The Slaughter Pact - Junk Pod

Most of the local players should know me. My name is Slaughter. I play frequently and help out at Rocket's Hideout in Baton Rouge. I don't travel much to play Magic, but I try to attend a Grand Prix or two each year and I play in all the Grand Prix Trials that I can. I also regularly attend FNM and Tuesday Night Standard tournaments at the local shop. I am known to often play Mono-Red or Rogue lists, but I do go with the more popular Control lists from time to time.

Innistrad is a very interesting set to me. I was excited about it when I first heard that the father of magic (Richard Garfield) would be on the design team. If I am correct, the last set he worked on was Ravnica, which most would agree was one of the greatest sets in Magic's history. The flavor in this set feels very full with every single card and the art is also quite amazing.

This is a list I threw together to get some ideas buzzing and decided to share with the populous. There aren't many Innistrad cards listed, but everyone is encouraged to adjust the list to better suit their playstyle and metagame.

Junk Pod

4 Birds of Paradise

2 Avacyn's Pilgrim

4 Viridian Emissary

1 Sylvok Replica

2 Fiend Hunter

1 Blade Splicer

1 Mirran Crusader

2 Phyrexian Rager

1 Entomber Exarch

1 Glimmerpoint Stag

1 Hero of Bladehold

1 Necrotic Ooze

2 Skinrender

1 Thrun, the Last Troll

2 Acidic Slime

1 Archon of Justice

1 Grave Titan

1 Wurmcoil Engine

1 Sun Titan

4 Birthing Pod

2 Go For the Throat

1 Doom Blade

4 Woodland Cemetery

4 Razorverge Thicket

4 Sunpetal Grove

2 Isolated Chapel

4 Forest

3 Plains

2 Swamp

Section 1: Engines

I'm sure most are familiar with how this deck archetype works by now. The card advantage and quality that Birthing Pod can generate along with the board presence it can establish is very powerful and can get out of hand quickly if not kept in check by your opponent.

Birds of Paradise and Avacyn's Pilgrim can be used as to accelerate your deck into many options. A Birthing Pod or even a Phyrexian Rager on turn two can put you well on your way to victory. Fiend Hunter can also be a great way to slow down the pace of an aggro deck and give your field a good blocker on turn two.

Section 2: Interactions

There are many great interactions between your creatures and Birthing Pod. One of my favorite in this list would be the interactions between Sun Titan and Fiend Hunter. Using Fiend Hunter early to slow a game down and save some life by blocking, then returning it to play later to deal with a creature when Sun Titan hits play can get you out of some tight situations.

There are many more subtle tricks that can be pulled off with the list above, but I've got to leave something to the imagination.

Section 3: Finishing the game.

Grave Titan is easily one of the best finishers in standard. Dropping a 6/6 that gives you 10 power on the field is a difficult thing for your opponent to answer. Wurmcoil can also be used in a similar manner to climb back up from a low life total against any hyper-aggressive deck.

As I said before, this is just a basic list for an unknown metagame. If I were going to include a sideboard, I'm sure it would involve some number of Timely Reinforcements, an Elesh Norn, and maybe some more Exarchs. Try this out sometime and let me know how it goes. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

- Johnathan Slaughter