Ponza

General Plan#

Under the Ponza umbrella you can include several variants, mainly GW Ponza and RG Ponza, but also some hybrid versions with extra splashes or Oath packages.

The common trait of these decks is the mana denial plan: Ponza attacks lands directly with many dedicated spells.

You should usually expect:

• 4 Wasteland;
• 4 Rishadan Port;
• about 7–8 sorceries that destroy lands;
• Sphere of Resistance;
• manlands like Mishra’s Factory and Treetop Village;
• Oath of Druids as a way to apply pressure with Terravore;
• Sylvan Library as a source of advantage;
• various hate permanents post-board.

This makes the matchup complex because your mana isn’t just slowed down: it gets systematically attacked from multiple directions.

Sometimes you can still develop. A sequence like:

Land, Birds of Paradise. The land gets destroyed. New land, wall.

can give you enough time and mana to assemble a line. Other times, the game becomes very hard because you’re forced to sequence cards suboptimally.

In this matchup you often have to choose between casting a discard spell or playing a combo piece right away, knowing that next turn you may no longer have the mana to do it. This is one of the hardest parts of the matchup: you can’t always afford the theoretically correct play, because the mana may no longer exist a turn later.

GW Ponza vs RG Ponza#

GW Ponza#

Against the GW versions you should expect more direct interaction with your key permanents.

The main cards are:

• Swords to Plowshares;
• Naturalize;
• Disenchant;
• Seal of Cleansing;
• post-board, cards like Aura of Silence and Ray of Revelation.

This means GW is very good at interacting with Survival of the Fittest and with your key creatures. If your plan goes through Hermit Druid, you have to respect Swords. If it goes through Survival, you have to respect Disenchant, Naturalize, or Seal.

RG Ponza#

Against the RG versions, the matchup can be slightly better.

The reason is that RG tends to have less direct interaction with creatures once you’re already comboing in your turn. You should expect cards like:

• Pyroclasm;
• Earthquake;
• Naturalize;
• post-board, Pyroblast and artifact/enchantment hate.

These cards are very strong against mana creatures and small setup, but less effective at stopping a combo assembled in the same turn. If you can build a window where you put together the plan and close immediately, RG often has fewer ways to interact than GW.

For this reason, in general, you should consider RG a bit more favorable than GW. Not because it’s easy, but because their interaction lines up slightly worse against your most explosive lines.

The Mana Denial Problem#

The core of the matchup is mana development.

Sphere of Resistance is particularly annoying because it turns every sequence of yours into something slower. Survival costs more, discard spells cost more, Unearth costs more, post-board removal costs more. Even when you have the right cards, Sphere can prevent you from using all of them on the same turn.

This is a huge problem for hFEB, because many lines require not just resolving a card, but chaining multiple actions on the same turn.

The question to ask is:

Can I afford to wait a turn, or will my mana be too compromised by then?

Against Ponza, waiting isn’t free. Every extra turn can mean one less land, one more active Port, or a Sphere that makes the sequence you had in mind impossible.

The Opponent’s Pressure#

Unlike TerraGeddon, Ponza often needs to use a lot of mana to apply pressure.

The main threats are often manlands:

• Mishra’s Factory;
• Treetop Village.

This can mean the game goes slightly longer, because the opponent has to spend mana to attack. That said, this doesn’t mean you have plenty of time: the mana used to attack is the same mana that could be used for Port, land destruction, or interaction.

The real way Ponza puts on enormous pressure is through Terravore, often with Oath of Druids.

Oath of Druids and Terravore#

Oath of Druids is one of the most important cards to respect.

Against Ponza, playing a mana creature like Birds of Paradise can feel natural, because you need mana to play around Wasteland and land destruction. But if the opponent answers with Oath of Druids, the situation can change completely.

Oath can put Terravore into play, and the size of Terravore can vary a lot.

Sometimes it’ll be a 3/3, but it easily becomes a 5/5 with trample after a Wasteland. Other times it’ll already be a 10/10 or 12/12, effectively becoming worse than a Phyrexian Dreadnought, because it grows naturally as the game goes on.

For this reason, you have to be very careful about when you commit creatures to the board. It doesn’t mean you should never play Birds or walls, but you have to ask:

If the opponent plays Oath, can I punish it?

If your follow-up is strong (a double Hermit Druid, a Survival that immediately finds a useful answer, or a line that closes quickly) then you can accept the risk. If instead you’re simply playing a dork without a plan, you may be giving the opponent the best way to kill you.

Game 1#

Game 1 depends heavily on the opponent’s variant. Against GW, you have to play around Swords and removal for Survival. Against RG, you can be slightly more confident in building a combo on the same turn, because their interaction is more often sorcery-speed sweepers.

In both cases, though, you have to respect mana denial. This means that sometimes you have to make seemingly premature plays: casting Survival before you have a creature to discard, or playing Hermit Druid before you’re perfectly protected, simply because next turn you may no longer have the mana. Often you have to pick the least fragile line among several imperfect ones.

Post-Sideboard#

Post-board your plan is fairly similar against both variants: you want to bring in answers to key permanents and increase your ability to survive long enough to assemble a combo.

The cards to consider are:

• Naturalize;
• Uktabi Orangutan;
• Swords to Plowshares;
• Ray of Revelation;
• Monk Realist;
• any other artifact/enchantment answers.

Artifact removal is useful against:

• Mox;
• Sphere of Resistance;
• Cursed Totem, if present;
• any other hate permanents.

Enchantment removal is useful against:

• Oath of Druids;
• Sylvan Library;
• Aura of Silence.

Opponent’s Sideboard#

RG#

Against RG you can expect:

• Pyroblast;
• additional sweepers like Pyroclasm;
• Tormod’s Crypt;
• Naturalize or other ways to break Survival.

Cabal Therapy calls are often more straightforward against RG. Since Naturalize is the main way they can break Survival, naming Naturalize becomes a very clear line.

GW#

Against GW the post-board is heavier.

You can expect:

• Aura of Silence;
• Seal of Cleansing;
• Ray of Revelation;
• Tormod’s Crypt;
• possible hate permanents.

This makes GW more complicated. Their answers are more numerous, more distributed, and often harder to name with Cabal Therapy.

The Survival plan becomes more fragile, but the Hermit Druid plan isn’t free either, because you still have to respect Swords, Crypt, and Oath.

Eladamri’s Vineyard#

Eladamri’s Vineyard is an interesting card in this matchup, more so than against TerraGeddon.

Against GW, though, it’s hard for it to stay in play long. Cards like Ray of Revelation are particularly annoying because they can remove Vineyard and then remain available from the graveyard to hit a future Survival. Many GW lists run at least a couple of Rays, so you can’t take it for granted that Vineyard survives.

That said, if Vineyard sticks, it can be very strong. In general, you convert green mana better than they do. You can use that mana for Survival, to develop multiple spells on the same turn, and to recover from mana denial. Ponza’s lands enter tapped, only produce colorless, or require mana to activate. Plus, they don’t have many creatures to cast naturally. This makes Vineyard more asymmetrical in your favor.

The limit is that Vineyard helps you put pieces on the board, but it doesn’t help them stay there. If the problem is resolving Survival, Vineyard can help. If the problem is protecting it from Naturalize, Disenchant, or Ray, then a discard spell can be better because it covers both phases: it can strip a land destruction spell or a removal.

For this reason, you shouldn’t consider Vineyard an automatic answer. It’s powerful in some games, but it has to be evaluated based on the opponent’s variant and your hand.

The Lobstercon Version#

A special note has to be made about the Ponza version that Top8 at Lobstercon.

That list is basically GW, but post-board it splashes blue for Meddling Mage and red for Pyroclasm. From your point of view, this makes the matchup even harder to read.

It isn’t fully clear how the opponent should sideboard against hFEB, because they have many potentially strong cards but not all of them fit perfectly together. Meddling Mage and Pyroclasm aren’t cards you always want to see in the same hand. That said, the combination can still be effective: Pyroclasm clears the board, and then Mage can shut off a line by naming a key combo piece.

It’s possible that the opponent cuts some Sylvan Library to make room for Meddling Mage or other interaction. In any case, this version can be even harder than the traditional GW variants, because it adds another axis of hate.

Against Meddling Mage you have to consider bringing in removal like:

• Swords to Plowshares;
• Ghitu Slinger;
• Pyroclasm.

Oath / Quiet Speculation#

Within this category you can also include the Oath / Quiet Speculation version, a sort of hybrid between TerraGeddon and Ponza.

These lists combine several very annoying elements:

• Armageddon;
• Cataclysm;
• Quiet Speculation;
• Volcanic Spray with flashback;
• Ray of Revelation;
• Call of the Herd;
• Swords to Plowshares main deck;
• post-board, Meddling Mage and additional interaction.

The Quiet Speculation package is particularly problematic because it gives access to flashback cards, so your discard spells become less clean. If you discard Ray of Revelation or Volcanic Spray, you haven’t really solved the problem: those cards stay usable from the graveyard.

Post-board, these lists often replace part of the Oath plan with Meddling Mage, making specific removal necessary. Here too, cards like Swords and Ghitu Slinger become important.

This matchup doesn’t need to be treated as a completely separate section, because the general approach stays similar: it’s a middle ground between TerraGeddon and Ponza. But you have to recognize that it combines some of the worst aspects of both.

Cabal Therapy and Duress#

In these matchups Cabal Therapy calls aren’t always clear.

Against RG they can be simpler, because often the truly problematic cards are easier to identify: Naturalize, Pyroblast, Oath or Pyroclasm depending on the spot.

Against GW and Oath/Spec, the problem is that the answers are more distributed. The opponent can have Seal, Naturalize, Ray, Swords, Oath, Library, Armageddon, Cataclysm, or Meddling Mage. On top of that, some of these cards have flashback or are tutorable with Enlightened Tutor.

Duress can be useful, but here too it isn’t always easy to figure out how much. It can strip a relevant card, but the opponent has so much redundancy. So resolving a discard spell isn’t enough: you have to figure out whether that discard actually opens a window.

The general rule is:

Use discard to protect the window in which you win, not just to strip a strong card.