MTG Salvation

Went 2-2 at FNM, beat Dredge and Sneak and Show, lost to Lands and Esper Deathblade.

Edit: I think I need some Cursed Scroll in the 60. I'm thinking of cutting a Pox and a Liliana.

LGS is running EMA drafts on Saturday, plus legacy side events during they day. Here's the list I'll be running.

Nice work!

Hi guys, I have been on hiatus for quite a long time and this is the list that I used to run, does this list still works or do you have any suggestions?

Also, I have a Leyline of the Void + Helm of Obedience an alt wincon, does it still work as well? Overgrown Tomb is for my Abrupt Decay on the sideboard

looking for feedback on this list. took it to my first ever legacy tournament and got walloped, mostly due to not knowing the format super well and because the deck’s not tuned right (see below). lost to esper stoneblade and two shardless BUG decks.



things to keep in mind:

there’s more aggro in my meta than i thought, so i’m going to swap 1x funeral charm and 2x raven’s crime for 2x drown in sorrow and 1x spinning darkness.

2. i’ll be playing in a weekly tournament series that allows ten proxies. my current proxies are the lilianas, the urborgs, and three of the bloodghasts, which should give you a general idea of what my budget is. however, i just got a deal on some bloodghasts, so i’ll have 3 proxy slots opening up. this gives me some room to play around with expensive cards.

3. how many urborgs are optimal? right now three seems like one too many, and i could use the proxy slot.

4. how about lands? 24 seems right on paper and i see most of these lists have 24, but i consistently drew too many lands over the course of three matches the other day.

5. sideboard advice? other than what i faced the other day, the meta has at least one reanimator deck, one or two lands decks, and allegedly some miracles, dnt, storm combo, and delver variants.

Big Pox is a rack pox staple. Running fewer than 4 takes a lot of power out of your list.... 23-24 lands help maintain mana despite sacrificing to multiple pox effects, and provide land drops for ghast. 3 urborgs is generally best.
Duress is also hurting your game against the aggro decks in your meta. Please refer to my list in the primer and the budget section for card ideas.
With a lot of graveyard decks in your meta I would suggest a combination of extirpate and surgical extraction as your cards of choice. Tormod's crypt is pretty lackluster against most players imo.

Hope this helps.

Mox diamond is card disadvantage in a deck that doesn't need a speed boost.

played two more weekly tournaments since last posting. getting better as i start to understand the format a little more. here's an updated list.




tonight i went 2-2, beating eldrazi stompy and maverick and losing to lands and a pyromancer/reanimator hybrid.

i just added the tombstalkers and they're amazing. sometimes you just need a 5/5 flyer. the deck was having problems closing the game before but boy do these guys solve that. sadly i never drew into the abyss, which i also just added.

funeral charm is super underwhelming. looks better on paper than it actually is. instant speed discard can be cute but it doesn't come up a whole lot. the card doesn't do enough as removal given the amount of DRS, stoneforge, and delver in my meta, and getting in 2 extra damage via pump or swampwalk is too much of a corner case.

i have a feeling that more pox would be better but i'm unsure what to cut.

To add more copies of pox I would cut 1 innocent blood, 1 liliana, and the abyss. At least practice with a full set of Pox; it's the most powerful card in the deck.

From the primer:
"We operate on 1-3 lands, so it is generally wise to hold lands in your hand if you have 2 on the board. Holding these lands gives you options when deciding what to discard to Smallpox/Pox. Furthermore, extra lands in hand provide additional fuel for Raven's Crime OR additional land drops to return Bloodghast.
Keep in mind that if you play a 4th land, you will now have to sacrifice 2 lands to Pox."
This is why we try to avoid running 4CMC cards, besides the obvious fact that we tend to run low.

Again I'd suggest running expirpate or surgical extraction in your meta... and just hope not to get matched against a Lands player!

Peace

thanks, i’ll see how it plays out. i’m planning on getting a playset of surgical extraction

the lands match was actually really close! was a turn away from winning g3 but he gripped my needle naming stage eot and made a monster.

Nice! Lands is probably our worse matchup.
The thing about this deck is that we have a few bad matchups, but the majority are even to favorable... So practice will help push those win percentages to give you the edge you need to occasionally win some tournaments. Stick with it!

another weekly tournament report. went 2-2.

notable deck changes: +1 pox, targeted discard suite is now 2iok/2thoughtseize, i'm maindecking ensnaring bridge.
possible future changes: i have some proxy slots freed up so i may play around with entomb and top.

MATCHES:

Mono U Draw-Go Faeries Brew

counterspells are awful against us. after whittling his hand away i blew him out with tombstalker g1 and gradually beat him up with bloodghasts g2.

Death and Taxes

this went to three games and was close. i had a couple mulligans and he opened with vial both times he was on the draw, which is really hard to beat. i think with a little better luck and some tighter play i could have had this one. maindeck ensnaring bridge was relevant here.

Lands

the usual horrorshow.

BRUG Midrange Brew

notable cards of his were dack fayden and leovold, emissary of trest. it played out like a typical midrange matchup, ie easy prey. i won 2-0 largely because of a loose keep against me g2 (he kept a 1 lander with 2x drs, brainstorm, and some other stuff and got smallpoxed).

Thanks for sharing! Looks like a pretty diverse meta, lots to consider when making your sideboard.

I've been playing 8-Rack for about 6 months now on MTGO. So, I guess I'm rather new to it but I've been around Magic for almost two decades...so I know more or less how it works. I first used Pox instead of Liliana of the Veil simply for financial reasons. It was good.

But, then it got really really clunky. I would always dread drawing it and was upset with how the deck worked overall. I was always waiting for them to have 4 lands, 4 creatures, or time the card perfectly for optimal advantage.

I know I'm in the minority in this forum at least, but I've been using the deck without Pox whatsoever and have had a lot more success. I've actually gone 4-1 in a League and won prizes in addition to my entry fee back! That's pretty tough on MTGO as you have to go 4-1 or 5-0 in order to get anything more than your entry fee in prize.

Basically, I play the same list I did when I first started...except I put Sinkhole in there instead of Pox. And it has worked wonders for me. Because I have more control over the board by controlling their hand, their creatures, and now 8 spells to control their lands. Still don't play Liliana and/or Wasteland because of the money, so I've spent about $100 on the rest of the deck total. Here is my list:



I am not very computer savvy, but I am looking into a way to record my games on MTGO with Legacy 8-Rack and make a little show out of it. Probably will play Modern too, but I enjoy the Legacy version a whole lot more.

Being a rogue deck, we do gain some advantage from players not knowing how to play against us... However I find it MUCH easier to play against 8-rack variations during testing.

Gotta say this archetype is crazy good!! I had taken my old mono black list apart a year or so ago but decided to rebuild it. This time around I've splashed white for Swords to Plowshares and Vindicate. I also have another list that runs a Stoneforge Mystic package. Can't figure out which one is better. Both decks are just nuts. My little brother took second place at a small but competitive Legacy tournament last summer with the SFM build. On my phone now but I'll add the decks lists later when I get to my computer. Both are nuts and love this archetype considerably more than traditional Pox. Seriously underplayed.

I've been seeing a huge rise of people playing online with Dark Depths and the cheap ways to make it into the 20/20 like Vampire Hexmage and Thespian's Stage. I have recently added in Diabolic Edict to counteract this as it is a very hard deck even for 8-Rack to beat because they don't really need many resources in order to go off. Having an instant spell sacrifice spell works well for when they cast a second creature for back-up, like Deathrite Shaman or the like.

Another card I use that isn't really talked about Gate To Phyrexia. It has eliminated the dreaded Chalice of the Void for me via Bloodghast. Beauty of it is that we can get it back in the same turn and good chance it'll have haste too. I used to have 2 in there, but have found that 1 works just as well.

I like how people like you, Laser Brains, are exploring into other colors for things like Vindicate and Abrupt Decay. I personally can't afford the land bases that accompany this kind of build...but, all the power to you, that seems really powerful!! I'd like to hear about results about any recent tournaments whenever you get a chance.

Using mtgtop8.com I can see in the highest placing decks for the last 2 weeks, Decks running depths ("Lands" and "Loam") only make up 7% of tournament winners. In fact, the dark depths combo deck has dropped off completely. Maybe you are seeing more locally, but it doesn't appear to be a significant trend overall.

Gate to Phyrexia is interesting, but probably less useful in general than ratchet bomb for dealing with chalice if that is a major concern in your meta.

I am no stranger to splashing colors in various styles of pox. However, I think it's clear that splashing a color in rack pox will cause more problems that it will solve. The deck is powered by casting a lot of BB, 1BB, and BBB spells and managing the lands is already difficult enough.
BW prison-style pox has the lower game one win percentage among styles of pox decks... (wins 44% of game one) based on data of collected from tournament reports. For what it's worth I have a large collection of duals and fetchlands, but still prefer the stability, consistency, and speed of mono-black rack pox over other variations. I also like chalice-loam prison pox and a particular brew of BG pox using synergy with spreading algae and urborg, tomb of yawgmoth.

Peace

another weekly tourney report. one day i’ll break the 2-2 glass ceiling….

M1: Death and Taxes (0-2)

same player and deck i lost to last time. that one felt close. this one really didn’t. game 1 i got overwhelmed with creatures and was underwhelmed by my draws. not enough removal. game 2 he landed an early vial. i stemmed the beats with an early ensnaring bridge. he managed to flickerwisp it on two consecutive turns for the win.

M2: Miracles (2-1)

my opponent was a salty fella who was clearly still reeling from his m1 loss to whatever. g1 i managed to keep his hand low and beat him down with bloodghasts. he tried attacking into liliana with a snapcaster mage, then got tilted hard (to the pojnt of nervously knocking over his library) when i animated a factory to block. that likely lost him the game and the tilt continued. game 2 i wasn’t able to beat two entreated angels. game 3 was white-knuckle. i led with a pretty punishing thoughtseize-hymn-hymn and kept his hand low, but he put up a fight. stuck a rack early. had both my tombstalkers removed but got there with factories. factory is superb in this matchup.

M3: Shardless BUG (2-1)

game 1 i mulled to five and was sure i was going to lose, but ripped a drown in sorrow just in time to take out two drs and a strix. ground out a win with racks. game two he suspended visions on t1 and 2, which proved to be too much to deal with. game 3 i attacked his hand early and a resolved tombstalker got there.

M4: Grixis Delver (0-2)

suffered from bad draws on this one. g1 he just went right over me with delvers and bolts. g2 i stabilized with an e bridge, removed his drs with disfigure, and waited on drawing into drown in sorrow so i could kill his legions of pyro tokens, get my hand to 2, and alpha strike with my entire playset of factories. played a bunch of racks but he wisely kept his hand outside of hymn range. after about 15 turns his last bolt left me at two. a few turns later he dropped his out in the form of drs and i topdecked a land.

i’ll post a revised decklist ahead of my next tourney. planning on adding some spice.

Right on man. Thanks for the feedback. So, with Ratchet Bomb...how would it work against Chalice of the Void? What is the CMC of Chalice? I know it's usually only played for 0, 1, or 2.

chalice on the board has a cmc of 0.

Hey all,

I'm rebuilding my Legacy rack pox deck after messing around with a modern 8-rack version that had Pack Rat and Asylum Visitor. I played a list pretty similar to the one on page 1 during the Legacy GP in Seattle a while ago and did better than I expected (ended 6-3). Are there any major updates to this archetype? I would think that Fatal Push would be way better than Disfigure, for example. Just having not played Legacy for a while, wondering if the meta has changed much in the past year. Thinking about taking this deck to GP Vegas this summer.

Thanks for any suggestions!

I haven't been playing much lately either. Completely agree with Fatal Push replacing Disfigure. Good call!
I use mtgtop8.com to keep track of meta changes... I don't see anything that would really harm pox, though the relatively new eldrazi deck looks annoying. Take a look at newer lists to get a feel for what you might face before walking into a tournament.