4 Dark RitualOriginally Posted by Hardcore
4 Liliana of the Veil
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Sinkhole
4 Innocent Blood
For something different: I'd suggest Collective Brutality or Warping Wail.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
I've used Ghost Quarter from time to time in the wishboard in my Chalice build to take care of a basic Plains that escaped the Smallpox or Sinkholes if I was worried about a Swords before tapping out for Marit Lage. But though useful, it doesn't always make it into the sideboard of that build depending on what I need to fight or tutor with Living Wish.
As for the Bloodghast/Collective Brutality Build it is more about disruption and keeping them on heels a bit than controlling the lands completely, without Sinkholes , or worrying about a creature or two getting Swords or Terminus. Against Miracles, which can't counter Bloodghast or Factories (8 threats) they do have RIP and sometimes Blood Moon. Tough, but with siding out some of the Loam Package and Innocent Blood for +2 Krosan Grip and +1 Maelstrom Pulse to add to the 4 Abrupt Decay and existing Pernicious Deed , and +3 Duress to existing discard while they try to Top against 1 cmc for most of it (Collective Brutality is 2) It becomes a bit harder for them to dial up the three cmc counterbalance on defence. So for a Pox build Miracles isn't as bad a matchup as it could be.
Someone once said on some thread or another here on The Source that if your deck has no game or plan against Miracles, it's probably not going to work out in the long run. Honestly mono red burn is one of the tougher matches, so the Chalice helps in the Chalice/Depths build and Collective Brutality is a good card against Burn (which also doesn't care about Loam wastelock-so side out some Loam) . Still a tough ask even with Bloodghasts pecking away. Rack heavy mono black builds can sometimes race burn.
Are you going to try Fatal Push?
I could see how it works vs Innocent Blood, which one is most useful in most situations encountered. I like the idea of targeting Deathrite Shaman above all. The second clause would probably only get occasional use. Instant is always good. I can see Loam Pox being able to use the permanent clause more efficiently than most decks having black.
Remember Innocent Blood can take care of Batterskull and True-name Nemesis, and avoids Mother of Runes.
Last edited by beez; 01-25-2017 at 08:51 PM.
Yea, but so does Smallpox and Liliana of the Veil, but like you said I really like Fatal Push against Deathrite Shaman.
Also like fetch, kill a Thought-Knot Seer...
I like keeping Innocent Blood around in the side for Reanimator, SnT etc...
Does creature kill count as disruption?
I have sinkhole which disrupt, but am thinking it is timewalk unless paired with something like ankh of Mishra or surgical Extraction.
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
Any card that disrupts your directly disrupts your opponent's game plan is disruption. Creatures tend to either mana-dork you or punch you in the face to kill you. Both of which furthers your opponent's game plan. Crucible and Sign in Blood do nothing to your opponent directly. They help you recover but while you're recovering, so is your opponent.
Sinkhole is a timewalk on your opponent since they now waste a turn getting another land out. That and if you're on the play, you'll have 3 lands on turn 3 while they're at 1 land. Is that not the same as taking an extra turn board-wise? On the Draw it costs them a turn and let's you 'catch up' at worst.
Land Destruction favors more aggressive strategies as you want to kill them before they can recover using bigger/more numerous threats. I'm going to bring back Chimeric Idol and Epochrasite and figure out a more LD focused build but thanks to Liliana being an auto-staple for my personal preferences, I can't use the now un-banned black vise. I would like to see an enemy's face where I'd go Dark Ritual, 3x Black Vice, and then slam them for 9 damage on their upkeep.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
I suppose sinkhole help bring liliana out since I get one more land in play the next turn.
If ckill is disruption then I see room for 3-4 darkblasts.
Brb
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
Sinkhole forces some awkward early game plays depending on their land tapped state. If your enemy has 2-3 untapped lands, you Sinkhole them to force them to play their flash creature or instant at a weird time. Then use Liliana to sac their creature. If they're tapped out, have Liliana discard their card in hand first to possibly prevent Force of Wills and then blow up their land.
One of the reasons I fell for Liliana Pox was that I was mesmerized by an old, nigh, ancient R/B precon from Urza's block called Ground Breaker. After much discussion with my old friend and magic coach, he said if you want to go after mana, Pox in legacy is your only real choice. The rest is history.
Also, having cheap / free threats like Bloodghast that rush your opponent's death is good when going the LD route. I've upped my threat count and power a bit to compensate.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
Has anyone ever tested Prized Amalgam in the deck? I'm going to be testing that out soon. Seems like with the amount of self discard effects e.g. Lili/Pox/Smallpox I'm always dumping useful cards that if were Amalgams would at least be able to recur off Blooghasts.
Here's the tentative list:
4 Bloodghast
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Hymn
4 Small Pox
4 Innocent Blood
2 Darkblast
4 Sink Hole
4 Waste Land
4 Liliana
4 Dark Ritual
2 Dakmor Salvage
20 Swamps
Sinkhole is better than wasteland in this deck. Gravecrawler
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
I will test this deck tomorrow.
4 Bloodghast
1 nether spirit
4 Smallpox
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Pox
4 liliana of the veil
4 sinkhole
4 ankh of Mishra
3 darkblast
1 the rack
3 shrieking affliction
4 dark ritual
13 Swamp
3 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
4 wasteland
1 dakmor salvage
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
Interested to hear how it works out!
Especially would like to hear about what you experienced running 4 big Pox and the Ankhs.
Big Pox is probably the single most powerful spell that we have access to in this deck, so it makes sense to try to maximize it and build around it.
Liliana and Smallpox can supplement big Pox, but as mentioned before, neither one provides the key thing that this deck actually struggles with the most: winning the game. Since big Pox can take huge swaths of life out of the opponent, I believe it should be a stronger presence in our lists.
Also, after some more thought and reading some of the other responses on this thread, I'm starting to think that Bloodghast could be essential piece of this deck.
In fact, I think it may actually do the things that we were wanting Mishra's Factory to do, but better. For example:
Points of parity:
- They both attack for 2
- They both "dodge" our symmetrical effects to a degree
Points for Bloodghast
- You actually WANT to discard it
- it's one of the few threats in the entire game that we can get for zero mana invested -- and that can recur multiple times
- We are fine drawing and discarding multiples
- pairs well with Cabal Therapy or other sac effects if needed
- it doesn't interfere with our manabase
- we can realistically attack with multiple Bloodghast in the same turn, whereas with factories it's usually 1 or maybe 2 max
- attacking with it doesn't cause us to expend mana
- has haste when we need it most - toward the end of the game when we are looking to close the game
- if we get the board to a low resource state, any land drop could potentially become a hasty alpha strike of between 2-8 damage
- the only removal that truly gets rid of it is swords to Plowshares, but it's an unappealing target for that because it's a small creature -- and may even be tempo disadvantage if we got the Bloodghast for free
- we generally don't care if it dies
- sometimes we want it to die to enable revolt
- when revolt is a factor, we can create awkward blocks for the opponent where we attack not caring if the ghast dies, and they either take the damage or block and kill it, allowing us to set up fatal push
- cannot be killed with wasteland
- pairs well with big Pox, since even a single pox will bring opponent quite close to 10 life haste range
Points against Bloodghast
- can't block
- might have to pay to cast it if no discard or landfall
- only one toughness means it pairs badly with Night of Souls Betrayal
- against D&T, mother of runes could give pro-black whereas Factory is colorless
- makes us weaker to graveyard hate
I'm sure I missed some points there on both sides, but I think bloodghast does enough things well in this deck, including apply some early pressure if need be, that I'm going to give it some extensive testing.
Would like to hear thoughts from others who have been using Bloodghast, especially in how it compares to Factory.
Last edited by griselbranding; 01-31-2017 at 03:03 AM.
Just pointing this out, the majority of these posts are essentially rehashing small number tweaks to the same list. There's only so many ways to build Mono-Black Pox, and since it has had basically zero success there doesn't seem to be much reason to keep kicking that dead horse. Anyone thinking they are gonna find some perfect configuration of redundant effects to dominate is delusional, mono-black is garbage and if you want to consistently be competitive you need to move towards something else. Not meaning this to discourage people, but anyone playing Mono-Black Pox is the equivalent of someone playing RUG Delver with Werebear over Tarmogoyf.
I'm still having reasonable success with my BU list. Overly grindy decks are proving to be an issue, I'm still looking for a solution as devoting sideboard slots to become the beatdown deck seems counter-intuitive but trying to out card advantage decks like Shardless BUG has not proved very successful. I'm currently debating on using 3 Sphere of Resistance or Standstill or Thing in the Ice in the board. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be grateful.
The BG decks have plenty of exploration remaining and at some point I will build and test with it. As a passing thought, if you are going to play the Depths combo I would think it important to find a use for at least one of those parts outside of the combo. That to me seems to be an issue, they are both quite dead without the other. Although, the 5-0 deck link post a page or two back seemed like a reasonable direction with the tutoring effects. The tutors have several targets for various board states but provide the added benefit of tutoring up a win-con. I would imagine playing more Depths and Stages is definitely wrong as at that point you're playing a crummy Lands deck.
I would say a BW version with Lingering Souls and Collective Brutality has a lot of potential. Magic Christmas Land of T2 having Urborg and Flagstones in play and casting Smallpox while discarding Blooghast or Lingering Souls would be the best. Beyond that sequence, Collective Brutality with useful cards to discard or delve away could be good. White also has some pretty powerful sideboard options and planeswalkers.
Oh the irony. This post feels kind of familiar.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
I disagree. Since Pox cannot be built to lock the game or combo win, in the more inevitable way of typical decks, it is all over the spectrum.
There's also too many cards to choose from and too many interactions to consider when building.
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
Some points for mishra,
Blocks as a 3/3, multiple mishra can handle alot of threats. Easilly killing small goyf's at least with 2.
Can be immune to nonwasteland/draw with top removal in combination with discard (raven's crime most common example)
Obviously in loam pox it's searchable with crop roation and recurable with loam.
Actually helps to cast spells
May be some more things Mishra gives, but just a few that could be considered.
My current Pox Loam list (updated 22 November 2016)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing
What's your UB list look like and how are you sideboarding against Shardless?
So the irony of saying that mono b should be dropped like a bad habit and then commenting on having issues with shardless makes me want to laugh, since I have yet to lose a long game to shardless with mono b or splashing g for having abrupt decay as my point and click removal spell. There are so many ways to build the deck and be (effectively) mono b that it makes my head hurt, as you need to decide how agressive you want to be (bloodghast vs factories vs scrolls) how much you want to focus on one shot effects vs staying effects (nether void/abyss vs pox/brutality) how much acceleration you want (0-6, diamonds, Rits or both?) and then you get to the impact of how your removal choices play out, how risqué is your mana base, (fetches for push any top vs dust bowl/drownyard temple vs swamps, wasteland, urborg) and that's without touching the sideboard. That being said, one of the common strengths that the basically mono b lists has always had is being very strong against non-top brainstorm decks. We regularly point and laugh at delver, and I think I've lost two sanctioned matches to shardless, both of which were due to my foolishness. My biggest piece of advice for anyone wanting to be able to slaughter a particular deck, you should proxy it or build it and play it for a month. You'll figure out all the points that you, as a pilot of that deck, don't want to interact with. It's how I figured out that shardless literally cannot beat us if we have the abyss out. It's how I figured out what to thoughtseize out of storm hands. It's how I learned where to push and how hard vs miracles (if you can force their fetches, do so, and do everything in your power to keep them off of double white. They basically can't win if big pox resolves, and Liliana plus nether void is basically game over, but they don't care much about chains unless they play mentor.)
Great losses often bring only a numb shock. To truly plunge a victim into misery, you must overwhelm him with many small sufferings."
—Ratadrabik of Urborg
I agree on the head hurting. There are many cards that are possible to play in Pox, and it is difficult to choose which and in what combinations.
Yesterday's Ankh-pox, for example, worked reasonable well for being untested. (I defeated 12post and lost to sneak attack and Jund running jitte)
The result was of course dependent on the composition of the whole deck. Any changes will have a cascade effect which is hard to predict. Next time I run ankh it will be without sinkhole and darkblast. That will have an effect in the decks performance, so will the substitutes.
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
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