MTG Salvation

I recently played with a friend's cube (Aiken013) who has a very cool archetype he's been pushing that sort of reshapes blacks identity a bit. It looks a bit like Pox at first, but it plays very differently (combo control) and uses some interesting card choices that look very weak at first but are much stronger when actually in play. I was quite skeptical of some of the choices at first, but after playing it I'm a believer and will changing my cube to accommodate the new identity.

As I said above, the deck sort of feels "Pox"ish, because it utilizes similar aspects of that strategy, but it utilizes it in a very different way. I found this deck to be much more flexible and able to operate without seeing your namesake cards too. You'll notice below that there are some creature theft effects, which work VERY well with the sacrifice theme, allowing remarkable options like surprise stealing their bomb, blocking their second best creature, using any cool tap effects, then sacrificing it to one of the plethora of effects in your deck. When you play against a well built version of this deck, it seems almost impossible to go over the top of them because they can be aggressive and defensive at the same time.

You need some key things: Sacrifice effects, Recurring/token threats, and a Supporting cast of cards that add extra value to what you want to do.

Here's what he plays in his (cube):





For those discussing the Red Tokens archetype, this may be a great companion archetype to introduce as well. I played this cube before Theros began being spoiled, so this is no doubt a bit dated. But the deck could only of gotten better since then with the great additions Theros has given us.

I love playing Pox/Stax decks with Red as a secondary color. It plays really well in my cube with a lot of red cards that cross multiple archetypes.



All tend to play very well with a black Pox/Stax strategy. Especially Imperial Recruiter that searches up multiple combo pieces for the deck. And Squee does a fantastic job mitigating a lot of the mutual discard and making the effects asymmetrical.

Huh, hadn't seen Attrition before. How has it worked out in practice?

Would Grave Pact be worth it if you were pushing this?

I'll plug Goblin Assault as a great card in this deck, and an under appreciated card in general (that is getting better with the red token push).