Mutilate

Sorcery

All creatures get -1/-1 until end of turn for each Swamp you control.

Discussion (51)

PaulMuadDib on Vito, Thorn of Dusk Rose

1 week ago

You are going to need more than 12 lands. Whenever I build a deck, I always start with 40 lands and then for every 3 pieces of ramp, which for a mono black deck would be a mana rock or swamp doubler or ritual spell like Dark Ritual, I remove a land.
Please retune the deck with 12 non-land mana sources and 36 swamps for starters and you can think of non-swamp lands you want to include later.
My suggestions for those sources are any 12 of the following, depending on your budget:
Sol Ring
Star Compass
Commander's Sphere
Crypt Ghast
Charcoal Diamond
Soldevi Adnate
Songs of the Damned
Worn Powerstone
Dark Ritual
Everflowing Chalice
Ashnod's Altar
Cathodion
Guardian Idol
Hedron Archive
Mind Stone
Magnifying Glass
Millikin
Prismatic Lens
Cabal Coffers <- could replace a swamp
Bubbling Muck
Pristine Talisman <- defiantly want that

After that you've got the commander, which takes up 1 card slot, so that leaves you with 51 cards to choose from.

I see the bare beginnings of either an aristocrats or a reanimator deck. In my opinion you should push more for aristocrats. It can draw you tons of cards and gain you quite a lot of life. There's no harm in keeping some reanimation spells in there though.

You want a good number of sacrifice outlets. I haven't heard of what a hard number should be so I'd shoot for at least 5. Here's a list of some that I remember off hand:
Witch's Cauldron
Vampiric Rites
Ashnod's Altar
Infernal Tribute <- has a funny synergy with Spine of Ish Sah
Gnawing Zombie
Altar of Dementia
Attrition
Blood Bairn
Bloodflow Connoisseur
Bloodsoaked Altar
Bloodthrone Vampire
Carnage Altar
Carrion Feeder
Corpse Blockade
Culling Dais
Dark Privilege
Diamond Valley
Disciple of Griselbrand
Gutless Ghoul
Lampad of Death's Vigil
Mind Slash
Spawning Pit
Phyrexian Plaguelord

For this strategy you'll need recurring creatures or token generators
Ghoulcaller Gisa
Reassembling Skeleton
Endless Cockroaches
Tenacious Dead
Nim Devourer
Bridge from Below
Open the Graves
Sanitarium Skeleton
Gravecrawler

value
Pitiless Plunderer
Bolas's Citadel

Lifegain
Blood Artist is a staple
Plunge into Darkness is something you might want for the pure lifegain of 3 per creature you sacrifice. Not sure that you want to use the "exile a bunch of your deck" too often.
Bontu's Monument
Corrupt
Drain Life
Shadows of the Past

reanimation
Living Death
No Rest for the Wicked
Sepulchral Primordial
Zombify
Rise from the Grave
Victimize
Apprentice Necromancer
Call of the Death-Dweller

spot removal/board wipes
Mutilate
Damnation
Defile
Hero's Downfall
Vona's Hunger

draw
Read the Bones
Sign in Blood
Damnable Pact
Smothering Abomination
Ransack the Lab
Minions' Murmurs
Harvester of Souls

and so forth. I'd look through some already built aristocrats decks to see exactly whether you want to take that strategy.

Oh yeah, for utility lands I'd choose any of the following within your price range:
Leechridden Swamp
Bojuka Bog
Reliquary Tower
Cabal Stronghold
Volrath's Stronghold
Phyrexian Tower
Myriad Landscape
Terrain Generator
Geier Reach Sanitarium

MrKillStar on B-Waste Recycling

2 weeks ago

Check some Shirei decks, most creatures have just 1 power, so they can sac/reanimate all the time and its pretty sick :)
Village Rites is better version of Altar's Reap
Black Market can be very good, especially if you can go crazy and put tons of counters on it.. or it just eats removal instead of some more important card in your deck.
Tortured Existence - absolutely great creature retrieval just for and can go crazy with your Desecrated Tomb. I use it in combination of Phyrexian Altar as infinite etb/etg engine. Bitter Ordeal to exile everyone's library; Emergence Zone to make it instant speed if needed.
Hell's Caretaker can be fairly good reanimator for Shirei aswell.
Crypt of Agadeem,Dark Ritual,Bubbling Muck,Songs of the Damned are cheap for mana ramp.
Mutilate is just board version of Defile, might aswell use both?
Altar of the Brood easy mill just for that triggers upon any permanent you play.
Insidious Dreams - to cast your combos from top of your library if you manage to keep Bolas's Citadel on board. Forever Young/Gravepurge for casting creatures from your graveyard (top of your library with Bolas's Citadel).
Blanket of Night if you get more non-swamp lands and you're on low budget. Its just cheaper enchantment version of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
Call the Bloodline could be easy way to get creatures into your graveyard, get some sacrifice dork and reanimate them later.
Priest of Forgotten Gods this pretty lady could be a nice addition to Shirei aswell, if you get some cards that make sacrifice dorks/etc. blahblah

Magic_Faqs on Tinybones, Get Hellbent

2 weeks ago

A few changes I would recommend:

1. Swapping Mutilate for Dead of Winter. It costs less, plus you're running plenty of Snow-Covered Swamps to justify playing it. Also, the odds are slim that your opponents are running any snow creatures.
2. Swapping Solemn Simulacrum for Nirkana Revenant. The Revenant gives you much better ramp plus a mid-late game mana sink. Even though it has no evasion, your opponents should have few to no blockers since you keep making them discard.

Scallywallwest on my ayara

3 weeks ago

From a lot of the cards I'm seeing here, I'm getting the impression that you really care about swamps (Cabal Coffers, Crypt Ghast, Defile, Mutilate, etc.). Maybe a Liliana of the Dark Realms would fit in here?

rjphilla on Mono Black Midrange Recursion (Budget Friendly)

1 month ago

I play mono Black. You need Mutilate as a sweeper.

No one expects it.

jwong14 on Mono Black Midrange Recursion (Budget Friendly)

1 month ago

Well, off the top of my head Lord of the Accursed is a really good tribal zombie card. Drana, Liberator of Malakir is also a very good bomb, and can be used if your going to go wide with zombies. Mutilate is a pretty good budget card that can be used very efficiently if you have a lot of lands. I would say that Go for the Throat is one of the best, if not the best cards for mono black removal. If your looking for deathtouch lifelink, then Death Baron and Whip of Erebos is probably the way to go. I think that splashing in some white might be good, because Bond of Discipline is a really good card (or maybe its just cause I normally play gruul midrange) and its able to completely shut down your opponent if you have some pretty high power creatures. I hope that this could also help but to be honest, I mainly just remember these cards from playing at FNM or such, if you really wanna learn how to play mono black, then honestly going to your LGS and asking around is usually the best bet. Thats how I got started, and what I still do. Most of the time, people are really friendly, but I would look into if your LGS is open. If nobodys there you can also ask the owner (but remember to buy a pack or two).

Tzefick on How would you give white ...

2 months ago

I've been absent from the topic for a while, I find it best to let the thoughts at the time of writing settle down and then revisit with a fresh mind.

Gidgetimer First of all I don't agree about white's lack of card draw in the Commander format is a content creator conjured issue. Content creators are just a very broad place I can refer to as a common platform where people share their beliefs. And I wanted to not only resort to the anecdotal experiences of me and my play group. Although for reference, most players in my play group agrees that white is the weakest singular color in Commander and one of those reasons is lack of card draw.

It may be a slight miscommunication but the thread could easily be about card advantage and not specifically card draw. I've made several of the suggestions in the OP not be direct card draw but rather an ability to access more card resources (like through the graveyard). So feel free to post ideas about mechanics that enables card advantage but not strictly through card draw.

This got rather lengthy Show

One of the major problems I find in white's card advantage pool is that white doesn't use many mechanics that effectively enables alternative card advantages. I mentioned they don't do draw-discard, they don't self-mill, they don't discard their own hand or in pretty much any capacity put their own cards into other zones other than the battlefield. From the battlefield they may put cards back into their hand if they die or self-bounce or flicker. They do have a selection of cards that resurrects permanents from the graveyard. However in recent times this has mainly been reduced to target low CMC permanents and their unconditional resurrections costs 4+ CMC, first of all that hardly cheats the mana cost and often it's a 1-for-1 trade, so no card advantage and no inherent mana value. White usually has to hard cast their big stuff to put them on the field and THEN it has to die and THEN they can use their recursion effects to get mana value. It's very clunky.

You point to the fact that white likes to equalize the board, mostly through board wipes. Although black seems to do the job just as well or better with Toxic Deluge, Mutilate, Languish, Black Sun's Zenith, Killing Wave, or Damnation. Most of these working around indestructible which can be a big factor if the opponent run cards like Heroic Intervention or one of the variants.

Red has cards like Blasphemous Act or Chain Reaction that works as damage board wipes. Blasphemous Act might even be considered better than white board wipes due to the mana reduction but generally white is better than red at wiping the board.

Green is kinda at a loss because their color doesn't really do board wipes and usually just resorts to taking out problems with Fight or the occasional Whirlwind, Hurricane, or the odd Ezuri's Predation. Green usually "fixes" the problem by applying enough pressure through their own creatures to require board wipes.

Blue has gained a lot of soft board wipes like Inundate, Evacuation, River's Rebuke and the all time favorite Cyclonic Rift. While not a final removal choice, the tempo and flexibility it provides can be more than enough for blue to pull ahead or win.

And after a board wipe, unless the white player has been planning or specifically played up to a board wipe, they lose a lot of resources themselves to a board wipe. But where other colors have access to good and fast card draw or equivalent, white is kinda stuck with the cards they have. They have a harder time rebuilding.

I wont go into the topic of mass land destruction, for one because of the social aspect of Commander and secondly because WotC haven't printed a new white mass LD spell since the early phases of the game - a point where the does and don'ts of the game was not quite established (looking especially at you Time Walk). There's one exception being Fall of the Thran which may just be a callback to the Urza block, and it has a soft-remedy. Cards that blows everything sky high usually includes "Nonland permanents" or in the cases of Elspeth Tirel and Scourglass exclude lands from their destruction.

This kinda sums up my point:

Overall I don't see white always coming out of a board wipe having equalized the card access/advantage. And even if that was true it reads like white is always behind up until the point that they equalize. That doesn't seem like a good position to be in.

ilovemydoghisnameistuna on <PRIMER> Shirei, Guiding the Dead </PRIMER>

2 months ago

In order:

My thing about Blasting Station is the situation where you go into your end step with Shirei, return a bunch of creatures, and immediately use all the triggers from Blasting Station to sacrifice them for next turn.

I actually just added Thorn of the Black Rose because it essentially means no one else will ever have monarch: if anyone else ever gets it, your trigger goes on top to take it back, resolves first, and you steal it back. Makes monarch slightly less appealing when the guy you got it from will constantly take it back without having to do anything for it.

I will definitely add Burglar Rat, it is very good card advantage. The reason I don't like Augur is because it only hits one player and only your upkeep. Might add Black Cat to draw less hate?

I want to add Yawgmoth, but am afraid to get it and be disappointed my his performance. I will try it out, but I might leave him on a wishlist.

Sling-Gang and Enforcer are great cards, especially the latter having deathtouch. However, for whatever reason, my group doesn't really care about me until I start getting tokens. Better to sit in the shadows.

Added Mutilate.

Want Grave Pact, currently outside my price range. Will add later.

Oversold Cemetery, same thing as Pact and Yawgmoth.

Arena, great card. Should probably get it.

Deadly Rollick is outside price range as well currently, hopefully the hype will go down a little.

Lands: definitely outside the realm of possibility, those are happy happy dreamland.

Imp's Mischief is so cool.

Thanks for the feedback, that definitely helps.