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Contamination was amazing for us as it wrecks most decks in the format if you set up the lock. Of course, we were running Crucible (why would anyone cut this card in Pox, btw, as it negates all the 'symmetrical' LD???) and Factories, which provide a nice alternate way to set up Contamination Lock.
in my build above where would i fit the crucibles in and how many, also how many man lands?
if that were the route to go?
Lol. Considering that that would make the build card for card identical to the build that I posted I was running in my opening thread, of course you know I'm going to say that I think the build is perfect.Quote:
Originally Posted by dragon_demon1
How has it been working for you?
Edit: Forgot to mention that I went back to running Duress over Cabal Therapy. I think Duress is overall the stronger card anyway you look at it.
Still not sure on the Dark Ritual vs. Chrome Mox debate. What're everyone else's thoughts on this subject?
The rack does almost nothing in this deck. It's not even a real finisher as your opponent can just hold back cards. If the rack is dealing damage to your opponent that means that his hand is nearly empty. If his hand is empty because it's in his yard, you've already won, If his hand is empty because he's played it out and is attacking every turn then 3 damage every upkeep isn't going to save you.Quote:
The Rack is one of the strongest cards of the deck. If you can slap 1 or 2 down it's definitly disruption. Opponents want to have multiple threads to dodge Pox, but the rack punish them for it. It is not a win more.
If you have multiple racks out then at best you've spent 2 cards and 2 mana to make your opponent lose 3 cards of his choice. I'd rather have hymn personally.
I'm not sure about this strategy, it seems to me that whilst you're sacrificing your win conditions, your opponent will craft a lethal hand and then play a crypt/vial it's good tech vs solidarity though.Quote:
Contamination was amazing for us as it wrecks most decks in the format if you set up the lock. Of course, we were running Crucible (why would anyone cut this card in Pox, btw, as it negates all the 'symmetrical' LD???) and Factories, which provide a nice alternate way to set up Contamination Lock.
I disagree, if you are going second it does nothing vs goblins/ most other aggro. Cabal therapy doesnt always hit but creatures are basically free in this deck and if you are missing that means you're opponent doesnt have the cards you are worrying about.Quote:
Edit: Forgot to mention that I went back to running Duress over Cabal Therapy. I think Duress is overall the stronger card anyway you look at it.
I much prefer mox diamond to either, a first turn smallpox is just as good as a first turn pox and mox diamond lets you run lots of land, they are all dead in the late game though but if you reach that stage you will probably win anyway.Quote:
Still not sure on the Dark Ritual vs. Chrome Mox debate. What're everyone else's thoughts on this subject?
The point about smallpox being symetrical:
You have other cards in hand and lands. Opponent has got cards in hand, creatures land. You will both loose 3 cards. Of course this can be a good trade, but it not always is.
About The Rack:
Pox cannot control the game. All it does is unbalance it, when the game us in your advantage, you must go for the win. The Rack helps that. When you Poxed/ Hymned your opponents hand away. He has the choice, or take damage, or play his cards out. If he plays, good that is 3 damage and additional food for Pox/ Sinkhole/ Innocent Blood. If he keeps in his hand because of low life( wich is often due to Pox) you get a turn. If an opponent has 6 life, he must keep the card in hand, or loose without carddraw.
About Ritual/Chrome Mox Diamond.
Ritual rules them all. First turn Ritual, Duress/Innocent Blood and Hymn to Tourach/Sinkhole wins games. Second choice goes to Mox Diamond, because I hate pitching buisinis spells.
How could Infernal Tutor improved this deck ?!
I mean : Pox is all about disruption then topdeck, then Win conditions. With IT your topdeck is far better than without.
You could then easily go with double(with a li'l help from your Dark Rituals) or successive sinkhole/smallpox/hymn even without hellbent and put a lone Contamination for a lock win condition.
Just a thought...
Thats right, pox doesn't give you any advantage you can abuse with the rack. If your opponent has 6 life, you have 6 life, and your opponents 2 cards might be lightning bolts. If you have no finishers in play and cast 2 copies of the rack, your opponent can hold onto his 2 cards until he draws something to win with. If you have another finisher in play, why do you need the rack, run a funeral charm to get rid of your opponent's answers instead.Quote:
About The Rack:
Pox cannot control the game. All it does is unbalance it, when the game us in your advantage, you must go for the win. The Rack helps that. When you Poxed/ Hymned your opponents hand away. He has the choice, or take damage, or play his cards out. If he plays, good that is 3 damage and additional food for Pox/ Sinkhole/ Innocent Blood. If he keeps in his hand because of low life( wich is often due to Pox) you get a turn. If an opponent has 6 life, he must keep the card in hand, or loose without carddraw.
This is the great weakness of the pox deck, it has very little card advantage. The only certain source of card advantage is hymn to tourach. Pox and smallpox are often card disadvantage but this is balanced by your permanent mana. If you destroy all of your opponents lands they cant play anything so all their cards are useless (except for denying you rack damage). Explosive first turn plays cost you lots of cards and don't destroy many lands. First turn mox diamond is card disadvantage (which can be recouped later with a crucible) and lets you play all you best first turn cards (smallpox, sinkhole, hymn). Your three mana spells arent much good first turn (pox is awful without a spirit in hand as it cannot net you card advantage)
The problem with infernal tutor is that you don't actually go hellbent all that often. You might be hanging onto an extra kill or land destruction spell or worse, an excess spirit. Once you're reached this point any finisher will win you the game anyway,except for the rack, you don't need to pick and choose.
In the early game, you dont want to spend effectively 2 extra mana to replicate a card you already have. every card in this deck has a better alternativ e costing 1 or 2 mana more, except the crucible and nether spirit which you dont want multiples of anyway.
Dimiir machinations is a cool idea, it costs 3 to transmute unfortunately but it would let you drop the spirits and crucibles down to 1 each. I don't think it's viable however, games often hinge on getting a crucible down quickly to recur wastelands.
It's useless to speculate but were entomb, imperial seal or vampiric tutor legal I would run them despite the card disadvantage.
I actually got my list of The Mana Drain so you must have posted it there...Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
What about trying a green splash with LftL that also uses exploration (probably instead of ritual)? Exploration and Mox diamond as acceleration with life from the loam as recursion/recovery seems like it could be good. Treetop village also seems like a much more efficient finisher than factory. The lone nether spirit can also be put into the yard with loam dredging.
7 win con:
4x treetop village
1x nether spirit
2x necroplasm
20 disruption:
4x duress
4x hymn to tourach
4x small pox
4x pox
4x sinkhole
11 mana accel/recovery:
3x mox diamond
4x exploration
4x life from the loam
22 lands (other):
4x wasteland
3x polluted delta
3x bloodstained mire
4x bayou
3x Barren Moor
5x swamp
Thoughts on this?
@nitewolf9: I’m not sure about the green splash. Even if we ignore the idea of a splash being a fundamentally bad thing in Pox (more on this in a second), your execution of it is rather…poor. First, you run green and black, but no Pernicious Deed? Deed wrecks decks based around permanents, and without Crucible in your deck, you really don’t care about blowing it for more than three since you can still use LftL to recur lost lands. But moving on…Exploration? Wtf? You have a grand total of seven win conditions in a deck with twelve board control cards, none of which are capable of wiping the board and eight of which are symmetrical or nearly symmetrical effects. To make matters worse, all of your win conditions are Needle-able, and you have no way to take care of Needle. Four of your win conditions are vulnerable to Wasteland, as is the remaining 44% of your mana base (not counting fetches or Wasteland, or Barren Moor, which I’m assuming is in there for some sort of card advantage generation). You run a grand total of three cycling lands in a deck with six ways to skip your draw step and eight ways to make yourself discard. You run Exploration, which is not a threat, disruption, or a way to recur a threat, and doesn’t generate card advantage or really allow for a turn one Sinkhole like Mox Diamond would. You do run Mox Diamond…in a deck with Exploration? So if you have an opening hand with a Mox, an Exploration, and two lands in it, what do you do? Pitch a land to the Mox and make Exploration useless? Play the Exploration and your second land and strand the Mox in your hand? Play a land, play the Exploration, then pitch the land to the Mox, thus rendering your Exploration useless until you can get your LftL card non-advantage engine going? I’d drop Exploration altogether in favor of Deeds and probably Infests as well. I’d also fit in more cycling lands so you can actually have a card advantage engine, thus negating the drawback of dredge and Pox/Smallpox.
So…I said a splash was a fundamentally bad thing in this deck. Why? You are running symmetrical land destruction. You are also running ways to toast your opponent’s lands. Your opponent, however, is probably not running ways to toast your basic lands. Therefore, despite the potential to create card disadvantage with Pox, you actually generate a rudimentary sort of card advantage – in the style of Burn – by intentionally building the deck to make certain cards of your opponent’s dead. You have plenty of ways to continue to destroy their lands post-Pox, but their Wastelands can’t touch your basic swamps. Therefore, you will end up ahead in the land race. Not so with a splash – you open yourself up to getting trashed by Wasteland at a point in time which may be rather…inopportune for you. your only way around this in this deck is Exploration, which is still terrible even with this purpose in mind.
As for Chrome Mox versus Ritual…Ritual wins, because Mox Diamond is better than Chrome Mox, and you should always run Ritual since it allows you to accelerate your threat spells out (in a way that Exploration does not, I might add).
I’m rather reluctant to chip in on the Rack debate, since I never liked it, but…in the right build, I can see it being golden. Since my deck is primarily geared towards beating aggro game one, and discard versus aggro is poor compared to, say, discard versus combo, I don’t run very much discard maindeck. My sweepers/creature kill discourage aggro opponents from committing too heavily to the board, which results in them holding cards back to keep up a constant stream of threats, thus making the Rack less useful. However, in a build geared primarily towards beating combo, you would be fairly discard heavy, so the Rack would be an effective clock that feeds off your discard (which, in and of itself, is not a threat, just a way to delay your opponent’s threats).
I’m also finding that Smallpox is not as great as I thought it might be. Against aggro, I would really rather just run Innocent Blood because it’s cheaper and it’s almost always card parity for me. Against combo, it’s almost always card disadvantage, since we both lose a land and a card…but I also lose Smallpox, so I actually lose two cards. 2-for-3’s aren’t hot. Control is like combo, but without the need to really push for a timely win, since you have adequate answers to their threats and you can cripple their ability to disrupt you through forcing them to discard. I’d really rather just run Pox and more creature kill or discard or another win condition. Not running Smallpox also decreases my dependency on Crucible and Mox Diamond to ensure stable mana, so I can drop the numbers on those and dedicate the space to something else. I’m still tinkering with my list, but I’ll probably have it done by this weekend (I have an organic chemistry midterm and an anthropology research paper both due this week, so I doubt I’ll have much time to mess with it until then).
Wow, last time I said Smallpox wasn't meant for Pox, I got doubted. At least someone else has seen the light. Seriously, nothing new has come out for Pox. You really need a good card. Phyrexian Totem is only a maybe at best also. I still prefer Nether Spirit/Chimeric Idol/Cursed Scroll. Bottom line they are the best win conditions, with Factory/Crucible at a close second.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aggro_zombies
Also, Innocent Blood > All. From what I've seen in testing, it really is just better than anything else black has to offer for you. Its blacks StP for Pox. It even kills Mongoose!!! Yeah, its a 4 of.
Just wondering if anyone has considered running Nether Void? I would think it would have great synergy with the LD aspect of the deck, plus all of the aforementioned kill conditions -- Nether Spirit, Idol, Scroll, Factory, and P. Totem all work great with Nether Void.
If you're running Crucibles, the additional 3 mana for the Void wouldn't be too tough to come by, and since Void counters the spell, you could drop a Nether Spirit, not pay the 3, and get him into the yard that way.
You can't compare Smallpox to Innocent Blood.
The only valid comparison to Smallpox is casting and using both an Innocent Blood and a Wasteland the same turn. In fact the cost of playing a Wasteland second turn and using it, and casting an innocent blood off of your first turn swamp is identical to the cost of laying down a swamp second turn and casting a smallpox.
The most powerful aspect of the card is destroying your opponents land. Sure that may not seem all that great by it self, but when you are running a total of 16 land destruction spells (not counting random discard of land via Hymn), it's an extreme crippling of your opponent's development. You are running as many land destruction spells as a lot of decks run land.
When I've played this deck, there are many many games where my opponent never goes past their first land and often is stuck at 0 land. At that point it's irrelevent if your opponent is playing control, combo, or aggro. That's how this deck wins. That's what makes it so damn powerful. And that's why Smallpox is so incredible, because it increases your ability to do that. If I could run 4 more Smallpox for a total of 20 2cc land destruction spells, I would without a second thought.
As for Nether Void, if there was any way to ensure that I would always have a ritual in hand to cast it turn two consistently, I would run it no questions asked. But without rituals, you are saccing your own lands too, which means that you many times won't reach 4 lands for a while. You would rather that Nether Void be something that destroys one of their lands instead.
I've said it too. I removed them for Funeral Charm, giving me 8 options( next to blood) to deal with Lackey or so.Quote:
Originally Posted by SillyMetalGAT
Playing both Smallpox, Wasteland, and Pox loses you a minimum of 12 lands. Thats really bad. That makes it so Crucible is a 4 of.... Which is also bad. The reason you need 4 Crucible is because you pretty much need one at that point to even hope of winning, because you dont have any way to regain lands faster than your opponent without it. Innocent Blood is also better because your really not effected by it at all. Its pretty one sided. Not to mention Smallpox sucks when your opponent has a vial on the board. A lot of other people are starting to realize this too, so im not the only one who says this. Play Smallpox if it works for you, all im saying is don't plan on winning with it at the next PT when you stare down accomplished aggro.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
EDIT: It does matter if your opponent is playing aggro, combo, or control even if they are at 0 lands. You don't have instant speed LD do you? Dont say wasteland either. Bottom line is that Smallpox + Pox is WAYYYY too damaging to yourself and it only makes it tougher for you to get out of the hole that Pox created.
How many lands are you running? I think the reason that some people are very happy with Smallpox and some aren't is that the first group created a new mana curve that's adjusted for losing your own lands while the second simply stuck with the old pox curve.
I approach this like a land destruction deck, one that has the bonus that it's ld also destroys creatures. I'll grant you that Vial has poor synergy with ld so you will have to play those few matchups/games that have vial differently. But aside from those few games in a few matchups, I've found the land destruction approach extremely effective. You recover from your own ld much faster than your opponents because you knew before hand that you would be losing your own lands, and run more lands as a result. You don't need to run more than 2 Crucible. Heck my old build didn't run Crucible at all and still did well. Just make sure you run a reasonable amount of lands.
All well built decks were built with a very clear curve in mind. Most every deck mulligans one land hands because they know they can't possibly win the game if they never go beyond one land. This build is designed to win by ensuring that every deck is stuck at 0 land and almost never gets past 1 land even if they cast a land their turn. But that requires casting land destruction aggressively and most importantly a curve that supports ld.
When I was playing with Smallpox, I was using 24 lands + 3 Diamonds and 3 Crucible. I think thats way too many slots to be dedicating just to run Smallpox in addition to Pox. When I originally played Pox, I ran 17 Swamps and 4 Wastelands and almost never had a problem with lands. Alsmot every threat in my deck costs 1-2. Pox, Nether Spirit, Chimeric Idol, and Infest were my only 3 CC cards, and E. Plague if I wanted to maindeck it. But I also ran Dark Ritual so it made this cards pretty much cost 1 and an extra card. Not a bad trade to put your opponent at 13.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
Smallpox on paper seems like a perfect fit. Hell its a half Hymn, Innocent Blood, and Wasteland for BB. But it also does this to you. Which isn't always a great thing because you spent an entire turn to play it. Your opponent now has their turn to go right back to the same board position they were the turn before. Its like a negative Time Walk on both people, except YOU casted it. Now if you did something like this it would be good: Diamond, Ritual, Duress, Smallpox, land. Only if you were on the draw and your opponent casted a creature 1st turn. I can see this card hurting Solidarity because its a land hungry machine, but nothing else is really effected by this card.
Seriously, think about how many times you draw this card and which it was a real Pox.
17 Swamp + 4 Wasteland is too low even when you weren't running Smallpox. You sac your Wastelands anyways. Even with 23 lands, you're effectively only running 19 lands if you are using Wastelands like you should. I don't see why people went under 22 lands then.
You run 2 more lands to support not just Smallpox but Pox as well. Like I said, you don't need to run Crucible at all. Actually, Crucible is rather slow hence why it's not included in the build in my opening post. And Mox Diamond is something I would run in place of Dark Ritual, not in addition to it, so it shouldn't be eating up any extra slots.
Try running 24 lands including the 4 Wastelands, 0 Crucibles, 2 Phyrexian Totem and 4 Dark Rituals and that's it and let me know how it works out.
Ummm 17 Swamps + 4 Wasteland isnt too low, try reading the past Pox threads. Thats the number that is pretty much agreed upon by the people that played the deck for a couple years. I dont get why you think that its too little. Maybe your doing some sort of math for it, but I never, EVER had a land problem, and I will prove this via MWS. IM me if you want to play it out, my s/n is the same as my source name, and Im always on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Clark Kant
Tell me what you've ACTUALLY tested your deck with Smallpox against? No paper writeups, I mean throw the cards into a Pox deck, shuffle it up, and play the game. I will tell you right now that I've played it against Goblins, Affinity, White Thresh, Solidarity, and Loam of all colors (GW, GWR, GR, GRB). I will post my matchups if you want, I played 2 out of 3 both with and without Smallpox and I have the matchups on my friends laptop, which I will have him send to me if you so please. I did a lot better against every deck without Smallpox except Solidarity and GW Loam I think.... It could have been GRB Loam though...
EDIT: This is taken from the Pox Primer, which can be found in the primer list. This is the original Pox deck, so yes it is old, but this is basically the shell that was used for Pox for quite some time.
G. The Decklist
//Discard Spells
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
//Land Destruction
4 Sinkhole
4 Wasteland
//Creature Destruction
4 Diabolic Edict
//Mass Disruption
4 Pox
//Creatures
4 Mindstab Thrull
4 Hypnotic Specter
//Damage Sources
4 The Rack
3 Cursed Scroll
//Mana Sources
17 Swamps
4 Dark Ritual
Total : 60 cards
IV. How to Play Pox
The most important thing about playing Pox is knowing when to play the card Pox. The other spells in the deck do not require you to worry about consequences since they only effect your opponent. Knowing when to cast the spell Pox depends almost completely on the board position at the time and whether it is advantageous to do so. You almost always want to achieve some type of card advantage by casting Pox since it can create a great swing in the game you want to make sure this is the biggest possible swing in your favor. You also want to affect the aspect of the board that is most critical to your opponent. For example, if you are trying to disrupt an aggro deck and it has 4 creatures in play and you have none this would be a good time for playing Pox because your opponent will lose 2 creatures and you will lose none. The best way to know when to play Pox is to understand what your opponent is trying to do. If you know that your opponent is playing control then you need to disrupt his ability to play spells. If your opponent is playing aggro it is important to slow down his assault by destroying his creatures. If you are playing against combo you know which pieces he needs to complete the combo and you need to use this information to disrupt his or her plan. This ability to maximize disruption requires a good deal of knowledge about what your opponent is trying to do and how he plans to do it.
Pox should never be confused with other blue-based control decks, because unlike those decks it is unable to maintain control over a game indefinitely. Its disruption creates instability for the opponent but for the most part that instability will not last and it is during this time that Pox has to find a way to beat his opponent. This is why the deck is classified as aggro/disruption because unlike a control player it does not have the luxury of waiting out every game but rather follows up its disruption with an aggresive strategy to end the game. But compared to other aggro decks it doesn't need to win nearly as fast because it does put constraints on its opponent and what he or she is able to do.
Finally, since playing Pox can be very different depending upon the deck that you are playing against it makes sense to examine how it does against the top decks in 1.5 currently.
Since its old, some cards have been decided that they are better. But note how Anwar only used 17 lands in general??? WOW and his deck was probably one of the most feared ones in general, with TeenieBoppers and ObFreelys coming in a close 2nd. If theres anyone to ask about Pox, its these guys.
I tested against the decks that I have access to,
Deadguy, Zilla Stompy, Fairie Stompy, UW Thres, Reanimator, Burn. Nothing with Vial unfortunately except on MWS. But against those matchups I've never once regretted running Smallpox as a 4 of. Burn is the only very unfavorable matchup for you and that's because of Pox, not Smallpox. Burn is the bane of most any black deck.
Edit: I read the pox primer thank you. Like you said, a lot has changed. No one runs 4 Mindstab Thrull and 4 The Rack and most people find Cursed Scroll too many hungry and to luck dependent at times to run as a 3 of. But more important than that, the meta has changed completely from what it was back then.
Things moved much slower back then. If you're short on lands, you could wait a turn or two to draw into another land and odds are, you're not nearly as behind as you would be today. Decks change and evolve based on new metas and new cards. I think it's time to rethink the old mana base as well.