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Moonless Ponza - A Detailed Analysis

Modern Control Land Destruction Ramp RG (Gruul) Tempo

ecdiesel

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A Waning Crescent "1/4 Moon"

Moonless Ponza, based on Ponza Rotta Red, is a deck that attacks the opponent's mana-base while ramping into its own threats.

The main focus of this Ponza variant is not a red-mana lock via Blood Moon like a traditional Ponza deck, but is focused rather on chained land destruction to deny an opponent as many resources as possible. A more detailed reasoning for this strategy is outlined below, as well as mulligan statistics, card choice explanations, and more.

For a faster build focused less on chained land destruction with a white splash for powerful sideboard options, check out my latest build, Diet Ponza:

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Diet Ponza

Modern ecdiesel

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General Notes:

Ponza early game has a fixed goal: play a 3CMC land destruction spell on turn 2. Starting on turn 3, several sequences branch off from this point, outlined below.

Deciding which lands to destroy will vary from deck-to-deck, but each color poses its own threats.

- Path to Exile is a dangerous card. Much of Ponza is devoted to land destruction and ramp, making the creature threats in the deck exceptionally valuable. It is often wise to resolve a Spellskite before playing an Inferno Titan , even if it means playing off-curve. In a meta heavy with white, black, or red control decks, Stormbreath Dragon becomes a premium threat.

- A Remand , Mana Leak , or Cryptic Command means that the opponent gets another turn to develop his/her mana base and get something onto the board. Thrun, the Last Troll , Spellbreaker Behemoth , Summoning Trap , or Ricochet Trap are cards to consider to play around counter-magic. Fortunately, counterspells are typically played in 3-color control decks with no low-CMC threats and few basic lands, making them good matchups overall for Ponza.

- Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek are the bane of Ponza. There is no way to avoid it on turn 1, which is brutal if an opponent takes a vital ramp or land destruction spell because it throws off Ponza's early-game plan. Ramp creatures are vulnerable to Fatal Push , but Utopia Sprawl makes it possible to play around creature destruction.

- Red spells such as Lightning Bolt and Pyroclasm can delay land destruction by killing Ponza's Arbor Elf and Birds of Paradise , but are usually ineffective at dealing with the larger threats in Ponza. Utopia Sprawl makes it possible to play around red's creature destruction.

- Typically the least threatening color. Green will not often have cards that interact with the game plan, though Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise will allow an opponent to continue producing mana despite land destruction.


Strong match-ups: Tron, Grixis Control, Jeskai Control, Mardu Control

Weak match-ups: Dredge, Death's Shadow, Affinity, 8Rack

In general, the deck is weak to strategies that require little or no lands to function and strong against those with few low-CMC threats.

Moonless Ponza vs Classic Ponza

Moonless Ponza is unorthodox in that it does not use 4 Blood Moon or any copies of Bonfire of the Damned . The reasoning is that Blood Moon is much easier to play around with cards that are extremely common in Modern, making it less consistent as a central strategy than chained land destruction. Additionally, by drawing multiple copies of Blood Moon or by having Bonfire in the opening hand, the traditional builds are more likely to mulligan or have unimpactful draws.

1) What's wrong with Blood Moon? It wins games on its own!

This is the most common critique of Moonless Ponza. The short answer is that an opponent with no lands is better than an opponent with "mountains" and basic lands.

To expand on that, Blood Moon does sometimes cause an opponent to concede the moment it resolves, but not consistently enough. Decks in the current Modern meta run anywhere from 8-12 fetchlands. Ignoring all else, that's already a 65-81% chance that your opponent accidentally played around Blood Moon by drawing their starting 7 cards. Blood Moon is also vulnerable to enchantment/permanent removal, and an experienced opponent will use mulligans to get multiple fetchlands/basics. In addition to this, many decks can still make use of basic mountains, whether as red mana or generic mana. A strategy chaining instant/sorcery land destruction spells together doesn't suffer from the same weaknesses as a strategy aiming to turn non-basic lands into mountains.

Another point to consider is this: even if Blood Moon really were the end-all-be-all powerhouse Ponza card, why not run 8 copies instead of 4? Here is a deck I've designed as a proof of concept. I've never seen another Ponza deck run Magus of the Moon , which is odd considering many players feel Ponza is a "Blood Moon deck" at it's core, so more cards with the same effect should be an easy include. My own testing with this "Full Moon" Ponza has been small, but, in theory, it suffers from the problems discussed above.

2) Why not play Bonfire of the Damned?

Bonfire of the Damned is a card that looks incredibly strong on paper, and in the right meta, it is. Unfortunately, in the current Death's Shadow and Tron meta, it can cost upwards of 6 mana for even its Miracle cost to destroy relevant targets. Aside from that, in a Ponza deck centered around denying your opponent the lands to play any cards at all, it's not often that an opponent will have a significant number of creatures in play. A cheap, single-target spell like Lightning Bolt or Sudden Shock is often more efficient.

Bonfire does have its niche uses, however. In a meta rife with Affinity or Elves, it's a must-have. Against a more diverse field, it's often not as efficient as single-target removal.

Deck Composition:

1) How many lands? How many land destruction spells? How many ramp spells?

Code Snippet

Using data from 1,000,000 simulated hands, it's possible to find the probability of a starting hand enabling turn 2 land destruction. To do so, it must contain at least:

  • one 1CMC ramp spell
  • one 3CMC land destruction spell
  • two lands

This means that it's possible to mulligan to as few as 4 cards and still have guaranteed turn 2 land destruction (barring interaction from the opponent).

The average Ponza deck (based on decklists from MTGTop8 and personal experience) contains

With these numbers, it's possible to play turn 2 land destruction in 59.07% of games with 19 cards left in the deck for threats, removal, and utility.

  • 21 lands, 10 ramp, 10 LD: 59.07%

Many decks choose to increase the number of lands from 21 to 22.

  • 22 lands, 10 ramp, 10 LD: 61.41%

However, as the simulation shows, it is slightly better to add another land destruction or ramp spell instead, despite many decks opting for the 22nd land.

  • 21 lands, 10 ramp, 11 LD: 61.96%
  • 21 lands, 11 ramp, 10 LD: 61.96%


2) The average deck has 59-62% chance to enable turn 2 land destruction, but what if more deck slots were dedicated to that goal?

One extra land, ramp, or LD spell:

  • 21 lands, 11 ramp, 11 LD: 64.78%
  • 21 lands, 10 ramp, 12 LD: 64.38%
  • 22 lands, 10 ramp, 11 LD: 64.28%

Two extra land, ramp, or LD spells:

  • 21 lands, 11 ramp, 12 LD: 67.22% (this is the mixture used in this build)
  • 22 lands, 11 ramp, 11 LD: 67.16%
  • 21 lands, 10 ramp, 13 LD: 66.72%

Three extra land, ramp, or LD spells:

  • 21 lands, 12 ramp, 12 LD: 69.92%
  • 22 lands, 11 ramp, 12 LD: 69.73%
  • 21 lands, 11 ramp, 13 LD: 69.57%


3) Why not try to maximize the possibility of a good starting hand by dedicating more slots to lands, ramp, and LD?

Adding additional lands doesn't see as much benefit as adding ramp/LD until there are 12 ramp + 12 LD, and at that point there isn't much room in the deck for threats/utility, so adding more lands doesn't appear to be worth it. Optimizing for turns 1 and 2 is important, but turns 3, 4, and beyond are when the deck is able to use its threats and win, so there must be a balance. In addition to this, the card pool of Modern is a limiting factor. To increase the number of ramp spells probably means adding more Birds of Paradise , arguably the weakest of the ramp spells, and adding more land destruction means adding more Blood Moon , which doesn't quite fit the chained land destruction goal of the deck as well as instant/sorcery land destruction, or adding more Beast Within , which has the largest downside of the instant/sorcery land destruction spells.


4) Why use Beast Within as land destruction? Giving the opponent a beast token seems like a big disadvantage.

Beast Within is, by far, the most complex spell in the deck. One way to mitigate the damage the beast tokens can do is to pick threats and utility that incidentally deal with them, for example, creatures like Courser of Kruphix or Obstinate Baloth with 4 toughness, or Inferno Titan 's triggered ability. Despite this downside, Beast Within actually has some significant advantages over Stone Rain and Molten Rain , aside from the obvious flexibility of destroying any permanent. Experienced opponents will not use their fetchlands until they absolutely must to play around targeted land destruction, and will often wait until the end of the Ponza player's turn to activate them. Because Beast Within is an Instant, the Ponza player can simply wait until the opponent's following upkeep and destroy the land they fetched.

Mulligan Strategies:

The standard strategy of the deck is to ramp on turn 1 and Stone Rain on turn 2.

A powerful starting hand for this deck is able to play Mwonvuli Acid-Moss on turn 2:

Turn 1: Forest, Arbor Elf.
Turn 2: Land, Utopia Sprawl, Acid-Moss

This allows 4 mana on turn 2 and 5-6 mana on turn 3 depending on if you're able to play a 3rd land. This is a powerful swing in Ponza's favor, leaving 5-6 mana on turn 3--meanwhile the opponent should be on 2 mana on turn 3.

Card Choice Explanation:

The following cards are the core of the deck--detracting from them is generally detracting from the purpose of the build:

Below is a brief explanation for the particular cards I have selected outside of the core cards:

Acidic Slime - Enchantment, artifact, and land removal that is tutorable with Primal Command . Blocks Tarmogoyf , Gurmag Angler , and other non-evasive creature threats. Still able to destroy a land even if the graveyard is, for some reason, empty--unlike Goblin Dark-Dwellers . Slime is almost always a 2-for-1.

Courser of Kruphix - It's card filtering. It's lifegain. It blocks beast tokens. It's only 3 mana. I avoided playing this card for a long time, but it has performed far better than I anticipated. The value of card filtering in this deck cannot be understated.

Inferno Titan - It puts the opponent on a 1-2 turn clock with its 6 power, attack trigger, and pump ability. The EtB ability means it has some impact even if it's destroyed immediately after resolving.

Stormbreath Dragon - A hasty threat that is safe from Lightning Bolt , Path to Exile , and Fatal Push .

Primal Command - Every mode on this card is useful. The most common use is to return a land to the top of the opponent's library and to tutor for a creature, but the lifegain has obvious uses, and the graveyard shuffle is sometimes useful against Dredge, which helps one of the deck's worst matchups. This card is especially useful when the creatures in the deck have various utility-- Inferno Titan to close out a game, Goblin Dark-Dwellers to continue destroying lands, Acidic Slime to remove an artifact/enchantment, etc.

Chandra, Torch of Defiance - This card has everything the deck could want: Ramps from 4 to 6 mana, pseudo card draw in a deck that desperately needs it, removal in a pinch, and an ult that is sometimes relevant in drawn-out matches, such as Lantern control.

Garruk Wildspeaker - Most Ponza decks run 2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance, which is certainly not a bad choice. Both planeswalkers are able to ramp from 4 to 6 mana and can produce threats. I choose to run Garruk Wildspeaker because of its unique interaction with 3CMC land destruction (the main focus of this build). If there is a Utopia Sprawl in play, it's possible to play BOTH Garruk Wildspeaker and a Molten Rain on turn 3 by using Garruk's +1 ability, which is not possible with Chandra.

The most commonly removed card while sideboarding is Beast Within . Some control decks have few targets and some aggressive decks benefit too much from the beast token. Below are explanations for the sideboard choices:

Spellskite - Spellskite helps many different matchups, soaking up Lightning Storm in Ad Nauseam, auras in Boggles, and Temur Battle Rage in Death's Shadow, to name a few. The primary purpose is to protect the larger threats from removal against control. Another noteworthy interaction is that it can block the beast tokens from Beast Within .

Anger of the Gods - Dredge, Affinity, Elves, Zoo, and against Noble Hierarch or other mana-producing creatures. It also destroys any beast tokens the opponent may have gained.

Ancient Grudge - Affinity, Lantern Control, and Aether Vial decks.

Obstinate Baloth - Burn and other aggressive decks.

Thrun, the Last Troll - Counterspells and control decks.

Sudden Shock - Infect has lost a lot of its meta presence, but Sudden Shock still finds uses against Affinity, Elves, Valakut, Chord Toolbox, and others.

Tormod's Crypt - Dredge, Living End, and Snapcaster Mage . I prefer this over Relic of Progenitus because the other requires mana to activate (Ponza almost always wants to tap out) and exiles both player's graveyards (Ponza wants to recast land destruction from the graveyard).

Customization

Ponza allows a lot of flexibility and creativity. There is a wide variety of interesting ways to close out a game as a result of ramping into a large pool of mana for the Ponza player.

The cards in the current build are by no means the only cards to try out. There are many interesting cards I have seen or tested in Ponza, such as:

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Date added 7 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)

8 - 4 Mythic Rares

21 - 2 Rares

4 - 6 Uncommons

18 - 3 Commons
Cards 60
Avg. CMC 3.21
Tokens Beast 3/3 G, Emblem Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Folders cool decks, Land Destruction, Modern - Ponza, Favorited Decks, modern, Primer and Staples, Modern, Ponza, Competitive Ponza, Modern (Goblin Dwellers)
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