UB Extirpate/Surgical Extraction Pox

This is a deck originally mused over in the Pox thread a while ago, I built this on Cockatrice and have been getting kicked ever since. I'm assuming if they can't be bothered to vindicate themselves games 2 & 3, then maybe I'm on to something. The core concept is that most decks run a minimum win condition and the rest is filler and filter or enablers, and if you can remove the heart of their deck, then you can win on the slowest of clocks. To this end we're running four copies of everybody's favorite Extirpate & Surgical Extraction, along with Snapcaster Mage to get as many castings as we can manage. The rest of the deck is based on getting key stuff out of their hand to target as well as the tempo slaughtering Smallpox to buy us enough time to not get Delver'd to death. Games will stall out, as we're not flush on threats, and so I have included two of the best planeswalkers ever to help maintain presence even when out topdecks are underwhelming.

4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Extirpate
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Phantasmal Image
3 Bloodghast
3 Wasteland
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Crucible of Worlds
3 Smallpox
1 Island
4 Swamp
2 Thoughtseize
2 Ponder
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 4 Force of Will
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 3 Dark Ritual
SB: 2 Toxic Deluge
SB: 2 Echoing Truth

I have been trying to face the broadest variety of decks, but so far about half of the players stick around for a game 2, so the sideboard is just a cover all bases spread. Fast decks like combo and storm can beat us before we can get going, so I've included a suite of counterspells to give us turn zero interaction. The Pithing Needle covers a lot of cards, and I haven't yet brought in Toxic Deluge or Echoing Truth, but I also haven't seen Elves or Death and Taxes yet.

I'm curious to see what insights and advice others can give. I doubt this will ever grow to T1, but you could definitely ruin people's day if you get the right meta.

Thanks

your best bet is to play on Mtgo in 2 man's or daily events.

I'll see if I can out your list together and if so, maybe I can stream some matches.

MODO is dumb and I hate it, but I see your point.

That'd be super helpful though, thanks!

This reminds me of the time I beat Miracles on MODO once with Grixis Control through CounterTop lock just because I had previously Extracted his Mentors and managed to Pyroblast both of his Jaces prior to him finding Counterbalance. I saw his deck so I knew I just had to stay ahead in cards in library to win.

So I can see how this would be fun. Also I love how Extirpate being Split Second can completely ruin their shit.

Nice idea.
I'd probably go for something more like:

Early game (Turns 1-2) - discard. Get their immediate threats out of their hand and have fuel for extraction. Maybe some innocent blood's to stop their early creatures that slip through the gaps.
Mid game - extract their cards and fill their graveyard. Use cards like Glimpse the Unthinkable to cheaply ravage their deck.
Late game - Win slowly. potential Win-Con - drain life with cabal coffers?

Just my thoughts.

How do you win if the opponent has Needle/Pyroblast or whatever else on Jace?

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Originally Posted by Poron

How do you win if the opponent has Needle/Pyroblast or whatever else on Jace?

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Originally Posted by PirateKing

4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Phantasmal Image
3 Bloodghast

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It's really bad that I like this idea for a deck. I know it is and I don't care. :laugh:

Any room for the new flippy Jace, Vryn's Prodigy to give both spell re-use and milling via the emblem? Maybe it's just too slow, too cute and unnecessary.

I've been wondering about Encroach for a while, this seems like a decent deck for trying it. It's got some nice synergy with the Smallpox / Wasteland package. Brainstorm in response is an issue, but if they hide their lands and you force them to shuffle, they might not be so happy either.

Phyrexian Revoker is another route for cutting players off, especially once you've seen their deck off one of the other exile effects.

There's a bunch of higher cc search-and-exile options like Sadistic Sacrament and Lobotomy. I'm not sure how viable they are.

Going to bed I was thinking of how would I build a deck to beat this deck, and I realized that Rest in Peace would totally ruin the deck, one by removing their own graveyard so now we have 8 dead cards, and turning our Snapcaster Mages into a flashy Piker. Then I thought most likely candidate decks would be Miracles and I realize now we're pretty bad at getting enchantments off the table.

I'm going to adjust my mainboard, remove the Phantasmal Image as too often it's Magical Christmasland when I have a Snapcaster in play and Phantasmal Image in hand and have a good card to flashback. Glimpse the Unthinkable might be good, but I think I'll try Thought Scour first, I feel the cantrip and Instant speed is more valuable then the gross number of cards.

But again, I'm making this up as I go, so feedback to tell me I have no idea what I'm doing is appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Poron

How do you win if the opponent has Needle/Pyroblast or whatever else on Jace?

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It's actually been about 40% concession, then 30% Creeping Tar Pit with maybe other creature's helping out, but the unblockable was the real clock. Then 10% Jace ultimate. So Needle on Jace would cut your winabble games down, but not the majority of them.

I have yet to test with flippy Jace, he does everything we want him to, but real Jace also wins slowly, but does more things while he's out. Using him to bounce a creature, Cabal Therapy them then Extirpate the creature helps nurture their threats to the point they cannot win.

I've always wondered why a deck like this doesn't exist. Basically just discard and ripping the opponent's deck apart with Extraction effects. I like it.

edit - I really like the idea someone posted above of Glimpse the Unthinkable to fill the graveyard. You could also consider Archive Trap as well and go for almost a mill secondary win-con?

This seems interesting. I dunno if those ideas are outdated and silly, but I remember seeing an old pox like list using Trade Routes, Loam and utility lands to great effect. Maybe adding green for Loam and Decay can help.
Hymn, Sinkhole and Vindicate might also be something worth trying if you go for more heavy land destruction plan.

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Originally Posted by TLK

I've always wondered why a deck like this doesn't exist. Basically just discard and ripping the opponent's deck apart with Extraction effects. I like it.

edit - I really like the idea someone posted above of Glimpse the Unthinkable to fill the graveyard. You could also consider Archive Trap as well and go for almost a mill secondary win-con?

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I've found you can't stray too far from the fundamental core cards of Legacy. Too many cute cards in the wrong order end up just being dead cards. The closest I'd consider for dedicated mill is Thought Scour because of the cantrip. I might try the flip Jace in place of the real Jace, but I don't want to make too many changes too fast. I've swapped the Phantasmal Image for Vendillion Clique for a more reliable attacker along with relevant effect. I'll keep you updated as I make progress in matches.

Update to my progress: Still only tested on cockatrice, still with the same difficulties getting to a game 2 without disconnects. For reftrence, here is what I'm testing

4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Brainstorm
4 Extirpate
4 Surgical Extraction
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Thoughtseize
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Bloodghast
3 Smallpox
3 Wasteland
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Crucible of Worlds
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Ponder
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Island
4 Swamp
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 4 Force of Will
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 3 Dark Ritual
SB: 2 Toxic Deluge
SB: 2 Echoing Truth

I've done well against the core popular decks, Miracles and Delver variants run minimal threats that they can be rendered toothless after your initial barrage. Lands can be tricky, with only Smallpox and Wasteland able to give you a target for Extirpate, but it gets really easy after that. Found a lot of difficulty with Vial decks, D&T, Goblins and Merfolk all go wide enough to circumvent having a quarter of their deck RFG'd. Except for D&T, I'm not sure how many slots I want to dedicate to those matchups. Maybe Dread of Night or Engineered Plague, but I'm looking for more game data to see if it's pertinent.
Have yet to play against the new Eldrazi Stompy deck, it looks like Chalice on 1 will be tough to beat, looking for ideas to counter it beyond just having countermagic in the opening hand. Like Lands, I feel like beyond that nasty roadblock, their deck should fall to enough Extirpate effects.

Invasive Surgery is my next focus, if the effect proves powerful enough, I'll have to see if I need to include more diverse card types to guarantee Delirium.

As always, thoughts and ideas appreciated, play experience worth its weight in gold!

Thanks.

A local player sometimes plays a similar build. You might want to try some copies of Ashiok. As a D+T player, that's the only card he plays maindeck that I particularly care about.

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Originally Posted by iatee

A local player sometimes plays a similar build. You might want to try some copies of Ashiok. As a D+T player, that's the only card he plays maindeck that I particularly care about.

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Care to explain? I don't see particularly why. Mill 3 a turn doesn't seem much of anything, and I can't think of many creatures of yours they could get back that would be of much consequence to you, since I'd imagine you trump mirrored combat with equipment anyways.

Ashiok essentially starts off on t3 with 5 loyalty, which means she's hard to kill. If you just leave her alone, the Ashiok player suddenly gets a huge board of blockers. If you dedicate all your resources to killing her, the Ashiok player buys something like 3 turns out the deal. During those turns you can be doing other things, like playing more planeswalkers, drawing into more removal, etc.

She's also very good against Miracles.