Quote:
Originally Posted by Chatto
Guys, guys.... try out sylvan library in a GB build. It's testing very well for me.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chatto
Guys, guys.... try out sylvan library in a GB build. It's testing very well for me.
I have been messing around with this list for awhile and am very happy with it so far. The Chalice is permanent based hate that often shuts down significant portions of decks. It also makes Loaming a little more comfortable when it is out, as a majority of commonly used GY hate is 1cmc. In addition, Chalice helps in some combo matchups as you can get it out for zero against LED. Time will tell if the sometimes less explosive turns 1 and 2 will be the downfall of it, but turn one sinkholes,hymns and smallpoxes do occasionally happen. A Chalice also keeps you from having to worry about every Delver, Mongoose, Deathrite Shaman, Brainstorm, Ponder etc that opponent will topdraw during topdeck war. For the most part it seems to work well.
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Mox Diamond
1 Nether Spirit
1 Bloodghast
2 Sylvan Library
1 Syphon Life
4 Life from the Loam
4 Lilliana of the Veil
2 Pox
4 Smallpox
4 Sinkhole
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Abrupt Decay
24 lands
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Bayou
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Urborg,Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Cabal Pit
1 Barren Moor
1 Swamp
1 Forest
Side
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Krosan Grip
4 Trinisphere
3 Engineered Plague
Pox is really bad, and I feel it has no place in modern incarnations of the deck. You lose too much life against aggro decks (especially those with burn spells), and you usually lose far more lands than your opponent (given that you've already been attacking their lands). You need to be using your life for Sylvan Library, if anything. I would up your Sylvans to 3. Given that you're using Chalice of the Void (and thus lack 1 cmc disruption), run the fourth Mox Diamond. I do, and Mox Diamond is one of the cards I most want to see in my opening hand. How's your combo matchup? I would want at least one Nether Void in the main (or possibly Trinisphere). I'm surprised to see 4 Life from the Loam. Overall, nice list.Quote:
Originally Posted by beez
My thought is, if I am going to splash green and open myself up more to Stifle, Wasteland, Blood Moon, Price of Progress etc, I want to Loam. Abrupt Decay is great, and Sylvan Library is a little better than Sensei's Divining Top, but those two alone don't elevate the deck enough to open up more of those risks than mono black. And I actually like Crucible of Worlds better than Loam for Wastelock and Factory recursion if the deck doesn't have other graveyard Shenanigans. It happens every turn and you don't have to dredge instead of draw or spend two mana to recur the lands. With Loam, Wastelock you will end up dredging a bit, so the Chalices help protect that. The advantage is that with Loam it can get very out of hand for the opponent if they do not have an answer very soon, and I find this build is best going after land destruction in the most devastating way possible. Queerios has similar build a few pages back the Loam engine can handle a lot of Big Poxing. I still took two out for the long game boost of two Libraries though.
I think Nether Void is better with Crucible because you need 5 mana out to even Loam some lands back, which may affect poxing choices. With 5 lands you are probably doing OK anyway. Tabernacle would be nice though.
I do need to test combo more, but Chalice helps against a lot of zero and 1 cm early threats and cantrips. The Trinispheres and land destruction hopefully repress them enough even if there is a Leyline of Sanctity out, which can be a problem with discard answers to combo. If they side Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void to avoid Chalice then you can side in Ratchet Bomb and Krosan Grip.
yeah this deck list didn't do well, i'm still trying to find a means to rework the strategy though. thanks for your input.Quote:
Originally Posted by D0LPHY
" Variant Three - BudgetQuote:
Originally Posted by D0LPHY
(Mana)
18 Swamp
2 Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Mishra’s Factory
4 Dark Ritual
(1cc Disruption)
4 Duress
4 Innocent Blood
2 Cabal Therapy/Funeral Charm
(2cc Disruption)
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
2 Powder Keg
(3cc Disruption)
4 Pox
2 Infest
(Win Conditions)
3 Nether Spirit
3 Phyrexian Totem
The only two cards that need be removed in order to budgetize the deck are Wastelands and Sinkholes. The loss of Wastelands while generally bad, actually makes the deck stronger in certain matchups. "
From the old thread. Yes it's outdated, however, to keep the deck budget, don't splash, and pick the right cards. Though I admit, I'm running a currently priced $500 version of the deck. Though a while back, the cards were cheaper.
Technically speaking, in this forum section, everyone just assumes you have money and should blast it on cards that usually gain value over time and are investments both for your $ future and for your gaming fun in general. My deck costs about half my friend's Landstill deck and the win ratio is about 50%, but good God how slow the games are lol.
Aside from Liliana of the Veil, I think Pox can be run on a budget friendly wallet assuming you fight without any LD whatsoever. So for now, get LotV and fight on with what's left! :cool:
i agree with the above post..
mono black discard pox is one of my all time favorite budget legacy decks..
its cheap but has the tools to beat a lot of decks in today's meta..
For a reasonably competitive budget Pox it would be nice to have Urborg although they are not the cheapest and are usually only in Pox, but I assume that if you want to run 4 Mishras you should have a couple. The rest is pretty budgety.
4 Pox
4 Smallpox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Inquisition of Kozeliek
4 Innocent Blood
2 Spinning Darkness
2 Raven's Crime
4 The Rack
1 Nether Spirit
2 Bloodghast
1 Necroplasm
2 Dakmore Salvage
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Mishra's Factory
16 Swamp
To each their own, but I heartily disagree; I think they are entirely worth splashing for on their own. (Also, Sylvan Library is amazing. It's my suspicion that most people play Library like Mirri's Guile and fail to see why it is worth the splash over SDT. The turn after you play Sylvan Library, unless your opponent is playing Burn or you have a fetchland, it is basically always correct to pay 8 life. The card advantage, combined with accelerants like Mox Diamond and Dark Ritual, will often create an insurmountable obstacle for your opponent.)Quote:
Originally Posted by beez
Good points. You make strong arguments for a lot of cards I wouldn't play, but that might only be because I don't play Loam. (Loaming through Nether Void does blow.) I still think big Pox is really clunky. I also think that given how invested in Chalice you are, you should really consider the fourth Mox and 25th land (Tabernacle!).Quote:
Originally Posted by beez
Quote:
Originally Posted by OmniStrata
I think there are two issues here. The first is the idea (often espoused on this thread) that one can play "discard" Pox or "land destruction" Pox. I believe this is a mistake. Pox is by definition a deck that attacks both mana and cards in hand (as well as board position, hence my endorsement of Abrupt Decay). It requires heavy investments in both strategic axes to even be a viable, 'tier 2' deck. How does a "discard" deck beat Dredge? Aggro-Loam? Likewise, a deck exclusively focused on its opponent's manabase will never have game against storm-combo, and probably not against Show and Tell decks either. Hell, Aether Vial trumps bare LD any day. Pox is about exploiting the synergy between Black's greatest assets: mana-denial, discard, and symmetrical creature sacrifice- and tax-effects. We avoid running creatures (at least in the traditional sense) so that we can play Smallpox and the like with little inconvenience to ourselves. We run a lot of land and often run recursion so that we can pay for our own tax effects (and Smallpoxes) while locking our opponents out of the game. Most importantly, we combine discard and land destruction to prevent our opponents from making progress in the game-state. Where discard would fail against top-decks and land destruction would fail against low mana curves, together they can knock an opponent off balance early and keep them off balance for long enough to win.Quote:
Originally Posted by zenitramleirdag
The second problem is that while budgeting for Legacy is always a legitimate aspiration, creating 'budget' (read: subpar) versions of non-budget archetypes is a waste of effort. Pox is not so strong a deck that even budget versions are viable. If you want to save cash, build an archetype that is cheap by nature (Belcher, Affinity, Burn, etc.); don't neuter an expensive one. While some expensive card choices are perfectly debatable (i.e. Tabernacle), others are simply not (4 Wasteland, 4 Liliana). As much as you may tailor your list to fit your finances, the purpose of this thread is to develop our archetype to be the best it can, not the cheapest it can while being vaguely playable. Ultimately, if money is an issue, you have to decide what's more important: winning, or playing Pox. A competitive player will choose an archetype he or she can afford and build it to the nines, rather than building a cheap facsimile of a deck that is out of reach.
I don't mean to come off as a jerk, I just think most of the disagreement on these topics comes from a difference in people's reasons for playing the deck. I love Pox's play-style as much as the next [sadist magic player], but I wouldn't play it if I didn't think it was competitive. That, to me is the most important factor in any list.
Yeah, I don't know if over the long run the Chalice will work out. I figure there is a reason it is not generally used in Pox. But I thought it held some promise with Loam so I think it deserves some more play against a wide variety of decks before I can judge how well it really works or not.
I do agree that the point of Pox is to attack a lot of resources at once and gain card advantage by killing at least 3 cards with 1. The problem, obviously is that we lose our own as well. The key to Pox, I believe, is to break this symmetry. An obvious way is graveyard recursion but can be open to a lot of hate. The problem with Sinkhole/Nether Void is that the advantage of resources we have over the opponent and even getting under Void in the first place for us as well is a razor thin margin of playing a few more lands than an opponent and maybe a couple sinkholes we draw. Sometimes they just Brainstorm into it faster than us. That is why an opportunistic Crucible or Loam is a big help, but as was said before, Loam can be fools gold. I have enough problems getting my wincons Exterpated and Extracted without even using Loam or Crucible. If I can't protect it I cant depend on it. That will be the test for that. Lilliana and Top or Library helps break the Pox symmetry in our favor for the discard portion, Using few and recurring creatures and manlands helps break the creature sac portion. And Chalice or Loam helps the land sac symmetry. Big Pox still attacks a lot for one card, so I think it still has some strategic value. The reason we can be so sado-masochistic is because we can recover from it, or at least profit from it more, otherwise your margin for how you expect to win vs how opponent can recover is too small to be very viable.
Also, I have noticed that Life from the Loam and Sylvan Library have some really wierd and tricky interactions. It's gonna take some more practice to get comfortable with that.
I don't believe you come off as a jerk, however, it's been argued already in older posts that LD is considered 'unusable' in a low mana meta. Though I love my sinkholes :) You mention Dredge and Aggro Loam. Decks that don't appear in massive hordes or win at most big tournaments. Graveyard decks are big in Legacy and it is true that Discard alone doesn't cut it. I will argue that you should just run Leylines in your board and then make your discard spells the Almighty Deadly against decks that think it's ok to discard. (watch out for Madness, lol)Quote:
Originally Posted by D0LPHY
Technically, dependant on meta, you could replace the Sinkholes and Wasteland defaults using Cabal Pits and Smother. I lose more to the too-many-creatures situation with Pox than any other scenario. Liliana + Inquisition + Dark Ritual + Hymn to Tourach already makes fights vs. Control/Combo decks fairly simple. Since those decks are creature light usually, old fashioned Duress can be added for more auto-win.
Pox's design will easily dominate Control/Combo and feels only weak vs. Burn and Fast Aggro and GY based decks. With that in mind, I fashioned my Sideboard to cover Pox's weaknesses instead of enhancing its strengths. Pithing Needle and Ratchet Bomb work just fine in place of Abrupt Decay and Maelstrom Pulse in my games vs. Walkers, Enchants, and Artifacts.
Btw, boarding in Tombstalker is the ultimate curveball vs. most decks who side out their removal ^_^ And, you could just kill them before they do anything relevant with him.
The latest variants of my deck have been going in the wrong direction; I should not lose to Rug Delver; it was auto win I the past. Perhaps it is the lack of spot discard or innocent blood?
I have noticed delver decks cannot handle recurring creatures (fatties can be countered but not bolted) so more of those seem right. still, I would like a fatty. Nihilith is a bit awkward because I need to cast it early, at a time when I also want to cast disruption spells. I may go with Tombstalker, or a couple of Reanimate(!).
Weenie style with buried alive and jitte is also possible.
All of your deck listings have Pox trying to do something it simply isn't. Non-control. Seems to me you're trying to re-invent the wheel and be clever when in truth, Pox won't allow it. Losing to RUG Delver is SACRILEGE as a Pox player! :cry:Quote:
Originally Posted by Hardcore
Discard + Land Destruction, as was discussed earlier is THE way to win in a meta that wants to run low land counts. "But decks can run on 1 land!" I will cast 3+ spells with my lands and you cast your one phucking spell... What Pox is afraid of is decks with huge land counts and graveyard recursion. Sinkhole + Wasteland or BUST in my opinion.
At this point in your Poxing research, what do you believe is now the essential Pox shell? I'm just curious.
I never consider substituting Bloodghast, smallpox, pox, darkblast or Hymn to Tourach. So those are the core I guess.
@OmniStrata,
I agree with a fellow gamers analysis: Pox is about resource denial. Some call that control, but that is merely an arbitrary classification. Resource denial OTOH is what the deck does, and answers Carsten Kötter's question; "Why I Win".
Acchieving this of course give the sense one have control of the game, but that is a mirage. Indeed, Pox have trouble keeping this state for a longer time, and lead to search for cards like nethervoid and trinisphere (which are about having permanent, rather than temporary, resource denial). Compare to Counter-top.
One can say I go for the fast winning route, rather than permanent mana denial of the trinisphere and nethervoid.
Sure, I could go the later, since they do work with landfall ability, but i prefer to go budget.
Besides, I love the challenge of making a viable deck, and learn a lot at the same time.
I guess one could liken it to surfing; trying to find a deck composition that can keep the balance and surf the tricky waves.:laugh:
LD pox
4 Sinkhole
4 Smallpox
4 liliana of the veil
4 Wasteland
4 mishra's factory
2-3 cursed scroll
1-2 nethervoids
(i didn't include the hymns because i've seen successful lists not running them, uses thoughtseize in lieu of it instead.. )
(here are the core cards of a LD pox build, here are the cards that are almost always found as a 4-of in almost every competitive LD build )
edit: in mono black LD, that is..
i do however still run pox as a 1-of or a 2-of often..i'm an advocate of using the big pox..maybe not as a 4-of..
Has the fact Bloodghast can't block cost you games? It costed me games quite badly which is why I dropped it from my list. Nether Spirit, the eternal bodyguard! ^_^Quote:
Originally Posted by Hardcore
I'm curious about the Darkblast. Why run Darkblast over harder hitting permanent removal like Cursed Scroll? CS can hit players and planeswalkers as well.
i think hardcore's fondness for bloodghasts explains his attachment to darkblasts..
well, i can't disagree that they do work well together..
IMHO, i think neither should be played over the other but rather together..especially in rack pox when you're running ghasts..
i, however, won't run ghasts in a more prisonesque build..