Frank Lepore
6/29/2012 10:58:00 AM
Birthing Pod?! Again?! Yes, well, I promise this will be the last Birthing Pod list for a while, deal? That having been said, I think there are a lot of cards that aren't getting a fair shake in Birthing Pod lists; cards like Massacre Wurm and Geist-Honored Monk to name a few, but I'm getting ahead of myself! A week or so back, my pal Rada mentioned to me that she thought Conley made a good point about Massacre Wurm being good in the format. She told me that she wanted to build a Pod deck around the six drop, and being a huge fan of the Wurm myself, I told her to do it and send me the list! This was the initial build I received:

BW Birthing Pod by Rada Rudyak Main Deck Sideboard 1 Archon of Justice 1 Blade Splicer 4 Blood Artist 4 Doomed Traveler 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite 1 Fiend Hunter 1 Geist-Honored Monk 1 Geralf's Messenger 3 Massacre Wurm 1 Morkrut Banshee 1 Phyrexian Metamorph 4 Restoration Angel 1 Skinrender 3 Solemn Simulacrum Creatures [27] 4 Birthing Pod 4 Sphere of the Suns Spells [8] 4 Cavern of Souls 1 Forest 4 Isolated Chapel 7 Plains 1 Razorverge Thicket 7 Swamp 1 Vault of the Archangel Lands [25] Deck Total [60] 2 Day of Judgment 2 Dismember 1 Grave Titan 1 Inquisitor Exarch 1 Nearheath Pilgrim 3 Oblivion Ring 1 Skinrender 1 Slayer of the Wicked 1 Sun Titan 2 Timely Reinforcements Sideboard [15] View a Sample Hand! Solitaire this Deck! Click for full deck stats & notes!

I thought it was pretty good for a first draft and I liked what I was seeing. I liked that it was base black and white, but it had the random green lands to Stifle some of the life loss from Birthing Pod. I ran it through a few games on MTGO and noticed a few things immediately.

- Sphere of the Suns wasn't really what we wanted. Unlike the other Pod decks where mana acceleration came down on turn one in the form of Birds of Elves, turn two acceleration just wasn't the same. It would ramp you to four, where three was your sweet spot. Cutting these, however, would give us that much more room for creatures, which was nice.

- We definitely wanted more two drops. You needed creatures to not only go up from Doomed Traveler, but also to get you to your three drops, and you never wanted to sacrifice a Blood Artist for this. Butcher Ghoul was the ideal candidate for his ability to block, survive removal, and come back. I also tried a Reassembling Skeleton here, but for the most part Butcher Ghoul was just a less mana intensive Reassembling Skeleton.

- Some of the numbers were off. Despite being our all-star, three Massacre Wurms were too many. A lot of times you would draw them, and three black is still hard to get in a two color deck (more so than in a tri-color deck, if you believe it). This is the same reason I felt Geralf's Messenger had to go. In fact, I felt Blade Splicer performed a similar role as the Messenger while being much easier to cast and much better against the more aggressive decks.

- Sun Titan seemed too good not to run. Against more controlling decks you want a secondary six drop to find, and Sun Titan is nuts, getting back things like Fiend Hunter, Blade Splicer, Blood Artist, etc.

- I also wanted to add a few things. I really liked Skirsdag High Priest. He's very easy to get going and one of the perfect things to pod a Doomed Traveler into. The Vault of the Archangel was awesome while the Caverns were not. We didn't want our Wurm getting countered, but we were often podding into him anyway. Furthermore, with so many different creatures types, it would often be a colorless land. I chose to simply swap them out for a couple more green sources and Evolving Wilds since I didn't want to be at the mercy of Phyrexian Mana for every activation.

After a few more tweaks and a few more games I came to the following list:

BW Birthing Pod by Frank Lepore Main Deck Sideboard 1 Archon of Justice 4 Blade Splicer 3 Blood Artist 3 Butcher Ghoul 4 Doomed Traveler 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite 1 Fiend Hunter 1 Geist-Honored Monk 2 Massacre Wurm 1 Morkrut Banshee 1 Phyrexian Metamorph 4 Restoration Angel 1 Skinrender 1 Skirsdag High Priest 2 Solemn Simulacrum 1 Sun Titan Creatures [31] 4 Birthing Pod Spells [4] 2 Evolving Wilds 1 Forest 4 Isolated Chapel 6 Plains 2 Razorverge Thicket 8 Swamp 1 Vault of the Archangel 1 Woodland Cemetery Lands [25] Deck Total [60] 2 Day of Judgment 2 Dismember 2 Divine Offering 1 Grave Titan 1 Leonin Relic-Warder 1 Nearheath Pilgrim 3 Oblivion Ring 1 Skinrender 2 Timely Reinforcements Sideboard [15] View a Sample Hand! Solitaire this Deck! Click for full deck stats & notes!

I was surprised how well it was doing. It seemed to have game against control and aggro strategies alike. Let's take a look so you can see what I mean...

T2 BW Birthing Pod vs. American Delver



T2 BW Birthing Pod vs. Esper Control



T2 BW Birthing Pod vs. American Delver, Match 2



As you can see, the deck has some really explosive chains, especially thanks to Restoration Angel. Restoration Angel on most of the creatures in the deck is pretty saucy, which is why you want four of them. She's also simply one of the most versatile creatures in the deck and one of the main reasons I wanted to play a Pod deck with white in it. The other reason I wanted to play Pod was Massacre Wurm, and, well, here we are...

As I said in one of the matches, having a card like War Priest of Thune would be just awesome. You could pod into him from a Doomed Traveler, destroy an O-Ring, then pod him into a Blade Splicer or something which would be kind of a blow out. This deck, as with most is highly resilient to Day of Judgment effects, typically due to the fact that all of your creatures provide some kind of advantage when you cast them. Now Terminus, on the other hand, is a different story...

I know I sung his praises last week, but again, Blood Artist is one of the most insane cards in the deck. As you can see in the last match, he did at least 11 damage on his own, and even when the swings aren't this insane, the incremental advantage he provides are just awesome. Especially in a deck when one of your main strategies is sacrificing guys. The fact that he pretty much halves all of your Phyrexian mana activations is also pretty swell.

High Mid Low

Restoration Angel

$20.58

$16.95

$13.75

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We really tried to cram most of the black and white cards that had some of the most impact when they entered play. If you think we're missing anything, please, let me know in the comments, since this format is pretty sizeable. I wouldn't mind a Leonin Relic-Warder or some removal in the main, but the Relic-Warder is usually going to get podded away, which makes him less useful. The list is also very tight, and I feel like I really narrowed down the powerful cards that you want a ton of (Blood Artist, Restoration Angel, Blade Splicer, etc.) and the cards that you just want the versatility of (Skinrender, Archon of Justice, Geist-Honored Monk, etc.)

I also know that I just went over a Pod deck last week, but I felt this one was unique enough with enough relevant answers to cards in the format to warrant covering. Also, BW is not often a color combination that we represented in Pod decks, at least not together. This is funny because black and white both have a surprising number of creatures with awesome enters-the-battlefield abilities (like killing things and making tokens). Hopefully you guys will find this one unique enough to give it a go, since not only is it a very fun deck to play, but it's also been putting up some very surprising results; I think I'm about 8-3 right now with the deck, and as you can see, it definitely holds its own against Delver.

Thanks to all you guys for reading, and thanks to Rada for getting the Wurm juices flowing (well, that just sounds completely inappropriate...)! If you guys have any suggestion for a topic for next week, feel free to leave it in the comments! As for me, I think I'm probably going to play this tonight at FNM since, as I said, it's pretty solid and has been performing quite well. Although now that I think about it, I might want some Go for the Throat in the board instead of the Dismember: they're often going to kill the same things, only Go for the Throat is better against Wolfir Silverheart and opposing Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, and you don't want to be taking any more damage from Phyrexian mana than you have to. Thanks again, and I'll see you next week!

Frank Lepore
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