MONO-BLACK CONTROL/MID-RANGE
**Nyctophilia**
Noun: An attraction to darkness or night; finding relaxation or comfort in the darkness.
"Because normal people have no idea how beautiful the darkness can be"
WARNING need to update deck description.
Hello all, Greetings Mono Black lovers. This is my first time creating a deck list, so I am quite excited to say the least. I have not yet faced a great variety of modern decks because my play testing has been limited and any feedback in that area will be much appreciated. I have attempted to create the deck to handle a large variety of opposing decks, keeping in mind there will always be one or two decks that your deck just cannot deal with. Again all feedback is welcome and no question is not worth asking. let me know what you guys think? Anyway, Enjoy the darkness.
Deck Aim:
so, the idea of this deck in the early game is to remove the opponents "key pieces" or any early threats that might be of an issue. this should disrupt there game plan enough, allowing us time to strengthen our board. 4 x Thoughtseize , 2 x Fatal Push and 4 x Gifted Aetherborn Targeted removal and nice death touch healers are great early game cards. Also note Inquisition of Kozilek and Collective Brutality available from side board in certain matchups.
You will also notice in the 2 CMC slot: 2 x Dark Confidant, 1 x Bitterblossom and 1 x Tourach, Dread Cantor these are all amazing in the later stages of the game but also against the crazily aggro decks they offer bodies to trade 1 for 1 with.
Mid game is where we want to work on our card advantage, all the while keeping the control on the opponent and removing anything that may be too much of a threat or offer them too much card advantage later in the game. At this stage we should be establishing how we want to play the match up also (by turn 2 or 3 you should know what your up against). A lot of our 3 cmc cards have "optional" plays that can steer the direction of the game. If you are against a matchup with high aggression our Murderous Rider and Liliana, Heretical Healer
might try to be played in there "lifelinking" body form helping you survive the onslaught. If, against a more control type matchup, a hard to remove threat such as Geralf's Messenger or Liliana of the Veil might be used for card advantage. Sword of Feast and Famine can be played in our third turn but, as I said before, think what it is you are up against, if its early aggression you might need body blockers to hold them off. You may want to drop the murderous rider as a body (If they would have no removal) considering its going to be followed by Lashwrithe turn 4. Its all about saying to yourself "what do I need to do to win this game?". Is it just to survive early? Is it to build up card advantage over time? Is it to stop their combo? Then, play your cards heading in that direction.
Around the mid/late game ideally we want at least one very large creature on the board to protect our life and our planes walkers. This gives us card advantage on the board state rendering there smaller creatures of little value. this is quite easily done with 1 of our 6 major threats Lashwrithe x 2 (equipped to our smaller creatures), Phyrexian Obliterator x 2 or Cavalier of Night x 2. These cards mentioned often pose as huge road blocks for some decks, sometimes giving the win all on there own. We also want at least one card that gives us permanent control over the opponent such as 2 x Liliana of the Veil, 2 x Rankle, Master of Pranks, 1 x Liliana, Heretical Healer
(transformed) or Sword of Feast and Famine these types of cards attempt to stop the opponent coming back into the game,
eventually leading to our win. With the way the deck is constructed the symmetrical effects of these cards can be abused to our advantage.
In the later stages you can look for a finisher such as Cavalier of Night, a kicked Tourach, Dread Cantor or any of our planes walker ultimate abilities. Our secondary, less instantaneous, win condition is to just grind the game out allowing our card advantage, discard and huge threats (Phyrexian Obliterator or Lashwrithe) to pull us to victory. Also if a board wipe has taken place or we are in one of those matches that everything is being removed, than top decking any of the following with 5 to 6 black mana available is perfect 2 x Cavalier of Night or Agadeem's Awakening
. Not to mention our constant onslaught of Bloodghasts every land drawn.
Card Synergies
the deck has a lot of cards that synergies well, offering either highly efficient card value or card advantage and control over time.
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Bloodghast and Bitterblossom offer bodies for Lashwrithe to create large continual threats, no matter how much removal they have.
These cards are also great with Village Rites,Rankle, Master of Pranks and Cavalier of Night as sacrificial bodies.
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Dark Confidant usually draws all forms of removal and so Cavalier of Night, Liliana, Heretical Healer
or Agadeem's Awakening
are great to get him back in the later stages. Also works well with Rankle, Master of Pranks and Cavalier of Night sacrificing him if he is doing too much damage and may become lethal. This guy has quite obvious advantages with symmetrical discard effects, as he offers an additional card per turn.
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A total of 9 life linking bodies, and 4 more available from the sideboard, offers roughly a 75% percent chance of drawing at least one in the first two turns. A 60% chance of two bodies on the 5th turn, this should compensate for the damage dealt by any of our many life draining spells or early aggression our opponent might throw at us. There are also plenty of sideboard options to take our Dark Confidants out, should we face a more "spell slinger" style of aggression. These life linking bodies are extremely beneficial combined with our many equip cards. Swinging with a huge life linker nets a loosing situation for your opponent no matter thier choosing, they block and loose a body healing you or they take it creating a huge life point gap. Also, the phyrexian equip cost of Lashwrithe becomes free.
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Our symmetrical killing effects, such as Rankle, Master of Pranks and Cavalier of Night have great synergy with Bloodghast, Bitterblossom and Lashwrithe giving us free creatures to kill/sacrifice. keep in mind a lot of our threats are of the highest "stand alone" raw power value cards, and most of the time if both players are down to a single creature it would net us the best outcome. keep this thought in mind when using the many symmetrical effects/abilities.
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Sword of Light and Shadow usually swords are considered too slow for modern, but a lot of our cards have synergy with this particular sword. Any of our unlockable Phyrexian Obliterator or some of our evasive flyers allow us to use its full potential. If you manage to resolve the equip, without the opponent responding with a kill spell, this sword stops some of the most played removal in modern Fatal Push and Assassin's Trophy to name a few. It should also put the creature out of Lightning Bolt range (providing it has toughness >1). In a top deck style game it is very satisfying having the sword equip resolve on Tourach, Dread Cantor, often rendering him only "touchable" by blue cards, and constantly getting bigger. I have had remarkable results with Sword of Light and Shadow and our lands,
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Lashwrithe is of extremely high value on nearly every creature in this deck coming down with a germ token that, as mentioned above, can be sacrificed or killed (with other cards) to shift the opponent further behind. It has a huge synergy with any of our life linker, flyer or trample/unlockable bodies. Some of our creatures are very hard for certain decks to remove (Phyrexian Obliterator virtually unlockable,Tourach, Dread Cantor protection,Bloodghast recurring body and 10 or less life gives haste) putting Lashwrithe on one of them allows for some stylish unexpected wins.
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A very underrated card I feel is Village Rites. This card works extremely well against control type matchups, giving card advantage by replacing the creature they are targeting with removal. We have plenty of recursive bodies to sacrifice to it even if the opponent doesn't play any removal. You can do some interesting plays with this card though getting yourself out of tricky situations. Say you have a small creature on board Gifted Aetherborn and Liliana, Heretical Healer
providing you have the mana the opponent is going to try remove the Liliana, Heretical Healer
first, in response you can sacrifice the Gifted Aetherborn to Village Rites, triggering the healers transformation, only to return the Gifted Aetherborn from the graveyard next turn. Your opponent will be far behind in cards and possibly board state after plays like these.
**hyper geometric distribution ** is something I went into quite heavily on this deck. understanding this allows you to estimate the odds of drawing a certain card at any given time in the game. These percentages are the reasoning behind all the 1 of this and 3 of that. Most people just have a full play set of every card they want in the deck, yet I believe having the correct ratios of everything gives your deck added consistency, drawing a good starting hand most games or top decking into an answer to turn the tides of the game more often. I would highly recommend reading a few articles about this, as it is very beneficial when deck building. I am not going to bother getting too advanced while explaining it in this description. I fear it may scare some people off, as using only black cards is probably scary enough for you "emotional creatures".
Side Board:
the sideboard is very important in black and especially when playing a mid range deck. A mid-range deck when built correctly should have some ability to "switch" its tempo from earlier or later depending on the deck it is up against. this is what was mentioned in the intro of the deck, to some extent. Keep this is mind when using a sideboard or creating a sideboard suited for your meta. Do I need more early threats or blockers? Do I need to get them off their game plan or take out their key pieces better? is this going to be a grindy game that comes down to card advantage? What is their game plan and do I have cards that directly stop that in my sideboard? These are all questions you should ask yourself going into games 2 and 3, considering every game you will be given a little more information about their specific deck build.
https://dotesports.com/mtg/news/mtg-basics-deck-archetypes
reading the above, gives a quick understanding of how curtain deck type are at an advantage or dis-advantage based on the deck they are up against. What we are trying to achieve with our sideboard and play style is "adapting" our deck to have an advantage based on what our opponent brings.
Aggro Match ups:
A good example of this would be the following: lets say we are versing an aggressive deck such as Affinity, they fill the board early then pump the creatures and try to end the game as quickly as possible through creature damage. This playstyle is quite common among any creature tribal type deck. We want to attempt all of the following: try to lower our mana curve closer to theirs, try to have cards that remove the "lord" creatures or we could make their creatures weaker. We definitely want as many body blockers as early as possible. With all of these factors in consideration we would, side board out 2 x cavalier of knight, 2 x Liliana of the Veil 2 x Geralf's Messenger and 1 x Sword of Feast and Famine, these cards struggled in at least one of the three aspects mentioned above. Add in the following, 2 x Plague Engineer, 2 x Murderous Rider, 2 x Collective Brutality and 1 Liliana, the Last Hope. You might also try to slot Damnation in instead of a Lashwrithe. Take your time looking at all of the above swaps to understand what makes them better against early, low down, creature aggression.
Control/ late deck Match ups:
One thing to be noted when versing control type match ups, our discard effects are our best friend. Control get their power from having "their turn on your turn" kind of plays, forcing the play out early due to discard is great. If both decks get to a top deck style faceoff this is perfect and what we should aim for, they cannot play spells if they don't have cards in hand. We don't want to give these matchups too much card advantage early through draw or planes walkers etc. Pithing Needle might a good option to turn some of these cards off, if they are activate abilities. If their deck is not really creature based threats swap the 2 x fatal pushs for 2 x Inquisition of Kozilek to rip out troublesome cards early. If it is going to be a grindy top deck matchup such as Jund Batterskull and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet are great, offering constant card advantage. Sword of Light and Shadow is a nice addition in different matchups also, offering constant late game recursion and protection against certain colours.
Closing Statement:
Hope you enjoy my Creation. Don't hesitate to throw any questions at me, based on any thoughts you have about it. I will continue to improve this deck information as best I can, in case you guys want to try play somewhat competitively with this deck also. I feel a lot of the decks power comes from the operation/piloting of it so it may not be for everyone, then again, the shadows are never "easy". This deck started with my Favourite card Phyrexian Obliterator and with constant analysis and improvement, ended up what it is today.
Oh and one last thing you must know, before you start playing this heavy with black: Remember to trust no one, because even your own shadow leaves you once you enter darkness...
May the dark arts guide you.
-Jaunty-
