BW Blink Rack (Modern MTG Deck)

The premise of this deck is to build an 8-rack deck around the Grief + Ephemerate combo, which usually takes almost all of our opponent's nonland cards turn 1. Since the combo is so devastating to the opponent's hand, I thought it would work better in a shell that takes full advantage this and deals damage with The Rack and Shrieking Affliction (as opposed to something like BW Griefblade which is just a midrange pile with a vague ETB theme, no hate though).

For additional Ephemerate targets, we have 4x Burglar Rat/Elderfang Disciple, which also gets around Leyline of Sanctity. To leverage BW colors, we also have elements of BW smallpox, with Flagstones of Trokair to sacrifice and Lingering Souls to discard. Souls is our main way to survive by clogging up the board with chump blockers, and it can also be discarded to pox or lili. Lastly, we have Fatal Push for some spot removal and Damn as our sweeper, which can be exiled to Grief.

Cut cards (please don't suggest these without good reason, because I usually had pretty good reasons for cutting them): Wrench Mind, Thoughtseize, Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage, Funeral Charm, Fetid Heath

Card Selection

Blink Package

Grief: Half of the deck's main combo. Although it normally 2-for-1s us, with Ephemerate we can pick out three of our opponent's nonland cards and still have a 3/2 evasive body on the battlefield. This can start chipping away at our opponent's life immediately, and actually servers a similar role to the racks themselves which we also use to incrementally chip away life. Since our opponents don't have many targets to use their removal on, Grief frequently eats a removal spell (usually after dealing 3-6 damage) which makes 4-for-3s them. Everytime one of my creatures gets taken out by spot removal, I'm almost always happy that it did. Grief also offers a decent late game play if we hardcast it.

Burglar Rat/Elderfang Disciple (Which one you run is personal preference): The alternate target for Ephemerate. It takes 3 mana to play this and flicker it, but frequently we can play this t2 and our opponent won't remove it, because who wants to spend their removal spell on a 1/1 with an etb ability? Since it doesn't require us to pitch a card like Grief, we get a solid 3-for-2 out of it. Since it has a weaker body than Grief, either it chumps and saves us another turn or eventually gets killed by a removal spell, making our opponent waste another card. Flickering Elderfang Disciple is also usually a better late game play, when our opponent's hand is mostly whittled down and Grief can whiff if they are holding lands. Most importantly, it's a decent play without Ephemerate, especially if it gets removed and becomes a discard 2.

Ephemerate: The only flicker spell we run. The other 1 mana flicker spells, like Cloudshift, just aren't that good of a combo with either of the creatures in the deck. The death trigger ones like Undying Evil and Malakir Rebirth also don't work with Elderfang Disciple. More importantly, it's a dead card without a targetable creature, so running more than four isn't optimal. Fortunately, we can always discard dead cards to Smallpox and Liliana of the Veil. If our opponent has some mana open, always wait for Grief's Discard ETB trigger (not the evoke ETB trigger) to resolve before casting Ephemerate. This prevents them from removing Grief before Ephemerate Resolves. If they cast the removal before the ETB trigger resolves, we can just flicker it to dodge the removal. If they wait, then we can see their hand and make them discard it, clearing the way for Ephemerate.

Rack Effects

The Rack: Namesake of the deck, not much to say here. On earlier turns, it is almost always correct to play the discard spells first before the rack effects, since the racks don't do anything until our opponent's hand is at 2 or less cards, plus it also tells our opponent what kind of deck we are running in g1 which helps them play around it.

Shrieking Affliction: Racks 5-8. One major advantage it has over The Rack is that we can pitch it to Grief. I used to run a Dave in place of a fourth copy of Affliction, but he almost always died after one turn since this deck is so light on removal.

Smallpox/Symmetrical Discard Package

Smallpox: The core of the second package in the deck. Since it has a symmetrical effect, the deck has several ways to break this symmetry and gain card advantage over our opponent. For the discard effect, we can discard cards like Lingering Souls or even Raven's Crime which we can cast from the graveyard. We can also discard dead cards, like Ephemerate without a creature target, Fatal Push against a deck with no <4 cmc creatures, extra lands, etc. For the creature sacrifice effect, most of the time we have no creatures on our side of the battlefield, or we have tokens we don't mind sacrificing like those from Lingering Souls. Although playing Smallpox in the same deck as a creature based combo can be awkward at times, none of our creatures usually stick around very long before they are been removed or killed chump blocking. Even if we do sacrifice one of our creatures, they all have ETB abilities so sacking them doesn't feel that bad. And finally, for the "sacrifices a land" clause we have Flagstones of Trokair to break parity and stay on curve while ruining our opponent's. A turn 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Inquisition of Kozilek into a turn 2 Flagstones of Trokair + Smallpox is backbreaking against most decks, simultaneously disrupting their hand, board state, and mana curve.

Liliana of the Veil: An absolute powerhouse in any 8rack deck, Lili plays triple duty as discard/rack enabler, removal, and wincon. More specifically in this deck, we can also take advantage of her symmetrical +1 ability in many of the same ways as Smallpox's by discarding stuff like Lingering Souls. Her -2 ability combined with pox thins our opponent's board, potentially forcing them to overextend into a Damn or Bontu's Last Reckoning. With all the control elements in the deck, we can fire off her ult more often than you might expect. If I could find space for a playset in this list, I would. She's just that good.

Lingering Souls: Since cards like Ensnaring Bridge and maindeck boardwipes like Bontu's Last Reckoning can sometimes conflict with our Grief beatdown plan, this is our main card to stall the game against enemy creatures. As stated above, it also has the additional benefit of being castable when discarded. Because Lava Dart has declined a bit in popularity, Souls is back to being a decent card again. That said, one new serious threat to watch out for is Fury, which can wipe out all four of our spirits in one go.

Additional Discard

Inquisition of Kozilek: Most 8rack builds play 8 targeted discard spells, with a playset each of IoK and Thoughtseize. However, this deck already runs a playset of Grief, which makes up four hand disruption spells. For the other four, Inquisition was chosen over Thoughtseize for several reasons. Most of the time, we want to be taking our opponent's early game plays. By turns 4+, we should be keeping them hellbent and prioritizing untargeted discard spells. We also want to carefully manage our life total while racing opponents with rack effects. In a deck that frequently wins games with life in the low single digits, the life loss from Thoughtseize can mean the difference between winning and losing.

Raven's Crime: In a deck running a playset of Smallpox and only 21 lands, the chances of flooding out are relatively low. Nonetheless, Raven's Crime is a great card that can save us in the unfortunate event that it does happen by turning every extra land we topdeck into a discard spell. We only run 2 due to our low land count, but it has performed well enough that I would go up to a third copy if the list wasn't so tight. Cutting one and going down to 1 copy is almost certainly a mistake.

Additional Removal

Fatal Push: Best efficient removal spell in mono black. With fetchlands, flicker effects, and Smallpox, triggering revolt is a breeze. While the deck is pretty light on removal, there isn't really space for more copies.

Damn: A maindeckable wrath effect that we can pitch to Grief. If a boardwipe isn't needed, having a second 2-mana spot removal mode is always nice. Damn also plays the role of our singleton catch-all removal spell in the deck (similar to the role Terminate plays in BRx decks) which deals with things like Murktide Regent. The 2-mana mode also prevents it from being a dead card when we are stuck on 3 lands, which is not uncommon in a Smallpox deck.

Sideboarding

Sideboard Choices

Bontu's Last Reckoning: Our backup sweeper for Damn, which we can slam down a turn earlier. While keeping the lands tapped is a serious drawback, being able to cast the sweeper with one less land is invaluable, especially because the deck can sometimes get stuck on 3 lands due to Smallpox. Generally bring this in against any sort of aggro or creature heavy deck.

Dauthi Voidwalker: One-sided grave hate on legs that helps with the rack plan by ticking away at our opponent's life total with a 3/2 evasive body, just like Grief. An alternative would be to run 3-4 Leyline of the Void, which we can pitch to Grief if we draw it later. While there are definitely some graveyard shenanigans going on in the format with Dragon's Rage Channeler, Murktide Regent, and Living End, there aren't too many extremely graveyard heavy decks we need to hose like dredge (besides Living End maybe) which is why I'm not running the Leylines.

Delirium Skeins: Bring this in against any opponent you think will board in Leyline of Sanctity; e.g. some white decks but definitely bogles and enchantress. Also, I generally leave in Grief but take out all 4 IoKs for other cards. We want to minimize the number of dead draws we have which is why I put in basically any removal or Tourach's instead of targeted discard.

Kaya's Guile: Plays double duty as backup grave hate and additional removal. The 1/1 spirit mode is very relevant, while the gain life one can sometimes win you the game against burn. Can be decent against the Indomitable Creativity deck.

Pithing Needle: You can name planeswalkers, Colossus Hammer, Stoneforge Mystic, Expedition Map, Mishra's Bauble and all sorts of other troublesome permanents with activated abilities.

Plague Engineer: Obviously good against any tribal deck like elementals (bye Risen Reef), especially hoses infect now with the "phyrexian" creature type errata.

Stony Silence: More HammerTime hate, hardened scales affinity and classic affinity are both also a thing again so there's that. Incidentally shuts down Bauble but I don't recommend bringing it in against bauble decks. It is okay against tron, but better when we're on the play which we usually aren't -- bringing it in here is a judgement call.

Surgical Extraction: Graveyard/combo hate which works well with all the discard we are running. If we Grief + Ephemerate turn 1 and the opponent has doubles of a card in their hand, we can add insult to injury by using this to take out 4 of their cards.

Tourach, Dread Cantor: A must-remove threat and discard 2-in-1 package generally good in the slower matchups, but frequently too slow for fast decks like hammertime and burn. He's obviously good against most white decks, but he really shines versus control decks. If you don't have the fourth land, it's not always necessary to cast him kicked, although it always feels like a waste.

Vindicate: Our final piece of catch-all removal for any problematic permanents, whether that's a creature, a Chalice of the Void, Teferi, Time Raveler, Wrenn and Six, or a tron land. Since it's a good card in basically every matchup, I usually put it in for IoKs against decks running Leyline.

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Casual

93% Competitive

Top Ranked	Achieved #1 position overall 2 years ago
Date added	2 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	7 - 2 Mythic Rares 23 - 12 Rares 17 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 1 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	1.85
Tokens	Spirit 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 WB
Folders	Favorites from other Planeswalkers, Bookmarks, 8Rack Variants, Favorite Modern Decks
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