I'm looking for input from people with experience running them in Commander. What other cards have similar effects? Best color combo? Support cards? The regular questions basically.
I've run them in mono black (big mana) with a moderate degree of success. With a doubler out and a crucible (and plenty of tutor for both), they put me a fair bit ahead in mana, and stripped cards to graveyards for me to reanimate cheaply.
That said, I took pox and smallpox out because anyone else who played the deck would cast them too early and screw themselves. You need to have a plan for them.
EDIT: death cloud is still in because it's a more interesting "win" condition than exsanguinate in the eyes of my playgroup.
Despite having similar-seeming effects, Pox, Smallpox, and Death Cloud all play out rather differently.
To take advantage of Smallpox, your best bet is to have either 0 of one or more of the resources in question, or to have enough (or specific things) that losing 1 doesn't hurt you too much. This is most common for your hand (cast it as your last card or with a card you want to pitch because of flashback/recursion/effect from graveyard) and your creatures (have no creatures or a creature you want to die because recursion/effect from graveyard).
To take advantage of Pox, you want to try to have each of your resources divisible by 3, while ideally having your opponents not be. At 3 creatures, you sacrifice only 1 of them, while the player with 4 creatures must sacrifice 2. With 6 lands, you sacrifice 2, while the player with 7 lands loses 3. Etc.
To take advantage of Death Cloud, ideally you want to be able to completely eliminate every single resource, except for one (generally creatures or lands), where you are the only player with that resource remaining. This can be accomplished through rampant token generation or land ramp.
I've played all the cards in other formats and have had Clouds in several Commander decks. I think I'm Going to put Xiahou Dun back together, maybe with a stax package featuring Cloud and Friends, though I have considered Savra.
I play Innocent Blood in a lot of my decks as a cheaper Fleshbag Marauder, and certain decks just like Smallpox better in the creature-removal slot. These decks have low mana requirements, and often disrupt the land-count of other players besides. Discard decks like it too, but I leave it out where I have high mana-requirements.
Death Cloud is an all-around high-impact play. The standard set-up of low lands and a high amount of mana rocks allows you to use it really well, particularly when your deck doesn't rely on doing a lot above 6 casting cost. Of course, the question becomes what you are doing with enough mana to wipe the table's hands with Death Cloud, if your deck is not mana-intensive. So basically, it's used best in one of two situations - 1) early in the game off a couple mana rocks for X = about 3 or 4. This resets everyone, leaves you with a couple mana, but upsets everyone for the rest of the game. 2) Late in the game for each player's full land count, ideally after you have 4 or 5 points of artifact mana. This needs setup, and works best along other ways to slow the game so that you can go late. Imagine you have a Winter Orb out, and you know an opponent is holding a Sun Titan that will take control of the game. You'll want to get enough mana ready before he's able to cast it, and you rescue enough tempo from the game to get it back under control.
Overall, these are really high impact plays, but they upset people.
Pox has a similar value, but works best as a wincon, since you're essentially Wrathing your opponents. Note that Pox works best when you're behind otherwise.
Death Cloud is an interesting one, since you basically want to eliminate those resources altogether on your opponent's side(or simply make opponents go to <=0). The previous Stax build still works (to eliminate creatures), but you'll want more lands than your opponent, and you'll want more cards in hand. Thankfully, most Stax decks are black/green or black/green/white, so you have the best color for ramp and arguably the two best colors for card draw. (Green card draw scales accordingtosomecreature-relatedvariable; black's "pay life to draw cards" mechanic is essentially...Greed essentially becomes Necropotence in EDH, and all players have an alt wincon of general damage, so picture what this means for the actual Necro.)
Remember Skullclamp to make the spell less painful.
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Death Cloud is a huge gruesome beating, with a remarkable amount of flexibility in how big you make it. Big enough to kill all the creatures? To dump all the hands? To crush all the lands? Or big enough to kill everyone else at the table? It's all up to you.
Pox is pretty rigid, I don't know much about it. Smallpox is both rigid and small. It seems bad for the same reasons Lightning Bolt is bad - small, efficient, one-shot effects don't go very far.
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Oh, you think the losers' bracket is your ally, but you merely adopted the scrub tier. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t 4-0 an FNM until I was already a man; by then, it was nothing to me but an extra pack to sell for store credit!
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I'm looking for input from people with experience running them in Commander. What other cards have similar effects? Best color combo? Support cards? The regular questions basically.
amazingly epic sig courtesy of DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Planes.
That said, I took pox and smallpox out because anyone else who played the deck would cast them too early and screw themselves. You need to have a plan for them.
EDIT: death cloud is still in because it's a more interesting "win" condition than exsanguinate in the eyes of my playgroup.
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To take advantage of Smallpox, your best bet is to have either 0 of one or more of the resources in question, or to have enough (or specific things) that losing 1 doesn't hurt you too much. This is most common for your hand (cast it as your last card or with a card you want to pitch because of flashback/recursion/effect from graveyard) and your creatures (have no creatures or a creature you want to die because recursion/effect from graveyard).
To take advantage of Pox, you want to try to have each of your resources divisible by 3, while ideally having your opponents not be. At 3 creatures, you sacrifice only 1 of them, while the player with 4 creatures must sacrifice 2. With 6 lands, you sacrifice 2, while the player with 7 lands loses 3. Etc.
To take advantage of Death Cloud, ideally you want to be able to completely eliminate every single resource, except for one (generally creatures or lands), where you are the only player with that resource remaining. This can be accomplished through rampant token generation or land ramp.
In all cases, you want to limit the token production and land ramp of your opponents. Try cards like Land Equilibrium, Ward of Bones, Mindlock Orb, Aven Mindcensor, Strangleold, Echoing Truth, Echoing Decay, Detention Sphere, Maelstrom Pulse, and similar.
Similar cards to look at would be Wildfire, Destructive Force, Tectonic Break, Tremble, Crack the Earth, and Devastating Dreams for the land department. Fugue, Liliana of the Veil, Delirium Skeins, Syphon Mind, Bottomless Pit, Necrogen Mists, Cunning Lethemancer, Chains of Mephistopheles, Gibbering Descent, Rotting Rats, Scythe Specter, Stronghold Rats are good ways to make everyone discard. Innocent Blood, Barter in Blood, Siphon Flesh, Fleshbag Marauder, Abyssal Gatekeeper, Butcher of Malakir, Slum Reaper, The Abyss help cull creatures. Smokestacks, Rite of Ruin, and Braids, Cabal Minion can help cull everything.
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amazingly epic sig courtesy of DarkNightCavalier at Heroes of the Planes.
Death Cloud is an all-around high-impact play. The standard set-up of low lands and a high amount of mana rocks allows you to use it really well, particularly when your deck doesn't rely on doing a lot above 6 casting cost. Of course, the question becomes what you are doing with enough mana to wipe the table's hands with Death Cloud, if your deck is not mana-intensive. So basically, it's used best in one of two situations - 1) early in the game off a couple mana rocks for X = about 3 or 4. This resets everyone, leaves you with a couple mana, but upsets everyone for the rest of the game. 2) Late in the game for each player's full land count, ideally after you have 4 or 5 points of artifact mana. This needs setup, and works best along other ways to slow the game so that you can go late. Imagine you have a Winter Orb out, and you know an opponent is holding a Sun Titan that will take control of the game. You'll want to get enough mana ready before he's able to cast it, and you rescue enough tempo from the game to get it back under control.
Overall, these are really high impact plays, but they upset people.
Pox has a similar value, but works best as a wincon, since you're essentially Wrathing your opponents. Note that Pox works best when you're behind otherwise.
Death Cloud is an interesting one, since you basically want to eliminate those resources altogether on your opponent's side(or simply make opponents go to <=0). The previous Stax build still works (to eliminate creatures), but you'll want more lands than your opponent, and you'll want more cards in hand. Thankfully, most Stax decks are black/green or black/green/white, so you have the best color for ramp and arguably the two best colors for card draw. (Green card draw scales according to some creature-related variable; black's "pay life to draw cards" mechanic is essentially...Greed essentially becomes Necropotence in EDH, and all players have an alt wincon of general damage, so picture what this means for the actual Necro.)
Remember Skullclamp to make the spell less painful.
On phasing:
Do note that artifact mana and death cloud is really good.
Pox is pretty rigid, I don't know much about it. Smallpox is both rigid and small. It seems bad for the same reasons Lightning Bolt is bad - small, efficient, one-shot effects don't go very far.