Archetype: Birthing Pod

[Jason Waddell]

More singleton breaking here. 

Here's the basic premise: I'm including 3 copies of Birthing Pod. Bye bye Survival (which has been less than stellar). Pod is a pretty unique card to build around, and is pretty much ideally suited for cube design. It's not mechanically isolated, all you need are creatures on a curve. It offers tons of creative drafting options, and doesn't force you to commit to the Birthing Pod line as your cards will have plenty of overlap with other archetypes. I think as far as cube combos go, engine cards like this are the way to go. As we've seen from Standard and Modern, there are all sorts of cute synergies and interactions you can pull with pod. 

I know there will be some reservations about supporting an archetype so explicitly with multiples, but it's really not so different from using mechanically similar reanimation spells / burn spells / counterspells / whatever makes archetypes tick. 

This is for random discussion and brainstorming of how these changes should affect a cube's design. 

For one, I'm going to be adding Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, as a bit of an overlap between Pod and the Gravecrawler aggro idea. This card is a fairly outrageous pod top-end. Undying Acidic Slimes and random dorks are pretty ridiculous. Also, we open up some real combo possibilities that take set up: Mikaeus + Murderous Recap / Kitchen Finks and a sac outlet (Carrion Feeder, Greater Gargadon, Goblin Bombardment)

It also provides another archetype that can conceivably get Geralf's Messenger into play. I know the card is pretty narrow, but the pool of black three-drops is pretty awful all around.

[Eric Chan]

We tried Pod for a while here. It..  never did anything for us.

The tough part about drafting Pod is that it's really hard to put together a uniform curve. You might be all set on two-drops, fours, and fives, with a smattering of sixes..  but you're missing threes. Or something.

Somebody said this on a podcast - maybe Kranny? - but this is a card that benefits from the larger deck size of Constructed. You can run more silver bullets, but more importantly, you can smooth out your mana curve, and not worry as much about running the well dry. Going down to 40 cards puts a lot of restraints on deckbuilding for this archetype.

I don't mean to be a negative Nancy, though. I hope this experimentation works out for you, cause I've love to find some way to get Pod back in my cube. It just didn't pan out the first time.

[Jason Waddell]

Don't worry about being negative, these sorts of honest answers are exactly what we're here for. 

Truth is, I don't know if it will work, but here's something to consider: 

When you only have one copy of Pod in your deck, it's not really worth building your whole deck / curve around. It's kind of a "nice to have" if you get it. But if you have 2-3 in your 40 card deck? Then you can really expect to draw it with consistency. 

I also imagine (again, unverified), that it is very skill intensive to draft. Unlike Reanimator, where all the support cards are obvious, Pod takes anything. It just wants creatures. What you draft and how you fill out the curve is something you'll need to think about the entire time. It's one of those decks that you'll get better at drafting each time you play it, and you start to evaluate certain cards completely differently. Yeah, maybe now the Vorapede does look sweet. Blade Splicer? Yes sir. 

And maybe it will just suck. But that's okay. I try a ton of ideas to find what works and what is fun. 

[Dom Harvey]

I think Birthing Pod is the perfect card for the multiples experiment, for the reasons you outlined. As for specific cards, I like Mikaeus a lot. There are some other borderline cards that become very useful when you have consistent access to Pod, most of them naturally involving the graveyard: Body Double, Necrotic Ooze, Entomber Exarch, Crypt Champion, and so on. Anything with a high CMC that can be put into play some other way deserves attention, but that's pretty much just Madness and Morph (Affinity/Delve don't have much). Butcher Ghoul is an interesting card that overlaps with the additional Gravecrawlers/sac outlets subtheme.

The two obvious ways to increase the Cube's creature density seem to be including 'filler' like Elvish Visionary or Sea Gate Oracle, or defaulting to creatures when you're looking to double down on a certain effect (i.e. prioritize cards like Fire Imp/Skinrender over other creature removal).

[Jason Waddell]

Hey Dom, these are some killer suggestions! I'll have to do some testing. I could see using Body Double instead of Meloku, certainly. I do wonder about Crypt Champion though, as a pod target, considering the sac clause. Of course you may be meaning it as a creature to be hardcast in a pod deck, I know there are corner cases, but wouldn't fetching Crypt Champion with pod set you back to 3 CMC much of the time? Apologies if I'm completely off the mark here. 

I view Pod as part of the new wave of limited "anchors" like Altar of the Lost or those Red uncommon enchantments they always print that. They play with things that are common in your environment, and if you happen to get a lot of those things (here: creatures) you can kind of go all out with it. If you don't, you still have functional cards for other deck types. So I think I need to be careful with the power level, as I don't want a high density of cards that can only be good enough in a pod deck. 

Good call on Fire Imp. I definitely need to track down a copy. I like your "creature density" comment, but I would modify it to be "density of good pod targets" rather than just plain "creature density" (although that was probably implied by your statement :P). 

[Eric Chan]

I do like that having multiples in your deck means you can plan for it, and build around it. That's something I hadn't considered when we were only running a singleton copy. Altar of the Lost is a great analogy.

That Vorapede makes a whole lot more sense, now.

Bone Shredder might be another good Fire Imp-type creature. I suppose anything with an ETB effect, or with persist / undying naturally synergize with Birthing Pod. In green, I'm partial to fixers like Viridian Emissary and Borderland Ranger, though they might be a bit slow for your cube. The nice part about stepping up the density of ETB creatures is that they play nicely with white blink effects, of which you're already running a few.

[Jason Waddell]

Bone shredder, yes, I love it. I always hated the echo on that thing, but if you can use deck construction and planning in gameplay to make it work for you, baby you got a stew going. 

[Calvin Chan]

I think one of the major reasons pod never worked out in Eric's cube was that it requires a solid curve of creatures across all the numbers.  With only one pod in the cube, you need to pick it up extremely early to get maximum value.  And even if you do that, having one copy in a 40 card deck is not great odds to warrant building your entire deck around it.

I really like the idea of having multiple pods to fully flesh out the strategy.  These may be too slow/narrow or already be in your cube, but I really enjoy with pod are the creatures that can untap pod (such as zealous conscripts and deceiver exarch) to jump past numbers.  And like Dom said middle value creatures are especially strong like wood elves, eternal witness, and solemn simulacrum since they can also ramp you into the top of the pod chain.

[Hannes Versmissen]

I think the 40-card Pod decks might "bog"-down into drawing an ever-increasing amount of lands, or have a horrible matchup against aggro/burn. (you'll need to draft a high amount of fetchlands to stop your draws from clogging) <=> (your gonna lose life to pod, pod activations, fetchland and maybe some shocks)

I think the deck will both draw worse as time passes, and needs time to set up. 

[Jason Waddell]

Hmmm... I've never played Pod in constructed, is this an issue? At a certain point in playing pod, isn't what's in your hand secondary to what's on the board? Activation's aren't free, that's true, but there are ways to compensate (Finks being the best one, followed by Thragtusk and Lone Missionary). It's definitely something to think about. I have a hard time thinking that aggro could deal with a Finks -> Restoration Angel -> Blink Finks line. Also, well, if a midrange deck loses to aggro, I'm not going to shed any tears. :)

Calvin: Good point with Exarch. I think I'll go with Pestermite instead though. Conscripts is definitely not too slow, and Pestermite holds his own. 

[Calvin Chan]

Right, i missed perstermite.  I think the pod deck has a pretty solid game against aggro.  The pod deck should have a couple of acceleration cards, like wall of roots in modern, which can hold fort pretty well against hyper aggressive decks or start the chain going early.  The blue exarch is also good for this and probably annoying for the gravecrawler deck. 

[Hannes Versmissen]

These weren't problems in the 60-card decks, but i'm only raising this as its something that will be magnified by the smaller deck-size. 

The life-gain should be able to compensate though, that was an oversight on my part.

[Jason Waddell]

Yes Hannes, it is a good point about 40 vs 60. We normally think of fetchlands as "thinning the deck", so by that virtue Birthing Pod will "thicken the deck". Testing will reveal whether it's actually a problem though. It's certainly something to think about. 

Well, life gain can compensate. It is true that Pod decks can inflict a lot of self damage. What it means is that a Pod player will want to prioritize life gain more than normal, but even then it can be an issue, as there are relatively few sources of life gain in a regular cube. Maybe there are others to be included?

[Dom Harvey]

I don't understand this point. Could you elaborate?

[Jason Waddell]

Every time you take a land out of your deck (i.e. fetchlands), you increase the probability of drawing spells from your library (you thin the deck of lands). 
Every time you take a creature out of your deck (i.e. Birthing Pod), you decrease the probability of drawing spells from your library. 

I don't think it will be a problem, but I have no data to back this up. 

[Jason Waddell]

Okay Calvin, I have something sweet just for you. We want something that can help birthing pod jump the curve? We want a card that can untap it for two activations? We want zombies in our set?

One word: Fatestitcher

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I am so excited right now. I hope hope hope it's good enough. This sort of sweet archetypal intersection card is like lightning in a bottle. Thanks for pushing my mind in that direction. 

[Jason Waddell]

Also, I don't know how to search for it on Gatherer, but are there any sweet 2brid creatures we can use?

[Dom Harvey]

2bid?

[Jason Waddell]

Hybrid/2 spells, like Spectral Procession. 

[Jason Waddell]

Ran some test games today with a Junk Pod list. I definitely wanted more creature-based removal and various utility effects. No specifics in mind, but I imagine I'll be tweaking my list for a couple months on Birthing Pod changes alone. 

In a test game I won with this infinite combo:
Sac Murderous Redcap, grab Zealous Conscripts, untap pod, sac Conscripts for Mikaeus, play Carrion Feeder and deal infinite damage. Way more satisfying than any other cube combo I've ever pulled off. 

The other thing I really liked about this "combo" deck is how much other decks can interact with you via all the regular means (blocking, creature removal, graveyard hate, counterspells, damage). The games were so much better in quality than Reanimator games ever were. Now to see how consistent it can be in an 8-man draft .

[Eric Chan]

Geeeeez. Great work, Jason. You're really getting my hopes up for Pod in cube! :D

[Jason Waddell]

Well, I was on the fence about Cataclysm staying in my cube, but check this out: 

Can anyone think of an archetype that is likely to have an Artifact and a creature in play, and can operate on one land....? :)

[Calvin Chan]

Ooh, Fatesticher is a sweet one! So many applications.
I believe 2bid was only one cycle of monocoloured sorceries.

I don't think you have a dedicated archetype that cataclysm fits in, but it would probably work in the steppe lynx deck with land tax, or stoneforge mystic with some sort of equipment.
I also like the interaction with artifact creatures like legionnaire, metamorph, blade splicer, tidehallow sculler.
And the very far stretch is loam, crucible of worlds/zuran orb (is this a deck?).  It can even have the bloodghasts, gravecrawlers and vengevine, while I'm in magical christmasland.

[Jason Waddell]

The dedicated archetype is Birthing pod. All a pod deck needs to function is a Pod, a creature and a land. It's basically a hand made interaction. Perhaps I was too cryptic. :P

[Hannes Versmissen]

Calvin: Birthing pod needs only one land, one creature, and itself to operate ;) The options you pointed out establish it as a more versatile card though. I especially like the cataclysm meets Crucible/zuran orb + bloodghast/vengevine or gravecrawler/zombies way of going about it.

Op maandag 18 maart 2013 17:15:34 UTC+1 schreef Calvin Chan het volgende:

[Calvin Chan]

haha, i was thinking too hard and went to look through your list. :)
Setting up pod and cataclysm with persisters is insane! maybe even with the awakening zone, so you don't need to pay life :P.

[Eric Chan]

It's clear. You guys are all sickos.

;)

But yeah, you guys clearly love to brew. For someone who mostly just enjoys playing one mana 2/2's and turning them sideways, watching you guys in action is a treat.

[Jason Waddell]

Untap with Pod and Fatestitcher. 

Tap Fatestitcher, tap down their creature. Sac to pod. Grab Urabrask. Unearth for U. Untap pod with Fatestitcher. Sac Fatestitcher (again). Grab Wolfir Silverheart. Swing for 16. 

[Niki Lin]

I am Niki Lin and I condone this message!

Op dinsdag 19 maart 2013 14:40:24 UTC+1 schreef Jason Waddell het volgende:

[Hannes Versmissen]

That's insanely cool and powerfull. seems i'll have to draft pod next time.

Op dinsdag 19 maart 2013 14:40:24 UTC+1 schreef Jason Waddell het volgende:

Untap with Pod and Fatestitcher. 

[Jason Waddell]

Which kind of pod? Bant pod? Zombie Pod? Tezzeret pod? Junk pod? Aggro pod? Infinite combo pod? ...

[Hannes Versmissen]

junk/jund pod, maybe with a twist. certainly midrange to aggro, preferrably not combo.

Op dinsdag 19 maart 2013 18:02:48 UTC+1 schreef Jason Waddell het volgende:

[Hannes Versmissen]

Maybe it's intresting to (re?)introduce Apprentice Necromancer into the cube.

It seems to be a blast with Mikaeus, and has some kind of use in pod (it's a viable target to reach from a token, and is able to make the jump to CMC 5/6 by reanimating a broken (by means or removal) pod-chain.)

Appart from that it doesn't validate broken reanimations, but has a nice offbeat interaction in midrange decks. heightend amount of ETB-triggers also make it a bit of an all-star to me.

Op donderdag 14 maart 2013 11:08:03 UTC+1 schreef Jason Waddell het volgende:

More singleton breaking here. 

Here's the basic premise: I'm including 3 copies of Birthing Pod. Bye bye Survival (which has been less than stellar). Pod is a pretty unique card to build around, and is pretty much ideally suited for cube design. It's not mechanically isolated, all you need are creatures on a curve. It offers tons of creative drafting options, and doesn't force you to commit to the Birthing Pod line as your cards will have plenty of overlap with other archetypes. I think as far as cube combos go, engine cards like this are the way to go. As we've seen from Standard and Modern, there are all sorts of cute synergies and interactions you can pull with pod. 

I know there will be some reservations about supporting an archetype so explicitly with multiples, but it's really not so different from using mechanically similar reanimation spells / burn spells / counterspells / whatever makes archetypes tick. 

This is for random discussion and brainstorming of how these changes should affect a cube's design. 

For one, I'm going to be adding Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, as a bit of an overlap between Pod and the Gravecrawler aggro idea. This card is a fairly outrageous pod top-end. Undying Acidic Slimes and random dorks are pretty ridiculous. Also, we open up some real combo possibilities that take set up: Mikaeus + Murderous Recap / Kitchen Finks and a sac outlet (Carrion Feeder, Greater Gargadon, Goblin Bombardment)

It also provides another archetype that can conceivably get Geralf's Messenger into play. I know the card is pretty narrow, but the pool of black three-drops is pretty awful all around.

[tomc...@gmail.com]

I don't have any cool Pod cards to suggest, but I've been running Birthing Pod in my cube for a while now. I mostly draft 2-player, which greatly limits the consistency of archetype-based decks, so I was quite skeptical. However, I've been quite pleased--even with only one Pod in the cube, it presents a completely distinct deck type that grafts nicely on top of all sorts of decks--I've seen everything but Aggro Pod built, I think. And most games, the Pod chain never happens. However, the opportunity cost both for the deck and the cube is so low--it's just one card. You build a good whatever deck and pay attention to your creature curve, and Pod can often slot in. I've drafted it 80% through a draft, if I happened to have already drafted a good curve or lots of ETB effects. It's pretty loose for a hypercompetitive 360 list drafted by Spikes, but for those who like to experiment, it's awesome.

In other words, the card works even if you're not really building dedicated Pod decks.

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

pod is not worth supporting. 

when you play with it you'll draw your chain way too often and practically forgetting what's in your deck is also a pain. adding a bigger glut of etb creatures would warp the cube to the point where it would be worse (and then the pod player might not draft the pod, or might not draw it if he drafts it, etc)

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

(don't get me wrong, i love pod, it's just not a fun cube card)

black three-drops: (dunno what you're talking about, this is a rich pool) 

Liliana of the Veil

Bone Shredder

Vampire Nighthawk

Hypnotic Specter

Expunge

Reckless Spite

Corpse Dance

Stinkweed Imp

Victimize

Necroskitter

Underworld Connections

Necroplasm

Phyrexian Arena

etc

[Eric Chan]

when you play with it you'll draw your chain way too often and practically forgetting what's in your deck is also a pain.

It's funny, people can't even remember what's in their decks when they run out a Green Sun's Zenith. I can't count the number of times someone has tapped it with X=5, only to plop a two-drop on the table.

[Jason Waddell]

I will say Pod has been producing some diverse decks from week to week, and is so far one of the more fun and unique cards I've played with in a draft environment. I'm sure I won't support it forever, but there's some pretty good arguments for its inclusion. Anyways, my article discussing it comes out in three days, so I won't spend too much time making my case here. The players have been particularly excited about drafting around this card. 

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

interesting! i'm looking forward to it, maybe i'll be persuaded to give it another try :)

[Jason Waddell]

I was tooling around in TappedOut and drafted this deck against bots. Not sure if there's a better way to build it. Definitely wanted more elves if I could snag them, and would have liked a Skinrender type of creature. I guess bots don't take fetchlands. 

[tomc...@gmail.com]

Your cube is much (much) faster than mine, so it's interesting to see how different something like a Pod deck looks. I've always treated Pod as a way to cheat bigger creatures into play (as well as a fetch-a-toolbox-ETB-creature mechanism). I'd never considered stopping the chain at 5cc. Were you looking for fatties and not finding them, or is this typical for your builds? Secondary question: Would you have maindecked something totally off-color, say, Sun Titan and Angel of Serenity, if you'd seen them in the draft?

Personally, I have a horror of not seeing Ramp/Tinker/Reanimation/Pod/cheat-into-play targets when they're crucial to the archetype, and run two usually undrafted and probably unnecessary 6+ mana guys in each color as a result.

[Jason Waddell]

I actually don't have a ton of experience drafting pod myself. I've prototyped some decks and played lots of matches with it, but haven't pulled it together in an 8-man setting yet (some of our players love to play Pod). Not getting a 6-drop here was likely an error (especially with a Vorapede), as I overdrafted 3-drops. 

In the prototypes, I liked having a 5 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 type of curve, but there's certainly room for maneuvering. This is one of those archetypes that certainly has a learning curve. People have played constructed with it, but really never played a straight Pod draft deck. 

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

jason: i still think pod is impossible to support with singleton but out of all the themes you could do this one seems like one of the most fun

[Nathan Weizenbaum]

For a while after NPH came out, I had Birthing Pod in my (singleton) cube. I ended up removing it because it was more or less never played, and when people tried to play it it usually didn't work out. Then I drafted a friend's (also singleton) cube and took Pod, played it, and it was awesome.

The lesson I draw from this is that, in a singleton environment, it's very difficult to take Pod and build around it. You often have to bend over backwards to get a curve that works consistently (having only one card at a given CMC slot can doom the deck), and then you're punished for taking on-curve creatures over better cards when you don't draw Pod. But that doesn't mean it's impossible; sometimes a deck with the ideal Pod curve just comes together, and when you get Pod in it it's very sweet.

I think there's room for a few of these sorts of cards in a cube--cards that are last-picks 90% of the time, but the keystones of awesome decks the remaining 10%. I've recently decided to devote a single slot in my cube to a rotating high-risk build-around-me card like these, which adds an extra dash of excitement to the draft (currently that slot is occupied by Epic Experiment).

Presumably in a non-singleton cube where it's possible to get multiple copies of Birthing Pod, the risk/reward calculation is much more favorable.

[Calvin Chan]

Right, as with my experiences, pod does not fare well in singleton because you work so hard on your curve during the draft, and then may never draw your pod in game.
But Jason's entire archetype discussion is having 3 copies in a small cube to make the archetype viable.  With some of the gems and synergies that were dug up or recommended, I think pod looks like an extremely playable archetype in his cube.

[Jason Waddell]

It's certainly playable, but I'm still trying to figure out whether it's Tier 1 or not. I'm fine with it being a T1.5 or T2 thing, as it only really takes up 4 slots. People really love pod around here, so I don't know when I'll get the chance to play it in a real draft. I have played many test games with it in prototype games and had a blast. Many many viable builds. I'm personally a fan of the weird aggro-pod build that Threatens their creatures then Pods them post-combat into Hellriders and weird things. Really janky, but fun if you're in the mood for that. 

Zombie pod with Geralf's Messenger is very fun too. Or drive your opponent insane with Finks into Restoration Angel. Basically, you trade-off deck slots and picks for the ability to tutor up the creature that's best for each situation. 

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

yeah, part of the issue in singleton is that (though UWx 187s are a pushed theme!) most of the ETB cards are so good on their own. good luck having someone pass you both finks and angel.

[Jason Waddell]

That's part of the point. It's not a set deck from week to week. You have to scrap for the same cards everybody else wants. 

[Christopher Morris-Lent]

right, the variation is great. my point is more that in singleton, in order to support pod, you'd have to add several mediocre ETB creatures, which wouldn't be worth it. modern 4c pod is a beautiful deck, really just a masterpiece with so many synergies and bullets, but there's no way for my cube to make anything like it. with your breaks from singleton, though, you could come much closer, which is what excites me most about your ideas!