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Plague Boiler kills everything for 9 mana in a black/green deck.

And when you say "poor man's" I believe you should point out just how dramatic the difference is. for instance, Pernicious Deed is from a block notorious for its difficulty to acquire and its expensiveness on MTGO.

If you could find Pernicious Deeds for sale or trade it will easily be in the 20 dollar/ticket range. On the other hand, Plague Boiler is a ten cent/bulk rare. For the cost of one Pernicious Deed you could have yourself 4 Plague Boilers and say, 4 Lord of Extinction.

Chaos multiplayer games are all about politics and having answers. The games will usually last longer because players have to think about the problems that will need to be dealt with in a few turns and there's just more damage that needs to be done. Most of the single player staples carry over but there are some cards that come into there own in multiplayer.

Cards with rattle snake effects are amazing and some of my favorites. All of the seal cards such as seal of cleansing , seal of primordium , seal of fire and similar cards such as parallax wave do a good job of making players reconsider what moves they're going to make with little investment.

A pair of seal of fire that have been sitting around plus some instant in your hand can easily move the game your way or even kill a player who is about to make a power play. The other thing its good for is making players afraid to play their important 1/1 and 2/2 creatures. In a 6+ player game you can have 2-3 players holding back, waiting for someone else to byte the bullet.

There are also cards that become much better in multiplayer like soul warden , essence warden , sun droplet , and rhystic study . Cards that are balanced in single player can become epic in a game with 4+ people.

Cards that can be cast as instants are also worth looking at. Never forget about fault line as a replacement for earthquake . There's no better response to an all out attack than nuking everything and blaming it on the other guy (don't laugh, sometimes it works).

As far as defencive instants go consider constant mists . It's a fog that can be used over and over late game.

Never forget to keep multiplayer politics in mind when choosing cards. Any cards that can make you a threat without making you look like a threat are awesome. Just remember, some cards can have the opposite effect too.

I've become a big fan clock of omens for its political potential. When its combined with cards like howling mine and Genesis chamber you can give you and maybe one or two other players an advantage, changing the balance of power. It also works as a piece in several combo's.

Overabundance is another card that can change a game's dynamic subtly and is fun to abuse with cards like tamanoa and sun droplet . It can even win you the game if you are willing to risk playing earthquake because your deck should have taken less damage than the others.