DiscardOutlets
3x Call the Bloodline (000)
2x Cryptbreaker (EMN)
2x Heir of Falkenrath (SOI)
3x Skirk Ridge Exhumer (FUT)
Lands
2x Drownyard Temple (SOI)
17x Swamp (SOI)
3x Westvale Abbey (SOI)
Removal
4x Dark Withering (TSP)
4x Gorgon Recluse (TSP)
4x Murderous Compulsion (SOI)
Utility
4x Asylum Visitor (SOI)
2x Geier Reach Sanitarium (EMN)
3x Gisa's Bidding (SOI)
3x Grave Scrabbler (FUT)
4x Psychotic Episode (TSP)
Here we have an upgraded variant of my Shadows block deck built around discarding Madness cards, such as
Murderous Compulsion
and
Dark Withering
, to payoff outlets like
Cryptbreaker
and
Skirk Ridge Exhumer
to build up our board whilst setting back our opponent. Once we have sufficient tokens built up, we win via big swing or mass sacrificing tokens to the
Westvale Abbey
or
Voldaren Pariah
for difficult to deal with threats. So, let's look at what we are running and why:
The Landbase
As a mono black deck we certainly have the option of going 24 Swamps and calling it a day, but the
Drownyard Temple
is excellent discard fodder for us, as it can self recur if we miss a land drop or have nothing better to do on a given turn, and the
Westvale Abbey
s are one of our primary wincons, allowing us to make tokens or a giant evasive beater to close out the game. The two copies of Geier are there as hard to remove backup discard outlets, though we are only running two as they are generally inferior to our other land options, and we do generally want to push for double or triple black as soon as possible.
- Discard Outlets -
The Breaker and Exhumer have solid synergy with each other, as both make zombie tokens we can tap for card draw, though
Call the Bloodline
remains the arguable most important drop in this slot, as it dodges creature removal and the lifelinking tokens can help against aggro matchups. The Exhumer's tokens are more valuable than the Breaker's and should be made instead whenever possible, as they function as psuedo removal, especially when mass sacrificed to the
Westvale Abbey
or
Voldaren Pariah
. The two copies of Heir give us a free discard and respectable flying beater, which can end games for us if the opponent has no answer for it.
- Win Cons -
The Pariah is almost a build around card for this deck, as a 3/3 flier for 3 on its own is perfectly fine, but the 6/5 beater for 3 is absolutely absurd, especially with its trigger axing damn near everything our opponent can throw at us, not to mention the -3/-3 we can place from the sac'd Festering Goblins should let us kill off smaller creatures they might want to sac instead. The only thing we really have to worry about is our opponent responding to a transformation trigger at instant speed, because until it resolves we haven't flipped, but we do have options to deal with that. Our secondary wincon, discounting clubbing people with tokens, is the aforementioned
Westvale Abbey
, which we can flip whenever and almost always kill something and gain some life off of.
- Removal -
Sadly we don't have access to a
Fiery Temper
in mono black, but these three function well enough. Madness effectively gives all of our cards Flash, provided we have a discard outlet, and all three of these work extremely well to stop creatures swinging at us, with Withering potentially hitting targets that won't. All together a fairly solid removal package.
- Utility -
Visitor provides us with potential extra card draw and a fairly nasty flash blocker, taking down up to x/5s in conjunction with a Festering Goblin, and we do have the potential to go through our hand fairly quickly, especially in situations where
Call the Bloodline
has been getting heavy use. Episode is our most reliable hand-hate option, and we ideally want to toss it out before flipping our Abbey or Pariah, not to mention it has the upside of burying the card we find instead of dropping into the graveyard for recursion. The Scrabblers allow us to pull creatures back to our hand, the most useful ones being discard outlets, though anything we recur is pretty fine
- Other Options -
Works best against aggro or token decks, but hits our own side quite hard, though this isn't ALWAYS a problem, especially if we have a lot of Shambling Goblins out.
At first the card appears strictly superior to Grave Scrabbler, but this card is useless to cast without a creature in our graveyard and doesn't provide a blocker for us, so . . . strong, but only situationally useful.
Side this in against decks running bigger creatures, otherwise it is often a sub-optimal draw -- nice card all the same, though.
Questionable but powerful discard outlet with removal and handhate options. The two mana cost and sorcery speed keep it from being a mainboard recommendation, however.
The slower nature of our deck often allows us to resolve this for at least 4~, gaining us some life and putting pressure on the board, especially if we drop this on their endstep via its Madness trigger, and it was previously run as an alternate wincondition in the deck -- it is still completely viable in the deck, I've just grown to prefer
Gisa's Bidding
for the easier math and the immediate card draw with a Cryptbreaker on the field.
- Strategy -
- One of the most important thing to remember about this deck is that it is designed to be played almost entirely reactively, and all Madness cards activate at instant speed with a discard outlet, so play to that reactive nature.
- Remember that you can tap zombies at any time with
Cryptbreaker
, even if they have summoning sickness. This means you can drop a
Gisa's Bidding
to it to create 3 zombies and block, then tap them to draw a card before damage is dealt.
- If you are playing against something like
Ixalan's Binding
, you can sacrifice its target to a
Voldaren Pariah
or the
Westvale Abbey
to dodge it.
