Now that Oko is out of the equation everybody is exploring new space in the meta.... right? Okay, well, probably not since most people just reverted to cat/oven, green stompy, fires, reclamation or the old T3feri decks with people still trying to get under the above with Cavalcade or UW fliers.

Well I say, screw that! Let me see if i can brew up some mono-black. Our best T1 play is still our good old friend from the Ebon Legion but after that I want to spend a turn or two attacking my opponents hand. I'm playing both Burgler Rats and Fenlurker as these will hopefully set up 2 for 1's later when coupled with Rankle, Cavalier of Knight or Liliana later.

I'm using both Murderous Rider and Ob's Cruelty. None of my early plays can block Questing Beast and I feel aggro is prevalent enough right now to warrant Cruelty, there are plenty of x/4s and x/5s running around that it hasn't been a dead card yet. Maybe it should be Blacklance Paragon since it can serve almost the same use (except against fliers), and adds some EoT flash to play around sweepers.

The main deck Leyline will probably get swapped out once cat/oven stops being so prevalent. That can open up space for more card draw or more discard.

4 x Knight of the Ebon Legion
2 x Burglar Rat
4 x Yarok's Fenlurker
4 x Murderous Rider
4 x Ob Nixilis's Cruelty
3 x Dread Presence
4 x Leyline of the Void
4 x Rankle, Master of Pranks
2 x Cavalier of Night
1 x Doom Whisperer
3 x Liliana, Dreadhorde General
21 x Swamp
3 x Castle Locthwain
1 x Blast Zone






Let me know what you think. What I should include or what I should remove? Thanks

Not gonna be too helpful, but I was thinking about Wintervoid's deck from thursday and one of those thoughts was that I'd like some removal. Then I realized I don't want dead cards either.

Now you present a deck with way too many dead cards and too many high costed cards - imo!

4x Leyline and 3x Ob's Cruelty are going to haunt you vs Fires/Dance. How do you win those matchups? Wintervoid's deck has a clear plan there: One-shot their remaining life with a big Command the Dreadhorde bringing back Ayara, First of Locthwain and Corpse Knight with a bunch of cheap critters.

What's your idea? 1-powered creatures aren't going to go under them and Liliana alone isn't going to turn everything around.

And vs adventures, I don't know. Should feel like a mirror except they have a lot more value.

Sorry..

edit: I do like Dread Presence. I think everyone forgot about that guy.

Yes, that is one of the major problems for mono-black right now. Fires of Invention

If they are playing with the Cavaliers that removal can be useful, but if they are winning with PWs most of it is useless. Elderspell can help with this. I wouldn't run more than two.

Against Fires, Ugin is probably a better PW than Liliana. He can deal with Bolas and Fires itself.

But we have to do more than just deal with what they do, as you bring up, a bunch of 1/1s just won't cut it. What do you suggest for pushing thru more damage? Haste and Flash can work around their game for 1 turn, maybe 2 if you're lucky. But theres not a lot of that outside of Paragon and Rankle.

Unfortunately Fires just doesnt care about what black does. It can refill its hand faster than I can force discard and blacks lazer focus on creature removal, as you said, is often useless

Maindecking Leyline cannot be correct - too many decks don't rely on the graveyard at all.

Also not a fan of the deck's concept. Sure you can rip your opponent's hand apart, but you still need to kill the opponent, and you'll be painfully slow at doing that with 1/1 Burglar Rats and Yarok's Fenlurkers. You got Knight of the Ebon Legion, but it's never going to grow, because the rest of the deck isn't aggressive. It's not surprising that Fires doesn't care, you are just so painfully slow.

I'd be looking to add Oathsworn Knight and Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage to start, I'm skeptical the card quality is there to compete though. EDIT: Maybe Spawn of Mayhem is better than Oathsworn Knight.

By the way there's actually an article on monoblack, it's a bit old though (it was written before the Field of the Dead ban): https://article.hareruyamtg.com/article/32489/?lang=en