Annnnd ... It's Gone! *PRIMER*

Commander / EDH Death and Taxes Gifts Ungiven Midrange Mono-Black Multiplayer

NV_1980

Creature (20)

• 1x Archfiend of Ifnir
• 1x Bone Miser
• 1x Burglar Rat
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Cunning Lethemancer
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1x Elderfang Disciple
• 1x Fell Specter
• 1x Guul Draz Specter
• 1x Hypnotic Specter
• 1x Liliana, Heretical Healer  ^Flip
• 1x Liliana's Reaver
• 1x Mindslicer
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip
• 1x The Haunt of Hightower
• 1x Tourach, Dread Cantor

Artifact (12)

• 1x Anvil of Bogardan
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Elixir of Immortality
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Geth's Grimoire
• 1x Jet Medallion
• 1x Library of Leng
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Amber
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Thought Vessel

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Blast Zone
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Cabal Stronghold
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 18x Swamp
• 1x Terrain Generator
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vault of Whispers
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x War Room

Enchantment (14)

• 1x Bloodchief Ascension
• 1x Bottomless Pit
• 1x Exquisite Blood
• 1x Gravestorm
• 1x Leyline of the Void
• 1x Liliana's Caress
• 1x Megrim
• 1x Necrogen Mists
• 1x Oppression
• 1x Painful Quandary
• 1x Quest for the Nihil Stone
• 1x Shrieking Affliction
• 1x Waste Not
• 1x Words of Waste

Commander (1)

Sorcery (14)

• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Dark Deal
• 1x Delirium Skeins
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x Feed the Swarm
• 1x Mind Shatter
• 1x Mire in Misery
• 1x Peer into the Abyss
• 1x Syphon Mind
• 1x Torment of Hailfire
• 1x Vicious Rumors
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

Instant (2)

• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Liliana Vess
• 1x Liliana, Waker of the Dead

---

Welcome to Annnnd … Its Gone {B}!

Hi there! Welcome to the primer of my mono-black, forced discard deck; commanded by Tinybones, Trinket Thief. Your hand, filled with cards? Yeah, those cards … they didn’t do so well. And now, … they’re gone. All gone. So that’s not good. For you. It’s great for me! Every turn in which your cards disappeared, I got to draw! When your hand got completely empty, well … that made my little skeleton unhappy as he couldn’t make more of your cards vanish, so he brought on the pain. Lots and lots of pain! I play this deck in casual formats. It’s not meant to be used in a competitive fashion, but of course I welcome anyone to try! Feel free to comment on anything you (dis)like throughout this primer; I hope you will enjoy it!

Why Tinybones?

The main advantage of this guy (or girl, I’m not an anatomy expert), is the spectacular potential for card advantage. Forcing a discard from multiple players each turn is not hard to achieve by this deck, so I’m potentially looking at two or three additional draws a turn. Then there’s the potential to do some massive harm with Tinybones’ second ability to my foes. To top it all off, Tinybones’ casting cost is very low, so it’s easy to summon him/her early on and profit from the first ability (which can put me in an advantageous position early within games).

Strengths and Weaknesses

I use the following ten parameters to determine the strength of the deck. For each, I allocate a score of 5 (very good), 4 (good), 3 (mediocre), 2 (bad) or 1 (very bad); when totalized this score represents the power rating of the deck (maximum score is 50 points).

• Mana: indicates the availability of mana sources within the deck.
• Ramp: indicates the speed at which mana sources within the deck can be made available.
• Card Advantage: indicates availability of filter- and draw resources represented within the deck.
• Overall speed: indicates the deck’s potential for pace, based on resource availability and mana curve.
• Combo: indicates the measure of combo-orientation of the deck.
• Army: indicates the deck’s creature-army strength.
• Commander: indicates how much the deck is commander-oriented/dependent (less dependency is better).
• Interaction: indicates how much this deck can mess with opponents’ board states and turn-phases.
• Resilience: indicates whether the deck can prevent and take punches.
• Spellpower: indicates the availability and strength of high-impact spells.

---

Mana: 4 The deck contains six mana rocks, a spell that provides an instant mana boost, a creature that doubles my swamps’ output and two permanents that can provide additional mana when I am forced to discard a land.

Ramp: 1

I have a single creature than upon sacrificing, allows me to search for a land. It’s not much, but it adds nicely to my other options that extend my mana base. I also use a land to play other lands.

Card Advantage: 5

Holy cow, this deck can give me some very nice card advantage (especially for a non-blue deck)! First off, my commander enables me to draw, if I force others to discard. The deck contains six other permanents and spells that will result in direct draw for me. Then there are four different tutors (one of them repeatable!), one creature that top-decks for life and no less than three permanents that allows me to steal from graveyards for hardly any cost!

Overall speed: 5

Almost half of this deck’s cards (forty-six!) have a CMC of three or less. When I combine this with the deck’s availability of mana sources AND its magnificent card advantage options I get a mono-colored deck with almost optimal speed.

Combo: 2

Nope. This deck just isn’t about that. It is however all about lots of synergy between my ability to force others to discard while I make that hurt (a lot) AND profit from that at the same time.

Army: 2

In retrospect, I don’t have all that many decks in which the army doesn’t play a very important part. This is one of them. Attacking is in no way required in order to make life very difficult for the opposition. Yet, having some of the deck’s creatures’ utility abilities available can still be instrumental in attaining victory.

Commander: 4

Though Tinybones, Trinket Thief is absolutely awesome and accelerates my ability to win, he/she is not super necessary for that. Plenty of other ways to get card advantage or deal damage in this deck.

Interaction: 5

During my opponents’ turns, I can mess around with their ability to cast by forcing discards or milling (through the use of five permanents), I can force them to take actions that will cost them life and in some cases raise my own (six permanents), I can steal creatures through discarding actions of my opponents and even boost some of my creatures this way (four permanents in total). Aside from all this, I can force my opponents to discard a lot more through sorceries and permanents during my own turns, through a plethora of cards.

Resilience: 2

Discarding is not necessarily bad for me. At least four permanents in the deck can be used to extract something useful (mana, life, tokens) for every discard, so discarding is not necessarily a full loss. One option even prevents me from having to discard into my graveyard and there’s a fair few cards in here that allow me to recoup some lost life.

Spellpower: 4

This deck is much more adept at slinging nasty, warped reality at you than it is at building armies. Its most effective weapons in that regard are fourteen enchantments and ten sorceries that will either force discards, inflict nasty consequences of discarding or just deal a shit-ton of damage.

---

Total power score: 34

This deck is one of my strongest single-color decks and scores well above average strength. The reason it stands out is a combination of its speed, spell-slinging capabilities and most importantly: its capability to negate the casting of opposing spells by getting rid of them before that can happen. Its army is not strong, but it (usually) does not need to be. Its ramp is a bit lacking, but considering the low mana curve that’s usually not an issue either.

General strategy

This deck aims to empty opposing hands and thereby filling mine. While it does that, it will punish opponents for discarding cards and having an (almost) empty hand. Ideally, I want to try and hold off on forcing discards until I have resources available that will interact with such an action, but I can’t always do that because some decks are able to gain too much advantage if I do not interfere with their plans within the first few turns.

So, against fast decks I will start forcing discards earlier (and involve synergizing effects later). Priority will be given to permanents that can force discards as I want to try and get maximum use during games out of these. Of secondary importance will be the one-use spells for discards. In terms of synergy, accelerators to my game get priority, while damaging effects are of secondary concern. Early-to mid-game transition happens once I start to get more resources of each of the above sorts available.

Against slower decks, I summon Tinybones, Trinket Thief early along with other permanents that either damage the opposition for discarding or provide me with some more acceleration (mana or draw), after which I start to employ discarding mechanisms (again, permanents that enable this get priority; one-use stuff comes in secondary). Like the strategy against faster decks, transition to mid-game starts to occur when I start to gather redundancy in resources.

Late/end-game transition happens when I have managed to put the game in mostly a lock-down kind state, meaning that the opposition has no or very few resources to attack me with or is unable to due to other constraints. During this stage the intent is to keep damaging the opposition by forcing discards while also looking for a bombshell sorcery to end the game.

Starting hand

At least three cards in the starting hand ought to be lands (or two lands and a CMC0 or CMC1 mana rock). This is a must; I am not going to start a game without this hand (even if I have to mulligan down to three cards). The ideal hand would also contain some acceleration in the form of rocks, draw- and/or filter options.

Early game

Right, resourcing first. If at all possible, I give priority to Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone, Mana Vault, Mox Amber, Sol Ring or Thought Vessel. Then there are some cheap card-advantage tricks I can use from the very first turns like Dark Confidant, Dauthi Voidwalker, Sensei's Divining Top and Waste Not. Last but not least, one of the cards with the highest priority to be cast early (if I can), is Library of Leng, which enables me to freely discard without these cards ever ending up in my graveyard (so in effect, never really relinquishing my cards until I’ve cast them).

The next step depends on whether I am facing very fast decks, or slower ones. In case of fast decks, I start forcing discards early. This helps to strip away opportunity for early advantage against me. I prefer using permanents over one-time spells at this stage, to maximize their value overall. This means starting out with classics like Hypnotic Specter, Abyssal Specter, Bottomless Pit, card:Necrogen Mist, Oppression and Words of Waste. Though one-off discard spells are of secondary importance at this stage, I still relish using them in case no permanents are available. My favorites include Dark Deal, Delirium Skeins and Plaguecrafter. Once I’ve taken away as much early advantage as I can, second order of business is to bring Tinybones, Trinket Thief into the picture; mostly because of the fantastic card-draw he/she potentially provides me with. Then priority will shift to enchantments or other permanents that reward me/punish opponents for discarding. Options that come to mind are Bloodchief Ascension, Quest for the Nihil Stone, Liliana's Caress and Megrim. Of course, when I am facing slower opponents, all the above will happen in reverse. So Tinybones first, reward/punish options second, actual forcing of discard third.

Mid game

Now I aim to strengthen my hold by raising the stakes a bit in terms of how much discard I can force as well as punishing others/rewarding myself for this. Since I’ve progressed a bit further in the game by now, I can use some more expensive options for that. When it comes to discard, this will usually be the phase that cards like Liliana, Waker of the Dead, Liliana Vess, Mindslicer, Painful Quandary and The Haunt of Hightower make an appearance. Should by any chance the opposition still have managed to get a board-presence, I can still do something about that through cards like Archfiend of Ifnir, Damnation, Feed the Swarm, Hero's Downfall, Mire in Misery or Plaguecrafter. I can keep things dead by deploying Bojuka Bog and Leyline of the Void or I can empty graveyards with Vess’s ultimate and Tergrid, God of Fright  . I can also re-use/re-cast spells and creatures that have ended up in my graveyard by employing Yawgmoth's Will or Elixir of Immortality.

End Game

By now, a whole lot of discarding will have taken place, along with a lot of damage dealing. Some opponents will have no cards in their hands at all, which is what I need to activate Tinybones’s second ability and deal a boat-load of damage to such players. To finish off anything that remains, mana reserves can also be pumped into spells like Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire.

Card Choices

Lands

My reliable sources of mana, and some utility:

• Ancient Tomb: major colorless mana for a small price in life-points; excellent land to start games with.
• Blast Zone: one hell of a wipe that can take care of all kinds of permanents.
• Bloodstained Mire/Marsh Flats/Polluted Delta/Verdant Catacombs: my filtering lands; very helpful in obtaining my useful cards faster.
• Bojuka Bog: a perfect way to say ‘bye-bye’ to the largest opposing graveyard in the game after I spent some time filling it.
• Cabal Coffers: perfect land for a ton of {B}, especially when used in sync with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.
• Geier Reach Sanitarium: aside from this land bringing some card advantage, it’s great to use as a milling mechanism (players that start with 0 cards in hand will be forced to discard what they draw).
• Inventors' Fair: potential for a little life gain, but more importantly helps me to look for some important artifacts.
• Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: a decent number of black permanents can generate quite a bit of black devotion, which translates into a lot of mana that this land alone can generate.
• Reliquary Tower: this deck is pretty good at allowing me to draw, so I’d rather not be forced to discard beyond seven cards.
• Terrain Generator: the deck's single ramp card, though it can only use land cards that are already in my hand.
• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: helps my Cabal lands a great deal and allows all of my lands to be tapped for black mana.
• Vault of Whispers: helps the artifact count, which is useful for Mox Opal.
• War Room: can't say 'no' to such a nice option for card-draw in a land; especially in a single-color deck.

Mana and ramp

The cards I use to accelerate mana-availability:

• Arcane Signet/Fellwar Stone: cheap rocks I will use to provide {B}.
• Crypt Ghast: doubles my swamp mana output and has the added benefit of granting me some life should I choose to pay a little extra mana during casting.
• Dark Ritual: an ideal spell in my starting hand (or any hand in the early game).
• Jet Medallion: helps me to cast black stuff a little cheaper.
• Mox Amber: this is almost a perfect rock with a commander as cheap to cast as this one.
• Sol Ring: are there EDH decks without this card?
• Solemn Simulacrum: fantastic ramping creature that grants a draw when it dies.
• Thought Vessel: a little colorless mana + elimination of the need to discard; which is useful in a deck that allows me to draw this much.

Card Advantage

The mechanisms that provide me with card advantage:

• card:Anvil of Bogarden: additional draw but also a forced discard for everyone.
• Dark Confidant: an excellent card to accelerate play in my favor from early on in games.
• Dauthi Voidwalker: not just a creature-form of Leyline of the Void, but a creature that can be sacced for something more useful.
• Demonic Tutor/Diabolic Intent/Vampiric Tutor: some cards in this deck grant me such huge advantages, that mechanisms I can use to find them are very valuable. Examples being Bloodchief Ascension, Geth's Grimoire, Library of Leng, Painful Quandary and Tergrid, God of Fright  .
• Elixir of Immortality: this deck often forces me to discard along with my opponents, so it’s nice to have a mechanism available that resets my library and include again all cards that were previously discarded (even gaining some life in the process).
• Geth's Grimoire: so many cards that cause opponents to discard; this is therefore an auto-include and one of the deck’s greatest card-advantage mechanisms.
• Gravestorm: I'll fill your graveyards; allow me to draw or I will exile that shizzel.
• Library of Leng: one of the most powerful cards in this deck; instead of discarding to my graveyard, I can just discard back to my library.
• Peer into the Abyss: force someone to draw way too much (that will need to be discarded) and lose a lot of life at the same time.
• Sensei's Divining Top: hell of a filtering card that allows for additional draw in a pinch.
• Tergrid, God of Fright  : Tergrid generates tremendous card advantage when combined with a discard-focused deck.
• Yawgmoth's Will: anything I lost during my game, I have one turn to recast it, which can mean a tremendous advantage as some spells (especially some of the sorceries) are very strong and I don’t mind using them twice.

Removal

What I need to get rid of what the opposition still managed to summon:

• Archfiend of Ifnir: with so much discard around, this is just one of the deadliest removal options I could muster, as it is almost impossible to do counter it in any way (even creatures with indestructible, hexproof and ward will not be able to do anything about this).
• Black Sun's Zenith: fantastic creature wipe that circumvents usual defenses against destruction.
• Damnation: wipes the battlefield clean, in case the opposition manages to raise an army despite my efforts to make doing such a thing very, very hard.
• Feed the Swarm: chance to eliminate a troublesome creature or enchantment, at the cost of some life; depending on the target, usually well worth the effort.
• Mire in Misery/Plaguecrafter: both of these are such great value for mana in playgroups (which is the setting I always play my games in).

Discard

How to empty hands.

• Bottomless Pit: welcome to your new turn! Discard!
• Burglar Rat/Elderfang Disciple: great value in a playgroup, not particularly strong creatures but it’s ok if they die, for I have a few ways to bring them back and re-use their ETB triggers.
• Cunning Lethemancer: everyone discards at the beginning of my upkeep.
• Dark Deal/Delirium Skeins: untargeted discard options for all.
• Guul Draz Specter: turns into a 5/5 flyer when I can force someone down to 0 cards in hand, which is relatively easy in this deck.
• Hypnotic Specter: one of my favorite cards of all time; it’s the first creature I ever unpacked ever, in my Unlimited starter set. Decided to base a deck on the discard mechanic at the time, based on finding this. Great value for what it can do.
• Liliana, Heretical Healer  : becomes quite a powerful walker when she transforms, with a primary that forces discards from everyone.
• Liliana's Reaver: great package deal for just CMC4; in here for the discard but also because he has deathtouch, a good strength score and his zombie generation abilities.
• Mind Shatter: targeted discard option.
• Mindslicer: the bane of any deck featuring blue and unlimited hand-size; I love this thing.
• Necrogen Mists: keeps the pressure on with forced discards every turn.
• Oppression: the kind of discard that makes life very hard for combo-decks.
• Painful Quandary: if this annoying enchantment doesn’t draw huge crosshairs on my forehead, I don’t know what will.
• Syphon Mind: doesn’t just force everyone but me to discard, but also allows me to draw for every card discarded; nice!
• The Haunt of Hightower: in terms of power/toughness, strongest creature in the deck, enables discards when attacking, which immediately makes it stronger when dealing damage due to the +1/+1 counter.
• Torment of Hailfire: one of the strongest late-game spells I know of and an excellent mana-sink
• Vicious Rumors: how in the world this card only has CMC1, I have never understood. Excellent card in multiplayer commander.
• Words of Waste: Tinybones allows me for a lot of additional draw each turn, so when I don’t need that this card allows me to force even more discards.

Pain and Benefits

Forcing discards gets a lot more satisfying when it also inflicts pain to others, or benefits me.

• Bloodchief Ascension/Quest for the Nihil Stone: so easy to get the counters up, and then it’s just dealin’ (and stealin’).
• Bone Miser/Waste Not: zombies, mana and card advantage, when I or the opposition discard(s).
• Fell Specter: pain anytime an opponent discards.
• Liliana's Caress/Megrim: discarding will get you killed.
• Sheoldred, the Apocalypse: superb lifegain combined with Tinybones AND massive damage to any opponent that's trying to compensate the amount of discard this deck forces upon them.
• Shrieking Affliction: empty hand? Get wrecked!
• Tourach, Dread Cantor: becomes very strong with all the discard around; and gets me some discard to distribute when I kick him in.

Utility

Some cards I have an overall use for.

• Exquisite Blood: an insurance mechanism that helps me compensate for some of the life-loss I am bound to suffer with this deck.
• Exsanguinate: one of my mana sink spells that’s always handy in a pinch.
• Leyline of the Void: anything that is discarded or dies on the opposing side stays gone … Very, very gone. Permanently.

Notable exclusions

This deck is still evolving. The following cards were considered but not added (yet):

• Necrogoyf: I recently acquired one, but I want to play a few more games with all of the Liliana walkers before deciding if I am going to take one of those lovely ladies out and replace her with this.

Thank you for reading!

I appreciate the time you took to read my primer. Hopefully it was entertaining and useful to you. If so, feel free to leave a +1 and/or feedback of any kind in the comments below. Thanks again!

Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 months
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	18 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.75
Tokens	Emblem Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, Emblem Liliana, Waker of the Dead, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Deck Ideas, Swamp