Clark Kant was probably referring to Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. At least, I hope he was.
Idol and Factory together is a bad idea. Allowing for such awful synergy is just asking for trouble. I think one should either go with Factory + Spirit + Totem, or Idol + Spirit [+ Totem if needed]. Also, I've found that with Idol over Factory, the deck CAN have less than 9-10 threats and still be functional. I can see such builds going with as few as 7 but as many as 10, maybe 4 Idol + 1-3 Spirit + 2-3 Totems [Edit: I run 4 Idol + 1 Spirit + 3 Totem].
One last thing about Factory... I have a feeling that playing it may be giving in to the danger of cool things. The synergy between Factories, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Crucible, and the Poxes is fantastic and all when it does click, but I see it as a bit unreliable. Factories hurt your B-heavy mana requirements if you don't draw Tomb, and are much too fragile without Crucible. And in a deck which doesn't have much deck manipulation [just SDT, which works great but mostly because the deck is so homogenous. it's at its best when used for fixing what type of disruption one would draw more than anything else] to begin with, getting all three cards consistently may be asking for too much. Synergy is all well and good, but the individual pieces should also function well independently, and Factory is just a bit too reliant on other cards for it to not suck in Pox. OR I just really suck with it, or I am really unlucky with what I draw or with what my opponents draw [random topdecked Wastelands suck, especially when you have no Crucible], but that's my opinion.
As for the Rack, it could work, but only if the deck was skewed totally toward a discard strategy, with the other stuff [LD & creature kill] just on the side. In other words, Sinkhole [narrow LD, unlike the Poxes which also hit the hand] and Innocent Blood [narrow removal] would have to make way for the Rack and Funeral Charm [sooo good in this deck].
Last edited by jebus; 03-12-2007 at 12:27 AM.
Yes sorry for the typo. I was talking about Tomb of Yawgmoth of which I am still running 4x.
I just wanted some input/data on if Idol and Factory could work together since it seems like a few people started running it.
Yes Chimeric Idol is absolutely fantastic. With 4 Tomb of Yawgmoth though, Mishra's Factory lets you cut mostly Swamps for your win conditions without hurting the manabase much, thus freeing up slots that Idols used to take.
So comparing Factory to Idol strictly isn't fair, as the additional disruption it lets you run certainly makes a difference, though it's very hard to determine exactly how much.
I do think that the deck can go in two different directions based on the amount of goblins you face and both versions have been close to optimal for sometime now. Specifically, I think something very close to either Variant One or Variant Two in the opening post is the way to go if you want to run Pox, with minor variations such as cutting stuff like Duress or Dark Ritual for cards like Powder Keg, Sensei's Top and Funeral Charm. I am starting to really grow to like Sensei's Top with 4 fetchlands.
I am having a hard time believing that the addition of Tabernacle is worth the loss of Nether Spirit (one of the biggest tempo boosts in the whole deck) even against Goblins, but my personal testing against has been limited due to having to proxy the card. But I wouldn't mind finding out if the people who advocated the card before still stand by it.
I am just waiting for the day Goblins gets hated out or neutered so the engineered plague slots free up room to make this deck tier one.
I also wouldn't mind seeing a quick vote on here on how many people think 3 Crucibles is the right number since you can always discard aways extras to Smallpox and Pox, and how many people think 2 is sufficent.
Hi everyone,
Here is the list I run which has work best for me :
Lands (23)
3 Wasteland
4 mishra’s factory
3 cabal pit
3 urborg tomb of yagmoth
3 polluted delta
7 swamps
Pox stuff (20)
4 pox
4 smallpox
4 hymn to tourach
4 sinkhole
4 duress
Other
3 the rack
3 mox diamond
3 sensei divining top
2 nether spirit
2 innocent blood
2 funeral charm
2 crucible of world
SB
4 enginneered plague
4 pithing needle
4 leyline of the void
3 powder keg
Chimeric / Mishra : i agree with Clark kant saying that running mishra over chimeric idol allows you extra spell slots and black mana problems getting much smoother running Urborg and mox diamond
SDT : now that I tried it, i couldn’t imagine playing without it. It’s a key card. in most cases, you and your opponent get into top deck mode. SDT really make a difference there, allowing you to topdeck almost every turn (especially with fetch and crucible). It prevents you from drawing 2 spirit, select the cards you will discard on pox, never get mana screwd etc.
The rack : well you already know how much i like this card in pox (see previous post).
I was also thinking about running engineered explosives instead of powder keg. It might sound weird since we're monblack, to the exception of mox diamond). But powder keg almost never gets used with more than 2 counters and EE is much quicker . Il also deals with enchantement such as pyrostatic pillar, sided by goblins. I'll try it and tell you how it goes.
After tests, i found that Pox is not a control deck. It is not a denial deck either. Pox is a TEMPO deck. Its intent is to ruin the opponent's early turns plans and win during this moment. Because you will never have enough removal vs an aggro deck or discard against a combo deck.
The plan is to wreck opponent's resources while winning. That is why:
-Phyrexian totem is not that good. And I'm not even speaking against the aggro MU (note that half of the rogue decks are aggro. And 75% of the fiel is rogue, so...). 2 is a maximum.
-Chimeric Idol is awesome
-Mishra's Factory sucks. It is immobilizing two manas for attacking, so most of the time you can't play spells if you want to attack. Totem is much more effective if you have mana to waste. And when you can't attack with totem, you also can't attack with factory because it's only 2/2 and will die at combat. I never went beatdown with factories.
-Dark ritual rules, because it gives you a huge tempo boost.
Anyways, here are some thoughts:
-stop running crappy mox diamond, it only gives you bad starting hands
-stop running the rack with only 4 Duress and 4 Hymn!!! It's useless, most of the time the opponents don't play a lot of spells because of your mana denial, and have big hands. Discard is not the way to go for Pox. Or make a real discard deck. Without Hyppie The Rack is only worst.
-I want to try Tainted Aether against gob. It seems to have a great potential. Gob is winning because even with Infest or PLague, it keeps throwing tons of goblins at your face. This card can stop it. What do you guys think?
Yes pox is a tempo deck. But in many games it is also a control deck, and a denial deck. That's what makes the deck so strong. There are many many many games I've played against a wide range of archeatypes that ended with me decking my opponent because I was able to answer every single threat he played, and he was able to answer every single threat I played but made the unfortunate mistake of playing card draw early on. Certainly sounds like something only a control/denial deck can achieve.
Tainted Aether sounds like incredible tech. Of course it practically neccesitates running Dark Rituals, and atleast 3 Crucibles if you don't want to have to cut Nether Spirits possibly making it a perfect sideboard card for Variant One of the opening post. Props on the great find.
As long as we're exploring high cc enchantments though, there might be other cards with powerful effects for wiping away creatures or neutering them, I don't recall them off the top of my head but run into several such cards when playing group games. One of them I recall is Ensnaring Bridge, might that card work if you're sticking with Nether Sprit and Mishra's Factory as your primary win condition? Probably not, it seems like a stall tactic at best.
Last edited by Clark Kant; 03-14-2007 at 09:04 PM.
No, ensnaring bridge is not a good tech. Remember you also have to win!
I searched through the database, especially for enchantments and artifacts.
Why just this kind of cards? Because:
-The creatures will die to Pox, so a creature will not solve the problems
-The sorceries like Infest did not proved effective. You just clear the board for one turn and a few seconds later your opponents is casting creatures (f***ing goblins most of the time!). That's why Wrath of God or Damnation are great cards but not real solutions.
What are the advantages of Tainted Aether now?
1. the only anti-synergic card with tainted aether is neither spirit. It is not that bad when the opponent is playing 36 creature cards... And it is less a disadvantage than to have to pay one mana each turn because of the tabernacle.
2. It has a great synergy with the mana denial strategy
3. It prevents the opponents from casting creatures. SCG is not that good with Tainted Aether in play!
4. It is fighting against opponents tempo strategies, like Aether Vial (wich shows up in a lot of aggro decks, like Fish, WW, gob...). For a tempo deck, wrecking opponent's tempo tools is not a bad idea!
5. It is an enchantment, wich is the type of card that face very little hate. Spells face counters, creatures face removal, artifacts face tinkerer, ancient grudge,...
And the disadvantage(s):
It is a 4cc spell...
If you guys find a better card to solve the deck's problems against aggro, just tell it!
Pox is not a control deck. Compare it to something like, say, BWHC Landstill. Pox is purely a tempo deck, as it is not able to sculpt and maintain a favorable board position for itself for any length of time. Why? Your biggest removal cards are symmetrical, so you're screwing up your own tempo as much as the other guy's, with the hope that you can squeeze some profit out of it by running bad cards that are synergistic with your other bad cards. No self-respecting control deck would do that intentionally. Furthermore, the reason why the Gobs matchup is so bad for this deck is because they are also a tempo deck, except they're a lot better at the tempo game than you are. That's why Goblins can still win even through the withering amounts of hate this deck can throw at it.Originally Posted by Clark Kant
As for the Tainted Aether, meh. I'd sooner run Spreading Plague just because it limits them to one guy at a time, and in a deck where your biggest man has 2 power, that's not so hot. Keep in mind that Lackey -> SGC is savage hosery if you don't get this card into play quickly. Also, most Goblins players would be happy to sacrifice spare Matrons, Mogg Fanatics, SCG tokens, Ringleaders, or lands if it means they can get the goblins that actually matter - Warchief, Piledriver, SCG - into play. At least Spreading Plague wraths them every time they do that. The final strike against T.E. imo is the fact that most Goblins decks splash for Disenchant effects these days to combat hate like Engineered Plague. When they Disenchant Spreading Plague, they'll have one guy in play. When they Disenchant Tainted Aether, they'll have however many guys they had in play when you dropped it. Not good. Not to mention that they can still kill you through Tainted Aether - hell, all they need are two Piledrivers and a Warchief or some other random Goblin to get you on a two-turn clock. Good luck stopping that with Tainted Aether.
You do realize the whole point of the the deck, the whole reason it was developed, is that the removal cards are NOT symmetrical right?
Your opponent loses a creature, a land, and a card. You don't lose a creature since all your creatures are actually artifacts or come back to play the next upkeep, you get the land you lost back thanks to Crucible, and you get the card back as well as long as what you discarded was a land, or a Nether Spirit or something. That's not symmetry, that's broken.
I do agree with you that this is not a control deck in that that's not what's it's built to be. The deck is infact built to be a tempo deck. My point was that the deck can take on the role of a control deck and ends up doing just that in many games.
I agree with you that the effect of Spreading Plague can be better in most cases than Tainted Aether. But it is 5cc...
So you have to have 3 lands AND a dark ritual, or FIVE lands! And even if these conditions are fullfilled, Spreading Plague can't hit play before your third turn... (if you don't pox and you have 3 lands and a DR: that's a lot of conditions). By that time it is already too late.
SO Spreading Plague is unplayable.
Just out of curiosity, what exactly is wrong with good old enginneered plague against gobs?
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Its slow against Port/Wasteland, and its narrow. Its only good against them. At least Tainted Aether is great against all creatures.
Now playing real formats.
An Enginnerred Plague don't stop the little red men.
You have to have at least 2 in play, and this doesn't happen a lot.
No one is suggesting cutting Engineered Plague from the side. Atleast I don't think they are. But sadly, you can only run four.
I've been extremely satisfied with the newest iteration (the one with Tomb of Yawgmoth) of this deck's performance against Threshold and virtually every archeatype. But goblins sadly remains a bit under 50% even with a hate filled board (ie 4 Plague, 4 Infest etc). So any thing I can do to improve the quality of the hate cards is a very good thing.
4cc cards are no longer unviable with the higher land count that Factories bring, and three copies of both Crucible and Totem.
Yeah Tainted Aether seems to mainly be effective in the early game only. Early on, it wins games. Late game, it does next to nothing unless you've already drawn into tons of other removal.
It's very effective if you also side in 4 Infest though. So perhaps running 4 Engineered Plague, 4 Infest, 2 Tainted Aether in the side versus goblins is feasible. I'm just not sure that's the best way to use 10 slots if we're willing to devote 10 slots to that matchup. What 10 cards can we sideout in the first place?
I think Spreading Plague is a very powerful card except that it just costs too much mana, and many games, you will lose without mana to cast it thanks to Goblin's own Wastelands. That also can happen with Tainted Aether of course.
If we can find a similar effect in the 3cc area, I would be a very happy man.
P.S. I made some changes with Variant One and am now running 3 Sensei's Divining Top, 2 Duress, 2 Funeral Charm, 0 Dark Rituals, 4 Tomb of Yawgmoth & 2 Phyrexian Totem. I am considering cutting a Swamp for a Cabal Pit and cutting an Innocent Blood (currently run 4) for a Phyrexian Totem. Still not sure if cutting Dark Rituals and Duress's was a good move, but Top however has been exceptional.
P.P.S. I've been keeping track, and very close to 75% of the games you play, you end up with 2, 3, or 4 lands in your opening hand and are usually better off not mulliganing. The other 25% of the time you end up either mana screwed or mana flooded. I don't know if this is comparable to other decks.
This is the version of pox that I am running. It is black/white for the power of vindicate and verdict.
//engine
4 pox
3 small pox
4 gerard's verdict
4 hymn to tourach
4 sinkhole
4 vindicate
//creatures
3 chimeric idol
2 nether spirit
//backup
1 crucible of worlds
4 ghostly prison
2 cursed scroll
//mana accel
4 dark ritual
//land
5 swamp
4 godless shrine
4 scrubland
2 flagstones of trokair
1 tainted field
4 wasteland
1 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
What I found is that Ghostly Prison absolutely wrecks aggro decks. They can't afford 2 or 4 to pay to attack you simply because in Legacy most decks are land shy and with all of the LD (pox,small pox, sinkhole, and vindicate) they won't have the mana to be effective.
Those moves are consistent with the results of my own testing with the deck. The Factory build, the more controllish version, works best with 4 Tombs, 3 Crucibles, and 0 Rituals. You want consistent land drops much more than explosiveness, so running 25+ lands is key and the slots for Rituals are better off used for Kegs or other controllish stuff. The Idol build, on the other hand, is much more tempo-based and works best with 0 Tomb, 0-2 Crucibles, and 4 Rituals.
3 SDT + 4-5 Fetch is a must in either build.
Well, it's comparable to other decks, when tested on MWS [and its damned shuffler]. The problem hasn't been as big for me and my Idols-and-Swamps Pox deck in real life.
However, one thing to consider is the higher number of colorless mana sources in the Factory build. With 4 Waste + 3-4 Factories, just how consistent are your opening draws? Sure, 4 Tomb [and maybe also the 3 SDTs?] goes a long way to help this situation out, but as I've said in the past, it's also difficult to become to reliant on it. I suspect quite a number of those 2/3/4 land hands are still unkeepable because of all those colorless mana sources.
I agree with your post except for two points.
I think it's wise for even the chimeric idol builds to run 2 tomb of yawgmoth to supplement the wastelands, and at the same time, I don't think 2 crucibles are neccesary for the nonfactory builds as long as you're running totems along with the idols and spirits.
And the second point is, yes you run 7 lands that don't produce black mana, but you also are running 18 lands that do. You usually get a sufficent number of black lands. You only need to run such a high number of lands because you end up saccing your own lands to Pox and Smallpox. Even when you don't have a crucible or phyrexian totem or a tomb of yawgmoth to fall back on, if you remember to sac the colorless mana producers to the sac effects, being color screwed isn't really that big of a problem.
I've seen some has talked about it, but I'd like to know if anyone, from experience, has found running Tabernacle in side useful against aggro. I'm talking of course of a build running 3-4 Tomb of Yawgmoth and 2-3 Tabernacles in side. It seems like it should slow the aggro player a lot in the beginning, and also let you kill his creatures just by killing his lands. And with ToY, it's a B mana producer.
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@Clark Kant:
I said that with Idol, one should run 0-2 Crucibles. It's not necessary [hence the 0], but it could be useful - recurring Wastes or Fetches - if the deckbuidler found it to be so. I personally run 0, with 3 Totems. Note to Sea R Hill: the reason I run 3 Totems is not because they're my main threats, but because they also play the role once held by Crucible [that of stabilizing mana, allowing you to Pox with reckless abandon]. It's the "T: Add B" thing that makes it particularly good.
Also, with 0 Crucible and thus no way to recur lands, the 2 Tombs that make your Wastes tap for B aren't really necessary, as Wasteland becomes just a one-use card. I guess in such a build, it's really a coin flip if the Tombs will help your mana [by making Wastes tap for B] or screw it over [by being Waste-able itself].
EDIT: I was talking about those opening hands with 2/3/4 lands that you talked about in a previous post, where you said it happens about 75% of the time. Just how many of those opening hands are unplayable because you open up with multiple colorless sources and no Tomb? You can't sac the colorless lands to Smallpox/Pox if you don't even have BB, or much less BBB.
The significant majority of them are very playable, as I mentioned, you are indeed only running 7 colorless sources along with the 18 colored ones. Except for some of the two land hands, you almost always get the two black sources you need to be able to keep your first opening hand. And don't forget that even when you don't, a single phyrexian totem or tomb of yawgmoth in your hand changes everything.
The few of that 75% that aren't playable are made up for by the few 5 land hands that are playable (your colorless hand either act as sinkholes, or are solid threats, and some of your colored lands act as removal too so even five land hands can be very disruptive esp when combined with a pox or smallpox).
So the 75% of the hands being a good call to keep is very accurate.
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