.

    Rancid Earth - Another candidate for the budget Sinkhole replacement, or Sinkhole supplement slot. It costs a little more mana which messes with the mana curve a bit, but it also can act as a one hit pestilence once you attain threshold, which can be quite potent at times.

    Night's Whispers - Not a disruption slot per se, but this does help replenish your hand and allows you to draw into more disruption especially after your initial disruption spells are used up. Unfortunately, the fact that this deck has little spare room, can't afford to cause much self life loss, and is often tight on mana, often using up whatever mana it has to cast disruption and threats, means that running it probably not worthwhile. Often you would rather that this were an additional piece of disruption rather than a card that eats up one of your turns to cast.

    Skeletal Scrying - Refer above.

    Phyrexian Arena - Refer above.

    Sideboard Slots

    Many of the aforementioned cards are just as viable in the sideboard as they are in the maindeck. But in addition to them, here are some sideboard choices that are a bit too narrow to be suited for the maindeck.

    Spinning Darkness – Creature destruction plus life gain all without paying a single mana, this card is a great supplement to your existing creature destruction.

    Engineered Plague – This card is sideboarded in every other black deck over Infest because it sticks around and stacks and because Infest has the drawback of hitting your creatures. This deck doesn’t care about that drawback, and Infest is generally good against a much larger number of decks. So I would start off any antiaggro sideboard slot with 4 Infest due to it’s utility against a much larger range of decks, and supplement it with as many Engineered Plagues as possible.

    Damnation – The single best sweeper black has to offer. Unfortunately, a tad bit above the decks general curve, and I’m not yet convinced that there any particularly difficult matchups that this card would improve. Infest already does a fine job of removing all weenies, and Innocent Blood, Pox, and Smallpox do a fine job of cleaning up the one or two fatty that many decks run that is big enough to survive Infest. But the card is so inherently powerful in a deck like this that the deck itself may warrant tweaking in order to allow you to abuse it.

    Diabolic Edict – It is an instant speed Innocent Blood that doesn’t set your Nether Spirit attacks back by a turn. It works well for the same reason Innocent Blood works well, because you have cards like Infest, Smallpox and Pox to deal with the others and because it dodges protection and untargetability. But you have so many other cards that have a similar effect that you are probably better off playing something else. Some people however may opt to simply maindeck this card instead of Innocent Blood due in large part to it’s instant speed.

    Smother – Yet another card that supplements your creature destruction well. It’s fairly versatile and it couldn’t hurt to have atleast some targeted removal.

    Darkblast – An early Lackey killer that can kill 2/2s as well at the expense of a draw. While Dredge does combo well with Crucible and Cabal Therapy, this deck has many better options in my opinion.

    Massacre - Worse than Infest against goblins which is the main reason to run a sweeper such as this in the first place. Don’t bother with it unless your meta is packed with white.

    Lose Hope – Scry is a very useful ability for a deck such as this that packs many bombs and no card draw. Nevertheless, it’s too narrow a card to play in a deck with so many better options.

    Mutilate – The second best sweeper that black has to offer. But requires many swamps to use effectively. Only bother with this if your play style isn’t as reliant on land destruction and you thus frequently find yourself with a lot of mana to spare.

    Sudden Death – A great card that just too mana intensive in a deck that has so many cheaper options.

    Perish – Rather narrow compared to the other sweepers you have at your disposal. Only worth running if you see a lot of green.

    Virtue's Ruin – See above, substituting green with White

    Dystopia - The first permanent is destroyed without any lifeloss. And losing a couple of life to clear your opponents entire board is usually a worthwhile investment.

    Leyline of the Void/Planar Void – Crucible, Dredge and Loam decks can really interfere with your gameplan. These cards shut them down. And they’re also quite potent against Reanimator, Threshold, Welder Survival and lots of janky combos, enough said.

    Tormod's Crypt – See above.

    Pithing Needle – This can deal with some of the randomness that interferes with your gameplan, especially artifact mana and Aether Vial. But Powder Keg does the same thing, and usually does it better.

    Kaervek's Spite – This is quite the finisher, especially when your opponent is tapped out. Probably too narrow to devote slots to however. If you do, just remember never to bring this in against any deck playing Force of Wills.

    Contamination - Combos with Nether Spirit (and Crucible + Factory) to screw over a lot of decks, a very potent strategy in certain metagames.

    Dimir Machination – Supplements Contamination by letting you grab any combo piece you may be missing, while also letting tutor up bombs like Pox. Its normal effect comes in handy at times too.

    Misinformation – A good way to ensure that your opponent won’t topdeck anymore lands anytime soon. *Props to Tannascurath for the tech.

    Tangle Wire – A great way to supplement your land destruction. This would be an autoinclude if this deck ran more permanents. As it barely runs any, this card is probably not worth the effort.

    Trinisphere - If your build is geared heavily towards land destruction, even at the expense of 1cc Discard spells, then this will supplement your gameplan against decks with very low curves very well.

    Oppression – Very potent and not just in builds that use The Rack. This card can really devastate Threshold and most control and combo decks.

    Chains of Mephistoteles – Another very potent weapon against Threshold, Control and Combo decks. Definitely a worthwhile investment if you can afford it.

    Wrench Mind – If your build opts to run The Rack, and it needs more discard spells, this is one of your better options.

    Persecute – In builds heavily focused on mana denial, especially if they are also running Dark Rituals, this can be an extremely potent means to decimate your opponents entire hand with a single spell.

    Haunting Echoes - Often too mana intensive to be castable in time to matter.

    Zuran Orb - Combos with Crucible to gain you life. But the combo is unlikely, especially in deck with no tutoring or card draw. Can provide some life gain as a buffer, but is too narrow a card to recommend devoting slots to. In short, don’t bother wasting slots on this.

    Engineered Explosives/Null Rod - Both can destroy most artifact mana, and can hurt Affinity and even Goblins in the case Explosives. Both cards are less versatile than Powder Keg for all intents and purposes however so we would stick with Keg.

    Other Splashes

    The Red Splash

    There are a decent number of cards that a red splash can offer this deck that work very well with the card Pox, Pyroclasm, Grim Lavamancer, and Lightning Bolt among many many others. Unfortunately, these cards all take up slots that are typically devoted to disruption and the focus instead becomes on abusing Pox to kill your opponent very rapidly. At that point we are talking about a different deck entirely, one that has more in common with traditional burn.

    The Green Splash

    Pernicious Deed – The only other splash worth considering is green, and this is the card that makes it worth considering. Deed is likely the strongest sweeper in the format, and it suits this deck very well.

    Life from the Loam – This is another potent tool that green offers this deck. Not only can this card be discarded to Pox and Smallpox with impunity, but it can dredge lands (including Mishra’s Factories and Wastelands) into your graveyard and bring them back to your hand all for just two mana, a significant advantage over Crucible.
    Last edited by Clark Kant; 05-27-2007 at 11:37 AM.

  2. #2

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Wow, that is a massively long post. It's over 8000 words, apparently.

    Isn't it kind of crazy to run no acceleration and no turn 1 plays besides Tops? (It looks from some of your card descriptions that you mean to run Rituals. Is this an omission?)

    4 Tomb of Yawgmoth strikes me as being too many (due to the legend rule). I know it helps cast Pox and such, but I still think multiples are going to hurt you.

  3. #3

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Quote Originally Posted by Nydaeli View Post
    Wow, that is a massively long post. It's over 8000 words, apparently.

    Isn't it kind of crazy to run no acceleration and no turn 1 plays besides Tops? (It looks from some of your card descriptions that you mean to run Rituals. Is this an omission?)

    4 Tomb of Yawgmoth strikes me as being too many (due to the legend rule). I know it helps cast Pox and such, but I still think multiples are going to hurt you.
    I wont claim to know what I'm talking about, but I think being able to discard them to both Pox and Smallpox makes running 3-4 not such a bad plan.

    I like your introduction thread...I think everyone should put as much effort into their posts as you did.
    Some of you may know me as Ishi-Ishi, Lover of Goats if you post on the WotC fourms.

  4. #4
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    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    I completely disagree with this version being the closest to optimal as far as Pox is concerned. Your doing alot of things wrong and Ill list each one for you to combat.

    A) White Splash
    Its been discussed over and over that the costs of splashing the color are too great. You dont have a basic plains and wouldnt want one. Your playing 9 'sources' of white mana with 8 cards that need white to be cast. With Stifle, Wasteland, and Rishadin Port all over the meta I can see you fetching into your Scrubland and casting a white card once before you lose your source. Pox costs triple black and your playing it as a four of. I really dont buy your matchup percentages against other decks running Sinkhole/Vindicate. Especially when they have Dark Ritual and you dont. No Mox Diamond to help get white?? Why bother?

    B) No 1cc cards aside from top. This is definitly a problem. I always push running 8 minimum in a deck not playing accel or CotV. YOU HAVE NO ANSWER TO GOBLIN LACKEY ON THE PLAY OR DRAW Your not even playing Engineered Plague in the main or side. ROFL.

    C) No acceleration. Your lack of acceleration will keep your deck in check by Daze and out tempo'd by Goblins mana cheats. Solidarity will go off easily when you arent playing ritual or duress.

    D) Flagstones is terrible in this deck. It doesnt tap for black unless you have tomb.

    E) Theres no way your matchups are that good against Burn or Loam decks. Those are pox's worst matches, you win like 20% of them with a GOOD list. The rest of your results also look inane because your 50% or better with everything. Yea right.

    You shouldve taken one of the lists from the N&D that was closer to the others. One of the decks 4-8 cards off from the others, not your own personal strange lists.
    Now playing real formats.

  5. #5
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    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    I know this comes from no testing, but based off of your testing, this seems like a deck that's good against a few things, but not great against anything. Most of your matchups barely scratch above the 50% marker, which seems like you could theoretically do, but that means you're coin-flipping pretty much every game you're playing. And even post-board matchups barely improve, which doesn't shout 'Play this!' to me.
    Quote Originally Posted by Jack Burton
    What does that mean? Huh? "China is here." I don't even know what the hell that means. All I know is that this Lo Pan character comes out of thin air in the middle of a goddamn alley while his buddies are flying around on wires cutting everybody to shreds, and he just STANDS there! Waiting for me to drive my truck straight through him, with LIGHT coming out of his mouth!

  6. #6

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Last edited by Clark Kant; 07-27-2017 at 12:00 AM.

  7. #7
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    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    The 1cc cards simply didn't have enough of an impact and were dead against too many matchups. More importantly, they were eating up slots for cards that the deck absolutely needed to run.
    Thats such a funny quote.

    Quote Originally Posted by Clark Kant View Post
    Bane, I know we argued about stuff in the past but that's a shoddy reason for calling me a liar and trying to pick a fight.
    Did you read what I wrote at all? If Im picking a fight with anything its your card choices. You have no answer to goblin lackey on the play or the draw. Unless of course you consider playing Smallpox on your second turn an answer.
    Now playing real formats.

  8. #8

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Bane, Innocent Blood and Funeral Charm were extensively tested, read the N&D forum. Yes, a Lackey does go unanswered for a turn or two at times and this does cost you some games. But many times, even with an unanswered Lackey, you can stabilize with Ghostly Prison or Nether Spirit or Chimeric Idol or Infest and mana screw them from that point on keeping them from playing additional threats. This deck has a large number of ways to stabilize versus goblins and run them out of steam. Innocent Blood while good versus Goblins was a dead draw against too many matchups. This deck has only so many maindeck cards it can devote to dead draws against control, and those slots are far better occupied by Ghostly Prison which wins games versus aggro all on it's own at times, something that Innocent Blood can't claim. Also, please keep in mind that not every deck plays a 1cc cost Lackey remover or blocker. B/w confidant, Enchantress, and a large number of decks don't.
    Last edited by Clark Kant; 04-09-2007 at 08:33 PM.

  9. #9
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    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Goblins runs right through nether spirit and idol if they get to swing in with a lackey.
    Clark Kant, if you want to test we can play a certain decided number of games preboard and then post board. You many be playing against weak goblin players. It would be fun to test the pox match a little more anyway, and then you can maybe change your results or switch your card choices.
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    "Has anyone seen the latest episode of Lock This Thread?" Peter Rotten

  10. #10
    The King of Lockjobs
    Peter_Rotten's Avatar
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    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    From the Open Forum Description:

    For "finished" decks: Decks which are optimized and thoroughly tested. A deck is not required to have proven itself in a competitive tournament environment to be included in the Open Forum, but it is recommended. A thorough writeup including card choices, strategy, and matchup descriptions is required.

    The deck stays in the Open Forum.
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  11. #11

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Thank you very much for helping keep this thread clean Peter.

    Nydaei, sorry for the typo in regards to Dark Ritual. The Card Analysis section, that's the only section btw, is copy pasted from a much earlier primer for the monoblack version of Pox, so it's outdated in regards to just one or two cards such as Dark Ritual. I should have bolded this statement when I first posted this. I went back and bolded it now. The earlier deck had to rely on explosiveness as it had no staying power and couldn't keep the disruption flowing. It also lost a lot more often for this reason. But the section is still invaluable in familiarizing people with the different directions the deck can take.

    Awesomator, that's mainly how this deck loses, but Ghostly Prison can singlehandedly shut down goblins, and even without it, this deck does a good job of limiting the number of goblins they can get into play, and picking off their attackers one by one with Spirit and Idol.

    I would love to test against the deck some more against goblins though. I played the best goblins player I know but it's not like you can ever overtest the goblins matchup.

    I'm at a computer lab and won't have access to my personal computer again till the third week of April though but how about sending me a pm with your MWS name or IM name and we can decide on a time to test.

  12. #12

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    I want to post a few quick updates. First, I regret that I initially forgot to thank the other people in my playgroup (the people that play at our shop) for their contributions in letting me play and thus test such a frustratingly disruptive deck against them as well. You guys have been great. So here's your mention.

    Second, I had a chance to play (though not formally test) the build that ran...

    -3 Sensei's Top
    -2 Crucible
    -1 Bloodstained Mire
    +3 Trinisphere
    +2 Rancid Earth
    +1 Scrubland

    and that build performed very well as well. Obviously, it has a disadvantage versus landstill, 43 lands, and generally, the slower decks. But Trinisphere has proven to be a huge boon against fast decks such as Burn especially, and I suspect fast combo as well.

    I do miss the lategame staying power that Crucible and Top gives you. But which of these two configurations you opt for should be decided by your metagame, as both perform well.

    Third, the reason why most of the people who didn't test the build themselves refuse to believe that it's strong, is that it looks slow, has no turn one play and thus people seem to think that's it's not a very good deck. Yes, it has no turn one plays preboard, and is slow to get started.

    But I absolutely promise you that you will change your mind about the deck if you test the deck (especially if you test it in real life after pile shuffling twice before each game, but I'm sure MWS isn't bad either.) The effect of running 20-22 land destruction spells is extremely extremely potent and absolutely devastates manabases, esp when those spells simultanously kill creatures. And even versus decks that get a good bit of creatures down before they start losing all of their lands, the deck has a number of ways to stabilize and eventually completely shut down their attacks, 4 Ghostly Prison (which means you will see one early most games), the infinately chump blocking and weenie killing Nether Spirit, Smallpox and Pox killing off their creatures, Cabal Pit all help you live long enough and either stabilize or completely shut down their attack phase.

    And that's why, if you just test the deck out as opposed to judging it based on preconcieved notions about how every curve should look even if it means cutting cards vital to the decks function, I promise that you will confirm the same results that I got, even before you get experienced with the finer details needed to play it optimally. And will likely agree that it's the strongest build of Pox yet (as our testing shows), and a strong choice for the next GP.

    P.S. Bottomless Pit and Chains of Mephistophles both look like they have potential in the sideboard. Pit hates combo worse than trinisphere even.
    Last edited by Clark Kant; 04-17-2007 at 02:42 PM.

  13. #13

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Preliminary testing with Tombstalker was so successful that it pushed the deck in a very different direction post Future Sight.

    It's not optimal mind you, and didn't have organized testing, so I would love to hear feedback on the updated build in the opening post.

  14. #14

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    I like the look of the new build a lot. From my (fairly casual) experimenting with the old build, it felt quite slow. It didn't have a solid turn 1 play, and Nether Spirit was often too little too late. Tombstalker and Ritual go a long way toward fixing both of those problems. I'll play around with it some.

    It sounds dumb, but Darkblast might be really good here for feeding Stalker and killing Lackeys.

  15. #15

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Darkblast seems like a neat idea. It is a great card overall esp versus lackey. But so far, between the huge number of disruption cards, fetchlands, and pox effects which put 3-4 cards in the yard each time they are used, situations where one or even two tombstalkers couldn't be played were rare.

    More importantly, darkblast eats up disruption slots that the deck doesn't have to spare. Every land destruction slot cut makes it harder to mana lock out the opposition. Plus dredge eats up card draws that the deck can't afford to lose.

  16. #16
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    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    I'm sure i will catch some hell for saying this but i played pox in the past, extensively, before smallpox. And anyone can see after testing extensively that there is no synergy between the two cards other then namesake. Turn two smallpox, well that sets the earliest pox for turn 4. Meanwhile you were unable to answer lacky, and other threats on field. It throws off the mana as you well honestly have trouble getting to a pox, so a draw into one will be a dead card. Pox was good, but with the inclusion of smallpox, it isn't helped.

  17. #17

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    The deck has a number of ways to deal with Lackey on the play and a number of ways to deal with the byproducts of an answered lackey when on the draw (Ghostly Prison, Infest to kill every single goblin they have, recurring Factories or Spirits, 3/3 blockers etc). Pox was forced to run creatures like Chimeric Idol etc to get around losing it's threats, threats that Smallpox has synergy with, I fail to see how that's a bad thing.

    Regardless, this deck isn't Pox, it's Vaka Pox. It has a different name because it's mechanistically a very different deck and has a strategy that tested to be viable in the format where traditional Pox wasn't. The focus is 99% on land destruction which is why it run on average 23 land destruction spells. It just so happens that 7-8 of the land destruction spells also double as creature removal, discard, and enable a turn 3 or turn 4 5/5 flyer for just 2 mana.

    Before calling this deck pox I strongly encourage you to test the newest build posted...

    // Lands
    4 Wasteland
    4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
    4 Scrubland
    4 Bloodstained Mire
    3 Polluted Delta
    3 Swamp
    3 Mishra's Factory

    // Threats
    4 Tombstalker

    // Disruption
    4 Dark Ritual
    4 Hymn to Tourach
    4 Smallpox
    4 Sinkhole
    4 Vindicate
    3 Pox
    3 Crucible of Worlds
    3 Trinisphere
    2 Rancid Earth/Sensei's Divining Top

    // Sideboard
    4 Duress
    4 Ghostly Prison
    3 Jotun Grunt
    2 Infest
    2 Cabal Therapy/Chains of Mephistopheles

    and see for yourself why it's different from and better than traditional Pox.

  18. #18

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    I think the new list has taken the deck in a completely different direction, removing the ideas behind the original list. Originally, you sought out to make a pox deck that relies on steady card advantage, board position, and card synergy in order to win. Interactions like Flagstones, Idols, Crucibles, Nether spirit and Ghostly prison with Pox/Smallpox. With the new deck, it seems that these interactions are gone and the deck has degenerated into some kind of weak black disruption/aggro. The deck is now extremely vunerable to graveyard hate, which is rampant in the format.

    Now don't get me wrong, I love this deck and have been playtesting it like crazy, I just feel that this new list is taking the deck in a direction it should not go. Your thoughts?

    -Grim

  19. #19

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    I can indeed tell you had been playtesting the deck.

    Yes the old build was very strong and consistent at slowly gaining complete control of the board. It was the build that was tuned and tested and I am certain that it's the superior build as of right now.

    I do think that something close to the old build may well stay the best build even after tweking and you are right that the old build had no big disadvantage against graveyard hate where as this one does. But the new build does seem like a good direction to explore, because it does seem like Tombstalker has a lot of potential providing the deck with a fast clock that can bring down any creature an opponent is able to cast before the mana disruption kicks in. So I see no disadvantage in developing it further, and trying to optimize that direction as well before determining what it is capable of.

  20. #20

    Re: [Deck] Vaka Pox

    Speaking of Tombstalker, I'm very interested as to what Nihilith can do in this deck.

    Tombstalker is a great topdeck midgame, a faster clock and can kill Exalted Angel and such on the offchance that your land destruction plan failed horribly.

    But Nihilth early on lets you smallpox and pox recklessly even if it means that not only your opponent's but your manabase is blown to oblivion too. If only it was a 5/5.

    It warrants testing, though on the surface, Tombstalker looks stronger. I'll test it, let me know if you guys test it too.

    What do you guys think?

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