A 2/1 for 3 cmc that can BLOCK?! Damn shame it's not instant speed, otherwise, it'd be the best card since Nether Spirit. I'm in on this thing. It's like hard casting Nether Spirit from your GY and with sniping backup from Cursed Scroll, should be able to kill anything you need so Innocent Blood/Pox/Liliana can sac the fatty. 1 cast-from-hand CMC for 2 power is a good thing as well.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
So shadow of the grave isn't for us. It's for people who want to abuse things like the dreams and/or seismic assault. It's likely not the best at those things, but it's very entertaining for that purpose.
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
Translation:
Start // Finish
2W // 2B
Instant // Sorcery
Start
Create two 1/1 white Warrior creature tokens with vigilance.
Finish
Aftermath (Cast this spell only from your graveyard. Then exile it.)
As an additional cost to cast Finish, sacrifice a creature.
Destroy target creature.
Could see this in a BW Pox list...one end "lingering souls" other end removal...
Ehh, you could try it. But pox already has a large amount of removal and I think waiting for the card to hit the graveyard to just get eaten by DRS is gonna suck... And the tokens aren't flying so I personally wouldn't play this over lingering souls + any kind of removal already in the deck.
There's also the mono-black one which is sorcery Hero's Downfall on the front end and 4-mana-Vile-Rebirth on the back end which is not too bad either (if you decide that killing PWs is very important)
FWIW, there's old school heavy control bug lists that are basically:
Veteran explorer, cabal therapy, Innocent blood, deed, jace and liliana.
They are really fun lists. And, while not truly competitive in today's landscape, you could make your opponents miserable while both using pox themes and nic fit themes.
Check out "Pernicious jace" and "veteran planeswalker " lists. :-)
I've been practicing with a list that feels pretty good. My sideboard is still in flux but overall this version has shown solid consistency.
Lands - 23
7 x Swamp
4 x Mishra's Factory
4 x Wasteland
4 x Polluted Delta
3 x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 x Verdant Catacombs
Creatures - 3
2 x Bloodghast
1 x Nether Spirit
Spells - 23
4 x Smallpox
4 x Thoughtseize
3 x Dark Ritual
3 x Hymn to Tourach
3 x Sinkhole
3 x Innocent Blood
2 x Collective Brutality
1 x Darkblast
Planeswalkers - 4
4 x Liliana of the Veil
Artifacts - 6
3 x Sensei's Divining Top
2 x Cursed Scroll
1 x Crucible of Worlds
Enchantments- 1
1 x Night of Souls' Betrayal
Thoughts?
I was actually in the same boat with Nether Spirit. I've been on the Reid Duke list since I picked up the deck and I've really only meddled with the 3-4 flex slots he left in the deck. However, as a concession to playing Thoughtseize and Collective Brutality the deck needs more cards for Escalate. I've found that with Top and fetch lands it's fairly easy to keep Bloodghast out of the yard and it's very helpful to keep pressure on the opponent.
I keep wanting to run multiples of Collective Brutality (waiting for them to drop online) as it seems like such a perfect fit for Pox. 2 mana and 2 of my cards for 2 of my opponents is right where we want to be. The feel bad is if it gets hit by Daze or Spell Pierce. I would be curious to see how far you could push the synergy. I will be attempting the following to start
4 Collective Brutality
4 Smallpox
4 Bloodghast
1-2 Nether Spirit
X Cabal Therapy
X Lingering Souls
We are already making Smallpox powerful by breaking symmetry and Brutality is like a form of Smallpox. With so many choice cards to discard I hope it will be easier to get pressure.
I like the above list to a degree but just wonder how it would play out by cutting Hymn and Sinkhole. We have witnessed lists in the past succeed without these golden cows.
Anyone experiment with anything like this?
I definitely like Collective Brutality's versatility however I don't think it's strong enough to cut Hymn or Sinkhole altogether for it. I mainly play it to recoup some of the life lost to Thoughtseize and Smallpox or as removal in a pinch. The inability to hit lands, planeswalkers, and artifacts comes up often and a resource denial deck like Pox can't have too many narrow discard cards. If you want to build around Collective Brutality I would probably recommend something along the lines of Reanimator or Zombardment instead that focuses on really abusing the graveyard.
So imo you cannot cut Hymn, no matter what you do. It's just such a blowout in every matchup. On the other hand, a lot of lists lately have been cutting sinkhole, I personally love sinkhole for the nostalgic factor but with how mana efficient the format is, most decks can run on 1 land to drag themselves out of our grasp. So I believe its reasonable to cut sinkhole, but not hymn. It's too valuable.
So this is a list I saw on mtgtop8 a few days ago, http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15182&d=292071&f=LE
I like how he diversified his threats and ran quite a bit of utility. I made a few changed since I didn't like the Disk, because it's too slow imo. And I cut the tabernacle since I don't have one lol.
Lands-26
9 Swamp
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Pit
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Maze of Ith
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Spawning Pool
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Wasteland
Spells-20
1 Beseech the Queen
4 Dark Ritual
2 Hymn to Tourach
3 Innocent Blood
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Smallpox
4 Thoughtseize
Enchantments-4
2 Nether void
1 Chains of Mephistopheles
1 The Abyss
Artifacts-6
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Cursed Scroll
2 Phyrexian Totem
Planeswalkers-4
4 Liliana of the Veil
I also thought Disk was random, until last week during playtesting I cast Ritual, Ritual, Disk to clean up a Thalia, Vial, Mom and something else (I think a Mirran Crusader).
Then I realised it's probably a good 1-off for a build running Rituals, as it's the only way (Ratchet bomb being even more slow + vulnerable) for mono-B to beat a variety of Artifacts (Batterskull anyone?), Enchantments etc, randomly also providing a wipe against swarm strategies that go over the top of your sacrifice-1s.
I'd much rather face something random like Enchantress, DnT etc with something like Disk in my main. Except for non-ETW combo, it does at least *something* against 90% of legacy decks.
Hmm... I've never tried it so I guess I will have to, I think I'll just replace The Abyss with Disk then. I'll try and jam some games with my group and give feedback..
Also, I didn't think about this until now. But wouldn't Grim Tutor be a strictly better upgrade to Beseech the Queen? Or do you think the difference wouldn't matter too much.
Since Grim costs you 3 life, I wouldn't call it "strictly"
Grim Tutor:
+Always costs 3 mana
+Always tutors any card in your deck
-You lose 3 life (while already running Thoughtseize etc)
-Costs like 150€
Beseech:
+Don't lose life (life is a precious resource for Pox to buy time to stabilize)
+Costs like 0,50€
-May be harder to cast for 3 without Urborg online or Dark Rit - f.ex. with 2 Swamps + 1 Wasteland in play.
-Is not guaranteed to tutor *everything* in your deck at any moment.
I'm guessing the last one will not occur too often (as usually you won't need to tutor the more expensive cards like Ensnaring Bridge, Disk turn 1-2), and you still get your turn 1 Dark Rit tutor Surgical against fast GY decks etc;
but against SnT/Marit Lages it's good to be able to drop Bridge off their SnT turn 2'ish, not having to wait for turn 3 to tutor and 4 to play (that's the most relevant scenario I can imagine where you need expensive cards early game to survive).
So I played in my local LGS legacy tournament last night with the list I posted above. Nev's Disk is way better than I gave it credit for. In every one of my matches, Disk got me back into the game.
Against D&T I was facing a mom, Bskull, and 2 vials. And I was able to blow everything and get back into the game.
Against Miracles I was able to get out of a double counterbalance he had on me.
Against Mono-Red Sneak I was able to destroy a sneak attack, chalice, blood moon, and a few lotus petals.
Overall I'm very satisfied with how Nev's Disk performed and will continue to keep it in the maindeck.
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