Faux Pox

Modern* Polupus

SCORE: 34 | 59 COMMENTS | 12877 VIEWS | IN 28 FOLDERS

practice makes (im)perfect... 2-1-1 —July 15, 2017

Went 2 - 1 - 1 today! The first positive record!

• GRIXIS DEATH SHADOW (1-1-1)

Game 1 was super close. My removal was putting in the miles and I don't think a creature was able to sit on the board for more than a turn. His Liliana came out to help out my plan, but ultimately it was Street Wraith with its swampwalk ability that did me in. Game 2 I sided out some discard spells and to bring in scourges and pulled out a victory with The Rack putting him on a quick clock that 2 gumag anglers hitting the board at the end couldn't stop. Game 3 went to time, but the game was heavily leaning in my favor when I was able to tutor out all my scourges off of an Extirpate and somehow I became the beat-down deck with me sitting at 19 life and him at 8. Go figure.

• GRIXIS CONTROL (2-1)

I was worried about having to play grixis death's shadow 2 times in a row, but thankfully this was its control cousin with Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip. Game 1 I got out an Empty the Pits for 5 zombies which overwelmed him and his lone Snapcaster Mage. I have no idea how many times I killed his Tasigur, the Golden Fang with all the kcommand he was doing to bring him back. Game 2 I got a Waste Not out on turn 2 and I can say that I'm not too thrilled with its interaction with Necrogen Mists. Getting value during their upkeep step is not very good. Throughout the game it gave me 6 mana I couldn't use, 1 zombie, and a card I had to discard. He got the win off of snap and Lightning Bolt. Game 3, his creatures were held back with Vengeful Pharaoh in the grave, giving me time to find removal for them and I was able to stick 2 mists and a Shrieking Affliction then waited for him to die.

• UWR CONTROL (1-2)

The only loss of the day. He knew what he was doing and was taking minimum damage from his lands. Game 1 I was able to win with 2 racks and a mists out with his Spell Queller sitting on my Raven's Crime, but pharaoh was giving some incentive to hold back from attacking. Game 2 went pretty quick. He won by getting an early Geist of Saint Traft and finishing me off with Lightning Helix. I never know what to expect from UWR control in their wincons, but I was able to cast Sadistic Sacrament to find out he was running a couple planeswalkers, specifically Jace, Architect of Thought which is really good against me. Game 3 went just like game 2, except with a Spell Queller sitting on top of my Dismember. When I tried to remove it he had counters to back it up and I ended up burning myself for 4 life trying to kill his creature only for him to Remand it and then Logic Knot it in the 2nd attempt.

• SIMIC PILIPALA COMBO (2-1)

I love this deck. It was probably the most resilient Pili-Pala based combo deck I've ever seen brewed. I was able to win the first game by just Smallpoxing everything and discarding away his hand, but the shock was game 2 when I cast Sadistic Sacrament only to find out that the deck had so many combos that I might need to hit every piece with an Extirpate before I could consider it dead. He was able to chip away with Bramblesnap until he got the combo and made him huge and killed me. Game 3 I was able to cast Vengeful Pharaoh and force a block to disrupt the combo, before ending the game with a Smallpox.

Lessons learned:

• Waste Not doesn't seem worth the space. Even going into it on turn 2 then sticking mists, it still felt really weak. Giving the opponents a choice and then also having it mostly trigger on their upkeep is not what I was hoping out of the card. If I were the opponent I would knowingly cast my creature into a removal spell rather than being forced to discard it and give the pox player a zombie to hit me with. I think I might try some number of Collective Brutality to help shore up the burn matchup while also giving me a discard outlet for my pharaohs and some extra removal.

• I was much more patient with my Necrogen Mists this time and it really is powerful if you can cast everything you need to cast from your hand before diving into topdeck mode.

• Almost every round went to 3 games with me winnning the 1st one and the others being really close, which is encouraging since if I can tighten up my plays and tune the deck/sideboard, I might be able to more consistently 2-0 my matches.

• MImic Vat is cute, but is too slow and runs right into the artifact hate they bring in games 2 & 3. I'm thinking about cutting it for more removal like Bontu's Last Reckoning or maybe something like Damping Matrix or Torpor Orb... I luckily faced mostly combo and control decks today, but there was 1 guy playing burn that I sat next to, so it's out there and some lifegain might be good too. I'll have to do some research.

• The deck has an overall positive record against the current meta champ: grixis Death's Shadow. Going with the 3/3 split with Dismember and Fatal Push feels right to me.

• I need to research further about stacking the Necrogen Mists triggers and Shrieking Affliction. I'm getting conflicting info from different sources. I hope it works in my favor when the opponent has 2 cards and I stack mists trigger on top to turn on affliction, since getting them down to 2 cards is much easier than getting them to 1, but today I played as though I couldn't activate affliction with clever stack manipulation to be on the safe side. edit: it doesn't :(