So, slightly unrelated note, anyone else excited to not lose to sensie's divining top anymore?
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
In the miracles matchup Top was of course better for them than for Pox, so that's a good thing.
Pox often ran Top as well tho so for other matchups it might give a worse card selection late game...
If Elves etc indeed become a deck to beat now as people expect (and Belcher), maybe a second Tabernacle in the board becomes indeed better. Ouch RE wallet
Cutting my Bitterblossoms frees up some space tho, and less losing to a resolved Jace may be nice too
If Stoneblade becomes the new control deck I'm a bit scared for Pox tho. Batterskull, Jace, Lingering Souls: all rather nasty and difficult to deal with cards.
That banning just addressed Pox's greatest problem. Enhanced top deckers. I for one do like me some Crystal Ball as it doesn't need fetchlands to be effective even though it can't defend itself.
My Miracles buddy may be easier to kill now, not sure yet, gotta test what he'd do with the deck.
On other news, I've found a way to play 4 big poxes with my deck now...
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
You mean you suddenly have free slots?Originally Posted by OmniStrata
That banning just addressed Pox's greatest problem. Enhanced top deckers. I for one do like me some Crystal Ball as it doesn't need fetchlands to be effective even though it can't defend itself.
My Miracles buddy may be easier to kill now, not sure yet, gotta test what he'd do with the deck.
On other news, I've found a way to play 4 big poxes with my deck now...
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
So... I look at this and think that we will be very happy with the way the meta is likely to shift. The format seems like it will lean more heavily towards storm/sneak and show style combo decks, creature based prison and/or delver style to beat the combo, and then the lands style decks that prey on delver. I may just be crazy, but don't we have medium to good matchups against basically all of that rock-paper-scissors meta now that sensis divining top isn't sitting in the middle with a hammer?
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
Yeah, I guess. Especially if Elves becomes big again.
I recently just reconfigured my BG Pox deck to run 2x Top. The card is irreplaceable in my deck since it does so many things at the same time. With top and Loam in the yard, I theoretically saw six cards before drawing. If for example, I had three lands or some combo of Bloodghast/Cabal Therapy on the top of my library, I could choose to dredge loam. Then with another top activation I'm looking at three new cards with the ability to draw one by activating tops second ability.
I could even technically see nine cards if I had a fetchland.
It helped me decide when to dredge and also make bolder 1-land keeps.
Another advantage was that if someone tried to Surgical my Loam, I could activate tops draw ability in response and dredge loam to save it. It also had self resilience by being able to save itself!
As far as BG Pox, Miracles was not that much of a big deal since we had Loam and I also ran the Depths/Sage combo for inevitability. They could swords, terminus and counter all day till they eventually ran out of spells. The biggest threat was Jace, which I ran cards like Lost Legacy, To The Slaughter and Maelstrom Pulse. We also had Abrupt Decay for CounterBalance...
Really, really bad ban by wotc...definitely more political than anything...first ban I'm actually disgusted by.
In Modern I played Dredge and Eldrazi (during Eldrazi Winter)
I thought Legacy was free from the BS that Modern is plagued with, so practically gave up Modern for it...but idk man.
I will try Mirri's Guile and/or Scroll Rack, but they are only subpar replacements if even that....
I don't think Scroll Rack works well with Pox as you are often hellbent. Guile or Sylvan Library should work. Library can give you extra dredges, Guile can't.
Had to do some juggling. Brought back Crucible of Worlds and it makes it work. Took out a single Inquistion, Innocent Blood, and Sinkhole since Big Pox does all 3 in larger chunks. 4 Poxes hurts the mana too hard without Crucible. More graveyard dependent and allows me to run more Nether Spirits to fuel my Contamination sideboard but having Phrexian Totem on top of it all allows very nice low land states to play out of.
On the SDT ban, I'm partying hard as fuck now. Think about it, this is a card that allows you to 'set' your deck every turn and see 4+ or more cards down without any penalty and with very little cost using fetches. It even dodges everything short of "Split Second" at no mana cost. It enables 1 cmc Wrath that no creature in the game is safe from, indestructible? regen? nope... It caused EVERY deck in the format to sideboard cards against it... May as well call Legacy the "Miracles" format eh? It's the most difficult match up for US specifically since we are top deck Lords and SDT effectively kills our strategy utterly and we Mono-B players can only Pithing Needle it. I did use Extirpate to ruin certain "in response" plays to my spells but that's just blah as far as quality of disruption is concerned.
I'm not interested in a format where it's "The One Deck" vs. "the others". Can Pox beat Miracles? Yes. Is it even likely? No... I do look forward to selling my own SDT playset just cause I can use the bit of chump change for more Pox deck options.
On the arguments of others, banning Terminus would have actually been fine but killing an entire deck archetype I suppose was necessary and I do feel sorry for people who invested much time and money into said deck. However, I'd still play Pox even if they banned our VERY necessary Liliana of the Veils. I hope the ex-Miracles players can still try to innovate another cool form of control deck.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
I agree that the deck was getting to the point where it was unhealthy. So do the two miracles players at my shop, interestingly enough. I didn't hate the miracles matchup, but if you aren't on loan pox, it suddenly comes down to trying to out play the miracles player, and in my area that was getting really rough (one of our two is andrew olshwager). I don't hate one or two sylvan library for library manipulation, especially if you have dredging or such to make use of the extra cards, but I feel like the format will be speeding up enough that we won't have time for those durdly options in the main anymore, at least until the meta re-settles and we see the leovold decks and lands decks re-configuring to be more streamlined towards the decks miracles was helping keep down. I do think that, on a larger metagame scale, a noteable part of why they banned top was the same as a major reason they banned it in modern and why they hit eggs in that format: time constraints. Top, and by extension miracles, was the single most significant reason for players hitting 10-15 min in turns at legacy gps and other major legacy tournaments, which isn't terribly good for the players. Granted, the more experienced top players weren't having that problem, but it has been the 'best' deck in the format for a good long while, and so basically anyone who wanted tiger into the format had tomvery seriously consider picking it up. I am basically glad it's gone, and I'm fairly certain that the initial metamon a large scale will go storm, be reanimator, etc. > eldrazi, delver and d&t > elves, shardless and lands, back to square 1, with the people like us playing the 'odd deck out' where our experience with the archetype combined with no longer needing board slots exclusively for miracles will be a huge advantage, especially since most of those decksnare even to good matchups anyways. I only wish I could go to gp Vegas.
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
With Top banned, I'm looking for a way to see more cards in mono black. I've been thinking about Reid Duke's old tech with Bottled Cloister, but I was wondering if anyone has tried Dark Tutelage before? There should be less Abrupt Decay and enchantment hate in general without Counterbalance plus I do play the standard 25 lands. Any other suggestions I could test?
I think decks with Phyrexian Totem could try playing Culling Scales. Scales is slow but effective at grinding away on a board of permanents (Moxes, Vial, equipment, creatures), and if there's something you don't want killed (Scales itself), the Totem can be animated in response to the trigger to fizzle it. Scales can also slow progression if they don't want to play permanents directly into its line of fire. The Abyss might be better overall depending on your own permanents.
Anyway, this deck does seem good right now. Smallpox/Innocent Blood against Deathrites, array of sweepers or overload kill spells against Elves, discard and accelerated hate permanents against combo. Noetic Scales could be worth playing as well to evacuate Leovold, Delver, and Marit Lage.
I played Jund Depths last night and had difficulty when Elves, Food Chain, and DnT were able to go wide against me. Liliana was a 3cc edict, Punishing Fire performed well but was clearly weak against x/3's in Food Chain (not to mention Leovold), Smallpoxes were okay against DnT and Elves but still a little slow and hurt my own lands.
Mainboard Deluges could do work, they've had success in Aggro Loam currently.
I'd recommend Crystal Ball. Granted, it can be pithing needled, but it allows you to skip shitty turns since you won't need to use a fetchland. It also counters Jace fateseal hilariously enough. 3 CMC is a lot but since it doesn't get 'stuck' after 3-4 turns, unlike SDT, it can work. Bottled Cloister demands you run Ensnaring Bridges and perhaps other cards that like hellbent mechanics on your enemy's turn.
With so many lands, I'd also consider Underworld Connections or Phyrexian Arena cause I'd rather pay 1 life per card than 3 life for a Pox or Liliana of the Veil when I draw the extra.
However, I'd still recommend wholly against card drawing spells because that's less disruption and I'm not a fan of lifeloss at all now that I'm going QuadraPox. Cycling spells on the other hand, or cycling lands [barren moor], could be used.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
Yeah I agree that any black deck almost needs 1 Deluge main and probably 1 in the side right now.
i second this..pox usually has trouble when opponent is able to put multiple threats on the field..i recommend some copies of toxic deluge, night of soul's betrayal or even larry niven's saucer in the main..these cards help us bounce back and recover and indirectly makes lili more effective..
Or play Ob Nixilis Reignited in the grindy matchups, it's a phyrexian arena that optionally also rips opppnent's creatures.
In lieu of Culling scales I'm currently testing Necroplasm in the side against Elves/DnT, as a recursive sweeper. Not sure if it's really necessary with Tabernacles but o well.
Didn't think about Scales yet, seems good in some situations but would get bad once you're Pithing Needling your DnT opponents.
@Claymore: how do you mean Phyrexian Totem needs to be animated to fizzle culling scales? It'll kill your Phyrexian totem as a cmc3 either way, so animating it seems like a waste of mana?
Oh, yeah, you're right. I was thinking of the interaction between Scales and token generators. That doesn't work then.
My new mission, now that Miracles is banned, is to try out as many decks as possible in the next few months.
Is there a playable version of Pox that doesn't include Nether Void/Tabernacle/Chains? The deck seems really fun but I don't own any of those cards, and they certainly aren't in the budget right now.
Nobody plays Legacy anymore, the tournaments are all too crowded
I've had some success with mono-black pox/reanimator
// 60 Maindeck
// 7 Creature
1 Griselbrand
4 Grave Titan
1 Custodi Lich
1 Vengeful Pharaoh
// 4 Enchantment
4 Animate Dead
// 8 Instant
4 Dark Ritual
4 Entomb
// 20 Land
2 Lake of the Dead
18 Swamp
// 4 Planeswalker
4 Liliana of the Veil
// 17 Sorcery
4 Reanimate
4 Collective Brutality
4 Thoughtseize
4 Smallpox
1 Dread Return
// 15 Sideboard
// 2 Artifact
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
// 4 Creature
SB: 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
SB: 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
SB: 1 Griselbrand
SB: 1 Ashen Rider
// 6 Enchantment
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 2 Engineered Plague
// 3 Sorcery
SB: 2 Innocent Blood
// 1 Instant
SB: 1 Coffin Purge
The SB is a bit of a mess and I'm not 100% sure about the maindeck either. Today was the first game I tried a deck like this after seeing it posted a while back.
The versions I saw had either Brutality OR Liliana but I'm pretty sure you want to be playing both. It's very interesting.
- You have reanimator-like combo draws where you just go turn 1 entomb turn 2 reanimate Griselbrand and win the game, turn 1 Thoughtseize turn 2 Entomb Reanimate, turn 1 Ritual Entomb Reanimate etc
- You have very disruptive pox-like draws (Turn 1 discard, turn 2 Brutality discard fatty, Turn 3 reanimate, or Turn 1-2 discard, Turn 3 Liliana, discard fatty, reanimate on turns 4+. (I.e. it functions like a normal pox deck but rather than play e.g. Cursed Scroll on turn 4 you have reanimates)
- Unlike RB Reanimator you aren't completely boned by Leyline because you have Rituals and Lake of the Dead to hardcast a fatty (people will often heavily board GY hate no matter what they are playing and if the games stall out enough then even Griselbrand is castable off just swamps)
Definitely seemed more promising than I expected, beating people with Grave Titans is also really funny.
2 Lake of the Dead seems like the right number.
Dread Return is not good, I wanted a 'value' target for Entomb in grindy games but this is not it. Maybe 1 Cabal Therapy is fine, or Vengeful Pharaoh is enough already. Soul of Innistrad is interesting but probably too cute/expensive/doesn't do anything when you need it to.
Maindeck Erebos is also something I have been thinking about.
I don't think nonblack Reanimate targets are needed in the main but you can consider it depending on the metagame.
The gameplan of this deck 'feels' stronger than normal Pox because it's more inherently proactive but I don't know if it's actually a better deck or not.
Question to other poxers here.
I have recently started playing these Japanese lists which feel very powerful:
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15182&d=292071&f=LE
but the other day I was wondering, could there be any merit to replacing 1 (or both) of the Phyrexian Totems with Serum Powder(s)?
Card advantage is very important in Pox so not mulliganning too often is key. Getting free mulligans makes the threshold of mulling questionable hands much lower.
It only makes colorless instead of black, and doesn't attack, but it didn't happen *that* often I got to attack with it anyway. In last night's games I maybe only attacked with it 2-3 times, whereas it got tapped for mana 10x as much.
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