I would do this:

-3 Scorpions
-4 Mind Rot
-2 Flesh to Dust
-2 Ragers
-3 Tribute to Hunger

+2 Agent of the Fates
+3 Paragon of Open Graves
+1 Hall of Triumph
+4 Assassinate
+2 Nightmare (however you'd need to drop the Fountains for this)
+2 Bloodghast

2 Nightmares with already included 2 Rune-Scarred and Griselbrand is bit of overkill, IMO. Also, I wouldn't swap Flesh to Dust with Assassinate because it allows you to deal with threats instantly instead of waiting a turn and losing life. All in all, Paragons, Bloodghasts and Hall of Triumph make it less of a control build and more mid-range, which is not he point of Mega's build.

My take on Mono Black. Creature heavy.

Nightmare ElmSt

27 Creatures:
4 Pharika's Chosen
4 Child Of Night
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Liliana's Specter
3 Paragon Of Open Graves
2 GraveBorn Muse
2 Indulgent Tormentor
1 Shadowborn Demon
2 Nightmare
1 Rune-Scarred Demon

8 Spells:
3 Ulcerate
2 Dead Weight
1 Rescue From The Underworld
2 Flesh To Dust

Enchantments:
1 Hall Of Champions

24 Lands:

24 Swamp

Control builds suck against tokens at the moment (at least for me. God I wish we had some sweeper...) so I decided to switch to a more midrage build. Got rid of Scorps, Mind Rots and couple of other things. Running something along these lines now:

Swamps x 24

Creatures x 22

4 x Pharika's Chosen
4 x Liliana's Specter
4 x Phyrexian Rager
2 x Agent of the Fates
1 x Graveborn Muse
2 x Paragon of Open Graves
1 x Shadowborn Demon
2 x Indulgent Tormentor
2 x Rune-Scarred Demon

Spells x 12

2 x Dead Weight
4 x Undying Evil
2 x Vicious Hunger
2 x Flesh to Dust
2 x Tribute to Hunger

Still got 2 more slots to fill. Either 1 x Muse + Tribute or 2 x Child of Night to fill that empty 2cmc slot.

Still not sure about Paragons - how are they working for you, guys? Haven't seen one in like 6 or 7 games to test it...

Assassinate let's you deal with threats two turns earlier. Getting hit twice or more by a creature for those 2 turns while you wait to be able to remove it with Flesh to Dust will lose you far more life. And that's assuming you do not miss a single land drop.



Indeed. And the reason I suggested it is that control-biased mono black is not good in the format right now. And it never will be till it gets a board sweeper and/or powerful card draw like Sign in Blood or Promise of Power.

Both are fair points, mate I still prefer flesh to dust to use it before I get him by that 7/7 trampler or 5/5 lifelinker. That's a tool I use for a late game bombs. Dead Weight/Vicious Hunger/Ulcerate along with Tribute usually help me get rid of all early threats.

Do you really find Tribute to Hunger to be good? I can see why you'd run it in BW Life/Death, but I feel the other removal options offered by black are generally better. The most common decks I've seen recently are, *by far*, RDW/Goblins, GW Tokens, BW Life Death. Against those decks Tribute tends to kill a 1/1, or Lone Missionary at best. The times it nails you a Baneslayer are extremely rare. I dropped it ages ago.

Yeah, it's pretty underwhelming with the amount of weenie decks running around. I like Dead Weight and a Shadowborn Demon/Flesh to Dust for most decks, and Ulcerate for very aggressive decks.

Well, with a lot of cheap removal for 1-2cmc it's pretty easy to save Tribute for the bombs that will eventually come to the battlefield. Because even the most token-based decks still run Baneslayer or some other angel/another fatty. Yeah, there are times when all you have on the other side of table is a bunch of x/1 and x/2 but for every one of each there are lone top-decked Rune-Scarred or Terra Stomper which could ruin the game if all you have is cheap removal. It could be swapped to Assassinate but I like to use my removal before the creture gets to attack me, it also could be swapped to Flesh to Dust, but I prefer to use both of them.

Removal is always a very subjective matter, it's hard to agree on same removal spells/amount of them, everyone prefers their own combination.

Strong mono black deck with extra win condition of blood tribute 1 shot kill. Other win conditions, simply beat down and suffer the past, sanguine bond may assist.

Deck works well, 1v1 deck obviously

Spells

3 ulcerate
3 suffer the past
3 undying evil
2 vicious hunger
3 tribute to hunger
3 assassinate
2 sanguine bond
2 flesh to dust
2 blood tribute

Creatures

2 bloodghast
3 child of night
2 pharika's chosen
3 giant scorpion
2 graveborn muse
1 shadowborn demon
2 indulgent tormentor

18 swamp
4 radiant fountain

Just wanted to say that I tried couple of builds from this thread because my own underperformed and yours run better than others Pretty consistent and good versus both fast and slow decks. Have you done any updates on it, mate?

Don't believe so, been playing other decks since it seemed consistent enough. I do plan on going back to it, just busy with work. And spent soooo much time on Mono green lately, up until now. Don't know why but always liked Mono Black, Mono green. don't care for Blue, Red, or White when going mono. And hard for other mono decks to compare, a 1 mana Deathtouch stops a lot of stuff. lol.
Thanks for checking it out.

I've been a mono-black fan myself since the first time I tried Magic Second favorite is Jund, then Dimir. Can't play a deck if it doesn't include black, that's my weakness

You know Hanika, I have a deck very similar to that. Maybe about 8-10 cards off, but running all the specters, ragers, and finishing with the nightmares and tormentors, etc. I keep meaning to get back to doing more testing for my mono-black but always end up getting side-tracked, lol.

I'm trying a black weenie deck and found that darksteel axe seems really strong in it, with the option of equipping a bloodghast, a regenerating creature or a specter. So far I have:

2 cruel sadist
3 tormented hero
3 quest for the gravelord
3 ulcerate
1 asphodel wanderer
3 Pharika's chosen
3 dead weight
2 undying evil
2 bloodghast
4 walking corpse
4 Liliana's specter
2 phyrexian rager
2 graveborn muse
3 paragon of open graves
2 darksteel axe
1 hall of triumph

and 20 lands (1 radiant fountain because why not).

Reasons to play black if you want to go aggro: the paragon is the strongest of its cycle, you get the best 1-mana removal, quest for the gravelord, liliana's specters are good no matter how aggressive the deck is, and graveborn muse. On the other hand you don't get triplicate spirits and the walking corpses are necessary to fill the 2 mana slot.
I actually like the cruel sadist, seems like a good way to fill gaps in your mana curve (if you are not going to spend all your mana this turn, pump her once) and if you keep a hand with no removal and you are afraid of some nasty 2-toughness creature coming from the opponent you can plan to use her second ability to kill it.

Another reason why the black paragon is really strong is because you can recur him efficiently with gravedigger. However, that might be too slow for head-on aggro.

Gravedigger is too slow but the phyrexian rager is pretty good, if I find that I tend to run out of cards - which would not be surprising given all the 1-drops I have, but hasn't really happened yet - I could add more of those.

The deck seems decent so far, not sure how I could improve the matchup against token based decks while staying in 1 color. Any suggestions?

Yesterday I finally got all of the premiums, and I have to say Mono Control is looking a lot better! Mainly thanks to Vicious Hunger, which provides 4x removal for a lot of the game's creatures (under 3 toughness) and a way to balance your life total against Ulcerate, Graveborn Muse, and early aggro.

Lords of Death
2 x Ulcerate
4 x Dead Weight
4 x Vicious Hunger
3 x Tribute to Hunger
2 x Assassinate
4 x Flesh to Dust
1 x Suffer the Past

2 x Graveborn muse
3 x Corpse Maggot
2 x Indulgent Tormentor
1 x Shadowborn Demon
2 x Nightmare
2 x Rune-Scarred Demon
1 x Griselbrand
1 x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

22 x Swamp
4 x Radiant Fountain


The goal is to kill their threats with a plethora of removal, gain life to offset lifeloss or survive early aggro, and finish them with big flyers and card advantage.
As you can see, there's a lot of removal. The Ulcerates are your way to 2-for-1 juicy Aura targets, but running 3 would diminish our life total too much.
The only removal I'm unsure about, is Assassinate. I currently run 2 just as extra killspells against ramp/big creatures.

Most creatures offer some form of card advantage. Nightmare is there simply as a big body. Even with the Radiant Fountains, Nightmare can and will grow quite big. Rotfeaster Maggot is there both as a durable (somewhat defensive) creature and to gain back some life. It's 3/5 stats make it very resilient to most forms of removal. There's only 3 due to limited room; 1 more could join in if an Assassinate were to be removed.
I included Kozilek as protection against milling and a way to outlast other control decks that carry a lot of removal.

This deck is a lot of fun and reasonably consistent at winning. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling in a similar way that 2014's LoD did.

Because of the popularity of graveyard/spider spawning decks, I would cut that assassinate for another maggot or suffer the past. Another couple options that would fit well are quest for the gravelord or galvanic Juggernaut

Personally, I think Assassinate is underrated and would probably keep a couple copies handy. Also, my mono-black runs nightmare and after a few lackluster nightmares due to radiant fountains I cut them all for more Swamps. I think it is better off that way. You have enough life gain as it is to make up for any life loss.