I feel (and this is after 15-20 games with my mono black) that I often don't want to play my discard options on turn 3 unless going against a very fast deck. If the opponent discards land, you got the least amount of value out of the discard (typically.. this obviously changes from deck to deck). My favorite time to force discard is if my opponent does not play a land on his turn.. then I know I'm gonna dispose of something useful on my discards.

We just have different strategies (which is great!). You want to win fast and I'm gearing up for a longer control game with the win con of giant flyers/card advantage.

Ok.. finally got around to posting my mono black. I put a lot or time into this one, won lots of matches with it (20+ ranked and unranked). It's kind of like LoD last year.. kill all the things (especially major 2/2 combo pieces like Vizkopa Guild Mage, Mentor of the Meek, Selesnya Mages, Jade Mages, Talrand, Guttersnipe, that obnoxious T1 Satyr Hoplite, etc.) make them discard their good cards, remove their great cards with your big kill spells/deathtouch abilities, play big nasty flyers for the win. It really locks the enemy down.

Kill Everything

3 Ulcerate
4 Dead Weight
2 Vicious Hunger
1 Tribute to Hunger
3 Giant Scorpion
4 Liliana Spectre
3 Pyrexian Rager
3 Mind Rot
2 Graveborn Muse
2 Paragon of Open Graves
3 Flesh to Dust
2 Indulgent Tormentor
2 Nightmare
2 Rune Scarred Demon

24 Swamps

I wish could have Griselbrand but sadly he is just a win more card. Other notable not here is Undying Evil. Wish I could fitit in but my creatures don't get in scuffles too often. No Agent of the Fates either bc I have to include him and stuff to trigger him. No room.

I have noticed in my playtesting that Griselbrand feels more like a win more card, too. Usually running 2 Nightmares means that I can fetch a big Nightmare with Rune Scarred Demon and that is good enough so Ive found 1 open slot in my deck and I'll have to look through my options there.

The variety of removal there seems pretty random. I'd do -3 Flesh for Dust, +3 Tribute to Hunger

I'd also put Undying Evil in the deck but then thats rebuilding it from the ground up almost.

Do you find yourself aggressively mulliganing if you go first for a Mind Rot?

The removal is everywhere.. and there is a reason for that.. flexibility. I want as many spells that can kill 2 toughness creatures as I can fit (within reason) because I feel 80% of the creatures often seen in the meta are 2 toughness combo creatures like the ones I mentioned above. If you remove them early and often, you can cripple your opponents plans. Those removal pieces can also be stacked on top of each other to kill crucial enemies like Charmbreaker, Baneslayer, Garruk's Packleader, etc. Ulcerate also doubles as a combat trick by debuffing an attacker/blocker, protecting your creature much the way Undying Evil would. If all that can't handle the problem, Flesh to Dust solves all problems not named Huntbeast.. even if it is pricey. Tribute to Hunger can't solve problems like Flesh to Dust can. Things like Baneslayer being protected by a few tokens/weenies. The lack of a sweeper makes it this way. If we get one.. I'd happily run all the Tributes.

I dont understand what you mean by aggressive mulligans. I always try to take a 3 mana hand.. as my deck comes alive at 3 mana. I start forcing discards as soon as I see the opponent with 4 cards in hand.

I would never ever remove Flesh to Dust for a Tribute - you can't target opponent's valuable creatures with a Tribute so he would always sac something replaceable or cheap. Flesh to Dust killed A LOT of late game fatties for me and usually it's the answer I'm fetching with Rune-Scarred. Don't know why would you suggest removing it.

Same thoughts on Griselbeand here though. When I have 8 mana available he'd be an overkill. Now, if only we had some kind of ramp like Heartless Summoning...



That's almost a copy of what I'm running atm Diffirence is in 3-4 cards, I guess. Seems like a pretty solid list to me. Only thing to be cautious about is Spider Spawning/tokens decks but I'm still not sure whether or not including Suffer the Past to counter them worth it.

I had a single Suffer the Past in there earlier and it was a nice, additional win condition. To be honest, I haven't seen hardly any Spider Spawning decks.. maybe twice ever. I get tons of G/W tokens and W weenies. That's my most common matchup.

Yup, GW tokens is like a new AG... Thank god spiders are not as popular as they could be - that's heck of an annoying and powerful build without access to sweepers.

Just after I wrote that post I ran into a Spider Spawning deck lol. He got wrecked. I changed a few things (I can't help myself)

-3 Giant Scorpion

+2 Tribute to Hunger
+1 Vicious Hunger

I figured that I don't really need to stall anymore bc everything is going to be dead. Also figured I need to be more focused on the decks objectives of killing everything, forcing discard and dominating the air.

What works best for ya Adding more removal didn't work out for me - I had often run out of creatures with only removal at hand. Also, I did reduce the initial amount of scorps, from 4 to 2 and that turned out great.

That's an idea too. The problem with the Scorpion is that it's an amazing aggro stopper against tokens and weenies and I love it against that opponent, but I hate it against other builds like mill decks, decks heavy with flyers, etc. With all the lifegain I have now.. I can take a little bit of a beating from token spam. Pyrexian Rager does fine against tokens too.. and if they want to waste a combat trick to kill the Rager, I'm fine with that.

Call of Death
Premium Deck


Land (25)
25 x Swamp

Black Cards (35)
3 x Ulcerate
4 x Pharika's Chosen
3 x Dead Weight
4 x Undying Evil
2 x Agent of the Fates
4 x Giant Scorpion
4 x Phyrexian Rager
3 x Cutthroat Maneuver
2 x Indulgent Tormentor
3 x Flesh to Dust
2 x Nightmare
1 x Griselbrand

---

Information
You might have lots of kill spells, but use them wisely and make clever trades with your deathtouchers to stall for time until you get a bomb. There are a few self-life-loss effects in this deck, use Cutthroat Maneuver wisely to counteract the life loss. It combos really well with Agent of the Fates too. Use fear to intimidate your opponent so they don't attack. Chump something early with a deathtoucher and use Undying Evil to bring it back. From then on, whenever you have one mana open, your opponent will have to guess whether or not you can pull that trick off again.

Edits
Edit 1: Removed unnecessary information and deck stats.

A person has to watch out for functional fixedness with Magic cards but I'm generally under the assumption that a person should never be putting Flesh to Dust in a deck. Whats the point of all of your discard and other creature removal if you still need to have expensive cards to remove fatties? If you're worried about swarms then Flesh to Dust doesnt do you much good sitting in your hand while goblins attack you for 4-5 turns.

The point is that Flesh to Dust, while overcosted, provides the greatest utility of all the black removal spells: instant death regardless of power/toughness. It is your late game answer to topdecked bombs. It also is your answer to unsolvable early game problems. For instance: An opponent played a turn 1 Pharikas Chosen, then played a Child of Night, I didn't think much of it at the time so I didn't remove it. Then he put Nimbus Wings on it and put it out of the range of my smaller spells (didn't have Ulcerate in my hand). Then he kept enchanting it over and over until it was a real problem. Flesh to Dust solved this problem. It solves every problem in the game except a jacked up Primal Huntbeast (hexproof). That's why it can never be removed.

"Answer to topdecked bombs" it is. Nothing's gonna save you from that Baneslayer or Terra Stomper if there are 2 more weenies except it. Only targeted guaranteed removal, in our case - sadly - Flesh to Dust. I agree that it's complete garbage comparing to what we had in last years black iterations, but we had no choice for now.

Yeah, I figure if I see Child of Night then they are either running Auras or they are running Paragons. Its hard to imagine your 'Kill Everything' deck not having a removal card for it, though. Most of you deck is removal. Flesh to Dust is overcosted but strong, Ill give you that but it seems more for decks that only have a couple of removal slots and you want to get the most out of it. I guess there is something to say for saturation but thats when Tribute starts looking like a good card against everything but aggro tokens.

Speaking of 5 mana for creature destruction, I subbed out Griselbrand for Shadowborn which is basically a sorcery Flesh to Dust with a giant body attached to it for a turn and itll feed the Quest for the Gravelords well.

Deathlord Timmy 2.0

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
1 x Shadowborn Demon
2 x Nightmare
2 x Rune-Scarred Demon


And thats probably where I'll leave that deck as its runs fairly well. Aggo black might still be the best way to run mono black but I think control into bombs has its place.

I had removal for it.. I just derped bc I didn't expect Nimbus Wings. I underestimated the player.. it was my mistake.

I like your list. Only thing I'd change is:

-1 Suffer the Past
-2 Swamp

+3 Assorted removal spells

I'll give -1 swamp, -1 suffer the past, +2 vicious hunger a go. The deck needs slightly above average land count still because it needs its bombs

I've wanted to give Mono-black a roll for awhile now here, but as I was lost camping in the wilderness I could not use any deck lists for resources. Instead, I made my own brew on a whim and thought I might post it here since it performed well enough against the AI.

The idea here is strict card advantage, willing your opponent's hand down to 0 while boosting your draw to incomparable heights with the Graveborn Muse. Because of that, it is also a dedicated Zombie deck!

x24 Swamp

x4 Vicious Hunger
x3 Tribute to Hunger
x4 Necromancer's Assistant
x4 Liliana's Specter
x4 Assassinate
x4 Mind Rot
x2 Graveborn Muse
x4 Gravedigger
x1 Shadowborn Demon
x2 Monomania
x3 Maalfeld Twin
x1 Griselbrand

Yup, the name of the game here is card advantage. Mind Rot, Lilanna's Spectre, and Monomania will all work to trap your opponent on the top deck, while cheap removal like Vicious Hunger will deal with any threats they already got out while helping to offset the cost of Graveborn Muse. Should they eventually topdeck a bomb, Tribute to Hunger should help seal your game.

If you have trouble drawing into Monomania or Mind Rots, the suite of Assassinates should help you keep board control. I originally hated Assassinate because I did not want to have to take a blow from my opponent's creatures in order to remove them, but Assassinate is meant to take out 2/3's and a few other cheap drops that Vicious Hunger misses rather than full on bombs. This cheaper cost than Flesh to Dust is important for that reason because it helps stop early aggression that can chew this deck alive. (Not being able to pay for Graveborn Muse will put you on the losing end no matter how empty you keep their hands.)

Some of these zombies have a lot of cool synergy, not all of it being just with the Graveborn Muse. Maalfeld Twins are probably one of the biggest dark horses of this set. They are a nice sized body on their own, for the same reason that Ogre Jailbreaker is starting to make the cut in many decks, but leaving behind another mess for your opponent discourages removal as well. This is extra nice in this deck, because two more zombies means two more cards to help close the game every turn!

I was originally skeptical of Necromancer's Assistant, since he really has trouble stopping those early creatures to slip past your discard like Krenko's Command and Raise the Alarm. Trading a 3/1 for a 1/1 is awful, and even worse when you've pitched three cards into the graveyard just to get him out. Buuuut he's the only zombie you can get out before Graveborn Muse, making him keep the cut. He also began to pay-off once I added Gravedigger to the deck.

The Gravedigger is awesome. He completely offsets the "downside" of Necromancer's Assistant, allowing you to pull back precious one-ofs like Shadowborn Demon or Graveborn Muse when you need them most. Again, both those cards are counting as zombies to help up your draw as well.

Monomania is great. Mind Rots and Lilanna's Spectre let us restrict most hands, but you will need multiples of any of those cards to fully empty their hand. Monomania solves that problem. Letting your opponent choose which card to keep is a shame, but unlike Mind Rot you know you've always put them in a far worse position. This is especially potent against blue, which has any easier time refilling their hand than most around the 3-4 drops. Going right into your Monomania!

Griselbrand is there for flavour. The ultimate draw-more card, he ensures we always have card advantage. But actually, I originally ran Nightmare's in his stead. The idea was to have a high-drop closer, and Nightmare was almost always the biggest thing on the board considering I could rarely miss a Swamp drop. However, Griselbrand's Lifelink is vital. You can totally skip his ability-- he ensures that Graveborn Muse won't accidentally kill you off, nor will a surprise Shock or Skullcrack. He also still swings like a truck, which is fantastic for closing the game before the opponent gets too lucky with his top deck.


So, not a top-tier deck by any means, but one with a lot of fun flavour that I think takes good advantage of being a mono colour in a duo colour world.

That looks like fun Though, I'd cut one Twin for a Rune-Scarred to insure that you'll always have what you want with 7 mana avaialble. Plus, it's one more flier to close the game. Muse might draw A LOT with such a huge selection of zombies, I might give that build a try.

If you really need an earlier, more defensive zombie, Walking Corpse is an option. Necromancer's Assistant does help you bring back juicy creatures with Gravedigger, though.