It all starts with
Chittering Rats
. More than just a discard "specter" that cant fly, chittering rat's text really says "If your opponent did nothing last turn, take an extra turn after this one" it is an incredible card and begging for some non monoblack love. I saw the printing of
Painful Memories
(which is just OK at best on it's own) and remembered
Memory Lapse
and it occurred to me you don't have to blow up lands if they never get to draw them. All was well and i got to brewing. It was a true dimir control deck for awhile with
Counterspell
and i realized that all this delaying their best spells was great and all but without a gameplan of my own, its all for nothing.
Then,
Eye Collector
was printed. After playing with it for sometime now, I can say with some confidence that eye collector has the potential to be the best black 1 mana creature in the format (there isn't much competition anyways.) Almost the entire deck synergizes with his kit allowing for truly phenomenal plays with mindgames and bluffs worthy of tournament level magic. In came the faerie duo
Spellstutter Sprite
and
Faerie Miscreant
for the obvious synergy and pressure. Next
Portent
and
Architects of Will
for their delightful interactions with
Memory Lapse
,
Eye Collector
,
Painful Memories
and each other, as well as their added utility to dig for answers, granting immense deck manipulation. Pauper has very few shuffle effects compared to other formats.
Peppersmoke
seemed like an obvious cantrip addition. You might say "Why
Painful Memories
it's slow, is essentially a mid-game play, and is often dead quickly. Why not....say...
Lost Hours
" Simple, like chittering rats, if your opponent plays nothing, it is
Time Walk
, but more importantly, turn 1 eye collector into turn 2 painful memories lets you throw out anything, EVEN THEIR ONLY LAND!!! Now that is a black deck I can get behind. You can also just practically bury a card most of the game with the other 16 deck manipulation cards until you draw an answer of overwhelm them.
The list is in constant flux I apologize. I'm a brewer at heart and I wont be satisfied even after its perfected but these cards make the core of the strategy. There are MANY other cards fighting for deck real-estate and I will place the ones that come to mind in the maybe board. Sideboards are meta based, so I will just place recommendations with explanations in the maybe-board rather than hard/fast mandatory cards with maybe an example sideboard. Feedback is HIGHLY appreciated, I've been playing for 8 years but this is the first time I'm reaching out to the community for help and feedback. Also looking for an MTGO group to play with to test out prototypes of brews like these before they reach this phase. If you play it lemme know the results and what you felt was missing.
GLHF!
When the deck had/has
Cavern Harpy
(A UB tempo control deck that incidentally runs the best creature spells to recurr with cavern harpy. Cavern harpy is so underrated -- in a format where the best spells are on value creatures -- I would call it the snapcaster mage of the format. Better even; having an instant speed, 0 mana vapor snag in it's kit and flying
