I love watching people metagame decks. I do, I really do. Partly because as a longtime Magic player, I do the same thing myself, and it's nice to have company. As the saying goes, birds of a feather and whatnot. (My father used to call it "idiots love company.")
Having rambled about that, my local store runs weekly, unsanctioned Legacy every Friday night. It's nice to play fairly casually, and it lets us pro player wannabes test out our deck building skills, and we can get instant feedback from the better players there. Plus it means we get to test without tanking any ratings we care about. About half of the local populace pays very close attention to the Meta, and we also travel to PTQs, doing quite well pretty often. Multiple of us are also pretty heavy Vintage players as well, traveling to Waterbury and the SCG P9 tourneys. We, we are THE UBAH. I swear it.
Why do you care? Well, uh, you probably don't, and won't, but it was meant to illustrate that the environment I play in is competitive.
People love to netdeck. Netdecking is a good thing. Really. Why? It allows people to have an idea of what they might see, allowing them to playtest, and perhaps even more importantly, build sideboards for those matches they expect to see in a tourney. But it also allows us Rogue Morons that can't realize that playing the best deck is a good thing, to build interesting (often sub par) decks that have a very good match up against net decks, and the whole field.
Without further ado, I present the worst possible deck you can play in Legacy, and still win tournaments with it.
POG. Pile of Garbage.
Card Choices, and why:
Kokusho, the Evening Star
One of the finest black fatties ever printed. It also has amazing synergy when you draw Innocent Blood, Chainer's Edict, or the second Kokusho to just finish a game immediately.
Innocent Blood
An answer to first turn Goblin Lackey. If you have a lot of Goblins in your meta, run four of these maindeck. Innocent Blood also is a wonderful removal spell for those untargetable guys that Threshold loves.
Mutilate
Black's finest mass removal spell.
Smother
Another answer to early Goblin Lackey. Smother is a damn fine card in almost every format, and its instant speed is fantastic against the manlands used by Fish decks and Landstill.
Consume Spirit
This card plays a giant role in this deck. Its versatility allows it to be removal if necessary, finisher quite often, but more often than not, it's as a tempo reset. Aggro decks come out strong, beat you often to below 10 life quickly. You stabilize, than take enormous tempo back by casting a Consume Spirit. I've found that Consumes for as low as 4-6 points just entirely take the wind out of most aggro deck's sails. Don't save the Consume Spirits for when they are enormous. Like I said, one that resolves for 4-6 is often amazingly good.
Duress
Black's best hand disruption. It's really your only maindeck weapon against combo decks or control decks. Duress is often sided out in this primarily aggro format. It scares me to play Black without it maindeck, though. I've seen too many games decided by first turn Duress to just dismiss it entirely.
Chainer's Edict
Kills Nimble Mongoose. Not a whole lot else needs to be said. Wait, wait... Kills Nimble Mongoose twice. Even better.
Diabolic Tutor
Finds pieces of the puzzle you need. This could be Grim Tutor, or even possibly Skeletal Scrying, but with aggro so dominant, I'd like to keep my life total as high as possible, especially considering you're already running Night's Whisper.
Decree of Justice
The only maindeck White spell you play, it's your trump card. Decree is an enormous win condition, it just cannot be said enough. Control decks without maindeck Stifle just roll over to you, as it plays right into your win condition.
Night's Whisper
Draw power in a deck is good. Especially a deck that's classified as a "control deck" You might want to swap up for a Skeletal Scrying or two, but a turn 2 Night's Whisper is pretty hot, all things considered.
Lands:
Scrubland
Lands that are fetchable, and tap for your colors are good.
Fetchlands
If you need to know why these belong in this deck, you do not belong here, go choose another game. I suggest Uno. It's pretty fun with good people.
Cabal Coffers
This allows you to make really large Decrees, and really large Consume Spirits. This list runs two because I never want to see one before turn 5, and if need be, you can Tutor for one. Seeing the second Coffer is nice, but not necessary. Your personal preference may lead you to run three or even four.
Plains
A slight bit of insurance against Wasteland. Another aside, if Wasteland runs rampant in your metagame, you might even want to run more than one Plains, and more than two Cabal Coffers. Season to taste, as the chef says.
Because you've chosen to play with this steaming pile, here are your estimated matchups:
Landstill: Preboard 60/40. Post board 65/35.
I would classify this as favorable. Your ability to make large Decrees is very good for you, and your removal makes them getting a win condition very, very hard for them. After boarding, you have several options. One favorite of mine is bringing out the Decrees, and bringing in Wretch and Plague. Name Soldiers for the Plague, and remove Dragon with the Wretch. Makes winning nearly impossible for them. Really. Remember you can use Diabolic Tutor to get a Boseiju, or a Cabal Coffers after game one.
Goblins: Preboard 50/50. Post board 60/40.
Everyone's bad matchup. Game one requires you to have removal in hand to deal with Lackey turn 1. Pay close attention to whether you're going first or not. Innocent Blood is awesome on the play or draw, but only Innocent Blood is good on the draw. If they play Lackey, and drop a Siege-Gang off it, you lose. If you deal with the early Lackey, your chances of winning jump enormously. After boarding, the Plagues make it much, much better for you. However, I still see Goblins winning through Plague on the board, so I'm considering running one Plague, one Sphere of Law on the board. The Sphere helps against random slight or burn decks as well. Another option is Ghostly Prison. Food for thought. Please just remember that a starting hand that has Plague in it isn't always a winning hand. Turn 1 Lackey for them can still be game if drop two Piledrivers turn 2 on you.
Threshold: 70/30. Post board 80/20.
You don't lose this game. I've never lost a match to Threhold with PoG. They run far too few threats to deal with your removal. Remember to save the Innocent Blood and Chainer's Edicts for the Nimble Mongooses, and watch out for clever players trying to drop Meddling Mage first, then Nimble Mongoose. Remember to play around Daze if you can, but if they Daze an early removal spell, that's fine, you've got plenty, plenty more. Every counter they spend keeping a threat alive means one more win condition you resolve later. After boarding, it's even worse. Boseiju cancels their counters, Wretch cancels their Threshold. I've also brought in Extraction to hit their Armageddons if I think that was their plan. Games two and three, make sure to keep a land in your hand, if you don't have Extraction and you expect to see Armageddon. A further note as well. Mystic Enforcer is not as good as you might think against this deck. Nor is Phantom Centaur, for the same reasons. You run 7 Sacrifice effects, and 4 Mutilates, plus the Edicts flashback. Pro Black isn't an issue, really. If you lose this matchup, ask your opponent why. My bet would be superior tech, or misplays on your part.
Survival Decks: 60/40. Post Board 70/30.
Here is where Duress can really shine for you. If you can Duress their first Survival away, your removal is insane against them. Keep an eye out for any Genesis Shenanigans, and you should be okay. If they can get Squee/Genesis/Anger rolling, you've got problems. Luckily, after boarding, Withered Wretch makes this match a lot easier. You could even bring in the Gerrard's Verdicts, and the Cranial Extractions as well, depending on the build you're playing against.
Pikula Black/White
I haven't done any real extensive testing with this deck, but I think at best, your game one is 50/50. The Land Destruction hurts you badly, but the low threat count (Cursed Scroll aside) does play into your strategy. After boarding, I think it gets better as you can bring in more threats (Wretch), and ways to deal with the Scroll (Disenchant). If Pikula B/W is big in your area, I might consider siding Sacred Ground, or perhaps even Damping Matrix.
Additional ramblings and observations:
Another note I'd like to mention is the abundance of Aether Vial. The Vial makes a lot of your Removal very slow, as the bulk of it is sorcery speed. I'm running the Disenchants out of the board, which could be brought in against the artifact, but I've yet to do it. I think (Read: bad player making obvious and/or bad observation) that the Consume Spirits keeping your health a little higher allows you to deal with the instant speed creatures. Perhaps that observation is hogwash. What I can tell you, is that in all my testing and tourney matches, Aether Vial hasn't given me fits.
Other random matchups are favorable for you, for the most part. Your only real worry is a basic auto-loss game one to many combo decks. Combo is not that prevalent in my neck of the woods, hence the maindeck shown above. If Combo is more of a problem where you play, I suggest dropping some of the removal for more disruption. Perhaps losing the Chainer's Edicts and changing them to Hymn to Tourach.
Another problem for the deck is Burn. Not so much a pure Sligh build, as creatures aren't a problem for you, but decks that run a lot of burn give you absolute fits. Hence the Gerrard's Verdicts on the board, rather than Hymns. They assist in getting Burn out of their hand early, and occasionally, they serve as a Healing Salve as well. It's another reason why Sphere of Law might be a good substitute from the sideboard, or even perhaps CoP:Red.
I touched on this above, but please, please pay close attention to Wasteland. Your deck's manabase is surprisingly strong, drawing consistently, but Wasteland against your Scrublands as well as your Coffers is a pain. You can win without both, but your power and flexibility is hindered appreciably without at least one or the other of the two lands.
I've played competitively many times with the deck, and done quite a bit of testing as well, running full matches with sideboards, each and every time. I simply cannot stress enough how important a tuned sideboard is. You can almost entirely toss my board out and start fresh, based on what you expect to see when you play this. I get so frustrated when I see deck lists posted, only to hear two days later the deck builder say, "oh yeah, my board sucked." Take the sideboard with a grain of sand. Or salt. Or Crushed Red Pepper. Whatever makes you tingly inside. It's very, very fun to play, killing absolutely everything that hits the table, and then winning in convincing fashion when it suits you. It has favorable matchups against most every aggro deck (Goblins aside), and it has a solid game against every control deck. I hate to say the above win/loss ratios are "set in stone" because everyone and their brother knows player quality, bad draws, etc can skew those results all over the place. Those results are my experience, and they are meant to show you what I've seen with this giant Pile of Garbage thus far. I've played said pile of Garbage locally three times now, and lost once. Overall, that's roughly 17-1-0. Not too shabby. Must be a fairly elite Pile of Garbage, or my opponents must be fairly non elite piles of garbage.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, my first attempt at writing for Star City Games. I hope a few of you take the time to toss PoG together and give it a shot, at least on Apprentice. It's much better than it looks on paper, and it's a whole lot of fun to play, even if only casually. Feel free to drop me a line directly, or post on the forums, and I'd love to chat!
Chris Philbrook
Kolrael at conknet dot com
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