What instant effect does Indulgent Tormentor have on the battlefield besides being a removal magnet? It can't even fight anything besides turn 2 crap because of its lacking toughness, and gets whacked by combat tricks regularly if you ever try to block it with it.. Baneslayer Angel eats it for breakfast. Nightmare isn't just a vanilla flyer.. the next turn when you drop Rune Scarred.. it will be a 7/7, then an 8/8. It isn't like it doesn't have a special ability. It curves out quite nicely in a late game flyers build.. T5 Tormentor, T6 Nightmare, T7 Rune Scarred, T8 Griselbrand should you choose to run it. This build is doable now but will be even moreso if we ever get a sweeper. Right now I stall the enemy with Giant Scorpions, discard, Spectres, Ragers, and cheap removal of key early game creatures with Dead Weight (which I find far superior to Vicious Hunger).

I run Nightmare in my mono-black deck. He (she?) is the main win condition. I'll post the deck build later, still got to test Flesh to Dust in it.

Regarding Dead Weight versus Vicious Hunger, I prefer the latter. There have been games where the life gain was relevant and I don't often run into Creepy Doll. I can see why you would want to run the former though.

The reason I like Dead Weight better is bc it's cheaper cost allows me to do more in a single turn, particularly turn 4. Say the guy across from me just tapped out to play Talrand, Guttersnipe or Goblin Rabblemaster. Now I can remove them, and play one of my 3 drops.. which my build is heavy on. I feel mono black doesn't really get going until you hit 3 mana.

Still tweaking my mono black build.

Deathlord Timmy

26 x Swamp

3 x Quest for the Gravelord
4 x Dead Weight
3 x Ulcerate
1 x Suffer the Past

4 x Pharika's Chosen
2 x Bloodghast
4 x Corpse Blockade
4 x Phyrexian Rager
2 x Graveborn Muse
2 x Indulgent Tormentor
2 x Nightmare
2 x Rune-Scarred Demon
1 x Griselbrand


The Blockades do a lot, really.

(Edited to remove the amuletes for a Deadweight, Griselbrand and 2 swamps)

The Walls really do help mono black get set up. I still prefer the Scorpion to the defenders though
. The Scorpion makes larger creatures scared to attack too. It will routinely keep big green creatures at bay like Arbor Colossus, Terra Stomper, etc... and it eats a token everytime they attack. Wanna see Brimaz get shut down? Play Giant Scorpion.

The Blockade is a Zombie which means it occasionally draws a card and it can sac a creature on the fly if I need to get a 5/5 token out. The Blockade isnt for every deck but it definitely has a lot of synergy with a certain number of cards.

I probably should take out the Traveler's Amulets and just put in some Swamps and a certain 7/7 flyer

Yeah.. I wasn't gonna try to tell you how to play your deck or anything but.. I'm totally not a fan of Traveler's Amulet unless it's in a 4+ color deck. I'd much rather have more creatures/discard/removal. I'm a big fan of the discard package we have of Mind Rots and Spectres. They are effectively removal spells if they end up forcing creatures into the grave.. this is why early game removal is more important than a bunch of Flesh to Dust.. because you can force the bombs to get discarded, effectively removing them from play.

Whats crazy is that a deck can become a 'discard deck' without really losing its focus. I just dont think discard is for mono black (although it would counter my deck very well).

Yeah, you're right about that one But Tormentor - for me - is 5-drop which could either improve my CA or eat a removal and save a Rune-Scarred from it. Now Nightmare... I expect something more of 6-drops than ability to grow on lands, but that's may be just me. Tormentor's job is to draw me a removal to get rid of Baneslayer instead of fighting him I've hear an opinion that my opponents are just too stupid to give me cards.

Now, regarding Dead Weight vs Vicious Hunger I've got 2 points: 1) Hunger provides me life which helps the stalling with snakes and scorps and 2) I prefer Ulcerate above both of them because of 1 black and instant speed. Best black removal = instant black removal, IMO. I agree though, that Dead Weigh has way more impact than Hunger in late game.

I rarely ever get to draw cards off Indulgent Tormentor. Opponents tend to opt for the other two options.. which are both good options too unless facing a token deck that can sac them for next to nothing. The only time I get draw off of him is when the game is pretty much decided.

As much as I like Ulcerate.. I just am not willing to run it in a deck with Ragers, Graveborn Muse and a weak turn 1-2 while I'm building to 3 mana to start dropping meaningful creatures. I run Dead Weight for 2 toughness utility creatures and 3 Flesh to Dust from topdecked bombs.

Tormentor is a beast imo. I run it in all my decks were appears (less my new love w/g/b junk-reanimator…. damn I love this deck). Normally, if a creature is such a removal target, it's because it's just a very good card (look at baneslayer… would you not have him in the deck because against white good players keep a removal with his name on it on the hand?). He has 5 attac, evasion and for your opponent he's an ugly choice every round… And in my mono-b-build, when he comes out he's normally buffed at least with +1/1 and out of the reach of most direct-dammage-removal.

In my g/b-ramp deck for example, it's possible to cast him on round 3… if he get not insta-removed, the game is usually won yet. Nightmare is surely better in this meta then it was in older dotp's. But I would prefer in every deck i can imagine a tormentor and/or rune-scarred.

@hakeem


In a deck full of ulcerates, ragers and muses and a relatively slow start, they do a good job to support the lp-fuel that my deck needs. And mono-b I don't remember that I missed once the of the fountain. There are decks were the fountains are pretty useful.

Lords of Darkness was my favourite deck too, so I built a mono B deck that's heavy on removal and late-game bombs. The only early creatures are a snake, two specters and *drumroll* Gargoyle Sentinels instead of Giant Scorpions. Sue me! I like its ability to defend against and kill bears, having the option to defend against flyers, and being able to push for extra flying damage in a pinch.
You may scoff at them, but I'd really recommend giving them a spin. They're much more multi-functional than the one-dimensional Scorpion.

I also run 4 Radiant Fountains and 2 Nightmares. While they're a nonbo, I feel as if both are needed for a late-game mono B build. Fountains provide survivability, Nightmares are usually big 6/6 flyers when they hit the field.

The card I'm most conflicted about is Tribute to Hunger. In theory, it provides both instant removal and early survivability. But in practice, it's often a dead card because the opponent has some worthless 1/1 he'd be happy to sac. It can shine against decks with large creatures, I suppose, but they're few and far between.

Tribute is only useful if you have a lot of cheap bouncing to get rid of weenies and get him to sac a bomb. Otherwise it's not so good, I agree.

I think it's currently impossible to build any version of Lord of Darkness without the access to sweepers - spiders and tokens will hit you HARD Black has no answers to that, atm. May be more aggro-oriented build can rush and win though.

That's why LoD was so good - you could clear the board a few times while slowly building your army of demons and gaining CA. Can't afford this now sadly. That's why I'm maining Jund at the moment - green ramp, red Shocks and Anger of the Gods, black removal and all the access to powerful green and black bombs. Precisely why I loved last year's LoD.

LoD was so boring imo. I liked the mono-b deck from 2013 lot more. LoD was pure remove until you get out our bombs, complete nobrainer-deck.

To come back to mono-b decks powerlevel: my mono-b has the best performance of all my decks, like 24/28 games won 1vs1. But ok, after that few games it isn't very representative and I can't know how much games of that i won because of a bad opponent deck or low skilled player. But it seems to be very competitive. Also I had good experience against weenie-deck. Ok, a turn 3 beastmaster-ascension in a token deck will break every mono-b without global removal…

Tribute I don't like neither… for that reason, to often you let the opponent sac a unneeded mini-critter… imo ulcerate is the best removal in cost and what u get...

By the way, is it me or over-all skill of players is definetely lower this year? I mean, I manage to beat people even with my WIP decks with tons of garbage cards and I'm pretty mediocore player myself... Either they run awful deck or they copy it from Web but don't know how to properly use it...

Back to mono-b discussion. LoD just happend to be the deck that 100% suited my playstyle - run a little amount of bombs but manage to win with them against hordes of weenies or control. Izzet was the hardest opponent and it was truly a pleasure to beat it. I wouldn't call it boring in any way - most matches I was sitting and thinking about my every action especially against such top-tier decks like AG or MM. Spend all removals too early and you're dead, cast a sweeper a turn earlier and you're dead too, manage to finally summon what you need but it gets removed via Path to Exile next second... I had a lot of good memories and interesting moments while running it

About the b-defense discussion:
The Problem of scorpion and wall: hey cost 3 mana. Turn three I wanna play Specter or Rager to get a first piece of card advantage (what imo is the key with mono-b with the cards befor any DLC at least). And turn 4 I cast usually another Specter or Rager or mind rot (and get more card-advantage), because I want to play my muses and paragons with an open mana (undying evil). So instead of waste rounds to get some defense card alomst without other value on the board, I prefer the turn 2 Child, turn 3/4 card-advantage, and turn 5 muses/paragons with undying evil. If I've no undying evil onthe hand I can still decide to bluff it or to play at its best t4 muse / t5 Tormenter (depends also the opponents colors). Personally and with my playstile, that mana-curve fits better then t1 nothing/removal, turn 2 nothing/removal and t3 first defender...

Yeah, I totally understand this conclusion mate. Thing is scorp could help you kill a fatty if you don't have any removal available and all the other ones (without Paragon's ability) couldn't. It also could kill a lot of weenies and live unlike Specters, Childs or snakes without the buff. But if faster playstyle suits you better than slowly building a defence, than it's great, I'm glad that it works for ya! I used the exact same strategy before (snake-child-rager/specter-paragon/muse) but for some reason it turned out to be not my cup of tea.

Nightmare isn't quite just some random vanilla..For one it has Flying which is very powerful in this meta and on top of that for each Swamp you throw down it gets even stronger. It may not be as amazing as a Baneslayer Angel but then not much is. In a mono-black deck I think Nightmare has a home here atm.

I didn't like HoD because HS decks kinda built themselves and they were somewhat predictable. I feel like Undying Evil limits the black card pool in a similar manner to HS but Undying Evil is such a good card. I figure that you are building a fast deck with it in mind or you are building a (probably slower) deck with Quest for the Gravelord in mind. Giant Scorpion doesn't really fit either theme in a crowded 3 spot. Its claim to fame is killing bears without evasion without dying but black doesn't really mind its smaller creatures dying as long as they serve a purpose. You can get Deathtouch from a 1 drop and if the Snake dies and the other creature dies, thats 2 counters for Quest for the Gravelord.

Aggro discard with Undying Evil and Paragons is probably the best approach. I'm still tweaking with Quest for the Gravelord to see if I get anything I like from it but it lacks early offense

Don't get me wrong.. I'm not saying the Tormentor is a bad card.. it's a great card. It's just too easy to remove. It's in all my black decks too. I just don't like that I don't feel comfortable engaging in combat with it. Actually, I don't feel comfortable engaging in combat with just about anything mono black early other than the Scorpion or Ragers. I don't want to lose my Spectres (reliable early damage) or my Muses (card draw MVP). Child of Night is just a worthless chump that can't get past anything without help from Undying evil or the Paragon.