I'm back!

Good news, everyone!  I have decided to return to the game.  I have a lot of time on my hands right now since I am recovering from a seizure and infection, and can't work or drive.  I'm going to stick to standard for most of my  gaming.  I'm afraid to make any forays into Modern due to the crazy combo decks in there.  I haven't looked into it recently so maybe things have changed, but I'm a tad lazy.  Going to be hard enough to catch up on what the meta in standard looks like as it is.  Since my computer is on the fritz, I am going to be typing on an iPad (boo hiss... Apple), and my ability to play test is going to be SEVERELY restricted until I get another computer.  I might try to wipe my computer hard drive and install Linux, but I'm not convinced the problem can be solved so simply.

I want to put together one deck in particular right now.  It revolves around Burning Vengeance.  It is probably the most fun deck I have seen in standard that can actually pull off wins against top tier decks, and I have a lot of the expensive cards I need for it on MTGO.  Burning Vengeance allows the player to use cards like Think Twice to not only obtain card advantage, but to kill creatures or damage the opponent.  Other flashback cards and cards recast off of Snapcaster Mage provide a massive card advantage when Burning Vengeance is on the battlefield.  Decks that aim to end the game really late or really early can both cause problems for it, however.  Hopefully, I can have a list up by the end of tomorrow and have some sort of sideboard plan to shore up those tough matchups.  I might play around with Search the City to push the card advantage over the edge and give me a better late game.  Delver of Secrets is also in consideration since the deck loves sorceries and instants.  Lots of fun possibilities.

Well... time to get to work.  I will have a list out soon.  See you then!

Budget Pox Control: Initial Impressions

 Just for review, here is how the deck works.  The ultimate goal is to set up a lock by keeping the enchantment Contamination on the battlefield using token producers or recursive creatures.  You use hand disruption, land destruction, and removal to help set up and maintain the lock, and it works pretty well... at least against most decks.

The main problem I had with the initial decklist is its weakness to decks with black spells or decks that contain Aether Vial.  If they manage to land an Aether Vial, you will suffer for it, and hand disruption will only partially solve the problem.  Creature removal, though something the deck packs a significant amount of, probably will not be enough to stem the tide since they just keep coming.  Decks containing a good number of black spells can still function reasonably well, even under the lock.  Another strike against the build presented in the article: the lock is pretty useless against colorless spells, namely artifacts.

Nether Spirits are also proving to be harder to find than I could have imagined, and I am not happy about the price either.  I decided initially to replace them with Reassembling Skeleton and that worked reasonably well, despite consuming a significant portion of the mana I was producing every turn.  After experimenting with them, I decided I wanted a card that would not be as mana-intensive, so I snap-bought a playset of Nether Traitors, not thinking that the drawback would be all that severe.  With Nether Traitor, you need another recursive sacrifice outlet in order to make him useful.  That is a HUGE downside, increasing the number of cards you need to have online for the lock to be effective.

The price of Hymn to Tourach has also changed my build.  I opted for Distress for the time-being.  It doesn't offer card advantage, but it does allow me a peek at the opponent's hand, assuming it doesn't get countered.  It may change again if I can find a more viable alternative.

Overall, I cannot complain about the deck's performance, particularly since I paid almost nothing to build it.  Once the opponent figures out what Contamination does and how the lock works, they usually concede before the game goes any farther if the lock is effective against them.  I have tried and tried to make a decklist that can function well without the Contamination lock to play as a maindeck so I am not a dog in game 1 against Pox decks, Aether Vial, and decks relying on artifacts.  This has proven to be a very difficult task indeed.  Advice and criticism toward this end would be much appreciated.

I would put up a decklist, but there are a significant number of uncertainties at the moment, so stay tuned.  If you want something to start from for yourself, check out mtgsalvation.com.  Enjoy!

Budget Pox Control for Legacy

An article on MTG Salvation caught my eye the other day.  It is the first article in a 3-part series, containing a total of fifteen budget decks for Legacy that all cost $100 or less, some much less.  The Pox deck there really spoke to me since I have 3 Bitterblossoms laying around in my MTGO collection from when I threw away a bunch of money drafting Morningtide, and I've always thought about getting into Legacy, but the price barrier was a bit too much for me to get over.  Also helps that I like Pox and decks that grind out wins.  It should not be too hard to get most of the cards needed for the deck without spending any tix at all, given that I have some credit on several bots at the moment.  You can view the entire list of decks here.  Enjoy!  I'll get the decklist I end up using posted up and try to have a few games to report on as well.  Should be interesting, as the last time I looked into legacy, Stax and Tooth and Nail were two of the top decks in the format.