Hey guys,

With Smallpox's debut in M12, I am having flashbacks of how good Solar Pox was when Time Spiral and its surrounding sets were legal.  The deck, a control deck with combo elements, utilizes the "drawbacks" of Smallpox to put the caster at an advantage over the opponent.

I'm hoping to reproduce the success with this new card pool.  Check out a bit more in-depth history and the version I came with.

First off, I'm starting with a list. This version, piloted by Ken Adams, took 1st place at a Roanoke tournament in 2006 (source: StarCityGames).

Deck: Solar Pox
Artifacts		Creatures		Enchantments		Instants		Sorceries		Lands		Sideboard
3	Orzhov Signet	2	Angel of Despair	1	Peace of Mind	1	Condemn	3	Compulsive Research	1	Dimir Aqueduct	3	Circle of Protection: Red
1	Phyrexian Totem	4	Court Hussar			2	Darkblast	3	Dread Return	2	Gemstone Mine	1	Faith's Fetters
		1	Skeletal Vampire			3	Mortify	4	Smallpox	2	Ghost Quarter	2	Peace of Mind
		2	Akroma, Angel of Wrath					4	Wrath of God	4	Godless Shrine	1	Condemn
		2	Haakon, Stromgald Scourge							2	Hallowed Fountain	3	Trickbind
										1	Orzhov Basilica	1	Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
										4	Watery Grave	2	Deathmark
										1	Snow-Covered Island	2	Nightmare Void
										1	Snow-Covered Plains
										2	Snow-Covered Swamp
										4	Flagstones of Trokair
4	Cards	11	Cards	1	Cards	6	Cards	14	Cards	24	Cards	15	Cards
Display Deck Statistics

To download the deck for Workstation, click this link.

What makes the deck.  Synergy.  There are so many minicombos in this deck that they provide a solid backbone for the deck.  Smallpox serves as a method to start off such interactions. Here are a few of the key interactions:

• Court Hussar/Haakon
  Haakon provides a means to bring back the Hussars each turn, providing both a chump blocker and a card for his efforts.
• Dread Return + discard + fat
  Reanimation at its basic form: discard an Angel of Despair or Akroma, bring it back with Dread Return, then beat face.
• Flagstone of Trokair + Ghost Quarter/Smallpox
  What's great about Flagstones is that it can search nonbasic Plains, meaning those Hallowed Fountains and Godless Shrines have an entryway when Flagstones hits the grave. When hit with Smallpox, Flagstones leaves you at neutral land loss while your opponent loses a land, throwing off tempo. When hit with Ghost Quarter, you fetch both a basic land and a dual, fixing your mana for three colors if need be. Finally, Flagstones of Trokair is legendary, meaning that if you play two, both hit the graveyard and fetch two lands. Lots of tricks with this card.
• Phyrexian Totem + Wrath of God
  Just want to give a shoutout to the morphing mana artifacts. Clear the board, beat for 5.

While it's impossible to duplicate the strategy verbatim due to the card pool, here's how I'm replacing some of the cards:

• Haakon/Hussar engine – Garruk, Primal Hunter
  Garruk pumps out creatures each turn while providing a raw draw spell unlike Court Hussar. Garruk also becomes a win condition with his ultimate; when paired with the green cards to power out the land, unless the opponent has a way to wipe the board the game's done once the wurms can move.
• Flagstones of Trokair/dual lands – Rampant Growth, Explore, Sphere of the Suns
  Rampant Growth provides the mana fixing and land advantage to unbalance Smallpox. Explore only provides land advantage but makes up for it with card draw. Adding a third color is a possiblity, bur for now I chose two since I run cards that have three of the same color in their mana costs.
• Angel of Despair – Acidic Slime
  Acidic Slime is nowhere near as good of a creature as Angel of Despair, but it can still knock out a land to mess up an opponent's tempo. It also serves as maindeck artifact/enchantment removal should one of those cause problems.
• Wrath of God – Life's Finale
  Black's flat-fee board wipe. It costs a bit more, but due to the land ramp in the deck it should not be a problem. As an added bonus, Life's Finale dumps three creatures of your choice into an opponent's graveyard. Creatures out of the deck means (usually) they can't be put back onto the battlefield, so the added bonus helps out when you're trying to power up planeswalkers or destroy manabases.  Use some strategy when selecting the removed creatures -- if you're demolishing lands of a certain color, prioritize creatures that don't use that color since chances are the opponent's going to have a hard time casting the creatures you leave in.

With that said, here's my version of a Smallpox-powered deck:

Deck: Poxflora
Artifacts		Instants/Sorceries		Planeswalkers		Creatures		Lands
3	Sphere of the Suns	3	Explore	2	Sorin Markov	4	Solemn Simulacrum	15	Forest
		4	Rampant Growth	3	Garruk, Primal Hunter	4	Acidic Slime	10	Swamp
		3	Life's Finale
		3	Dismember
		4	Smallpox
		2	Sorin's Vengeance
3	Cards	19	Cards	5	Cards	8	Cards	25	Cards
Display Deck Statistics

To download this file for Magic Workstation, click this link

Here's some design notes:

Miscellaneous cards that fit the bill

• Solemn Simlulacrum
  This morning on Twitter people were chirping about the card hopping up to $13. This card was the initial reason I became interested in Smallpox since the land search negates the Smallpox land loss and the card draw negates the card draw. Besides that, since the planeswalkers have triple colored casting costs, a lot of land search needs to come in to help play them. Ideally, this card can come down on turn 3, opening up many turn 4 plays such as Garruk or Acidic Slime. Overall, this card helps the deck become more consistent.
• Sorin's Vengeance
  Come on, who doesn't dream of hitting with Sorin's life = 10 effect then winning with this? Besides that, this card is a win condition without turning on the opponent's removal. This card also serves as some stall should you be put against a wall--who knows, you could topdeck that Life's Finale to put you back in the game.
  
• Sorin Markhov
  Besides styling with his vengeance, this card serves as a source of repeatable removal and life gain.

Cards that made me go hmm, but didn't fit:

• Vengevine – Just not enough creature spells to make this matter.
• Mimic Vat – Again, not enough creatures and not enough board removal to make this worth running.
• Bloodghast – This would be good EXCEPT that it can't block. I'm not worried about being able to get beats in early, I'm more worried about shutting down an opponent and then kicking them while they're writhing on the ground.
• Primeval Titan - Geez man, don't you think you have enough lands? Sure, there's Smallpox, but there's more than enough mana sources to make that work.
• Grave Titan - I prefer a non-creature win condition in this deck.
  

Cards to consider for the sideboard

Note that the deck mainboard is more for an aggro environment. Sideboard isn't complete yet, but I would consider these cards.

• Inquisition of Kozilek
  Hit up any spells that cost less than 3, such as Tempered Steel, Swords, and counterspells. Good utility card.
• Despise
  Good card for both aggro and control decks. Use it if you feel Inquisition isn't enough targeted discard.
• Nature's Claim
  Mainly to counter the speed of Hawkward decks.
• Memoricide
  Hey Primeval Titan, I choose you! Once they're gone, hit up Valakut with some Acidic Slimes. Other than that, use it to gut decks that rely on few win conditions or decks reliant on a card for a combo.
  

Tips on playing the deck:

• Smallpoxing ASAP isn't always the best play
  Destroying a land base to shut out an opponent is tempting, but keep in mind that pox hurts you too and can slow you down. Sure, play it once just so your opponent knows your running it if the opportunity presents itself, but then keep an eye out on how the opponent reacts.
  
  The way many players play against an “edict effect” (Magic slang for forcing a player to sacrifice a creature) is to play multiple creatures in the same turn; that way, if the edict effect hits, then the worse creature can be sacrificed. If you see this happening, that's a great time to hit a Life's Finale.
• Sphere of the Suns and Rampant Growth aren't dead late game
  They can be pitched to Smallpox. Usually this is the better play, but if Smallpox and the spell are the only cards in your hand and you have the mana available, do cast the spell first since Smallpox can be cast if you have no cards in hand.
• Make your opponent do stuff if you use Sorin's ult
  Tap out all their lands. Suicide important creatures into Acidic Slimes. Play cards so Smallpox takes out the card they need. Swing with every creature should you be able to win in the near future. Take a hold of that Spellskite, target it with something, then pay as much life as you can (this is a "suicide" kill with even life or puts an opponent at 1, waiting to get sucked by Sorin). Get some extra practice with this card since typically the best play isn't the most obvious.

That's all I've got regarding this deck for now. Do stay tuned to this blog (subscribe in the top right corner!) for more decks coming up. I've got plans to update some decks to the Overextended format as well as some other concoctions kept in my handy dandy notebook. A special shoutout to @metaknightmare, @daiches2, and @fenaris for helping me out with a question about Spellskite and the "Mindslaver" effect. And on that note, if you've got any further questions/comments, drop me a line on Twitter @shadowsketched or leave a comment below.

Till next time,
@shadowsketched