This is a great deck, and I bet it would do really well in FNM.

I very highly recommend Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx due to your high devotion

Thanks for the suggestions, yoshiman95.

Unfortunately other than Blood Artist every single card I need to play costs full black mana, no colorless mana.

This means that if I have a starting hand with 2 land cards (pretty common) and one of them is the grey-only Nykthos, I'm effectively a turn behind mana-wise. This is a big problem in an aggro deck, and (to my knowledge) can only be circumvented in aggro builds such as Elves through the use of mana dorks, which I lack.

The decks that utilize Nykthos the best usually have 2-drops with costs and a mix of 3-drops costing and (black is arbitrary, could be any color). In this way they aren't slowed down initially by the grey mana. For example, I use Nykthos to reasonably good effect in another build of mine:

Evolving Company Playtest

Modern shelldell

SCORE: 0 | 0 COMMENTS | 50 VIEWS

With that said this deck might possibly utilize its black devotion for a Grey Merchant of Asphodel finisher, although it's a bit high on my curve and my creatures are usually in a mix of the grave and field.

Alternatively, if you think there are good creatures that would work particularly well in this deck I'd be grateful for those suggestions.

Anyways, thanks for taking the time to check this out.

Very noice! Have you considered Grave Pact?Seems great with all your death triggers.

Fair enough. How are you on card draw? Are you ever lacking enough threats because of an empty hand by turn 3-4?

@yoshiman95 I am usually topdecking around T4, yeah. However I often have enough to do with my mana by paying for Gravecrawler or Bloodsoaked Champion recursion.

@Angry_Potatoes Yeah I had that thought as well. I ran 1x Grave Pact for a couple weeks to test and I found that with 21 lands I was hitting 4 mana around T5, at which point I wanted more of a "bomb" for 4 CMC to clutch the game rather than another sac booster. The goal of Grave Pact is to clear their board as you clear yours, and really, Damnation accomplishes the same thing all at once for the same cost. Grave Pact does get around indestructible, which is a nice bonus, but overall not enough to sway my choice. Plus Tragic Slip handles indestructible nicely atm. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Grim Haruspex?

I've got a couple Grims lying around, I'll slot 1x in for testing

I wish he were a zombie for Gravecrawler synergy! He looks like one.. glowing eyes and a brain lying around. But you can't have everything :P

Is killing wave worth it? Whenever i play it in commander it never hits what i need it to

It can be, but mostly just as a lower cost Damnation against a token deck. I think I'll move it to the SB for now and replace with all Damnation, which is not only more reliable but much better when you're down.

Really cool build, +1

I'm also going to try 1x Bad Moon. The only drawback is that it's a global effect. However, I think it would still have a consistently asymmetrical advantage towards this deck, even in the face of enemy black creatures.

Black is ubiquitous in modern, but more for spells than creatures. The most common black creatures in competitive modern currently are:

2x Tasigur, the Golden Fang or
2x Gurmag Angler

4x Dark Confidant
4x Vault Skirge
4x Siege Rhino

I think it might fairly advantageous to bump up all of my little attackers from 2/1 to 3/2, even if the opponent has a couple midrange threats that get even larger, as those would already need to be dealt with via removal anyways.

Cool deck! Have you tried Altar's Reap? And maybe Blood Speaker could work as a tutor for the Demon. No Rest for the Wicked could be an option too, even if quite a strange and must-be-tested one. :P

I started out with 2-3x Altar's Reap. I found that even in this sac deck paying two life for Sign in Blood is an easier cost to pay than sac'ing a recursive creature. It can be frustrating when you're stuck with too many lands or other support cards and you're trying to establish your board presence but Altar's Reap just won't help you draw more cards and works against your board setup.

Blood Speaker is pretty interesting, though it's at the end of my curve. Best case I'd hit 4 mana T4 (but probably T5), play him, tutor Death's Gate, but then I can't sac the Blood Speaker so I'd still need three other creatures in play. For whatever it's worth I've found T2-T3 to be the sweetspot for playing the Demon of Death's Gate, essentially as soon as you can Inquisition them and get three 1/1s out. Once you get past T4 your life is either too low to afford the Demon or your board is developed enough with bigger creatures that you might get more mileage out of swinging with everyone another turn anyways. I think Blood Speaker could be cool in a black control demon toolbox deck (maybe with Crypt Ghast & Heartless Summoning?), though, so I'll keep that in mind for the future. Thanks.

No Rest for the Wicked has a lot of potential. I'm not sure how much value I'd get out of it since most of my attackers have built-in recursion. To make the most use of this enchantment I think I'd have to focus on more potent attackers that lack recursion, but then I'm kinda going all in on having this card to make the deck work, which sounds unreliable.

I feel like this deck might work better as an apostolis deck but i understand if you don't wanna take it that way. Also, whip of erebos could work well to gain back the life paid and guarantees at least one swing with the demon if you reanimated it

On a similar train of thought, how often are you leaving mana untapped at end of turn because you ran out of things to do with it? Erebos, god could work well to refill your hand and he could even become a beater with two creatures out. Maybe look to erebos's titan from origins. New Liliana might be worth testing too

This deck started as a Shadowborn Apostle deck... trust me when I say that Apostle decks are really terrible in a competitive environment, even a FNM-caliber one.

In order to reliably get 6 Apostles onto the battlefield in a relevant time frame -- say, turn 3 -- you need to have as close to 30 Apostles as possible. I pushed it down to 28 Apostles at one point and it still wasn't as reliable as I'd like. That may sound extreme but you really do have to go all in on them or else you're going to be waiting around T4-T5+ to get 6 of them and start doing anything.

Then you have ~21 lands, ~3-4 demons, and ~5 cards to spare. So pretty much no room for any disruption, protection, acceleration, removal or any other staple component of good decks, leading to a completely one-dimensional deck. But that one dimension can be funny sometimes! Tyrannosary added Thrumming Stone to get a hilarious (but gimmicky) cascade combo.

Surprise! Playtest

Modern Tyrannosary

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The apostles themselves are useless to attack with or block with since you need to keep them alive, and most competent decks have some kind of removal that can keep you from getting 6, or even wipe them all out with Pyroclasm etc.

With that said if you ever want to build an Apostle deck I have 21+ I can trade you! XD

Liliana, Heretical Healer  ^Flip might be worth a shot. I've got a WBr Human Aristocrat build that I'm testing her in, too.

Yeah, you have a good point on all the three cards. Side note: Sign in Blood is love. <3

Btw, I noticed you are looking for cards for your sideboard: try Imp's Mischief for heavy control decks (you can change the target of a counter to it), and Sudden Death for Twin/UWR Control/Delver/the like (it hits everything, and has split second!).

I saw someone mentioned grim haruspex and I completely agree, it offers you opportunities to draw into a wincon if you need to, especially nice synergy with viscera seer and blood artist. Also I might suggest mogi's marauder, it's kind of a pet favorite of mine. Run 2 in sideboard and against decks that have nothing to block the intimidated creatures it's almost an insta-kill for 3 (and it has haste!). You could drop down a marauder, swing team, and sac off everything to viscera seer with blood artist out to finish them off.

Also Kalastria highborn, and blade of the bloodchief would offer you more solid wincons at far less risk than the demon.

And altar's reap is a great card in here, you just use it in response to spot removal. Path to exile could mess up your game plan on a recursion creature, altars reap prevents that, as well as netting you 2 cards. It also allows you to leave that 2 mana open for spot removal on their turn, and if you need to respond with reap you can. With blood artist or kalastria highborn, or blade of the bloodchief out this could actually advance your game plan pretty fast.

@Adameus2012

I already commented on Altar's Reap vs Sign in Blood above. As far as anti-Path technology goes, I'd rather not aim to leave open in a what's predominantly a sorcery-speed / creature-based aggro deck. Leaving open for Tragic Slip is already a bit of a fine balance. Rather, I'd lean towards picking off Paths with Inquisition of Kozilek, or sacrifice to Viscera Seer for free at instant speed.

I've experimented with Grim Haruspex a bit and I'm still trying to gauge how helpful vs win-more he is. Sac'ing your board and refilling your hand is wonderful when everything's already going well, but when your board isn't established and you've got a mediocre hand.. waiting for T3 Haruspex and then waiting for some other good sac / death opportunity isn't as helpful as a quick Sign in Blood pick-me-up.

Kalastria Highborn is interesting, though that'd require pushing the deck much more towards vampires to have a useful payoff IMO. If you want to put together an alt decklist for that or feed ideas for the spin-off I'm open to suggestions. I like Blade of the Bloodchief (which, again, benefits from a more Vamp-centric list) though the disadvantage of pumping a creature over time is that you're investing in what is otherwise a disposable, recursive threat, helping to "turn on" / increase the value of opponent removal.

I'll throw a couple Mogis's Marauder into the side board for now since I'm only at 10 of 15 cards, and experiment when I get a chance.