rogue pox

[Anonymous]

i guess first the deck list as i have it now....

4x Buried alive
4x Ashen Ghoul
4x nether shadow
3x sengir autocrat
2x Krovikan horror
1x Undead Gladiator
4x Dark ritual
4x pox
4x hymn
4x Drain life
2x powder keg
2x Urbog justice
1x demonic tutor
1x sol ring
1x mind twist
2x phyrexian tower
15x swamp
1x strip mine
1x lake of the dead

I play this mostly in muliplyer and casual games. I does quite well and i really like the deck. I am thinking about making this into a more serious T1 deck. There is a montly T1 tounrney around here and i'd like to get into playing there. It's a really high powered field, plenty of keeper, TNT, fish, gro, zoo. I borrowed my friends sligh last month to play and did ok. But sligh isn't my style i really don't don't know how to play it perfectly. So i'm thinking next time i'll take a risk and take something rogue like my deck above. And I've been playing this thing since i got back into magic a year and a half ago in different incarnations.

obviously i need to make changes. with that environment I think duress, sinkholes, and wastelands should all go in. The urbog justices will go to the side if anything or just get replaced by edict. theay are so good in this deck with the horror saccing away all my dudes to ping my opponent. I've been looking at standard pox deck lists and i see the balance and think that would be awsome tool to have in the deck. Granted I will pretty much always be the one with the most creatures, but the pox is to hit the land and hand, and the balance would really be nice. But i don't own any duals or moxen to make the splash viable. Drain life has to stay for me, that's what the deck is about, but i guess i have to go down to 2 to fit stuff in, with a tower and the lake of the dead the drains get pretty big. (i used to run songs of the dammned and spoils of evil back in the day- what fun

  ) I find myself a lot of times with only the lake of the dead in play, man that balance could be a brutal LD tool for this deck. I might could borrow the scabs and try it. Also maybe phyrexian alter. I can usually have 3 or 4 shadows/ ghouls coming back each turn saccing them for B or W mana each turn could be a nice engine

The Autocrats feed the tower and the horror. Not sure if theyy could make the cut  i love the smurfs.

Maybe try for a contamination lock?

Arrgh... to many ideas.

Any suggestions?

[iceman]

Too many creatures. Most pox decks play with 1 or 2 nether spirits - that's it. Chimeric Idols usually fill that creature gap. You're definately right about sinkholes - 4 of them if you want to be competitive.

No duress?
I would play more swamps, probably 18, 1 strip mine, and 2 wasteland. Innocent bloods work great if you cut the creatures out (except for nether spirits of course)

Underworld dreams are great damage-dealers, but I don't know what your financial situation is. Cursed scrolls are also good beaters. But if you can't afford those either, racks work nearly as well in most cases.

[j_orlove]

You could always use Hampuusi's B/W build:

Disruption (21)
4 Pox
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
2 Gerrard's Verdict
1 Vindicate
2 Diabolic Edict

Kill (7)
2 Nether Spirit
2 The Rack
3 Chimeric Idol

Utility/Search (6)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Balance
1 Necropotence

Mana (26)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Scrublands
1 Strip Mine
2 Mishra's Factory
3 Wasteland
4 Caves of Koilos
8 Swamp


and, you can use the search button to find old pox threads. There was one a while ago (named "Urgent pox help!" or something) that had a whole bunch of different decklists (including this one)

[Anonymous]

thanks for the help.

as always I'm trying to compress 2 different decks into one.. lol

I've been golfishing out a few ideas today and i'm finding that the ghoul/shadow/horror engine works well alongside with the pox except that i lose the horror quite often from my hand if I'm agressive with the pox. I cant see casting the horror to often in a competitive t1 environment, so iguess i'll take the pox out of that build and keep it around for casual play. throw the songs of the dammned back in and make it the BIG DRAIN deck...
 

So I'll work on getting the cards for a b/w build. Should be relatively easy except for the scablands and factory's if i choose to run those.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to run undead gladiator along with the spirit.

Does the spirits ability "trigger" no matter what when it in the yard, and then checks on resolution? or does it only trigger if it's the only creature in the yard? i.e. if i had a gladiator and a nether spirit in the graveyard at the beginning of my upkeep, could i pitch a card to return the gladiator to my hand and get the spirit back? Or would the spirit just not trigger?
could be kinda nice to be able to have the extra beats on the board. Plus the psudo-card advantage of cycling the gladiator would be nice.

[Anonymous]

the oracle text reads as such

"At the beginning of your upkeep, if Nether Spirit is the only creature card in your graveyard, you may return Nether Spirit to play."

it looks like it wont trigger if theres another creature, sort of like the way oath of druids works

[j_orlove]

If you have 2 creatures, the spirit misses its chance to return before you get an opportunity to use spells/effects (like the gladiator). So, no, there is no way to get spirit back if you have 2 creatures during upkeep.

Of course, you could always get the gladiator back at the end of their turn...  

But chimeric idol would probably be more useful than the gladiator, becuase idol works very well with pox (the card specifically, not just the deck), since it's only a creature when you want it to be, and the rest of the time, pox ignores it--letting you keep a creature out when your opponent may have none.

[Anonymous]

thanks for clarifying.

I was thinking of running entombs so i was looking for things to throw in the graveyard after the spirit. Cabal therapy looks good. Coffin purge in the side board, Chainer's edict possibly. Rifstone portal seems janky but could be intresting, could run deeds or someother nonsense, or just make all my lands duals.

i'll post back later with a rough draft.

[BurningIce]

Also Drain Life requires a lot of mana to use.  Pox makes sure you don't have that mana.  Not usually a good combination.

[Anonymous]

Spining darkness might be a good replacment for drain life. Use it carefully with nether spirit though.

[Anonymous]

Here's a nice pox primer: http://members.chello.nl/~p_verhees/
I also have rakso's pox primer, which is about 2 years old, but I can't find it on the net.

[Anonymous]

Just wondering,

has anybody tried tainted field in the B/W pox builds?  How did they fare?