In the Mix: Poisonblade pt. 1

Here’s the first installment of what I hope will be weekly coverage of our homebrews. I’m going to discipline myself into using Excel to track deck changes and we’re going to stick with an idea until we’re convinced it’s either potentially brilliant or pretty surely terrible. I'm also going to try and be brief, since I'm no pro and there's no need to—OK, in the spirit of brevity, I'll just get to it.

I’m very proud that I’m going to show you a spreadsheet here. Not only does this represent the successful transference of my business class skills to the real (Magic) world, it also proves that the money I spent on an accounting degree was put to good use since I now know how to use the Σ button to see if I’m at 60 cards yet—whoa! Don’t pass over that mad tech I just dropped.

G/W Poisonblade
	1.0		2.0		3.0
4	Fauna Shaman	4	Fauna Shaman	4	Fauna Shaman
4	Stoneforge Mystic	4	Stoneforge Mystic	4	Stoneforge Mystic
2	Putrefax	2	Putrefax	2	Putrefax
1	Phyrexian Hydra	1	Phyrexian Hydra	1	Viridian Corrupter
4	Plague Myr	4	Ichorclaw Myr	4	Ichorclaw Myr
4	Necropede	4	Necropede	4	Necropede
				1	Phyrexian Revoker
4	Ancient Stirrings	4	Ancient Stirrings	4	Ancient Stirrings
4	Oust	4	Tumble Magnet	4	Expedition Map
3	Emerge Unscathed	3	Contagion Clasp	1	Mortarpod
1	Sword of Feast and Famine	1	Sword of Feast and Famine	1	Sword of Body and Mind
1	Bonehoard	1	Bonehoard	1	Sword of Feast and Famine
1	Whispersilk Cloak	1	Whispersilk Cloak	1	Bonehoard
3	Mimic Vat	3	Nature's Claim	1	Whispersilk Cloak
				3	Nature's Claim
4	Inkmoth Nexus	4	Inkmoth Nexus	4	Inkmoth Nexus
20	lands	20	lands	20	lands
60		60		60

Another big plus to using Excel is that when your boss comes up behind you at work, it looks like you’re doing something legitimate and you get that split second you need to minimize it and click back into Outlook before he/she gets close enough to see that the cell says “Phyrexian Revoker” and not “Purchase Order.”

Now, I had a personal prejudice against Stoneforge Mystic for months because I felt she was “overexposed” à la Lindsay Lohan and also I take issue with the art (will be covered in another article). However, after a few minutes testing against Cawblade back in the let’s-improve-Hawkward days, I had to take back my “I will never play what’s-her-name!” assertion I’d initially made.

My comprehension of the economic value added by the tutoring powers of cards such as Fauna Shaman and Mystic just didn’t come immediately when I first saw these cards. Only after playing a little more did an understanding sink in about the impact on deck consistency, reliability, and redundancy that tutoring produces (“a 1-of becomes a 5-of,” was how Elliot put it).

Stylish: she rocks spring's Tribal trend!

Fauna Shaman and Stoneforge Mystic are not only super cute together, they also kick major ass. Of course, if you play Stoneforge, you need to accessorize her. Threatening someone else with a sword is definitely more fun than cowering under theirs.

Poison. You only have to do half the damage you’d regularly do, but the dudes are “all a little smaller,” as Bennie tweeted. That lil’ problem has turned out to be a big one in several previous attempts at an infect deck. The few of you who read my FFL mono-green infect article may remember something cringe-inducing about a Prized Unicorn and other blushworthy attempts at evasion to “just get the damn damage through!”

Two things have changed. First, the Stoneforge jewelry, a.k.a. shinies of every shape and beating size, make your poison guys into the bullies instead of the bullied. Second, we didn’t have Inkmoth Nexus before. I mean Elliot and I, personally, did not have Inkmoth Nexi in our possession and we hadn’t proxied them in the earlier poison decklists. Duh, right? Our son is teething and can now basically run (he’s 11 months), so for us, many obvious ideas are relegated to afterthought territory. The baby has infect, devour 3, trample, and apparently hides a Mindslaver somewhere on his 28-pound person as well. The other day I found myself crawling around on the floor wearing a colander, Mexican biscuits in one hand and a bag of ice chips in the other. I still have no idea why.

In testing, Poisonblade has had good, tough, generally close matchups VS U/W Cawblade at just over 50/50. We’ve noticed that when Stoneforge Mystic/Swords are involved, whoever wins the die roll is heavily favored to win the game. Clearly we might need to make some other tweaks to increase our win % against Cawblade if it becomes more than 20% of the field, but overall I’m very happy about the deck’s performance. A chance to win vs The Best Deck, contingent on making the right choices at critical, pivotal decision points does not feel like a bad place to be when going rogue. 

You can exhale now, he's finished painting.

The Oust and Emerge Unscathed were “clever” ideas we’ve kicked around for a while, but in reality they weren’t that clever and didn't impress. We tried Kibler’s Contagion Clasp/Tumble Magnet combo, which we barely drew, and when we did it was obviously powerful but felt a little heavy for what we wanted to accomplish with this build. Didn't take @blairwitchgreen's suggestion yet to add Grafted Exoskeleton to this build yet, but that's because I'm saving that one for a special, special unicorn-Glissa party. Bennie also had the flash of brilliance to add Gideon ourselves since he's such a boor to deal with, but Gideon doesn't hang with my clique (you'll notice he's not my friend on Facebook), so if any of you do try The Great White Gid in this brew please let me know how it goes.

On Expedition Map: I believe the FFL mono-green mystery Zendikar-block infect-key-card is Ancient Stirrings. The game changer for poison decks is Inkmoth Nexus. When we drew him, we won much more easily. When we didn’t, we had to really grind it out on pins and needles (felt mirrorlike vs Caw). Ancient Stirrings finds Inkmoth Nexus, and Expedition Map adds another route.

We started with 3 Maps but took it down to 2 after testing against an aggressive brew I call Droids (more on that, next week). Aggro decks might simply be a bad matchup for Poisonblade, but the changes we’ve made so far mitigated the problems without taking away from the Cawblade fight. Elliot expects Boros to be a tough matchup, but right now its metagame share is going down so it’s not a huge concern. Valakut is probably a bad matchup; the plan is to use Acidic Slime, a singleton Tectonic Edge, maybe even the Leyline of Sanctities I talked Elliot into buying at Guardian during our nerd-date-lunch on Sunday.

Tall, dark and putrid.

Poisonblade has a lot of answers, and if you have your Nexus, you can put them on the defensive by asking your question, as Zvi might say. The resilience of this deck is charming, and it’s fun: Necro-ping some Hawks, hope they try to sweep their way out of a bad position, and Sword+Bonehoard your little corrupt Blinkmoth into a baby Emrakul monstrosity. You might even take down that aggro deck with the right play: Elliot finally scored a win over Droids by holding a Necropede, tutoring Fauna in response to my DoJ, and then doing me exact damage with that hasty tub of love, Putrefax. Ouch!

Fauna Shaman has turned out to be the backbone of the deck, so we cut one Mystic to make space since if you really need Mystic, you can find her with Fauna. We added a Glimmerpoint on the recommendation of @BlastodermMan (who also had the Leyline idea) as Gideon hate but also to get more value from Viridian Corrupter. We’re on the fence about the Mortarpod, but sometimes all you need is to get rid of that one dude. We also might try to cut 3-4 cards to try and squeeze in Tempered Steel, but more testing is in order before all that jazz. Kibler’s U/B, Darkblade, Sparkblade getting added to the gauntlet, so I’ll be able to report the results on those matchups soon.

Poisonblade 5.0

4          Fauna Shaman

Beautiful artwork, too.

3          Stoneforge Mystic

2          Putrefax

2          Viridian Corrupter

4          Ichorclaw Myr

4          Necropede

2          Plague Myr

1          Phyrexian Revoker

4          Ancient Stirrings

2          Expedition Map

1          Mortarpod

1          Sword of Body and Mind

1          Sword of Feast and Famine

1          Bonehoard

1          Whispersilk Cloak

1          Glimmerpoint Stag

1          Ornithopter

4          Inkmoth Nexus

2          Sejiri Steppe

4          Razorverge Thicket

4          Sunpetal Grove

8          Forest

3          Plains 

It looks strange, I know, and it’s rough but we’re ridahs. Like Teddy Roosevelt and…DMX? (D-M-X…Ink-Moth-Nex...eh, better leave that to @thagatherin)

Poisonblade isn’t the kind of deck I personally like to play as it’s very much like Cawblade in that there are just way too many pinpoint decisions for me to make. I do love to watch it, though! It’s geared for mid-to-long (but not too long) games, and often things look bleak but it comes out of nowhere and kills. This makes for entertaining nail-biters: good for spectators, but hard on the pilot! Last words: Chapin mentioned in his SCG article this week that counterspells are horrible right now and I hope people take his advice because less of those pesky blue spells around means a better environment for Poisonblade…also, Condemn is weaker against this deck than against others who can’t find their creatures at will, and well, Poisonblade can run Condem too…expecting to be irritated by discard, and therefore by Darkblade. Thoughts and/or suggestions? Percolating a G/W/B version as well (ha, I’ll make YOU discard!), so look for that in the next few weeks.

Till next time,

May Magic be your sword.

-MJ