I play dredgevine so I automatically love this idea. There are some cards from my deck that I think would work such as, Lotleth troll (works great with grave crawler and bloodguasts and champion). Also, Gnaw to the bone is a great SB option for affinity and burn. And Abrupt decay. You would have to put in green, but the cards I mentioned doesn't mess with merchant seeing as Lotleth is green black, and the others are spells.

Hey Joejoe3955!

Thanks! Dredgevine and this definitely have some similarities, for sure.

As for splashing, it is something that would be fun, but mono color is the way I was wanting to stay with this. If I was going to, yes, Lotleth Troll would be fantastic.

I know some people already suggested this, but Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is an absolute must. You will not always be able to land a gray merchant on turn 5, but with the shrine, you can land it turn 4 or even sooner. It's never a bad thing to produce a big amount of mana. You could use Cavern of Souls so gray merchant cant be countered. You only play three diffrent creatures types, so you could choose one that fits you the most at a specific game. Go for the Throat is decent removal, a coupleInquisition of Kozilek and/or Thoughtseize can not be missed!

Thanks for the comment Memphismaymagic5!

As I have said many times, no. That card does not help this deck. This is not a devotion deck, but a deck that gets value out of Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Also in this, he is a zombie, and one of my favorite pet cards. Getting black mana on the first few turns is way too important, and I have absolutely nothing to spend the mana that I can get from the Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, and I don't intend to put in anything that does, because it takes away from the deck. While good in true mono-black devotion, this is not mono-black devotion.

As for the other cards, I do like Cavern of Souls, but again, I feel like there are too creature types, and none of them are really any that I need to not be countered, so it wouldn't be too good here.

Go for the Throat is a card I did have initially, but the removal is very metagame based, so this is something that does fluctuate for me.

Finally, the targeted discard. I do really like that type of deal. Just what to take out to put cards like that in is difficult. Maybe it will sneak its way in eventually.