That moment at 19:02... Where the Grief saw triple Sword to Plowshares as Phil commented that he was hoping not to see double removal had me laughing out loud. Be careful what you wish for, I guess!
59:20 Sheoldred's Verdict would be a fun card. "Choose one: - Each player sacrifices all nontoken creatures. - Each player sacrifices all creature tokens. - Each player sacrifices all planeswalkers."
match 1, game 1, turn 3 "Noteably, my opponent has fewer cards in library than I do, I might just deck them out" Oh yeah, its gonna be a fun video. Love seeing you this excited for a deck. Sheo goes brrr
@@RedLexLuthur Ayara is great. She also keeps your life total high if there are other burn players in your pod. But Syr Konrad + Morality Shift can easily deal 30+ damage to each opponent in one turn, and let you finish them off with some combination of Woe Strider, Bloodghast, Pox Walkers and similar effects into Dread Return for something like Canoptek Scarab Swarm or Gray Merchant to finish off anyone still alive. Konrad + Mind Crank can also just be GG. Whenever somebody mills a creature, each opponent takes 1 damage and mills a card. If anyone is playing a creature heavy deck, that can burn out the whole table in one cascade of damage.
The 5th game had such great flavour. Really did feel like the cycle of a monarch - my theory is the zombie tokens are the unfed commoners who died and begin rallying, while the monarch sits on high amassing riches and throwing soldiers out slowly to die
ye i agree that force at the grief was a slight missplay, considering he could have known you are baiting to make way for sheoldred (game 1) i believe he tought countering the grief allows him to remove sheoldred with swords, little did he know there was reanimate in your hand XD
13:05 I think this is a classic "who is the beatdown" mistake. If you had inevitability in this matchup, sure take the Ponder. But you don't, hence take the Swords that is going to blow up your orc / Sheoldred. This is a mistake that a lot of good players make: they're so used to playing control decks with inevitability, that when they play midrange-against-control and they don't have inevitability, they still play as if they have inevitability (when they should be playing as if they're the beatdown because that's how their deck lines up).
Surprised somewhat to not see 1 copy of retrofitter foundry. Decent enough card on it's own, can be used to establish a contamination lock and eventually outpace the sacrificing.
Interestingly, since Contamination doesn’t shut down Urza’s Saga, it would be possible to play a Saga package with Retrofitter foundry. Heck, is it possible to slot Contamination into UB Ninjas? Bitterblossom wouldn’t be terrible there either…
@@realperson69 you might be able to play it in ninja's as a card to lock the game when you're ahead, but there's definitely some awkwardness with locking out your own blue spells. Feels like it'd be better as it's own thing.
This mught be really good in a glimpse of tommorow style deck once it goes off youll have creatires and then lock them out with the containmination or infernal darkness type cards lol😊
At 14:29 Force pitch Spell Pierce on Grief happens post Brainstorm which you think is a really strange play but it makes perfect sense to me. If Grief resolves it just takes force, so either way your down Force. The options here are to be with a Spell Pierce but facing down a Grief and giving up hand info, or to use the Spell Pierce as effectively 0 mana swords to Plowshares by pitching it. You could always hide force on top, but after Grief takes a card your so low on cards you can't really afford to Pitch Force anymore, especially sense your facing down 4 on board power.
1:19 I feel like it should be noted contamination has one massive upside compared to blood moon - it hits basics. While contamination is in play, an opponent without artifact mana can never cast their nonblack spells - especially important in games 2 and 3 where they can use their early fetches to grab basics.
Black is by far my favorite color and the beats of these games is why. Black just dominates resources in a way I find very interesting and zero sum fun.
@@012998Mnb It seems unlikely to get that big, but I guess that can be better than the evasion. I just worry about accidentally attacking the triggers such that you make the token bigger before you sacrifice it to contamination.
Hi, casual commander player here so I don't know Card legality or meta pieces, but I wanted to know of Ophiomancer had any viability in the decklist? I've used that one and Contamination as a soft lockout before in commander games.
I was wondering if The Meathook Massacre isn't a perfect card for a deck like this. It swipes the board, if gains you life, it hurts the opponent, it's black.
In the beginning you mention blood moon "destroys" urzas saga because it doesn't have the Lord counter it needs. I thought it was the opposite way: it loses the chapter abilities and goes to the gy because it has the saga type and 0 chapters, and needs to go because it has at least the same amount of lore counters
Don't really consider this a mono-black prison breakthrough honestly. The contribution Contamination has in this deck list is miniscule. Bowmasters, Sheoldred, Grief, you're winning with those anyway without Contamination. In the decks current state, you would be better off dropping the Trolls and just playing Duathi Voidwalker, changing the 2x Bitterblossoms for 2x Tourach, Dread Cantor. I get wanting to make a card you love work, I really do. But Contamination's contribution is just not there in this build. I would lean more toward cards that turn Contamination's upkeep cost into attrition value. Something like Meathook Massacre would be have much more synergy, especially if you need a board wipe. With the token generation + contamination, it just works. Hell even Vraan, Executioner Thane would shine. I could even see slipping in one Lloth, Spider Queen.
I never liked Contamination, mainly because it doesn't address other mono-black decks, artifact decks, or even decks that access mana from sources other than land. It is boring when it works (winning is fun but better when it felt like more than a lucky draw), and it is a dead card (sometimes only partially) when it doesn't. That said, I used to have a Contamination deck back in the day. It was designed from the ground up to win vs other black decks, with Contamination and ways to sustain it built in to handle orher colors. Had discard to hit any instants that might remove it same turn. Worked well, got dismantled because it was not exciting to play or play against.
I play Infernal Darkness and Contamination in my EDH mono black zombie deck. Stops a table in their tracks usually. Hall of Gemstone is another fun one to run in Green, (it's abit more fair) it's an upkeep trigger, and get to choose color. So you are able use your colored lands in upkeep before choice. After that you are locked into a solid color for the turn.
This might be a good deck to play the mh2 suspension tutor in so u dont have to play that many contaminations and get it when u need it after u have a board.
that is true but the one deck that ran Contamination had more than enough removal for it so it wasn`t that big of a deal. It sure as hell was annoying.
10:39 Without any knowledge about future. Why not attack with 4/4 horde to face and 1/1 to narset ? If opponent wants to trade 4/4 he looses narset. If he kills 1/1 he can only chump or take 4 in which case horde becomes 5/5 next turn and you get another 1/1 from land so keeping monarch becomes quite hard. 1/1 can't block anyway and there is potential to gain something from that attack.
After comparing it to Blood Moon in the intro, you forgot to highlight the fact that Contamination affects basic lands. 😅 I know that and you know that, but TH-cam viewers? Just between you and me, they look like they might not read cards. 😉
I love it when the kind of suspect card carries some weight in the games
That moment at 19:02...
Where the Grief saw triple Sword to Plowshares as Phil commented that he was hoping not to see double removal had me laughing out loud. Be careful what you wish for, I guess!
"maybe I just take a draw to see if I get Plague Engineer"
"i'm _so_ good at magic"
My man, you ain't wrong.
59:20 Sheoldred's Verdict would be a fun card.
"Choose one: - Each player sacrifices all nontoken creatures. - Each player sacrifices all creature tokens. - Each player sacrifices all planeswalkers."
match 1, game 1, turn 3 "Noteably, my opponent has fewer cards in library than I do, I might just deck them out" Oh yeah, its gonna be a fun video. Love seeing you this excited for a deck. Sheo goes brrr
I'm such a fan of contamination, and this warmed my heart to see this work. I used to play this in erebos edh w/ ophiomancer.
Btw, i LOVE how much you play black stompy decks
Have you ever tried Syr Konrad? I've been having a lot of fun playing mono black burn in commander lately.
@@epsteindidntkillhimself69Ayara is silly as a burn style deck, I've lost games to army of the damned and friends.
@@RedLexLuthur Ayara is great. She also keeps your life total high if there are other burn players in your pod. But Syr Konrad + Morality Shift can easily deal 30+ damage to each opponent in one turn, and let you finish them off with some combination of Woe Strider, Bloodghast, Pox Walkers and similar effects into Dread Return for something like Canoptek Scarab Swarm or Gray Merchant to finish off anyone still alive.
Konrad + Mind Crank can also just be GG. Whenever somebody mills a creature, each opponent takes 1 damage and mills a card. If anyone is playing a creature heavy deck, that can burn out the whole table in one cascade of damage.
Mono blue, Blood Moon comes into play, I counter that spell for two blue mana, o wait, I have sapphire medallion. Just one.
I LOVE contamination. Was baby’s first combo in my O.G. chainer deck
Awesome deck, that last match was incredible
The 5th game had such great flavour. Really did feel like the cycle of a monarch - my theory is the zombie tokens are the unfed commoners who died and begin rallying, while the monarch sits on high amassing riches and throwing soldiers out slowly to die
This was excellent magic. This wasn’t even close to jank. Not only did contamination win games, but the token enablers did work without it. Well done.
Love the history lesson. It's like an old dream finally came true. Awesome!
28:00 was amazing, the disbelief as opponent tapped and untapped the Volc was palpable.
it's at 46:05 onwards
ye i agree that force at the grief was a slight missplay, considering he could have known you are baiting to make way for sheoldred (game 1) i believe he tought countering the grief allows him to remove sheoldred with swords, little did he know there was reanimate in your hand XD
congratulations, I bet this will motivate many people to give the card a try!
honestly was more impressed with Dreadhoarde's synergy with Orcish Bowmaster. very curious if this is a real synergy or not
Yeah, that actually looks somewhat good.
Most of the time it feels bad cause flying for murky and you rather go wide I feel. But if they don't have removal it's nice.
Really cool that this deck is relatively cheap compared to alot of legacy decks too
13:05 I think this is a classic "who is the beatdown" mistake. If you had inevitability in this matchup, sure take the Ponder. But you don't, hence take the Swords that is going to blow up your orc / Sheoldred.
This is a mistake that a lot of good players make: they're so used to playing control decks with inevitability, that when they play midrange-against-control and they don't have inevitability, they still play as if they have inevitability (when they should be playing as if they're the beatdown because that's how their deck lines up).
Contamination has always been my favorite pet card ever. Excited to see you made it into a deck!
Surprised somewhat to not see 1 copy of retrofitter foundry. Decent enough card on it's own, can be used to establish a contamination lock and eventually outpace the sacrificing.
Interestingly, since Contamination doesn’t shut down Urza’s Saga, it would be possible to play a Saga package with Retrofitter foundry.
Heck, is it possible to slot Contamination into UB Ninjas? Bitterblossom wouldn’t be terrible there either…
@@realperson69 you might be able to play it in ninja's as a card to lock the game when you're ahead, but there's definitely some awkwardness with locking out your own blue spells. Feels like it'd be better as it's own thing.
I've historically been a huge fan of contamination in duel commander, so I get hype every time I see it pop up!
Ah yes Contamination. An old school black prison archetype from days past.
'this feels illegal' 🤣 what an awesome attack
Game 5 was the chalice of the void from hell.
Im glad mono black got a nice bump, orcs fighting the monarch was justice!
After seeing Phil reanimate a DRC, I remembered a game in which I reanimated the opponent’s scavenging ooze to eat the opponent’s uro
This was beautiful. This was art
Oh yeah it’s all coming together
31:40 that was a really good play / call.
This mught be really good in a glimpse of tommorow style deck once it goes off youll have creatires and then lock them out with the containmination or infernal darkness type cards lol😊
At 14:29 Force pitch Spell Pierce on Grief happens post Brainstorm which you think is a really strange play but it makes perfect sense to me. If Grief resolves it just takes force, so either way your down Force. The options here are to be with a Spell Pierce but facing down a Grief and giving up hand info, or to use the Spell Pierce as effectively 0 mana swords to Plowshares by pitching it. You could always hide force on top, but after Grief takes a card your so low on cards you can't really afford to Pitch Force anymore, especially sense your facing down 4 on board power.
1:19 I feel like it should be noted contamination has one massive upside compared to blood moon - it hits basics. While contamination is in play, an opponent without artifact mana can never cast their nonblack spells - especially important in games 2 and 3 where they can use their early fetches to grab basics.
1:03:34 has got to be one of the first times arena has ever been entered in legacy
its the only time ive ever seen it used!
Bloodgast, recurring graveyard creatures, drop of honey comes to mind also, cabal cof.
Match 5 keeping up with the opponent who had both the monarch and initiative with your single draw per turn was incredibly satisfying. Grind them out!
Great deck wonderful play lines also. 👏 👏
Since you have all those tokens you could play recurring nightmare
Black is by far my favorite color and the beats of these games is why. Black just dominates resources in a way I find very interesting and zero sum fun.
Very interesting deck. Feels like a very black strategy I like it !!
Round 1 was exciting!
I play with Mirrex a lot in Standard, it's very cool to see it playing well in Legacy :)
Outgrinding initiative, thats impressive 😂
Clear cut case of that opponent getting trolled by the blocking restriction :P
what is the upside of running more Dreadhorde Invasion than Bitterblossom?
Invasion, like skrelvs hive, gives your tokens lifelink once a condition has been cleared
@@012998Mnb It seems unlikely to get that big, but I guess that can be better than the evasion. I just worry about accidentally attacking the triggers such that you make the token bigger before you sacrifice it to contamination.
Amass makes a bigger creature.
Don't you love it when your opponent is cursing the fact that they hold the monarchy
I’m here for the tree and the munchies. Let’s get it.
that final game was hilarious
Contamination..... that's exactly what Clown Car needed.
Would echoing decay be a good answer to forth eorlingas?
Hi, casual commander player here so I don't know Card legality or meta pieces, but I wanted to know of Ophiomancer had any viability in the decklist? I've used that one and Contamination as a soft lockout before in commander games.
I've played it in older builds. It was slow, but not unreasonable.
@1:01:16 that’s what she said
I almost feel like contamination was made for the old stack rules with Karakas in mind lol.
Love it! Next time I want to see a Desolation prison. 🖤
...coming up!!!
Good lord game two against the show and tell player, that was almost tough to watch
why does the Dreadhorde Invasion trigger on the stack spell out "one" lol
Ophiomancer is a MUST in Contamination decks
Man that round 1 game 1 was frustrating..
Amazing deck
17:43 I think he played it like that to play around bowmasters. He's probably holding plow
Fun deck, thanks.
31:49 lol
48:29 too good
I was wondering if The Meathook Massacre isn't a perfect card for a deck like this. It swipes the board, if gains you life, it hurts the opponent, it's black.
Meathook massacre would be solid in this deck
That final game was amazing.
I want to live in a world that smallpox and contamination can coexist
In the beginning you mention blood moon "destroys" urzas saga because it doesn't have the Lord counter it needs. I thought it was the opposite way: it loses the chapter abilities and goes to the gy because it has the saga type and 0 chapters, and needs to go because it has at least the same amount of lore counters
I really think the Troll is a legit legacy card. It's an absurd card in pauper as everyone seems to be discovering a week later than it should have.
9:00 Zombie Orc Army!
:0 impossible. contamination in constructed?
Can't wait for it to be contaminating time.
Borcish Owmaster at it again
Don't really consider this a mono-black prison breakthrough honestly. The contribution Contamination has in this deck list is miniscule. Bowmasters, Sheoldred, Grief, you're winning with those anyway without Contamination. In the decks current state, you would be better off dropping the Trolls and just playing Duathi Voidwalker, changing the 2x Bitterblossoms for 2x Tourach, Dread Cantor.
I get wanting to make a card you love work, I really do. But Contamination's contribution is just not there in this build. I would lean more toward cards that turn Contamination's upkeep cost into attrition value. Something like Meathook Massacre would be have much more synergy, especially if you need a board wipe. With the token generation + contamination, it just works. Hell even Vraan, Executioner Thane would shine. I could even see slipping in one Lloth, Spider Queen.
that last game was sick
"This feels illegal" 🤣
A quick note future phil may want to address, all WAR amass spells have been erratad to "amass zombies X"
I stand corrected. Amass is a strange ability
I never liked Contamination, mainly because it doesn't address other mono-black decks, artifact decks, or even decks that access mana from sources other than land. It is boring when it works (winning is fun but better when it felt like more than a lucky draw), and it is a dead card (sometimes only partially) when it doesn't.
That said, I used to have a Contamination deck back in the day. It was designed from the ground up to win vs other black decks, with Contamination and ways to sustain it built in to handle orher colors. Had discard to hit any instants that might remove it same turn. Worked well, got dismantled because it was not exciting to play or play against.
Would spear help with life
I play Infernal Darkness and Contamination in my EDH mono black zombie deck.
Stops a table in their tracks usually.
Hall of Gemstone is another fun one to run in Green, (it's abit more fair) it's an upkeep trigger, and get to choose color.
So you are able use your colored lands in upkeep before choice. After that you are locked into a solid color for the turn.
Even using it as a 'Time Walk' is fun too.
What a cool league
This might be a good deck to play the mh2 suspension tutor in so u dont have to play that many contaminations and get it when u need it after u have a board.
One more thing that made contamination very bad in legacy previously was deathrite shaman. It was legal when i played a few years ago.
that is true but the one deck that ran Contamination had more than enough removal for it so it wasn`t that big of a deal. It sure as hell was annoying.
30:53 lol 3 and 3
Love contamination
Obligatory algorithmic contribution
suprised no hymn to tourach in this deck. but theres only so many deck slots
38:38 sorry to hear about the swamp ass
Yes phil, this is what I’m here for
Am I the villan for rooting for the control deck in round 1? Or does it mean that Brian taught me well?
Mono black without Hymn. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
Why isnt mystic sanctuary banned?
Oh god, it's so big
10:39 Without any knowledge about future. Why not attack with 4/4 horde to face and 1/1 to narset ? If opponent wants to trade 4/4 he looses narset. If he kills 1/1 he can only chump or take 4 in which case horde becomes 5/5 next turn and you get another 1/1 from land so keeping monarch becomes quite hard. 1/1 can't block anyway and there is potential to gain something from that attack.
the most fun game was the game in which you decked your opponent
a good one indeed!
I would the land that amasses
Urza's Saga strongest set!
Yesssss, wait nooooooooo, I wanted to do this and say I created it lol.....
I'll just enjoy the pain I guess.
"I finally broke it" the video still said. Dude. You didn't break anything.
After years of trying to make Contamination work unsuccessfully, I built a successful, Legacy-viable build. That's a win.
After comparing it to Blood Moon in the intro, you forgot to highlight the fact that Contamination affects basic lands. 😅 I know that and you know that, but TH-cam viewers? Just between you and me, they look like they might not read cards. 😉
I always wonder if infernal darkness woukd be better
1:00:00 why not just.....kill him with Bowmasters. Just dome for 3 every turn