If you play Dark depths, I absolutely love Hexmage as it provides both combo and Planeswalker removal.Originally Posted by ntropy
My current Pox Loam list (updated 22 November 2016)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing
Is there a way to keep pox mono-black but still play a small Depths package? I am getting serious about pox and I had two sets of win conditions I was looking at:
4x Hexmage
1x Dark Depths
1x Thespian's Stage
2-3x Expedition Map
or
2x Bloodghast
1x Empty the Pits
4x Mishra's Factory
If I play the depths combo I would cut 2x Factory for depths/stage.
Here is a rough list for reference:
2x Bloodghast
1x Empty the Pits
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Thoughtseize
4x Innocent Blood
2x Fatal Push
4x Dark Ritual
4x Smallpox
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Sinkhole
3x Liliana of the Veil (don't have 4 yet)
1x Crucible of Worlds
4x Mishra's Factory
4x Wasteland
4x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Cabal Pit
12x Swamp
Alternatively I could do this:
4x Vampire Hexmage
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Thoughtseize
3x Expedition Map
3x Dark Ritual
4x Sinkhole
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Innocent Blood
2x Fatal Push
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Crucible of Worlds
2x Mishra's Factory
1x Dark Depths
1x Thespian's Stage
4x Wasteland
1x Cabal Pit
4x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
12x Swamp
Let me know if I'm way off base here. I only have 1 copy each of Depths/Stage, and I have no Nether Spirits (easy to acquire however.) I'm also don't have some of the rare singletons (Tabernacle, Nether Void, Chains.) Does that mean Pox is a dead end for me?
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
I only own Nether Void. That doesn't mean Dead End if you don't have Tabernacle or Chains. Reid Duke's original winning list had only the Nether Void and he removed it in his 2nd iteration of the deck.
The original thread stated that Pox can be built on a budget and still remain competitive. Personally, I think the only real 'issue' for money card is Liliana of the Veil but replacing them with Big Pox and running Crucibles or Dakmor Salvage or Phyrexian Totem to recover may be the route your wallet can take. I personally won't be purchasing Dark Depths, Thespian Stage, Vesuvas, etc.
My only luxury card I know I need but can't afford is Tabernacle but one can simply keep saving, or win some tourneys and store credit that cardboard.
Looking at your list, it seems fine, but to combo off, I'd recommend a tutor of sorts. Infernal Tutors, Expedition Maps, or Beseech the Queen are great tutors for hitting your combo, but each combo piece you play will lower your deck's ability to disrupt. It's a delicate balancing act.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
Looking to build something with Tabernacle, Chains, Abyss, Void, Noetic Scales, and probably Crucible and/or Nev Disk. Major Pox card I don't have seems to be Bloodghast. Would I just use a recent Mishra's/Cursed Scroll/Phyrexian Totem list?
Adachi Ryosuke has just that for you
His most recent list has all of those except for Noetic Scales which I guess is the worst in your list of cards anyway. And Disk, but his previous list had the same main deck except for swapping Disk/Abyss:
http://mtgkmc.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-485.html
(2nd place)
(with Disk over Abyss: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15182&d=292071&f=LE but that was before Miracles ban, so still heavier on Bitterblossom sideboard)
You won't need Bloodghast at all for a build like this. Tbh I never liked Bloodghast in mono-B anyway.
EDIT: seems I was mistaken; he also swapped 1 IoK with a 4th Innocent Blood, so I guess there are 2 maindeck differences
I was thinking Expedition map was good enough for a tutor...maybe not. It gets both lands (or urborg, wasteland, cabal pit, or a sideboarded bojuka bog.) Its way slower than crop rotation, but I don't have the bayous for bg pox (have literally everything else.) Not sure green-based fetches and basic forests would do the job.
I'm fine without the depths/stage/hexmage combo. Factories, bloodghast, and empty the pits are fine win conditions. I would want hexmage for specific matchups (jace/pw killer, first strike is nice, fast win against burn.) I could try them both out, but if someone has already tried this, and its too magical christmasland with only one depths, I could save myself a lot of time.
Tabernacle seems foolish for me to acquire...if I can borrow I will, but otherwise I'll just have to make do without it (and cross my fingers it doesn't cost me games.)
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Thanks for the list. Scales seems fairly well positioned if you can land it after all your Hymns, locking out TNN, Leovold, Show and Tell, Angler, Marit Lage. A list with Rituals to accelerate it out alongside the other haymakers Void and Abyss seems fun to me. Fairly hard to remove as well, but you would open up to awkward situations of bouncing Snapcaster and Flickerwisp.
I'm not terribly fond of empty the pits. in general, it isn't quite efficient enough at BBBB since the zombies come in tapped. One of the things i like about most of the builds that are floating around is that approximately all of the kill conditions (especially in the main boards) serve an alternate goal to simply winning the game. Mishra's factory and Nether Spirit make attacks very difficult for most 'fair' decks with ground creatures (see D&T, any non-TNN attacker out of Leovold Decks, etc.) while Cursed scroll does a good job of picking off small creatures so we don't have to waste spells and she makes our liliana -2s more effective (DRS, Elves, Delver decks, etc.) even Bloodghast (which I also don't like in Mono B) has uses (Cabal therapy, protecting our factories from StP, additional discard fodder so that smallpox/liliana +1 look even more lopsided) also, the quad black is going to be mildly obnoxious to pull off, as the deck runs a surprising number of colorless lands and has a habit of eating its own mana base as well as its opponent's. most of the time, when you get to a point where you can cast empty the pits, you'd be able to kill them with a nether spirit/cursed scroll/mishra's factory/Tombstalker (eats delver, leovold, flickerwisp, mindscensor, thought-knot, dodges push and decay, trades with zombie fish, and trades with griselbrand w/ cursed scroll activation)
In general I prefer needle as a PW Killer, since it also can hit port/Stage/vial/DRS/Griselbrand
I thought the same thing about tabernacle being foolish to acquire. then i played with one in the deck. then i acquired one. it single handedly wins a lot more games for us than it seems like it should. you don't know happiness until you turn 1 IoK/Seize their DRS, turn 2 Rit Seize/Iok the brainstorm and sinkhole them, then drop tabernacle against a delver/leovold player.
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 played a couple of matches on Thursday. I took down Elves 2-1 by stealing the last two games. I had a lot of disruption game one, but I never managed to find a Liliana or Cursed Scroll to control the board. A Quirion Ranger managed to keep one Bayou alive and that single land led to a board of five green men including two Deathrites that drained me out. I took game 2 on the back of an early Tombstalker, which I'm testing in the board, and barely snuck by when I managed to kill his Ruric Thar with a Liliana -2. In game 3, my opponent played turn two Bitterblossom to counter all of my edict effects. He got me all the way down to 1 life when I topdecked my only copy Night of Souls' Betrayal and squeaked out a win with Cursed Scroll and 1/1 Mishra beats.
Second match was against a B/G Living Wish Depths Midrange brew that was super interesting. I took game 1 by playing Night of Souls' Betrayal and my single maindeck copy of Engineered Plague on Shaman. I pinged away with a Cursed Scroll while Deathrites, Hexmages, and Confidants rotted in my opponent's hand. Game 2, I just never really got anything going. My opponent kept Wasting my Factories and Urborg is actually a very dangerous card to play when against Depths. He eventually Living Wished for a Stage on turn 5 to kill me with the 20/20. Game 3 was a hard fought game. I had my opponent at 6 life staring down a Liliana with 6 loyalty to my Cursed Scroll, NoSB, Wasteland, and about 8 Swamps. I punted and shot my opponent's face because he was manually thawing a Depths that had 5 counters on it. He ultimated Liliana killed my Scroll and NoSB which was my downfall.
Tombstalker won me a game against Elves, but it ended up dying to the Depths player's Liliana -2 twice. It feels almost unplayable if the opponent has any way to kill it minus maybe Swords to Plowshares. I felt like Nether Spirit would have been better against the Depths player every time I drew Tombstalker. I only drew maindeck Plague once, but it was excellent. It's a slot that I normally rotate between Crucible and big Pox, but it felt strong especially when I landed it in conjunction with the NoSB. I was set to play against Enchantress and D&T as well, but I had to leave early to watch my kid.
Last edited by Chiptoon; 05-27-2017 at 11:37 PM.
I'll drop the Empty and slot in a tombstalker. Thanks for the great feedback.
Tried hex/depths with maps for a few goldfish games. It makes smallpox super awkward and distracts from the control elements (innocent blood had to be dropped.) Going with bloodghast/tombstalker for now.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Looks an excellent build. I look forward to trying it with Faith of the Devoted in my similar list. I run three Entomb, so we will see if Faith out of the board can beat Entomb Golgari Brownscale hope for an active Lilliana to toss it to and cross fingers for the best. Maybe give Glacial Chasm another try, although I usually feel awkward with it.But Faith of the Devoted can be an extra win condition too as well as slowing fast decks, has it helped in this regard too? Which matchups besides Burn and Delver has it been best for?
So, I am now moving to BW Pox. Naturally I started by ordering the mana card. Right know I got one Godless shrine, three Concealed courtyard. Four marsh flats are on the way by mail. Now what to do with this man's base? Suggestions welcome.
For starters I intend to play two of three Kaya, ghost assassin and one Kambal, consul of allocation.
Kaya was what pushed me to the white side. She is like Pox in that you need read the card twice or more to get what she does. Even then you can be surprised by the tricks she can do.
I feel she will fit right in with a discard /the rack themed Pox deck. Speaking of which I should mention in have ordered a set of cabal therapy again. I am not interested in playing a token deck, so I am skipping Lingering souls.
With nine fetchlands available Tombstalker seems like worth playing. Vindicate is probably best in the sideboard.
Something like this
3 tombstalker
4 Bloodghast
3 nihilith
3 shrieking affliction
1 kambal, consul of allocation
3 liliana of the veil
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
2 Kaya, ghost assassin
3 Pox
2 toxic deluge
4 cabal therapy
4 dark ritual
9 Swamp
3 Concealed courtyard
1 Godless shrine
4 marsh flats
1 polluted delta
4 bloodstained mire
I got some Dark confidant but am not sure they fit. They are less good without top.
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
I agree Kaya alone is enough reason to want white. She's a pox-proof disruption engine, and a win condition. Vindicate, Lingering Souls, Fragmentize are good sideboard options you gain access to, but not at all necessary. What are your thoughts on Flagstones of Trokair?
I think that to run flagstone I need to have Urborgs in the deck. Since I already am vulnerable to PoP that may not be so good. Worth testing later.
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
I don't think you can afford Bob without the ability to actually dictate what's on top of your library. I agree that Kaya is good, and I think that she's among the reasons to go B/W. for your mana base, I want a basic plains somewhere, but that's just me. personally i'd be starting my mana base at
4 wasteland
3 urborg
4 marsh flats
1 plains
1 godless shrine
4 Black Fetch
7 Swamp
3 Mox diamond
But i'm a wasteland addict. How's it feel without the wastelands in there?
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
Does anyone play lifegain in the board? Is burn worth sideboard slots or do we concede the bad matchup?
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Well, sometimes wasteland do something, sometimes it doesn't. With twelve post and lands in my meta I should include them. Actually I did that last tourney, and of course they did nothing :p (typical)
I'll consider your mana base. Tnx!
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
The answer to those questions depends on your build and preferences. Sinkhole and Smallpox on his lands can stop him in his tracks. Or you could force him to discard and take damage from the rack. (it is possible to race burn)
Life gain is essentially time walks unless they are cards like syphon life.
"Pox early, Pox often, and Pox hard!" - Le_Lepreux
I could easily slot in Syphon Life or The Rack in my sideboard. I know that Hymn to Tourach, Sinkhole, and Inquisition are all good against burn. Smallpox is riskier, but the land destruction is valuable. When I was playing g/b pox ages ago I was using Sun Droplet, which is slower but also repeatable (essentially 1 life every upkeep.) I have about 3 slots left to dedicate to burn decks. Another card I was thinking about was Witchbane Orb. With Dark Rituals this could easily get onto the board in time, and it has merit against targeted effects like opposing discard.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
It's true burn is a bad matchup, but I'd say Spinning Darkness or Syphon Life would get better mileage than Witchbane Orb {too expensive cmc for what it does}. If you're afraid of opposing discard (why? you're a Poxer!) you'd be better off with Bottled Cloister as you'd be safe from all sorcery speed discards and your own Liliana.
Three Lilianas to rule them all. One Pox to find them. Smallpox to bring them all and in the Sinkhole bind them!
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