While Land Tax being legal soon may be slightly bad, it allows us to have more density. 3 extra cards means that our discard spells hit more and pox can become easier to unbalance in your favor.
I see it from other angle. The big Pox vcan be our best answer to Land Tax with a Liliana of the Veil in the table. In my first thoughts from it, I think maybe Pox version based on land destruction will be most affected for Land Tax. I think with a version with 7/8 pox and 4 Dark Ritual I can play around and for sure The Rack will be the most powerful win condition I will have.
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The Izmagnus are the most powerful members of the Izmundi
Modern: Grixis DS ; UR Phoenix ; Storm ; Burn Standard: MonoRed ; Ral Spells ; UR Phoenix ; Izzet Drakes Commander: Locust God
I'd love to when I get onto my laptop but it's a bit hard on the iPad (laptop is in then tv cabinet, 13 month old daughter makes it difficult to get in there!).
I might chime in my thoughts on Land Tax. You're on the draw, turn 2 against villain's turn one Land Tax. What's to stop you missing your own land drop, in favour of playing Mox Diamond/Dark Ritual/Inquisition of Kozilek, assuming you didn't IoK or Ritual-IoK & Hymn to Tourach turn one, and ripping any relevant cards from villain's hand? Force them to either skip their turn 2 land drop hoping you land drop on turn 3, or drop their own land turn 2 and turn off Land Tax? I understand it's not a great option, but if villain has turn one Land Tax, I'm assuming this means their deck is a bit more mana hungry than Pox. Best case scenario, you've forced them to turn off their own Land Tax, thus basically making their turn one Land Tax a blank, gaining you a turn and blanking one of their cards....
I think Land Tax coming back is cool, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. It will be a good while before it achieves prominence in a deck. Whatever game it might have against us, it has just about no game whatever against the top decks. Sneak/Show, Reanimator, RUG Delver, and Maverick just don't care about this card.
One would have to reasonably expect not to face many of these decks in a tournament.
In other news, I played several games last night and confirmed that Dystopia does, indeed, turn Maverick into a non-match. Perhaps some prefer Perish.
I thought about Contagion too. It has some uses, but ultimately I think it's too narrow. This is from the guy running Dystopia!
It really only rages against fast aggro. However, against that field I'd rather have Darkblast and/or Funeral Charm.
It also compares poorly with Spinning Darkness, a more likely kill that gains life and uses a resource we don't care about. I very much care about the resource that Contagion consumes. If only it said something like Counter Target Spell, or something crazy like that!
Ya I feel like Darkblast, Spinning Darkness and Funeral Charms in the MB are more than enough to dispose of x/1's. I love em. And if I ever felt like I needed more targeted removal like it, Spinning Darkness is in the SB.
Been thinking about Ghastly Demise too though. Hit's beefy goyfs and knights.
Also, Grafdigger's Cage shuts off GSZ, which never occurred to me. Bit off topic. But GSZ was giving me a lot of trouble the other day. haha
There's this other card, Dystopia, that hits beefy Goyfs and Knights. I guess Perish is the more traditional choice.
I just love seeing the 'I'm getting ahead of the sac effects' expression turn to the 'I now know why he chose Quasali over Knight on that IoK... maybe it's time to shuffle them up then' once Dystopia sticks.
Hmmm, Perish would get a confirmed kill even if I couldn't strip the Pridemage though. Perhaps I'm playing the wrong hate.
So, as it turns out, I have all the Wastelands and Lilis to make this deck. However, I have no Urborgs and I am poor. How many Urborgs are necessary at minimum to get this deck running smoothly with 3 Mishras and 4 Wastelands?
i dont use wastelands... they dont give you any advantage like pox does and only hits non-basics. and screws up ur mana, maybe if your only running 1 pox. or 0. And if you are going after land might as well add sinkhole normaly 3 urborgs is good,, but can go 4 and discard to pox or sac...
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Standard: pft, i love to see my cards depreciate in value once they rotate :S
Mordern: Melira, UR Storm, RDW, Infect, W life/control, UW Tron
Legacy: RDW, Pox
Vintage: Dark Depths, R Grey Orge
So, as it turns out, I have all the Wastelands and Lilis to make this deck. However, I have no Urborgs and I am poor. How many Urborgs are necessary at minimum to get this deck running smoothly with 3 Mishras and 4 Wastelands?
I pair 4 Wastelands, 4 Mishra's, and even 1 Mikokoru, Center of the Sea (from which I drew 6 completely 1-sided cards against Maverick for a total crush yesterday) with 2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
I also run 14 Swamps and 2 Bojuka Bog. I include 4 Dark Rituals in the mana base. These get sided out for grindy matchups. Oh, and 1 Crucible of Worlds for me. I'm always happy when it hits the field.
The thing to do here is not to consider Wasteland and Mishra's Factory as mana-producing at all. Don't depend on them. Sometimes, they'll be used as mana. Few cards in the deck even use colorless mana: Cursed Scroll, Liliana of the Veil in a minor way, and a Mishra's activation are the only ways colorless mana can be used.
Wasteland, instead, is a free and uncounterable land destruction spell. Mishra's is a free, and uncounterable, win condition.
Make no mistake, the deck needs black mana, but you don't really need that much. As long as I can ramp to 3 (for a Pox) and then 2 (for a Smallpox), I'm happy.
I have not encountered any problems with mana, either in terms of color or amount, with this base.
1 Pox is also doable depending on the rest of the list. At first I was incredulous about Spinning Darkness, but once again, replacing a Pox with a Spinning Darkness a la the Reid list has worked out beautifully.
not sure if anyone made this post yet, but if Land tax decks start coming back or they get into current decks...we're screwed right?
Ya we were talking about it for a bit. Consensus being (from what I can remember) that it's not going to hurt too bad.
I, personally, am not that worried about it.
It could be put to great use in D&T/Stax/Quinn/Parfait, but not enough to put them over the edge in competitiveness to stay alive against the rest of the meta. From what I've been catching lately, most* have dismissed the card for the most part already.
Parfait will be a deck, but it won't be a deck to beat for awhile. I think it will come to replace Stax as the white resource denial deck, and have some funky R/W Land's Edge variant too.
If it top 8s the next big tournament, though, bets will be off.
It will always have a pretty bad matchup against combo, though. That's our edge. And if it becomes a thing, there's Dystopia.
If somehow it becomes format-defining, which is a ridiculous and absurd idea, I might get to play Gloom! I just love ridiculous hate cards. It's quite irrational.
Hype. If it doesn't even place in the first tournament, the price will plummet.
And it won't. The grinders are playing Sneak Show and friends. We're more likely to see Omniscience, though I'm calling Omnipotence, at the top tables. That won't happen either. Maybe someday, but not this summer.
I've put together my old list on MTGO...and I cannot win.
I think it's 0-7 in matches, 1-14 in games. The build I'm using online is a rack build. It's not losing to any single type, I think it's losing to EVERY type. Poor play on my part has definitely been a factor in several matches, but I can't help feeling that the build itself is subpar too.
Tombstalker was main for some of that, and won me the one match.
It's been brutal--probably my worst streak in any format. I feel like the build is caught between slow control (Ensnaring Bridge) and Bloodghast-aggro, and doing neither well.
Sinkhole, Wasteland, and Entomb are not options for my online build, though I'm using Entomb in the cardboard version.
+4 Funeral Charm
+4 Swamp
+1 Liliana of the Veil
+1 Nether Spirit
+1 Darkblast
+1 Spinning Darkness
Maybe 1 or 2 Urborgs though.
This transformation is intended to shift too many win conditions for discard, anti-creature, or either spells to assist you in exhausting either resource.
If I had to guess these games went with the Pox deck unable to exhaust the opponent's creature and the opponent's cards together, and getting stuck with a creature inferior to the opponent's.
Without LD it's necessary to hit the hand+creature really, really hard, because they'll be able to cast whatever they draw and most of the time it'll be better than the bears on our side of the field.
I disagree Rhaderis, I leave him with 10 win cons: 4 Factories, 4 Racks, and 2 Nether Spirits. Reid's Loam Pox runs 9 win cons (including Vampire Hexmage), as does his old school Pox deck here.
If anything, I might advise him to further shed a Rack for a control card.
Wow, you are quick! Posted when I got on the train, and three replies by the time I got off.:D
Last night I lost to Goblins, even after trading 4-for-1 with Infest. Also lost a Pox mirror that was playing Phyrexian Arena.
Can't remember previous matchups exactly, but I think there was Sneak/Show, Reanimator, maybe a Burn deck, and something else.
@Lormador: As Rhaderis said, having so few win cons scares me a bit, but you're right that it would hit their resources harder. I'll give it a try and see what happens.
@Rhaderis, are you still running 8 Pox?
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"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
It's the evil that adds to my speed, that and living in Beijing. Plus it's my day off. And I feel guilty toward my Pox deck, as I've elected to play High Tide in tomorrow's tourney.
Perhaps it is unwise to pass over a black deck in this. I hope Liliana doesn't take revenge.
@Sockosensei, Pox is also a deck that requires some finesse. I was losing a lot when I first picked it up to. It requires a much different playstyle than I've ever played before.
I'd go with the changes Lormador mentioned for starters. Also MB 2-3 Bojuka Bog, they're really good. I was skeptical when Mad Mat brought them up, but since I put them in I haven't looked back.
Cursed Scroll is also really good, I love it, so I suggest keeping those in somewhere. I run 2 MB next to 4 Rack, 2 Spirit, and 4 Factory.
But all in all, Lormador made good suggestions in my opinion.
Ah Cursed Scroll. At first I loved that card, so I bought it. Then I hated it, because I kept losing with it. After playing for awhile, it slowly crept back in... now I wouldn't play without it. Got a pair of them active one game. The sad part was the opponent's face couldn't take very much artifact burn, hardly much more than his creatures really.
I forgot about Bojuka Bog. Those are important too.
I never posted my recent list, shiiii. Can't remember who was asking for those, but sorry whoever it was! haha
Sideboard obviously needs work, and I can start working on it now that my MB is about how I want it (except Sinkholes, Wastes, and Tombs; but those are gonna have to wait a while).
It's also sig'd by the way. Just click the sig pic to get back here for future reference.
@Snow
Yeah, I see you're new to the interface on that [externalsitenamehere] interface. The comment reads: "Mountains = LT". Also, I tend to run fewer win-cons in my pox deck. Fewer decks are running RFG creature kill with the high number of "protection" creatures. Entomb makes it virtually 6 win-cons btw which I've found to be the correct number. It could potentially run factories, but that might stretch the basic count.
I see it from other angle. The big Pox vcan be our best answer to Land Tax with a Liliana of the Veil in the table. In my first thoughts from it, I think maybe Pox version based on land destruction will be most affected for Land Tax. I think with a version with 7/8 pox and 4 Dark Ritual I can play around and for sure The Rack will be the most powerful win condition I will have.
Modern: Grixis DS ; UR Phoenix ; Storm ; Burn
Standard: MonoRed ; Ral Spells ; UR Phoenix ; Izzet Drakes
Commander: Locust God
I'd love to when I get onto my laptop but it's a bit hard on the iPad (laptop is in then tv cabinet, 13 month old daughter makes it difficult to get in there!).
I might chime in my thoughts on Land Tax. You're on the draw, turn 2 against villain's turn one Land Tax. What's to stop you missing your own land drop, in favour of playing Mox Diamond/Dark Ritual/Inquisition of Kozilek, assuming you didn't IoK or Ritual-IoK & Hymn to Tourach turn one, and ripping any relevant cards from villain's hand? Force them to either skip their turn 2 land drop hoping you land drop on turn 3, or drop their own land turn 2 and turn off Land Tax? I understand it's not a great option, but if villain has turn one Land Tax, I'm assuming this means their deck is a bit more mana hungry than Pox. Best case scenario, you've forced them to turn off their own Land Tax, thus basically making their turn one Land Tax a blank, gaining you a turn and blanking one of their cards....
One would have to reasonably expect not to face many of these decks in a tournament.
In other news, I played several games last night and confirmed that Dystopia does, indeed, turn Maverick into a non-match. Perhaps some prefer Perish.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
It really only rages against fast aggro. However, against that field I'd rather have Darkblast and/or Funeral Charm.
It also compares poorly with Spinning Darkness, a more likely kill that gains life and uses a resource we don't care about. I very much care about the resource that Contagion consumes. If only it said something like Counter Target Spell, or something crazy like that!
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Been thinking about Ghastly Demise too though. Hit's beefy goyfs and knights.
Also, Grafdigger's Cage shuts off GSZ, which never occurred to me. Bit off topic. But GSZ was giving me a lot of trouble the other day. haha
Legacy: Pox | Tiny Leaders: Thalia Hatebears
I just love seeing the 'I'm getting ahead of the sac effects' expression turn to the 'I now know why he chose Quasali over Knight on that IoK... maybe it's time to shuffle them up then' once Dystopia sticks.
Hmmm, Perish would get a confirmed kill even if I couldn't strip the Pridemage though. Perhaps I'm playing the wrong hate.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
BU[MANA]G[/MANA]W[MANA]R[/MANA]Slivers (Overlord as general)BU[MANA]G[/MANA]W[MANA]R[/MANA]
BMono Black (Xiahou Dun as general)B
Mordern: Melira, UR Storm, RDW, Infect, W life/control, UW Tron
Legacy: RDW, Pox
Vintage: Dark Depths, R Grey Orge
BU[MANA]G[/MANA]W[MANA]R[/MANA]Slivers (Overlord as general)BU[MANA]G[/MANA]W[MANA]R[/MANA]
BMono Black (Xiahou Dun as general)B
I pair 4 Wastelands, 4 Mishra's, and even 1 Mikokoru, Center of the Sea (from which I drew 6 completely 1-sided cards against Maverick for a total crush yesterday) with 2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
I also run 14 Swamps and 2 Bojuka Bog. I include 4 Dark Rituals in the mana base. These get sided out for grindy matchups. Oh, and 1 Crucible of Worlds for me. I'm always happy when it hits the field.
The thing to do here is not to consider Wasteland and Mishra's Factory as mana-producing at all. Don't depend on them. Sometimes, they'll be used as mana. Few cards in the deck even use colorless mana: Cursed Scroll, Liliana of the Veil in a minor way, and a Mishra's activation are the only ways colorless mana can be used.
Wasteland, instead, is a free and uncounterable land destruction spell. Mishra's is a free, and uncounterable, win condition.
Make no mistake, the deck needs black mana, but you don't really need that much. As long as I can ramp to 3 (for a Pox) and then 2 (for a Smallpox), I'm happy.
I have not encountered any problems with mana, either in terms of color or amount, with this base.
1 Pox is also doable depending on the rest of the list. At first I was incredulous about Spinning Darkness, but once again, replacing a Pox with a Spinning Darkness a la the Reid list has worked out beautifully.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Ya we were talking about it for a bit. Consensus being (from what I can remember) that it's not going to hurt too bad.
I, personally, am not that worried about it.
It could be put to great use in D&T/Stax/Quinn/Parfait, but not enough to put them over the edge in competitiveness to stay alive against the rest of the meta. From what I've been catching lately, most* have dismissed the card for the most part already.
Edit: *Most being the already established decks.
Legacy: Pox | Tiny Leaders: Thalia Hatebears
If it top 8s the next big tournament, though, bets will be off.
It will always have a pretty bad matchup against combo, though. That's our edge. And if it becomes a thing, there's Dystopia.
If somehow it becomes format-defining, which is a ridiculous and absurd idea, I might get to play Gloom! I just love ridiculous hate cards. It's quite irrational.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
BU[MANA]G[/MANA]W[MANA]R[/MANA]Slivers (Overlord as general)BU[MANA]G[/MANA]W[MANA]R[/MANA]
BMono Black (Xiahou Dun as general)B
And it won't. The grinders are playing Sneak Show and friends. We're more likely to see Omniscience, though I'm calling Omnipotence, at the top tables. That won't happen either. Maybe someday, but not this summer.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
I think it's 0-7 in matches, 1-14 in games. The build I'm using online is a rack build. It's not losing to any single type, I think it's losing to EVERY type. Poor play on my part has definitely been a factor in several matches, but I can't help feeling that the build itself is subpar too.
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
2 Pox
4 Dark Ritual,
4 Innocent Blood
3 Liliana of the Veil (need a 4th)
2 Ensnaring Bridge
4 The Rack
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Bloodghast
1 Nether Spirit
//Land
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Dakmor Salvage
4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
12 Swamp
Tombstalker was main for some of that, and won me the one match.
It's been brutal--probably my worst streak in any format. I feel like the build is caught between slow control (Ensnaring Bridge) and Bloodghast-aggro, and doing neither well.
Sinkhole, Wasteland, and Entomb are not options for my online build, though I'm using Entomb in the cardboard version.
Suggestions?
My 1994 Magic Cube
Japanese cards on eBay -- Legacy, Modern, EDH, Cube.
-4 Bloodghast
-4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
-2 Cursed Scroll
-2 Ensnaring Bridge
+4 Funeral Charm
+4 Swamp
+1 Liliana of the Veil
+1 Nether Spirit
+1 Darkblast
+1 Spinning Darkness
Maybe 1 or 2 Urborgs though.
This transformation is intended to shift too many win conditions for discard, anti-creature, or either spells to assist you in exhausting either resource.
If I had to guess these games went with the Pox deck unable to exhaust the opponent's creature and the opponent's cards together, and getting stuck with a creature inferior to the opponent's.
Without LD it's necessary to hit the hand+creature really, really hard, because they'll be able to cast whatever they draw and most of the time it'll be better than the bears on our side of the field.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
If anything, I might advise him to further shed a Rack for a control card.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Last night I lost to Goblins, even after trading 4-for-1 with Infest. Also lost a Pox mirror that was playing Phyrexian Arena.
Can't remember previous matchups exactly, but I think there was Sneak/Show, Reanimator, maybe a Burn deck, and something else.
@Lormador: As Rhaderis said, having so few win cons scares me a bit, but you're right that it would hit their resources harder. I'll give it a try and see what happens.
@Rhaderis, are you still running 8 Pox?
My 1994 Magic Cube
Japanese cards on eBay -- Legacy, Modern, EDH, Cube.
Perhaps it is unwise to pass over a black deck in this. I hope Liliana doesn't take revenge.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
I'd go with the changes Lormador mentioned for starters. Also MB 2-3 Bojuka Bog, they're really good. I was skeptical when Mad Mat brought them up, but since I put them in I haven't looked back.
Cursed Scroll is also really good, I love it, so I suggest keeping those in somewhere. I run 2 MB next to 4 Rack, 2 Spirit, and 4 Factory.
But all in all, Lormador made good suggestions in my opinion.
Legacy: Pox | Tiny Leaders: Thalia Hatebears
I forgot about Bojuka Bog. Those are important too.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Sideboard obviously needs work, and I can start working on it now that my MB is about how I want it (except Sinkholes, Wastes, and Tombs; but those are gonna have to wait a while).
It's also sig'd by the way. Just click the sig pic to get back here for future reference.
2 Cursed Scroll
4 The Rack
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Dark Ritual
4 Funeral Charm
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Innocent Blood
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Smallpox
1 Pox
1 Spinning Darkness
1 Darkblast
4 Mishra's Factory
14 Swamp
3 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Necroplasm
3 Ghastly Demise
4 Engineered Plague
1 Spinning Darkness
3 Duress
Legacy: Pox | Tiny Leaders: Thalia Hatebears
Yeah, I see you're new to the interface on that [externalsitenamehere] interface. The comment reads: "Mountains = LT". Also, I tend to run fewer win-cons in my pox deck. Fewer decks are running RFG creature kill with the high number of "protection" creatures. Entomb makes it virtually 6 win-cons btw which I've found to be the correct number. It could potentially run factories, but that might stretch the basic count.
Ay?
Legacy: Pox | Tiny Leaders: Thalia Hatebears