Damnable Pact

Sorcery

Target player draws X cards and loses X life.

Discussion (50)

austintayshus on Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Spidercannon

1 month ago

Neat Deck!

To start, I think I counted about 11 ramp spells, which is a good start. You may want to swap out Golgari Locket and Darksteel Ingot for some land ramp spells like Rampant Growth and Cultivate . Lands tend to be safer than artifacts.

As far as card draw effects, I think this is where your deck could use some work. There are a number of effect that will get extra cards into your hand like Grisly Salvage but most are conditional (you can only get a creature or land) and most only give you one card at a time. I think Shamanic Revelation wpuld be a good addition from your maybeboard because it will probably draw you 3 cards or more most of the time. Strive for card draw effects that either A) draw many cards at once or B) can draw a lot of cards over the course of the game. For category A Cards, I would recommend Read the Bones and Rishkar's Expertise and Disciple of Bolas and Damnable Pact . For category B cards, I would recommend Abzan Beastmaster and Beast Whisperer and Lifecrafter's Bestiary and Primordial Sage and Greed .

Hope this helps!

dingusdingo on Aggro Tribe: Mono Black Vampires

3 months ago

The tribal base looks pretty nice, and I like the amount of 1x and 2x that you run. I might bump Vampire Nocturnus up to a 2x though.

Not a fan of Essence Extraction . Its spot removal that is expensive at 3 CMC, and doesn't guarantee removal. The extra life is certainly nice, but I would run more Fatal Push or Tragic Slip over them.

Chalice of Life  ^Flip is nice here, gives a colorless way to inflict a loss on opponents.

With the 2x Crypt of Agadeem and the 20 lands anyways, you could definitely fit 1 or 2 X spells in here for games that go longer. Torment of Hailfire is ridiculous.

A few draw pieces will help in case your creatures get hit by Wrath of God or some variant. I'm a real big fan of Mindblade Render , which isn't a vampire but worth a consider for a budget swinger/drawer. Asylum Visitor is less of a guarantee to draw, but its a 3/1 tribal creature with madness for 2 CMC so it might be worth a consider. Can help gas you when you're at no hand. Damnable Pact is an X spell that can refill you mid game at the cost of some life. Dusk Legion Zealot is a tribal that can replace itself, but doesn't beat down very well. Sign in Blood is a straight forward black draw card that can help you close out long games by acting as a shock too.

I think Dark Favor isn't that great, creature enchantments open you up to getting 2 for 1'd rather easily (they blow up or bounce your creature in response to the enchant, removing 2 of your cards with just 1 card).

I don't like Urge to Feed . It is mediocre removal, and the pumping of your tribe costs you an attack that turn.

Duress and similar effects as a 3x or 4x will help immensely. They let you deal with Enchantments and Artifacts, which are difficult for mono black to handle. They also let you get rid of board wipers, engine enablers, counterspells, and combo pieces before they are played. Finally, they reveal a lot of information about what your opponent can do, which helps you to make better decisions.

You should consider that there are some antisynergies with your cards. Captivating Vampire and Throne of the God-Pharaoh both want large amounts of creatures, while Kalastria Highborn and Indulgent Aristocrat both want you to sac creatures. Undying Evil wants to save creatures without +1/+1 counters, but Blade of the Bloodchief and Indulgent Aristocrat both want to put +1/+1 counters on creatures.

If this was my list, here's the changes I would make

• 2x Essence Extraction -> 2x Duress
• 2x Urge to Feed -> 2x Duress (so 4x total)
• 2x Undying Evil -> 2x Fatal Push (4x total)
• 2x Dark Favor -> 2x Asylum Visitor
• 1x Vampire Nighthawk -> 1x Asylum Visitor (so 3x of each)
• 2x Indulgent Aristocrat -> 2x Vampire Cutthroat (4x total)
• 2x Blade of the Bloodchief -> 2x Captivating Vampire

In short, cull down to 8 pieces of creature removal. Up the amount of stealing vampire so serve as more removal and serve as a better tribal buff than blade of the chief. Add in hand disruption, add in Asylum visitors as cheap beaters who can help you if you're empty and benefits from opponents hand being empty too (from your Duress !). Move from the sac vampire to the guaranteed hits vampire because we don't want dead critters. Nocturnus gives all your vamps flying, so slightly upping total creature count while replacing 1x Nighthawk lets you get more benefits. Hope these suggestions make sense and are helpful!

austintayshus on Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief

3 months ago

Sorry, I didn't that you already have Blood tribute in your deck. lol

But I think you could use a few more card draw effects. Perhaps Greed and Harvester of Souls and Damnable Pact ?

austintayshus on Orzhov, Vizkopa, Obzedat: Death & Taxes

4 months ago

For card draw, I would recommend Well of Lost Dreams and Dawn of Hope and Read the Bones and Damnable Pact and probably also Mentor of the Meek . Some of those cards may be over budget by a little but they are all worth it for the card draw.

TurtleLordMTG on Rakdos, Lord of Burn

4 months ago

Nice deck! +1 If I would suggest something about the playstyle for Rakdos, Lord of Riots it all depends on how you want the deck to work. If you're laying in for a more casual/focused Rakdos-theme deck than this is it, you've got demons, sacrifice, burn etc so nothing to point out there. I would however just generally recommend more card draw since you might quicky run out of your burnspells. Staff of Nin is a good casual draw card but a little bit too slow. You might want to look into cards like Read the Bones , Damnable Pact , Greed , Sign in Blood , Succumb to Temptation , Grim Haruspex , Underworld Connections are just a few cheap (prizewise) draw spells you could use.

And there's also the option for card-selection cards like Faithless Looting which is a really good one, not card draw per-say but it's still card advantage in a way.

The best draw card in black (and maybe in the whole format at least according to me) is Necropotence . Altough a little expensive it does grant some ridiculous card advantage but that's totally up to you if you want to invest in such.

And lastly, if you ever want to take this deck to a more semi-competitive level, the way for this is to just load the deck with some cheap burn and huge creatures with generic mana as the majority of their cmc (like the eldrazi).

tompadget on Elenda BW Tokens/Pox

5 months ago

Daedalus19876 Thank you very much for your feedback. The cards you mentioned from my maybes were pretty much the exact ones I've selected so that's very reassuring.

All the other suggestions are great, thank you. I was already swapping Luminarch Ascension for Bitterblossom so good to get your encouragement on that swap. I don't own Vampiric Tutor atm. My current budget substitute is Diabolic Intent which I could use for the same purpose. Any other card draw you could reccomend in place of Damnable Pact ? I just bought a copy of Tymna the Weaver so I guess I can swap in her for Pact. I think Altar's Reap is possibly weak too, but I do sorta like having a surprise instant speed sac effect.

I should have explained but I don't tend to run Toxic Deluge at the moment because there is one guy in our playgroup who always plays big mana big creature green based decks with commmanders including Arixmethes and xenagos. He also runs lots of cards that double creatures power and double +1+1 counters etc so the creatures often end up extremely big so Elenda, the Dusk Rose is often not the biggest creature and Toxic Deluge frustratingly is just not as good as usual against his decks as the amount of life you have to pay is sometimes huge and sometimes even unpayable. It's possible the card is still good enough tho and I should give it more of a try because maybe I've underestimated how I can gain that life back same turn or get to a life total where I can pay. I run Path to Exile over Swords to Plowshares for a similar reason but again I'm open to trying out Swords to Plowshares especially as this friend is moving this month so the meta is going to change.

This decklist is still in quite an experimental stage and The Elderspell is something I have been just trying, partly as an alt wincon with the new Liliana, Dreadhorde General . I agree that it seems loose and I should cut it for one of the ones you highly recommend like Reaper from the Abyss .

I have a copy of Bolas's Citadel and would never have thought of it for this deck so thanks so much for that idea. I'll def try it. I will add back Swiftfoot Boots too but I cut Lightning Greaves because it stops me targeting Elenda, the Dusk Rose with effects like Hatred and Shizo, Death's Storehouse . Do you def think Lightning Greaves is better given that drawback?

Do you think Cabal Conditioning could be worth trying as a late game finisher to tutor? Or does Sadistic Hypnotist fulfil that function well enough?

One new card I was extremely impressed with was God-Eternal Bontu I ended up 1v1 against my friend on a Ruric Thar deck and I was recurring Bontu and he was recurring Ilharg, the Raze-Boar and the card advantage from Bontu in a token deck won out.

Your deck was such a good staring point thank you. Certain synergies like Elspeth, Sun's Champion + Martyr's Cause are just so good!!

Daedalus19876 on Elenda BW Tokens/Pox

5 months ago

My first thought would be to reduce the number of lands you control that enter the battlefield tapped. They're a significant issue for this deck IMO, since WB doesn't have access to especially good acceleration as-is. Your enchantment suite is good, though I'd be cautious about Luminarch Ascension (I wouldn't run it without Cataclysm in the deck).

I find that Damnable Pact is generally a bad return on card draw; I'd run something like Vampiric Tutor to grab Skullclamp instead. I'm not convinced by The Elderspell here unless you play in a meta with a significant number of PWs (this deck isn't generally one where you want to eat your own PWs to get a boost in loyalty). Careful with Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet - he can sometimes backfire when you'd rather get the death trigger than the token. Swords to Plowshares is significantly better than Path to Exile in this deck. I'd cut one land for Fellwar Stone , probably. I'm surprised not to see Lightning Greaves in here, since it's good at protecting Elenda from the dreaded exile effects. The other glaring exclusion is Toxic Deluge , which is an INCREDIBLE board wipe for this deck (since you can tailor it to not kill Elenda under most circumstances, and immediately gain back far more life). I'm curious if you've considered Bolas's Citadel , since it works very well with Pox -style effects in a deck like this that can gain back life. From your maybeboard, I'd most highly recommend Fleshbag Marauder , Hero of Bladehold , Merciless Executioner , Reaper from the Abyss , and Sadistic Hypnotist .

Hope that helps! Deck looks pretty good to me ;) and I'm flattered by you linking my primer in the description!

jpermar on Rakdos, Lord's Downward Spiral

5 months ago

A massive update this time. One that I'm very excited about. Here are the changes:

• Gilded Lotus -> Fanatical Firebrand
• Sword of the Animist -> Swiftfoot Boots
• Mana Crypt -> Thermo-Alchemist
• Neheb, the Eternal -> Pilgrim's Eye
• Abyssal Persecutor -> Coldsteel Heart
• Dire Fleet Ravager -> Rune-Scarred Demon
• Fiery Confluence -> Painful Truths
• Olivia Voldaren -> Goblin Fireslinger
• Damnation -> Damnable Pact
• Steel Hellkite -> It That Betrays
• Bojuka Bog -> Smoldering Marsh
• Oppression -> Artisan of Kozilek
• Rakdos, the Showstopper -> Theater of Horrors
• Sol Ring -> Lobber Crew
• Flame Rift -> Gamble
• Rakdos Charm -> Lotus Petal
• Duplicant -> Walking Ballista
• Scourge of the Throne -> Void Winnower
• Bloodgift Demon -> Mask of Memory
• Kokusho, the Evening Star -> Painful Lesson
• Oblivion Stone -> Necropotence
• Risk Factor -> Dark Ritual
• Whip of Erebos -> Plague Spitter
• Heartless Hidetsugu -> Arguel's Blood Fast  ^Flip

Overall, the deck is faster and more consistent. Here's a summary of changes by card category:

• direct damage is now at lower cmc
• -1 Ramp
• +1 protection/haste
• +2 tutor
• +5 draw
• +1 anti-control
• -4 Creature removal
• -2 graveyard hate
• -1 discard
• -1 extra attack
• -1 lifegain/recursion
• +1 removal

So the changes overall are lower cmc, more draw and tutor, less creature removal and less utility (graveyard hate, extra attacks, etc.) Overall, the early turn plays to get direct damage and get Rakdos out are far more prevalent. The deck is more aggressive and more focused now, and plays much smoother.

And yes, this is the only deck I have where I've taken out Sol Ring . It's simply better to have only colored mana in order to cast Rakdos as consistently as possible!