A weird mono-black combo deck built around
Heartless Summoning
, one of my favorite MTG cards ever printed. In a normal deck, it's no better than a mana rock, but when built around properly it allows for some bizarre nonsense through exploiting triggered abilities. Like all decks running the
Heartless Summoning
/
Myr Retriever
combo, it can win with a very lucky turn 2 combo, but that's no fun at all! The fun part comes from the absurd amounts of card draw that it can start generating on turns 3 to 5 by combining 'card draw on death' creatues and free to cast (and instantly killed) 2 mana artifact creatures.
The deck is weak to graveyard hate, counter spells, and fast fliers, but c'est la vie playing mono-black, there are some sideboarding options for these matchups. It's proven to be very fun to play on MTGO, when it goes off the triggers go a bit crazy!
Key Combos:
- Heartless Summoning + Myr Retriever + Myr Retriever
= Infinite permanent etbs and gravestorm. An old timey combo that this deck aims to breath some new life into.
- Previous combo can be used with card draw on death triggers and then
Altar of the Brood
to win via mill.
Bitter Ordeal
can be used as an alternate way to mill an opponent playing eldrazi, other reshuffle effects, or strong artifact hate.
Syr Konrad, the Grim
is another win condition.
- Playing a second copy of
Heartless Summoning
turns
Workshop Assistant
, and to a slightly lesser extent
Scrap Trawler
, into functional copies of
Myr Retriever
giving the deck a total of 8. This play kills the card draw creatures, but it's a great 'go for broke' move if there are 4+ creatures on the field with 1 or more of them having a 'card draw on death' trigger (not an uncommon state). Basically, blow up the board, draw a ton of cards (usually between 4 and 12), and hope to find that last
Myr Retriever
,
Workshop Assistant
,
Altar of the Brood
, or
Syr Konrad, the Grim
. This is really fun to pull off!
Workshop Assistant
and
Myr Retriever
also have the added bonus of making the deck fairly resilient to artifact destruction.
Grim Haruspex
,
Midnight Reaper
, and
Filigree Familiar
are all sources of card draw.
Warteye Witch
allows us to scry. I've debated whether to include the witch for a while, but I think the upside of running 1 fewer
Midnight Reaper
is worth it, since he is a liability against aggressive decks.
Shred Memory
is both a tutor for 3/4 combo pieces when transmuted, and can also be cast to hit eldrazi before they reshuffle or get rid of things like
Bloodghast
and
Arclight Phoenix
before they reanimate.
Silent Arbiter
is an excellent way to lock down the board against go-wide strategies, and he can be recurred in a pinch.
Perilous Myr
and
Necropede
both block/trade well in the early game, and act as removal (for their creatures or ours!) once heartless summoning is out. Oh, and they also recur!
Syr Konrad, the Grim
is a new addition that adds so much more versatility and reach to the deck, allowing it to win with or without the infinite combo. Our free to cast artifact creatures are constantly dying and recurring, so he can quickly become a threat! His symmetrical mill ability is a great way to dig for our second
Myr Retriever
while pinging the opponent. He also combos with
Shred Memory
to hit for those last 4 points of damage!
Witch's Cottage
is a card I'd like to experiment with. I don't know that the deck wants more than one, but it seems to offer some nice late game value.
Massacre Girl
is another experiment I'm trying, She's a great board wipe with or without
Heartless Summoning
, though she may end up in the sideboard.
Barren Moor
has proven to be an excellent addition, allowing for further digging and consistency. Side note: One reason I don't like building multi-color decks in modern is that all of them require such expensive fetch and dual lands to be consistent and even remotely competitive. Mono-color enablers are cheap!
Sideboard:
So, graveyard hate is a big problem, since the deck relies so heavily on creature death triggers ('dies' = 'put into a graveyard from play'). Thankfully strong hate like
Leyline of the Void
and
Rest in Peace
have mostly gone away with the banning of Hogaak. Still, to combat graveyard hate I bring in 3 more
Evolving Wilds
, one Forest, and 2x
Return to Nature
(since
Shred Memory
can tutor for it). Cards like
Relic of Progenitus
and
Tormod's Crypt
only shut down our combo, not the death triggers, so we can also side into an aggressive strategy with
Desecration Demon
,
Gonti, Lord of Luxury
, and
Massacre Girl
. The main deck does not fair well against fast burn strategies (really, what does?), since they can kill us by turn 3 or 4 when we'd like to start our combo.
Dragon's Claw
is a passive way to hopefully buy us a few extra turns in these matchups.
