This is my take on a Tom Ross inspired mono-black 8-Rack deck! There are some pricey staples in this archetype so there are some budget alternatives based on things I have available but I still love how it plays! A lot of 8-Rack builds tend to be creature-less, relying on
Ensnaring Bridge
to shut down aggro (generally this builds worst matchup), however
Nyxathid
is kind of a pet-card of mine and is a fun surprise win-con that people generally don't expect. It makes for a fabulous blocker to hide behind, but assuming you can pin your opponent quickly enough, it puts a much shorter clock on your opponents life total if they weren't able to get a creature out before you wreck their hand. In combination with the tax effects of
The Rack
or
Shrieking Affliction
, its hard to consistently remove artifacts, enchantments AND massive creatures. While the tax effects are the main win con,
Nyxathid
is just too much fun for me not to include.
It's a really straightforward concept; make your opponent discard their hand faster than they can play it out and then tax them for not having any cards. While it certainly won't make you any friends at your local FNM, piloting 8-Rack is fast and fun. Assuming you enjoy the idea of frustrating your opponent into a scoop.
I'm really excited about the addition of
Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage
from War of the Spark. It's great in the slot that Liliana would occupy if I could afford more of them. It really supports the play style with a discard loyalty ability, AND a static ability that taxes your opponent for not having cards on one planeswalker.
Mire's Toll
is another pet card of mine that I actually really love having in this deck. Worldwake was when I was introduced to Magic, so there's that, but it also allows you to choose ANY card from the players hand to discard. Most discard staples only allow non-creature, non-land options, or cause loss of life for playing, but not
Mire's Toll
! It does only allow you to choose from a number of cards in your opponents hand equal to the number of swamps you control, which is certainly a draw back. Because of how low the curve of this deck sits, you generally only need access three lands total throughout the game, keeping land draws in hand to pitch to
Raven's Crime
once it's in your graveyard, or to
Smallpox
. With that being said, if you're opponent consistently has more than three cards in hand, you're probably losing anyway, nullifying the drawback to
Mire's Toll
.
Sign in Blood
and
Barren Moor
are obviously included for card draw. With the low curve of this deck, in combination with NOT having a
Raven's Crime
in your graveyard to keep pushing the discard clock, it's easy to run out of gas as land draws become reallyyyy dead cards in your hand.
As stated above, aggro decks just crush this archetype, so the sideboard is mainly focused around removal, more copies of the two creatures I include, and just a touch of graveyard hate. I probably should include more representation in that regard, as there are plenty of decks that benefit from cards in their graveyard, and feeding that fire for them can be majorly problematic. I'm looking for and open to suggestions of all kinds of course, however the sideboard is definitely where I need the most help as I don't currently have a consistent Modern meta to make decisions around.
