MTG Salvation

This thread is for the discussion of my latest article, Squandered Resources: Black and Budget Legacy. We would be grateful if you would let us know what you think, but please keep your comments on topic.

Too bad we just got a small mention to Zombies... they wont be competitive in Legacy , ever never ever =(

Quote from Lyracian

Nice read.

I would prefer 2 Bloodwitches in the Vampire deck but that is really a matter of taste; otherwise it is pretty much as I would build one.

Focusing on the Pro-White Weenie is an angle I had not thought of trying before.

Shame you did not cover an actual Pox deck; they always seem like such a good starting point for mono-black control decks.

Yeah, looking back I would probably play 2 witches as well. I was just afraid of the 5cc with only 22 lands.

Actual pox decks focus in the destruction of a mana base (sinkhole and wasteland) which just gets way too expensive. This is really the only real option in my opinion.

Quote from SumX

Too bad we just got a small mention to Zombies... they wont be competitive in Legacy , ever never ever =(

Yeah, believe me i have tried multiple times to make a good zombie deck. I have gotten decently close before, but not with anything that would fit a 250 dollar budget.

If you REALLY want to play a competitive zombie deck you should check out Sam Black's ZOMbardment deck. It has seen a lot of impressive success, albeit only at his hands from what I can tell. It has some placings at GP's and SCG's that prove its strength. The problem is that it is 2 colors, which means dual and fetch lands.

Man you forget about mono B Suicid with Flesh Reaver, Phyrexian Negator and Kaervek's Spite. :-(

Quote from Radar73

Man you forget about mono B Suicid with Flesh Reaver, Phyrexian Negator and Kaervek's Spite. :-(

I didn't forget about it. Nowadays that style of deck just is not as powerful as it once once. I guess you could try and build it, but imagine facing RUG or Ur delver and using Dark rit to play a turn one negator, only to have them hit it with lightning bolt on the next turn. That's not really something you want to be doing in legacy atm.

Should I have included a suicide black list? If I really sit back and think about it I guess I could have worked a little harder on trying to make a refined and viable list. Do I think the list would have been worth the monetary cost? Well, that kind of depends on exactly how much money it would come down to, but really I can't see it being worth it. =/

I believe blade of the bloodchief is a fine replacement to umezawa's jitte in order to make the deck even more budget.

Blood artist may replace kalastria highborn also, even though it will be tough to keep them alive.

What do you think?

blade of the bloodchief does not clear the field or gain you life, but its pretty good at ending the game fast. I can see it being played.

Blood artist is a bit iffy, I would have to test him.

Hi!
First of all, great series of articles! I am kind of new to the format though I have played Magic a long time and they are very helpful.

Regarding the Contamination deck, it certainly looks interesting but I was not sure about what the deck does about getting the Contamination card (i.e. there is no card draw, tutors, etc). It seems like even if you disrupt your opponent's hand and early drops well they will be able to recover faster than you if you do not lock them with Contamination.

The deck doesn't really need contamination to function. Yes, having it really helps, but overall if you just keep their hand low, field clear and land a bitterblossom you should do fine. Beyond this, the deck is able to stall for so long that eventually you should find one.

Is it a weakness that you may not get a contamination every game? Yes, but I don't really think that should prevent you from at least trying the deck out.

I tried a very similar build to the one you posted and to be honest I didn't like it that much. Pox and Smallpox hurt me just as much as they hurt my opponent because I had no way to gain my tempo and gas back (crucible of worlds, life from the loam etc) The deck worked, but I guess just not as well as I would have wanted. =/

Quote from Pasab

Why not including Liliana of the Veil in the contamination deck?

She is in the list, she is the first card under the "other spells" category. Really there is no pox deck that should not run her, she is just way too strong.

OH you certainly could do those things. I personally love the idea of using white in pox. The bummer is that splashing a color, using thoughtsieze or using opal all make the price up the deck jump quite a bit. If you have the money or the cards then it would definitely be worth the shot, though I can tell you I have only ever tested a mono black version of the deck.

I suppose i could, though that's it not my area of expertise. This site does need a non-budget legacy writer from what i can tell.

Oh it's not that I am not allowed. My series is based on budget legacy, to write about non-budget decks in the series would not make much sense. I could write 2 columns, but that would be a lot of work. I barely keep up with this one.

As far as I can see, yeah. I don't think this site has a writer for non-budget legacy any more. I could be wrong though.

Quote from Johanovich

In the contamination pox build, I would have included a worm harvest (works well with liege) and 2 diabolic intent since you're going to be spawning creatures like mad anyway. That way you could search for wanted items in case you need them.

I'm thinking of building a similar version, but with the inclusion of jitte and perhaps sword of light and shadow for the lifegain.

Worm Harvest would probably be a good win condition, especially with Liliana. I think it would be better in a B/g version that ran wasteland, smallpox and loam, but I think it could work in this list as well.

I don't know about sword of light and shadow, but Jitte would probably be fine, especially with 4 bitterblossom.

[QUOTE=Lyracian;/comments/8692802]Nice read.

I would prefer 2 Bloodwitches in the Vampire deck but that is really a matter of taste; otherwise it is pretty much as I would build"

I would replace with butcher of malikar(??? Not sure if that's the name, it's from the same set, I think it's 5 colorless and 2 black to cast, special ability is when creatures from your side die you sack an opponents creature). The bloodgasts can be sacked and brought back with landfall, that can wipe out a whole board of opponents creatures when done right. I wish they would bring back dark ritual or a cheap rise from the grave(animate dead).

If you play anything but standard then it opens you up to a lot of powerful value cards but if you compete then I recommend buying singles online! Packs are too expensive and more designed for booster drafts. Let the card stores spend 3 to 4 bucks a pack an pull junk! Then order from tcgplayer.com or a place like this. I bout many amazing rates and mythics in sets of 4(impossible to pull from packs) for in many cases about a dollar a mythic. I did spend 3.00 a piece for omnisciences and 5 dollars for nicol bolas planeswalker. I also got 4 hellcarver demons for 80 cents each! So check the deals and order that way. I only wish I would have known about this value a couple years back. When the zendikar block was out I spent almost 1500(14 boxes) and not one hellcarver! I only got 2 jaces and tons of dual lands(like scalding tarn). My point is I got extras of many cards I only needed 4 of and got few sets of the ones I wanted to use in tourneys. Thus far I've spent 300 and have all the ones I use, including 4 ajani goldmanes! Lol as you can tell I'm sold on online ordering and the time to get then was 2 to 3 days.

Butcher of Malakir also costs waaaay too much cmc wise. 7 mana should give you a lot more than what butcher does. =/

Quote from xjosh

Your vampire deck seems quite interesting, why not including Vampire Nocturnus?? And dark ritual and Liliana of the veil seems like another auto includes in this kind of list.

Well dark ritual is not in the list simply because it would be a terrible top deck. The other decks that use it for the most part have a place where they can dump the extra mana should dark rit be top decked late in the game. Stillmoon's pump for example.

I'm sure Liliana would do fine in the list, though I am not sure what would come out. It would require testing for sure, but Liliana is a very powerful card, especially when you can recur the cards you discard with her.

as for nocturnus, well he is really only included in very aggressive vampire lists. This list is meant to be more of a midrange deck that grinds players out but still holds its own in the aggro aspect. Kind of in between, ya know? I chose the lord I chose because it gives me the best of both worlds. That is all up to preference though, and I am sure in the right build nocturnus would do fine.

OF course I have. It real weakness is super aggressive strategies like zoo. burn, RUG etc, but Jitte helps a lot when you can get it. Mid range and control are your strong matches, but it kind of depends on which archetypes you face and a little bit of luck too. Terminus can really ruin your day.

I like Cavern of Souls, too bad it costs so much. =/

If the burn player is running Volcanic fallout things get nasty =/

As long as you can keep Mom from becoming active maverick is ok. Just destroy fatties that hit the field and be smart with your cabal therapies. Name what will lose you the game, not what you think they have.

Non-budget vamps would definitely use thoughtseize, cavern of souls and maybe wasteland. There are a lot of double black cmc's though, so I'm not entirely sure about wasteland. I would need to test it. Not entirely sure what the whole list would be. =/

Can do. I can tell that you really like vampires. I can relate with and respect anyone who has a love for off the wall decks.

What list did you end up with? What have you been testing against?

Yeah I like it. If it working well for you then that is great. You are pretty void of 1-drops, but dark ritual kind of makes up for that.

No love for the combo deck? I'm a B/W Stoneblade player primarily but I have always had a love for mono black. I played mono black pox for years to great competitive (local) success and ran black stax to less competive success for a while.

Here's my take on a revised version of Tainted Shadow, with a half-full tentative sideboard, additional comments (and a question) below:



My logic on the card change choices:

1) The removal of phyrexian obliterator seemed like the right move to me, as it opened up 4 slots to ensuring the success of the combo. As an 'alternate win condition' he isn't exactly that. He is also hard to resolve once you've blown your initial mana acceleration in an attempt to get a tainted shadow live. His replacement with gitaxian probe serves as crucial 0cc cantrip for consistency, but also as an invaluable information tool that tells us when we are safe to go all-in.

2) The replacement of inquisition of kozilek with cabal therapy follows as the next logical step from the inclusion of gitaxian probe. With 4x probe and 4x duress, as well as our several other means of drawing into said cards, our chances of seeing the opponent's hand is very high. This makes cabal therapy almost objectively better than inquisition of kozilek, for our purposes, and also allows for that last-ditch effort of flashbacking with a sacrificed spellskite to strip their additional hate, if the need arises. Because cabal therapy hits the integral hate of our choice, (not missing relevant cards like force of will), and because my list has more cantrips, I feel comfortable going to 3 copies instead of 4, giving a flex slot, which leads me to my third point.

3) The inclusion of urborg, tomb of yawgmoth and funeral charm. Granted, Urborg is not a 'budget inclusion', nor does it necessarily need to be a 4-of, but its presence alongside funeral charm is pretty powerful. Note that all 3 of funeral charm's effects are relevant here. The pump is relevant for extra reach, the swampwalk is relevant for unblockability (as opposed to the mere pseudo-unblockability that aphotic-wisps provides), and the discard is relevant for ensuring the combo's successful execution. The downside is that it does not provide a cantrip like aphotic wisps, but I feel as though the versatility and ensured unblockability (swampwalk) mitigates this.

4) The sideboard: moving the 1-of slaughter pact in your list to the board and adding 2 more copies seems fair to me. The 1-of in the initial list is not reliable, nor is it necessary if we only want to kill creatures that actually hinder our ability to push damage through. Extirpate and surgical extraction should speak for themselves, as well as the 4-of inquisition of kozilek. Post-mortem lunge is to deal with removal if spellskite doesn't get us there, but I am least sold on it's inclusion, especially since swords to plowshares is our most feared removal, making 'lunge worse. I am open to suggestions for it's replacement.

Questions:

1) Should I ditch the funeral charms for more aphotic wisps, or something else entirely? Or should I ditch the aphotic wisps for more funeral charms?

2) Sideboard suggestions?

3) Any other comments or criticisms?