I literally never noticed that Cabal Therapist didn't have to sac itself. Cool idea!

Of course, he might not stick around for awhile, but Lurrus of the Dream-Den would both fit this deck (though you'd have to take out the SFM package, or else just run him mainboard) and also make the discard in this deck not as good. I would think Surgical Extraction would be a great mainboard include here, both as a hedge against Lurrus decks and as a good way to strip decks of their core pieces. I think it's probably better than the 1-of Anguished Unmaking, and while 6 discard spells is standard, with the Cabal Therapist you could cut Thoughtseize to add the Extractions. Or perhaps Paths.

It's also a bit odd to think about, but I wonder if this could be tweaked to make use of Aether Vial, maybe with additional hatebears over the tokens? The big problem with Therapist is that you have to wait a turn to use it, but with Vial your opponents would have less of a window to respond.

Would love to know how this performs if you get to try it out!

@ abby315

I think Yorion tends to be a better fit for Stoneblade archetypes. It doesn't prevent running the equipment and Stoneforge Mystic package and the increased deck size can be a bonus as it allows a pilot to easily fit 3 swords and a Batterskull.

@ car

I've toyed around a bit with Cabal Therapist in Lurrus shells and it's not exactly been impressive. When it locks out your opponent it's huge but Therapist is pretty sad into the Lurrus mirrors where it basically achieves little or often nothing. Because Lurrus is omnipresent in most formats at the moment I don't think Cabal Therapist ultimately brings that much to the table in a competitive sense. I've been tinkering with a Modern Stoneblade list myself (here:Stoneblade Yorion), but I've not completely settled on a final draft.

Hello. I am not sure about adding a companion. I tried yorion and it just made the deck far less consistent. the only thing i really have to flicker is stoneforge. The bitterblossom cabal has been working great for me tho. I added surgical extractions and brimaz! going to try them now.

deck looks solid. maybe Shadowspear? I'd also say you should play some number of Collective Brutality in the 75. I am not too familiar with the meta post-companions, but you seem weak to burn and other aggressive decks. Brutality is a good general card that can help you stabilize long enough to get cards like Batterskull or Sword of Light and Shadow on the board (since you would probably need to use sfm in order to get/play these).

Have you ever tried Smuggler's Copter? It works well with Bitterblossom and Lingering Souls and is good in general. BW Stoneblade decks w/ Copter have been putting up some results recently too.

Since you have a lot planned around Cabal Therapist, a card to try out is Ranger-Captain of Eos. Other than that have you considered Dreadhorde Invasion as a supplemental Bitterblossom.

I do want to know what is the reasoning behind mainboard Surgical Extraction.

Smugglers copter looks good! what do you think I should take out to replace with it? I did add a collective brutality. I feel that the deck is not too reliant on cabal therapist, but will consider ranger captain. Dreadhorde invasion looks nice but not sure if i need more tokens. surgical extraction is there to rid their deck of core pieces of their strategy I am just testing it.

If you ever find that the main deck Surgicals aren't that great you could replace them with Smuggler's Copter. Otherwise the 2 Giver of Runes are a safe cut since you don't have too many creatures to protect and you already have a bunch of swords to protect them anyways.

If you did play 3 Copter I would go up to 3 Lingering Souls as well. You gain a lot of card advantage off of discarding Souls to Copter.

took out one extraction and the givers as well as brimaz for a lingering souls and 3 copters. will test this out today after my exam. What do you all think of phyrexian arena or sorin

is smallpox worth adding?

Copter is a good enough card advantage engine, so don't add P Arena. Sorin is very meh--I'd rather have Liliana if you were to add any planeswalkers. You'll have to test Smallpox for yourself. Personally, I don't think it really fits this deck's game plan.

added mana tithe, bloodghast and smallpox

With the way your deck is evolving, it is starting to look more and more like an orzhov smallpox list. Some stuff I would say about that is that you really need to make sure smallpox doesn't end up being card disadvantage for you, because in most cases, its just card disadvantage or break even. To do that, you need to maximize your Flagstones of Trokair and Bloodghast type cards. I'd run the full 4 Lingering Souls because of that. Also, a card thats worth looking at is Fetid Heath to fix your mana since you have black cards like Liliana of the Veil and Smallpox, which can be awkward to get out with lands like Flagstones of Trokair out. most smallpox decks run 4 Liliana of the Veil, but Cabal Therapist may fill some of the role it does, I don't know though. One last thing that I would say is that Vengeful Pharaoh is a card that seems to slot into smallpox, but no one ever seems to include.

hope this helps.

Hello. I am most intrigued by vengeful pharaoh but am not sure if it works without 4 lilianas. it seems to have ny synergy with cabal either. I did read a smallpox primer the other day and decided that the deck would better fit the shell. I do want to have 4 souls but I wasnt sure how to add the 4th i ended up taking out an inquisition but am not so sure about it. I also liked having a third sword so I had protection from whatever colors I wanted, but was also not sure how to fit that.

Thinking about going full pox and taking out stoneforge package. Thoughts?

I think the stoneforge package is really good because it's a way of putting down threats with little Mana open. Having cards like swords is especially good because it makes your small creatures more formidable threats. I honestly think stoneforge is perfect for a smallpox deck. A lot of smallpox decks seem to play it too, just in you're case I could see how it would be hard to fit it all in.

Honestly you have to go all-in on Smallpox if you want to make it work. Personally I think you should make a dedicated Smallpox variant of your original deck and link it in the description or something rather than editing this deck, because this one is losing its focus as the "Cabal Stoneblade" deck.

updated the deck to fit a full pox shell. click the link in the description to see it!