Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
It's a nice disruptive tool, and you are the only one who sees it coming. I think Smallpox is pretty good. Of course it's value shoots up if you cube multiple Gravecrawlers and such.
Card/Deck Single Card Spotlight
- Thread starter Dom Harvey
- Start date
It probably depends on how heavily you support graveyard tech in general. I think there is a lot of good stuff you'd typically run which works well with it though. Gravecrawler and Bloodghast are obvious ones, but I also run Haakon, Stromgald Scourge.
I personally think graveyard interactions are some of the most interesting in all of Magic, so my cube is heavily biased in that direction. I wouldn't call Smallpox uncuttable, but for me it's pretty close.
Outside black, I commonly pair this card with green because that's the easiest way to handle the harder mana costs and there are cards that want the effect (Life from the Loam, Vengevine, Genesis, Call of the Herd, etc.). This is also a sweet reanimator enabler and I've even used it with mimic vat.
Interesting control finisher that attacks the game from a different angle, or game ruining bullshit?
game ruining bullshit?
I always assumed this was just unstoppable fast mill, but I guess with enough removal it could be interesting to fight over. Seems like it needs to be tried out.
?
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
After initially panning it is "the 475th awful black/blue mill card", I recently added Phenax. Unlike Jace, Memory Adept you actually need to have dudes on the board to make it work and it only turns into unstoppable fast mill if you hit devotion, which is no small feat. Someone drafted a black/blue control deck last time we played, but the deck was really loose overall and the player didn't draw Phenax a single meaningful time, so I'm working on theory here.
CML
Contributor
Interesting control finisher that attacks the game from a different angle, or game ruining bullshit?
you are the biggest card hipster since me. god bless you, your list is full of more idiosyncratic cards and their kin, things we try once and are complete failures. try phenax and tell us what happens
Interesting control finisher that attacks the game from a different angle, or game ruining bullshit?
Haven't tried it out in my cube, but I did go Blue during BNG prerelease just hoping to open this in my sealed pool with a couple durdly U/B guys with decent toughness. It happened. I think the best thing I did all prerelease was setting up my board with Phenax in hand and calculating how many cards my opponent had left in his deck before milling him for exactsies before his draw step. Phenax mill-kill actually forces you to build a certain way and rely upon creatures, even then it's not a sure thing, which is pretty cool.
Way more interactive than Emo Jace. Looking at my own 360 list, the only cards that really fall into a Phenax deck and are still pretty functional on their own are:
Which isn't enough for me. I'm sure you could find good workarounds if you really want Phenax mill to be a thing, but then it becomes a matter of whether those cards are any good in other archetypes.
CML
Contributor
I've run decks with 4x Gravecrawler where Smallpox was bad. It has some nice theoretical applications, but in practice it was almost always a clunky
spell that you wished were anything else.
Agree. None of my best recurring aggro / sacrifice shenanigans decks maindecked Smallpox, even when I spent a pick on it. It's a little too tricky to get maximum value out of all four symmetrical effects - sometimes the sacrifice and life loss would be good for you, say, but the discard would be actively bad.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
Yeah, once you realize that its just a super awkward edict effect (and edict effects can be awkward already), you stop running it.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I've run decks with 4x Gravecrawler where Smallpox was bad. It has some nice theoretical applications, but in practice it was almost always a clunky
This is basically why I cut it too. There's also a bunch of cards that work well with crawler that aren't as poisonous as well, my current favorite being tragic slip
By contrast, I loved Innocent Blood in black aggro and control decks. Weird to see a card that works in both, but (generally) not midrange.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I'm sure the midrange deck edicting their own lands has something to do with it
Fuck what CML said, run it for delve/spells matter. Also can randomly fuck up something your opponent set up with scry for the price of free.
CML
Contributor
nah not interesting enough to be worth the draft slot. seems reasonable until you try it. gitaxian probe is also not close to being worth it
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I think I'm liking CML's preference for Brainstorm. Might run a couple more of them and cut the ponder and preordain. Kind of irrelevant: It's still a far off goal to somehow support storm one day. Just a few storm cards (Brainfreeze, Tendrils of Agony and Mind's Desire wouldn't be too poisony if the rest of the archetype was already there. Probably impossible but a man can dream...)
CML
Contributor
if you brainstorm you can prowess into more spells and shuffle dem nasty lands away
also being an instant for prowess is cooler than probe or whatever
ponder is cool too i think i would run 4 brainstorm 3 ponder 1 preordain no other 'trips
Anyone else running this guy?
I've seen gamestates in my cube where Brainstorm was used as a combat trick and to push through the last points of combat damage. It was awesome. And if you draft a Goblin Bombardment, you can sac the babies for often an extra 3-4 damage assuming he lives long enough. So fun.
I've seen gamestates in my cube where Brainstorm was used as a combat trick and to push through the last points of combat damage. It was awesome. And if you draft a Goblin Bombardment, you can sac the babies for often an extra 3-4 damage assuming he lives long enough. So fun.