This week I have a late Christmas present for all of you in the form of a brew that I have been working on since this article on Shardless Pox which was my take on a Shardless Sultai and Pox hybrid. This version is Blue Black Pox dropping the green and going into a more heavy mana denial game plan featuring the card advantage and selection that blue provides us with. Due to the holiday I am going to keep this short and sweet and present you with this decklist:
Blue Black Pox
| Lands (24) 2 Creeping Tar Pit 1 Island 4 Polluted Delta 4 Swamp 3 Underground Sea 4 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth 2 Verdant Catacombs 4 Wasteland Creatures (2) 2 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy Spells (34) 3 Ancestral Vision 2 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver 4 Brainstorm 3 Hymn to Tourach 3 Innocent Blood 4 Inquisition of Kozilek 3 Liliana of the Veil 4 Sinkhole 4 Smallpox 4 Stifle |
Here we are essentially a bit of a super friends deck that allows us to hit most of the resources of an opponent from the library to the graveyard no matter where the card is, it is not safe. The black gives us are essential and traditional pox elements while the blue provides us with that much needed card advantage and some additional pieces to aid and compliment our mana denial package. Blue also gives us Ancestral Vision as a way to refill our hand after the initial onslaught of discard and mana denial getting us ready for the next wave of disruption.
Spells – Mana Denial
As usual we have Sinkhole, Smallpox, Wasteland and later in the game Liliana of the Veil ultimate to restrict our opponents mana.
Stifle is a newcomer that we get from adding blue to the deck. Shutting down a fetchland can often not only restrict a mana source but also restrict how effective a Brainstorm can be when using it to clean up a hand and throw away dead spells. If there wasn’t another land in the cards seen with Brainstorm then our opponent is now locked out of additional mana sources.
Spells – Removal
Innocent Blood, Smallpox and Liliana all give us the ability to destroy Creatures and none require targeting so it doesn’t matter what Creature it is. Although there can be problems with hitting the correct Creature at times the amount of card advantage and mana denial we have should allow us to restrict what our opponent can play and keep ahead of this problem.
Spells – Planeswalkers
Liliana of the Veil is a Pox staple and should not be surprising to see in this deck as she controls the board and hand of our opponent.
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver is a newcomer here and in Legacy. Its ability to attack the top of your opponent’s deck means that while cards aren’t safe in the hand from Liliana they also aren’t safe on top of the library from Ashiok. This means Sensei’s Divining Top can’t protect cards you need and it means that Brainstorm can’t just hide cards from you. Here we are literally attacking all resources and making it impossible to protect cards from our disruption. As for winning the game Ashiok does allow us to take Creatures exiled and turn them against the opponent.
Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy is in this section because as a creature he really doesn’t do much of anything, however, as a Planeswalker he does weaken opposing Creatures, can buy back our spells and late in a game his emblem can allow us to mill out an opponent as an alternative win condition outside of Creeping Tar Pit and Creatures that we have stolen with Ashiok.
Sideboard
There is not a sideboard as of now but some options would be board sweepers in Toxic Deluge, permanent based Creature killers like Night of Souls’ Betrayal or Engineered Plague, additional discard like Duress or prison pieces like Sphere of Resistance or Thorn of Amethyst. We could even include some number of Tombstalker or Tasigur, the Golden Fang to allow us some additional win conditions that are cheap and efficient. Another way to go would be Force of Will, Flusterstorm or Daze to add some permission to the deck.
Initial Thoughts
I have been playing around with this brew basically since I wrote the article on Shardless Pox and have finally come to a decklist that I feel is worthwhile and could definitely be a contender in the current meta. Ashiok is a Planeswalker that I have been trying to slot into a deck outside of Modern for a long time and I feel like this deck is the ideal way to do that. I will likely test this deck soon for myself, but I feel as though it should work well and will be fun in the process of being competitive very similar to Shardless Pox.
Happy brewing to each and every one of you. If anyone has an idea for a brew that they would like to see, I will gladly take requests and challenges on twitter. 🙂
Aaron Gazzaniga works part time at a game store and in his off time has been an avid magic player/brewer since 2003. Having begun in Odyssey Standard Block and always favoring control and prison style decks, we come to this moment in time where Aaron finally gets to talk about and share his ideas. If you want to contact Aaron tweet @aarongazzaniga