Infernal Darkness

Enchantment

Cumulative upkeep-Pay (Black) and 1 life. (At the beginning of your upkeep, put an age counter on this permanent, then sacrifice it unless you pay its upkeep cost for each age counter on it.)

If a land is tapped for mana, it produces (Black) instead of any other type.

Discussion (51)

SideBae on Aminatou in Progress

1 month ago

1. So Preordain is awesome for the same reasons your Brainstorm and Ponder are... I suggest running it.

2. Narset, Parter of Veils is a great way to limit your competitive opponents. Especially if you pair her with a well-timed Windfall . Ashiok, Dream Render happens to be another way to punish people for playing tutor-tribal kinds of strategies.

3. Another hallmark of competitive decks is their ramp, especially zero and two-mana. In your description, you say you want to stay budget -- unfortunately, that rules out about all of the good zero mana ramp. ( Mox Tantalite is bad, and Mox Amber is hardly better most of the time.) So I suggest increasing your two-mana ramp, and maybe including Ancient Tomb if at all possible to speed up their presence on the board. Some to consider: Talisman of Progress , Talisman of Hierarchy , Talisman of Dominance , Coldsteel Heart , Fellwar Stone , Mind Stone , Everflowing Chalice , Prismatic Lens , etc. None of these should be more than a few bucks.

4. Concerning your lands: I think you're running too many, especially if you add some of the ramp mentioned in (3). I'd cut four-ish, maybe five. Generally, once you have a few (3 - 4) lands, you'd rather have a rock and a land in hand than just two lands, since you can cast the rock without using your land-drop. I'm not sure HOW budget you want to keep this deck, but Mana Confluence and City of Brass are each around $10, and they're great in any three or more color deck. Pain lands ( Caves of Koilos , Adarkar Wastes and Underground River ) are better than your tapped lands like Sejiri Refuge , as far as I can tell.

5. I think a reanimation package is probably better than running Show and Tell . Show and Tell is symmetrical, and is often actively dangerous to resolve in EDH, when everyone is trying to do busted stuff. I'm much more a fan of Buried Alive and Entomb to get your fatties in the bin, and then using Animate Dead , Dance of the Dead , Reanimate and/or Necromancy (which is $$$ for some reason) to get them back.

6. Tutors like your Demonic Tutor are good, but like zero mana rocks they tend to be pricy (see Vampiric Tutor and Enlightened Tutor ). One I do suggest is Lim-Dul's Vault , which is only a couple dollars these days. It also happens to be instant speed, which is kinda dumb-powerful, if you ask me.

7. Cumulative upkeep was designed to make powerful effects transient; however, Aminatou, the Fateshifter sorta changes that equation with her -1. Consider cards like Mystic Remora , which you can blink to keep around relatively indefinitely. Similar cards to consider are: Musician , Phyrexian Etchings , Tidal Control and Infernal Darkness (if you're particularly mean).

8. Divining Witch is interesting -- I'd actually never seen that card before. If you're trying to exile your deck and win with your Jace, Wielder of Mysteries , I think Demonic Consultation is probably a better way... though you might want to keep both. Another method (that I think is worse) is to use the card Doomsday , which is only a few dollars. The problem is that if you run Doomsday , you'd likely want to run a Doomsday -package, so you could win by just casting it and drawing into your top card... For that, I'd suggest talking to someone smarter than me, as I've never been able to get the hang of what the hell is going on with that strategy. All I know is that the package usually has something like Gitaxian Probe and Lotus Petal and ends with me being dead.

9. You may have good luck with card draw spells. Repeatable effects, like Phyrexian Arena and/or Dark Confidant , tend to be expensive; luckily, the spell versions are often decidedly less so. I suggest running a few or more of the following: Painful Truths , Night's Whisper , Treasure Cruise or Dig Through Time (running both can be tough since delve can get in its own way), Fact or Fiction , Thirst for Knowledge , Concentrate , Chemister's Insight , Oona's Grace (questionable, due to the high mana requirement), Ancient Excavation (good with the reanimation mentioned in (5)), Archmage's Charm , Chart a Course , Syphon Mind , Deep Analysis and/or Words of Wisdom -- pay extra attention to the instants you can cast on an opponents end step. Another way to do this is simply to steal your opponents' card draw with Notion Thief or Plagiarize .

10. Lastly, I know its around $11 these days, but I think Counterbalance would be dumb in this deck. Using your general's +1 will let you stack whatever you want on top, which can be especially devastating if you can keep an opponent's general off the board that way.

Good luck man! Love this deck.

StopShot on [COMMUNITY] What cards do you ...

2 months ago

Ban Contamination and Infernal Darkness . Unless you’re playing mono-black these completely screw your manabase, and the decks that run these are too efficient at keeping them on the board or recurring them. Even if you get a mana rock out its still practically a one-sided Rule of Law . These cards might as well say, “Win the game if you play this,” because the owner will have a gross advantage in the game before it’s finally removed for good. Blood Moon and Back to Basics are bad, but Contamination should have never been printed.

burferking on Phylactery Broker

2 months ago

I forgot to suggest: The Immortal Sun (since you don't play Planeswalkers). Spine of Ish Sah and Meteor Golem particularly to destroy permanents like artifacts or enchantments. Infernal Darkness is Contamination 's lil brother.
Phyrexian Etchings either way your opponents are fucked. Hall of the Bandit Lord Ifnir Deadlands Mischievous Poltergeist Soul Channeling Bloodgift Demon Demonlord Belzenlok Archfiend of Despair Darkness

Yellowcandy on The Cataract Kill: CEDH Xiahou Stax Combo

2 months ago

Profet93

Fetches is very true, I built this deck and included the fetches but forgot too add them to the digital list I'll get on that. As for crucible at best its probably really good, especially with buried ruin, lake of the dead, and blast zone but its also just going to be a dead three mana in some games which scares me, well see.

Withering Boon is in the conversation I've been thinking about slotting it in, testing it right now but I'm not sure if its better than a kill spell because kill spells are better for recurring with xiahou.

Infernal Darkness sounds interesting will go into the maybeboard for now, Ill find a time to test with it, might be a flex slot for games that it can just be a potential time walk in.

Thespian's Stage and Vesuva I found to be too clunky. The deck already isn't the best with efficiency and hands with only colorless mana blow so I'm trying to keep non swamps down to a minimum.

Also Phyrexian Revoker is over pithing needle exactly because of that and it can also sometimes keep contamination around for another turn if needed. Might switch it to pithing needle sometime, but so far it hasn't mattered too much.

Hatred is a no go because we really want to save every ounce of life for ad naus, necro, or citadel, would be funny though, horsemanship lol.

Thanks for the feedback!

Profet93 on The Cataract Kill: CEDH Xiahou Stax Combo

2 months ago

1. Lovely deck!
2. Why phyrexian revoker over pithing needle or even the new spy one? Is it because it is recurable with stronghold?
3. Infernal Darkness for redundancy?
4. Thespian's Stage or Vesuva for additional coffers? Lots of black mana can help u go off or just help u recast ur commander incase ur recursion pieces get exiled (as they usually will seeing you play this deck and your opponents are wise)
5. Withering Boon for shits and giggles. It reminds me of evil goku doing a kamehameha.
6. Crucible of Worlds with fetches for deck thinning, consistent land drops, and infinite recursion of lands and artifact (crucible gets ruin and ruin get crucible as well as ur other artifacts). I know ur deck wants to race but I feel that its always nice to have a back up? I dont play much cEDH though. As a mostly(?) control deck, I assume you want the game to be grindy so u want additional recursion that ur commander doesnt provide. Also gets back the land from lake of dead.
7. Hatred for more shits, giggles AND just to spite someone early in the game.

PhoenixNest on Infernal Control

2 months ago

Contamination is better than Infernal Darkness because it's 1 mana cheaper and you can run cards like Bitterblossom and Ophiomancer to have sacrifice fodder every turn, and those cards aren't bad without Contamination. That will give you more room to add other cards. Cabal Therapy would fit in the deck if you added the token producers.

If you want to stick with Infernal Darkness, you should run Vampire Hexmage and cut Ferropede and Ammit Eternal . Blighted Fen is not good because it requires you to have a total of six lands in play, so you should cut those in favor of some combination of Swamps, Dark Depths , or other utility lands

StopShot on engine out, painters servant in

3 months ago

I would have banned Contamination & Infernal Darkness long before I would have banned Iona, Shield of Emeria . Contamination makes Blood Moon and Back to Basics look as trivial as Root Maze when optimized for lockdown. If it didn't affect basic lands I would be much more okay with it.

Protean Hulk or Grand Abolisher - either one of those I would have banned. If my best answer to a combo is Cabal Pit or Ghost-Lit Raider 's channel ability something has gone wrong. If better answers were printed to get around this combo *cough* Grand Abolisher *cough* then it wouldn't be as bad.

Lastly I would have banned Dakmor Salvage . The infinite combo with this card, a discard outlet, and The Gitrog Monster is like the love child between Modern KCI and Legacy Four Horsemen. The casuals in my playgroup don't even want to bother understanding the inter-complexities that go behind this combo because there is a lot to take in, especially when the Gitrog player uses their discard step as a discard outlet to win the game. (Yes, I understand Gitrog players can use their discard step as a repeatable method to cycle Dakmor Salvage .) The issue here is, if no one can or wants to fully understand all the rules and limits that go behind this strategy that means only the Gitrog player is responsible for checking to see if the Gitrog player is following the rules behind his combo or not. The point is unless I'm there this player gets away with winning games a judge would have tossed the book at him for, because he knows his opponents won't challenge him on the validity of his reasoning. (Even I'm not fully knowledgeable on it myself either; I just have a better general understanding.) Seeing it get played in my casual play group is just too painful to watch and no one wants to make a play-group ban or else said player is going to feel singled out which would create bad blood amongst players. Either way this one combo has been disbanding my play group and nobody really wants to play the game as much given the stigma of the combo. I have even given up building my deck to go up against theirs as it would require boarding in cards that would already set my own deck back like Rest in Peace , Cursed Totem , and Suppression Field .

Contamination and Flash-Hulk combo are a pain to deal with, but I feel like I can still somewhat interact with them with cards like Seal of Cleansing and Red Elemental Blast . It's just those strategies feel like they run against the spirit of the game and are just too harsh to deal with as it currently stands. The Gitrog-Dakmor Salvage combo however, is the only strategy I feel incredibly helpless against that is crushing my interest in playing this format. I don't think these cards will ever get banned however, because they're either too obscure for most casual players to use often enough and/or they demand a player to own a lot of monetarily expensive cards in order to use them consistently and fast. Contamination , Infernal Darkness , Grand Abolisher , and Dakmor Salvage are the cards I feel need to banned the most given their impact when utilized in decks that can use them optimally.

Strangelove on Chainer Fun

4 months ago

Saw your post on /r/edh. I've been tweaking a casual mono-black Belzenlok for a while now (...bascially Necrologia -on-a-commander into every version of Rise of the Dark Realms ).

Chainer's game plan should be something like... Ramp > Control > Reanimate.

Focus on filling and stealing from your opponents' graveyards and protecting Chainer.

Stax: Honestly, I would avoid hard stax. It encourages your opponents to hate you and escalate their power-level.

What this deck really needs is ramp: 38-40 lands and 12-16 cards like Bubbling Muck , Charcoal Diamond , Heartless Summoning , Burnished Hart , Coalition Relic , Revel in Riches , Black Market , Magus of the Coffers , Gauntlet of Power , Nirkana Revenant , etc. Also Phyrexian Tower .

I'd recommend Dark Deal and Ward of Bones as soft stax. The first fits right into your game plan and the second is pretty clutch vs. artifacts and enchantments.

Board wipes like Boompile , Nevinyrral's Disk , Coercive Portal , Perilous Vault are very necessary in mono-black because they are some of the only ways to deal with artifacts and enchantments.

...If you want to lean into stax... here's a list for evil people :)

Hard Stax

Necrogen Mists , Bottomless Pit , Infernal Darkness , Tainted AEther , Painful Quandary , Possessed Portal , Death Cloud

Creature Stax

Mindlash Sliver , Burglar Rat , Rotting Rats , Noxious Toad , Liliana's Specter , Screeching Buzzard , Cackling Fiend , Sadistic Hypnotist

glhf!