Glad to hear you're able to play, Lexxx

I think you're right about MBC. We don't have the tools to deal with all those powerful enchantments.
So I think we should move to a more aggro/midrange strategy, like Eriatarka's.



2 x Bone Splinters
2 x Bonded Construct

2 x Despoiler of Souls
4 x Child of Night
4 x Shambling Ghoul
3 x Reave Soul
1 x Shadows of the Past

4 x Deadbridge Shaman
3 x Fleshbag Marauder
1 x Liliana
3 x Read the Bones

1 x Erebos's Titan

2 x Priest of the Blood Rite
2 x Gilt-Leaf Winnower

2 x Kothoped


Haven't tested it yet.

24 Swamp

hi again,

I'm back with some slight changes to my Mono Black Artifact deck. I tried running the Necromantic Summons instead of a Gravedigger and didn't really notice it. I guess that's not a bad thing but not particularly a good one either. For now it'll stay in but in the future it'll probably just going back to Gravedigger.

Right now I'm running the deck with
-2 x Bitter Revelation
+2 x Shadows of the Past

Fits a 22 land curve a little better and helps similarly to draw. The active on it can be quite nice, especially in a deck where you have the potential of dealing 12+ damage to yourself by the end of the game, more if Priest of the Blood Rite 2/2 body lingers around play more than one turn. And it's kinda just a win condition in itself. All in all, I think it's a pretty good tweak. Let me know your thoughts on the change and/or any further ones you can think of.

Will certainly test it, mate! Love your build.

I really love your deck but I think you should try to find some place for some Nantuko Husks. This card is excellent in a lot of situations and I find relying only on Fleshbags to sac your Priest of the Blood Rite is a bit too risky since you will likely need to use them earlier to get rid of some stuff. It provides instant speed and unconditional sac outlets to flip Liliana in response to removal, or also to sac Myrs at instant speed to ping stuff for 2 if necessary.

Also it can offer some nice shenanigans with Graveblade Marauder. You wait for the trigger for life loss to happen and respond to it by saccing your whole board. Hakeem did that in one of his vids, can be devastating especially since you have a way to make it unblockable with Graveblade unblockable with Rogue's Passage. The Husk himself is also a great target for Rogue's passage if you can get him big enough.

Thanks for the reply, Dream Maker, and glad to hear you're enjoying the deck.

Nantuko Husk is an interesting card and it's a zombie target for Cruel Revival, bonus. I see the potential in it but I'm not sure if it's enough to make it worth cutting something for it. I feel the decklist is pretty solid right now and I wouldn't even know where to start making room for these. Maybe run like 2 of them just for some additional surprise factor. I do like the idea of sacrificing everything into Languish and smashing face with a giant Nantuko Husk. If you've tested a version of the deck already with Nantuko Husk I'd love to know what you cut from the deck for them.


Some more thoughts on the card and how it fits into the deck:

I'm not sure they're entirely necessary for flipping Liliana, Heretical Healer. With Bottle Gnomes and Fleshbag Marauder that's already 6 activators and she's just a single card that doesn't make or break the deck. Many times I play her just to let my Despoiler of Souls get through for some early damage. It doesn't really matter if she dies, we can always Gravedigger her back up later. And as for Priest of the Blood Rite, yeah it sucks sometimes only being able to sacrifice the 2/2 body with Fleshbag Marauder. I've even had games where I've used Reave Soul to remove it myself. But even then, the life loss has never really been a problem, especially not with the addition of Shadows of the Past. The 2/2 body isn't always bad either, I'll usually use it to block something with 4 or more power, meaning even if it stuck around for 2 turns it prevents as much damage as it deals. Also I think it's a pretty fun how it clocks both players if they don't decide to block or remove it.

Thanks again for the post, greatly appreciated. It really got me thinking, I'll be racking my brain all night trying to figure where to fit these. Even if only for some play testing, seems fun.

You may be right, I do not know if it will really improve the deck ultimately because I haven't spent enough time with your deck yet (after all you probably know it better than I do) but I can really see it working well in it. I don't think it's absolutely necessary to put it in, but I feel like it could bring so many merits to this deck that including him could benefit a lot.

One other fun interaction I found late game was bringing back the Despoiler multiple times to sac it to Husk multiple times and help dealing the finishing blow.

I tried modifying the deck as follows and have been doing pretty well so far, but I need more time for testing:

Creatures: 24
4 x Perilous Myr
2 x Despoiler of Souls
4 x Nantuko Husk
1 x Liliana, Heretical Healer
2 x Graveblade Marauder
3 x Fleshbag Marauder
1 x Erebos's Titan
3 x Gravedigger
2 x Priest of the Blood Rite
2 x Gilt-Leaf Winnower


Spells: 12
1 x Shadows of the Past
3 x Reave Soul
4 x Read the Bones
2 x Languish
2 x Cruel Revival


Lands: 24
20 x Swamp
2 x Foundry of the Consuls
2 x Rogue's Passage


As you can see I added in some lands, because I didn't feel very comfortable with playing only 22, but this is a personnal preference. So I guess if you're fine with 22 you can probably add some cards back.

I also removed 1 Cruel Revival because even if the card is great, I think 3 is a bit too much for a 5 mana card and I don't really want to see this card too early. As good as the gnomes are against aggro, I think we have enough other ways to deal with it to safely cut them and make room in the curve for the Husks. Less life gain may be a problem but there still are options left and in general I didn't find the life loss from Read the Bones to be too annoying if you're careful enough. I cut one Shadows of the Past because as much as I'd like to draw it early, this card is just very helpful, but still not absolutely necessary. And it's bad in multiples. I cut one Reave Soul just to make room for one more land that's still enough copies to get it early reliably and this removal has limits to what it can do anyway. But I guess the case could be made to keep all 4 copies and go down to 23 lands.

Looks pretty good, I'm going to try it. But I think I'll run with 22 lands still, and just remove the 3x Bottle Gnomes and 1x Cruel Revival for 4x Nantuko Husk.

I find in this game, at least on Steam, the difference between 22 to 24 lands is negligible. Either you get mana screwed or you don't. Even with 22 lands I still get flooded all the time.

Keeping in 2x Shadows of the Past because I think this card is insane. Being able to scry basically every turn, even multiple times, digging for just the right card is really awesome. You mentioned having 2 in play is a bad thing, I beg to differ. What's so bad about being able to scry twice as much? Then you can really start to fetch anything you want from the deck. Sure you lose out on the second half of the enchant but really you run this card for the scry. And with just having 1 it's likely to just get disenchanted immediately if even seen at all. I've considered actually running all 3 of them in my deck for a while, just wasn't sure what to cut for it.

I'm a little hesitant on taking out the third Cruel Revival mostly because I find 2 copies of a card just isn't enough for good consistency, I really want this card every game. It has 2 for 1 literally written all over it.

Anyway, gonna take it for a spin over the next few days to see how it performs. It looks promising. I'm excited to see the interaction between Despoiler of Souls and Nantuko Husk. Should be fun.

About Shadows of the Past, you're right, I shouldn't have said bad maybe that was a bit too strong. It's true that the double scry 1 can be very useful sometimes but I've already had this situation where I had two of them in play and most of the time it felt like an annoyance to just top the same card over and over when I found it. Definitely useful though in the case where you are really digging for something in particular and not just waiting for the next card you may be okay keeping on top.

I guess here that's also my personal opinion but it's still a card I'm fine playing as just a one of, it's not the end of the world if it gets removed and to me the upside of having 2 is not that stellar.

Anyway I hope the Husks work for you, I'm going to keep playing with this deck and experiment with it. It's a really nice mono black you put together, so again props for that!

After a bit of play testing, 25 wins or so with some losses too of course but I haven't been keeping track. I think that's something the game should already be doing for me but oh well, maybe with Zendikar. I've made about 500 coins, sitting at 8600 now

anyway...

Playing with Nantuko Husk has been interesting. The card actually changes the deck quite a bit more than I thought it would, as long as you're drawing them. Compared to Bottle Gnomes which is there almost entirely for stall, Nantuko Husk brings a bit more aggression to the deck. I found myself wanting to attack with this guy all the time, as long as I had other creatures on board. I'm not convinced this is necessary to have but it can work decently well in the deck. The card has potential, but I couldn't take advantage of it nearly as much as I would have liked.

One of my main issues with the card is consistency. Sometimes I drop this guy on turn 3 and he does nothing more than trade into a 2 drop or gets twin bolted away. If you don't have the other cards to fuel this guy, he's just over priced fodder. Other times when you do have the cards it does open up possibilities and has great synergy with a lot of the deck. Basically as long as you can get ahead he's amazing. But in games where I'm behind, I found it hard to get much value from this guy.

As cool as it is to Languish the board while sacrificing everything to your Nantuko Husk, if you really wanna get some meaningful damage through or potentially win the game off that you need to have gone wide on the board yourself. This leaves you vulnerable to the exact thing you're trying to get them with. Or you're just left with a 2/2 the turn after Languish which really isn't exciting to me.

The best games I had with Nantuko Husk were when I drew into 2-3 Perilous Myr for obvious reasons. Sadly, I never was able to get a good sacrifice combo with Despoiler of Souls but the synergy is definitely there.

I ended up trying multiple variations of the deck, including the list you posted and eventually just ended up back on my deck with simply replacing 3x Bottle Gnomes for 3x Nantuko Husk. The deck still runs great, hardly even notice a change with just subbing 3 cards in. The one thing I did notice was my life total at the end of most wins being less than 10 life. Now a win is a win but sometimes it's cutting it a bit close. The more I play the more I miss Bottle Gnomes but that could just be me feeling sentimental.(I even run them in my paper type 1 mono black control)

All in all, I rather enjoyed the switch. I think both cards work great in the deck and it would mostly come down to ones personal preference.

Thank you, Dream Maker, for sharing your ideas!

...And it's gone

2 x Vampiric Rites
3 x Shadows of the Past
1 x Liliana, Heretical Healer
3 x Fleshbag Marauder
4 x Deadbridge Shaman
2 x Smothering Abomination
3 x Gravedigger
4 x Mind Raker
2 x Languish
2 x Mire's Malice
1 x Ob Nixilis Reignited

4 x Perilous Myr
3 x Complete Disregard
3 x Titan's Presence

21 x Swamp
2 x Mortuary Mire


Not streamlined quite yet due to not having all cards yet but it really works wonders in depleting opposing hands.

@Empo; I like your idea, but I'm not sure I get how your deck could work. You have few things to sac and a lot of saccers, you've got Titan's Presence but only a few big colourless creatures, and the amount of discard we have is not sufficient imo.


Here's a spin at a BFZ mono black (control/midrange) deck:
4 x Reave Soul
2 x Shadows of the Past

4 x Complete Disregard
4 x Malakir Familiar
3 x Fleshbag Marauder
1 x Liliana, Heretical Healer
2 x Read the Bones

1 x Erebos's Titan
2 x Languish
2 x Rising Miasma

1 x Ob Nixilis, Reignited
3 x Cruel Revival
2 x Gilt-Leaf Winnower
2 x Kalastria Nightwatch

2 x Kothoped, Soul Hoarder

20 x Swamp
2 x Foundry of the Consuls
3 x Mortuary Mire


This is all theorycraft though. The most questionable cards are probably Kalastria Nightwatch and Rising Miasma. Lemme explain. The former is a reasonably sized body; in our pool it's actually a very strong body. Look at Green's 5-drops and then look at the Nightwatch again. It's big enough. I thought about adding some lifegain to give it flying, but our options (Bottles Gnomes) aren't worth inclusion.
As for Rising Miasma....how often do you draw one of your two copies of Languish against Elves, Thopters, or other weenies? Even if it only gets an opposing Jace, Chandra, Nissa or Kytheon it's still decent. Late game, it gives ya another creature. Seems worth it to me.
Other than that, I think 2 RtB and 1 Ob Nixilis will provide enough card draw while not being too much of a drain on our life total.
Disclaimer: MBC isn't and won't be a tier 1 deck simply because of plenty powerful enchantments we can't deal with. So either we take a more aggressive approach, or we accept our doom against those decks and enjoy playing the ever awesome Dark Side as best we can

Malakir Familiar and Kalastria Nightwatch don't really work in this deck at all... they are basically your only creatures, and sub-par unless you life gain from Shadows of the Past, which is your only source of gaining life. With such few creatures in your deck you'll have trouble even activating this. Maybe you went a little bit overboard on the removal.

and why not Priest of the Blood Rite instead of Kalastria Nightwatch?

Anything bigger than Smothering Abomination (great at giving cards!) should be dealt with a spam of Fleshbag. It's only there to make sure that Mind Raker can do it's job. And seeing how weenie aggro is rampant.... There is usually enough creature control in tandem with the discarding to gain control of the board. Works against most decks even if it wins late game.

@Eriatarka: you could be right about too much removal. Although I included Shadows of the Past mostly for the repeated scry effect, it would be nice to be able to activate it more regularly. Maybe -2 Reave Soul, -2 Complete Disregard, +4 Perilous Myr.
Although Kalastria Nightwatch is subpar in a normal environment, I think it's playable here. I do see your point though. Priests of the Blood Rite offers more evasive Aggression, but whenever I've used it, it feels like I've put myself on a fairly fast clock (especially against aggro decks).
I disagree about Malakir Familiar; flying and deathtouch make this an awesome defender and a decent evasive attacker. The lifegain buff is just gravy and unneeded here.

I've play this deck for hours and it's just an awesome deck! Great work

even so, I'd replace nightwatch with skitterskin

I have been playing this mono-black sacs deck with some success in ranked play. It is not tier 1 but maybe tier 2. It is a little slower than the Dimir sacs deck but maybe just as good. Please give it a try and let me know what you think. Card suggestions welcome.

MonoBlack Sacs
4 x Sludge Crawler
2 x Bone Splinters
4 x Perilous Myr
2 x Despoiler of Souls
3 x Carrier Thrall
2 x Reave Soul
1 x Liliana, Heretical Healer
2 x Wasteland Strangler
2 x Fleshbag Marauder
4 x Nantuko Husk
3 x Complete Disregard
1 x Erebos Titan
2 x Smothering Abomination
2 x Priest of the Blood Rite
2 x Cruel Revival
1 x Necromantic Summons
16 x Swamp
2 x Foundry of the Consuls
3 x Rogues Passage
2 x Mortuary Mire


13 Sac fodder creatures:
4 Sludge Crawler (also an ingester)
4 Perilous Myr
2 Despoiler of Souls (can be reanimated from gy)
3 Carrier Thrall (can be sacced twice or used as ramp)

8 Sac enablers:
4 Nantuko Husk
2 Smothering Abomination
2 Bone Splinter

Early game removal:
2 Reave Soul

Instant Speed Removal/Ingester:
3 Complete Disregard

Processor:
2 Wasteland Strangler

Late game removal/recursion:
2 Fleshbag Marauder
2 Cruel Revival (can recur Husk or Fleshbag)

Late game beaters:
1 Erebos Titan
2 Priest of the Blood Rite
1 Necromantic Summons

Liliana for recurring Carrier Thrall and Myr to keep Abomination/Husk engine running.

Since I am running mono-color, I can tolerate a few brown lands and taplands, especially the Passage which enables massive surprise swings from Husk.

Reave Soul does not have ingest/sac synergy, so maybe it can be replaced?

Update:
-1 Bone Spliners
-2 Reave Soul
-1 Necromantic Summons
+1 Complete Disregard
+1 Ob Nixilus
+1 Gravedigger
+1 Swamp

So far I am 6-2 with this deck in ranked play in the mid-teens, rank 17 now (had a bunch of losses with Gruul ramp)

So here's my version of the above - haven't checked to see how it compares. Very strong, IMO. You can see its blue counterpart here: viewtopic.php?p=393513#p393513 and its Voltron version here: viewtopic.php?p=393509#p393509

Mono Black Sac

Black: 33
4 x Sludge Crawler
3 x Vampiric Rites
2 x Despoiler of Souls
3 x Carrier Thrall
4 x Culling Drone
1 x Liliana, Heretical Healer
3 x Fleshbag Marauder
4 x Nantuko Husk
4 x Complete Disregard
2 x Smothering Abomination
2 x Gilt-Leaf Winnower
1 x Ob Nixilis Reignited

Colorless: 3
2 x Blight Herder
1 x Oblivion Sower

Lands: 24
14 x Swamp
3 x Foundry of the Consuls
3 x Rogue's Passage
4 x Mortuary Mire


Much like its UB cousin (linked above) this deck is complex to play. You are now also somewhat concerned with trying to get some ingests in for blight herder (which is actually pretty great, btw), and you've lost some of your creature control capabilities. However, you don't lose that much of the main build, and you gain a lot of mana consistency.

Carrier Thrall is still great in this deck.

I hadn't intended to play Gilt-Leaf Winnower, but it's actually much better now than it was last season, so for now he stays. My original thought was Priest of the Blood Rite, which probably makes more sense in this deck, lol. Happy accident, or thing that will eventually change - not sure yet.

DJ, as a fan of mono-black decks – yours rocks! It’s consistent, it has a beautiful curve and it shows great results. I have one suggestion and one question though.

A suggestion – how about some bone splinters to deal with fatties if your opponents manages to cast them? I get that deck is designed to stop them earlier but I’d take it just in case of some irritating flier or some bomb.

And a question – why all 3 Vampiric Rites? Seems like 2 is quite enough, because you don’t need 2 on the table at the same time, right?

Other than then, great deck, one of the best mono-black ones I’ve tried, and I tested them a lot