This started as a B/W apostles deck, and while there are some very good white cards missing, the mono-black seems faster and more streamlined, not to mention a lot easier on mana. Taborax seems like a no-brainer for the commander.
The Flavour
I find that the flavour here is great. In terms of pure flavour, I'd like to drop the vampire sub-theme, and maybe even the wizards (
Grim Haruspex
,
Dark Confidant
, etc.) but they're such a huge part of how the deck functions.
I wanted to find room for
Liliana, Heretical Healer
, and
Kothophed, Soul Hoarder
+
Griselbrand
+
Razaketh, the Foulblooded
+
Demonlord Belzenlok
, and
Liliana's Contract
. However, Griselbrand is illegal, Belzenlok and Kothophed are a bit weak, as is Liliana, and if you have four demons out and aren't already winning the game, I'd be surprised.
The Play Pattern
Play your commander at the earliest convenience, quickly get out a large number of
Shadowborn Apostle
, sacrifice them and whip out a big demon. In the meantime, take advantage of strong ETB/LTB triggers, particularly to help maintain your life total. Throughout the process, you will be paying life, gaining life, drawing cards and generating lots of extra mana.
The Commander
Taborax, Hope's Demise
Though he threatens to turn into an 8/8 just with one Shadowborn Apostle activation, winning in combat is an alternate win condition here. The real power here is drawing a card every time a cleric dies,
Harvester of Souls
-style! Its creature type doesn't actually matter here, but the flavour is out of this world!
The Demons
There are a lot of demons to choose from, and the ideal demon for me:
- Wins the game outright or,
- Significantly advances the game plan, or
- Fills a very specific and critical slot, and
- Is worth hard casting; these will end up in your hand a portion of the time and there are no ways to shuffle them back in, discard/reanimate, etc.
Number 3 is important, which is why I have a "sideboard". Swap the demons in and out as necessary according to the games you'll be playing.
Archfiend of Depravity
is weak against a voltron-style commander,
Bloodgift Demon
is pretty replaceable,
Archfiend of Sorrows
is excellent against a mass tokens strategy, etc.
Five or six seems like a reasonable number of demons. You want to avoid drawing too many in your hand, as the mana spent on them could be accomplishing something much more powerful. You also want to have enough to tutor up if you activate the Apostles 3 or more times in a single game.
-
Archfiend of Depravity
: Good way to delay many decks. Some decks may not be affected by this very much, so consider swapping it.
-
Bloodgift Demon
: The weakest of the mainboard demons, but he's affordable and provides a bit of card draw.
-
Harvester of Souls
: Big card draw engine, but in a lot of cases, by the time you're tutoring a demon to the board, you may not need any more card draw.
-
Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
: Great instant-speed response to someone searching their deck, or just to have on the board. Like the commander, may become big enough to win the game in combat.
-
Razaketh, the Foulblooded
: You'll be tutoring this guy first 95% of the time, as he is without a doubt THE win-con of the deck. As much as I tend to dislike tutors, this guy takes enough work that I think it's fair, and you can go find whatever piece of the engine you're missing.
-
Rune-Scarred Demon
: Alternative to Razaketh, if he's already on the field, dead, or stuck in your hand.
I've got demons in the sideboard instead of the maybeboard. If I come back here and find comments suggesting new ones, I'll add them here and move them around from time to time.
-
Archfiend of Despair
: Looks a bit nicer in the
Athreos, God of Passage
shell but still has nice political implications here. It's just that your opponents will all try to kill you instead. If you get a dozen
Zulaport Cutthroat
triggers, this has the potential to finish off all your opponents simultaneously.
-
Archfiend of Sorrows
: Bring this guy instead if you're facing down a lot of tokens.
-
Demon of Wailing Agonies
: I'm not sure I see a slot for a Big/Big. If Taborax is out, what this guy does is weaker by an order of magnitude anyway.
-
Demonlord Belzenlok
: In a low-to-the-ground (until it's not) deck, this guy is probably just going to draw you an apostle.
-
Eater of Hope
: I can just picture a weak 7-drop stuck in my hand, and being able to do much better than kill a creature for 3 mana and 2 Apostles. The regenerate ability is almost just a dummy sac outlet; if they're wasting removal on this guy instead of, like, any other demon, you should be happy.
-
Indulgent Tormentor
: A lot of opponents will be able to choose something that doesn't hurt them very much.
-
Kothophed, Soul Hoarder
: There's a spectrum that starts with this guy not doing very much, and ends with it being a key part of the opponent's combo. If he ends up somewhere in the middle, he'll be good.
-
Reaper from the Abyss
: Turning spare Apostles into cheaper
Doom Blade
has some applications, to be sure.
-
Sower of Discord
: Cool multiplayer applications, not so good in 1v1.
-
Vilis, Broker of Blood
: This guy could get out of hand in a big hurry. I might try it out a few times, but I think there are better card draw engines available that have the advantage of not killing you.
The LTB/ETB Package
A lot of these seem weak on the surface, until you consider that the goal is to get these to trigger in batches of six, and often multiple times, at that!
Blood Artist
being a scary threat on its own is a good way to protect your other scary threats, too.
Unless I missed something, these should be all the triggers you need to remember when something enters or leaves the battlefield. I'll separate them into the ones that exist primarily for your benefit, and the ones that exist primarily for your opponent's detriment.
-
Ayara, First of Locthwain
: Slight flavour fail, but she's a sac outlet in a pinch. Otherwise, pings the opponent(s) as you build up your cult. Your zombie tokens will trigger her, too.
-
Bastion of Remembrance
: Comes with one piece of fuel for the sac machine, and also works with your zombie tokens. Not particularly powerful or efficient, but having this effect not attached to a creature is handy.
-
Blood Artist
: Remember this works with your Apostles, Zombies and the opponent's stuff, too.
-
Dictate of Erebos
: A bit awkward to cast, at times, and not something you want to see in the opening hand, but can absolutely keep your opponent(s) from setting up before you do. Also works with Zombie tokens.
-
Grave Pact
: See above.
-
Open the Graves
: Does not work with Zombie tokens for an obvious reason, but this is where they come from. Use them to flood the board or as more sac fodder.
-
Relic Vial
: This doesn't do anything particularly well or efficiently, but it does a lot. Ends up being better than it looks, for me.
-
Rotlung Reanimator
: Only works on clerics or itself, but most of what you're saccing is clerics.
-
Xathrid Necromancer
: These ones come in tapped, but works on any human creature, including the token from Bastion.
-
Zulaport Cutthroat
: Another Blood Artist.
-
Black Market
: This is a weird card, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. You're either looking to take advantage of your opponent's stuff dying (or provide a disincentive to them saccing or attacking), or to capitalize next turn on a bunch of your stuff dying this turn (you've got time on the next upkeep to do some stuff, too). When this card shines, it's great, but I suspect there will be times where you can just use the five mana on this turn to do something more useful than whatever you're doing with the mana next turn.
-
Carnival of Souls
: Another strange card, but lets you cast infinite Apostles for 1 mana (and a bunch of life). Remember your tokens AND the opponents creatures trigger this as well, so you may want to drop this on the turn you intend to win.
-
Grim Haruspex
: Non-optional card draw
-
Harvester of Souls
: Triggers off your opponent's stuff, too, but not tokens.
-
Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
: You're not bringing this guy in for the +1/+1 counters, but it's a nice to have.
-
Taborax, Hope's Demise
: Let's not forget the commander itself! This is optional, so if the life total is getting sketchy, take a pass.
The Card Draw
At the time of writing, the average CMC is 2.24, and a lot of the 5+ CMC cards end up being extraneous once your machine is turning, so you'd prefer to draw into more apostles than anything. What this all means is card draw is important, and effects like
Dark Confidant
are worthwhile.
-
Bloodgift Demon
: As mentioned previously, this is a fairly weak demon, and by the time you're hard-casting 5's or tutoring demons, you're not hoping to have very many more upkeeps.
-
Dark Confidant
: Putting this guy out on turn 2 is a great way to win games.
-
Grim Haruspex
: Not much else to say about her.
-
Harvester of Souls
: See above.
-
Skullclamp
: We don't have any power/toughness increases so this should kill apostles instantly. This when combined with anything else like Taborax is often the best thing to do with your Apostles if you don't already have six.
-
Dark Tutelage
: At 3 mana, this is getting to the point where you may not have very many upkeeps to take advantage of it, but it dodges certain removal and board wipes.
-
Necropotence
: Also a 3 mana enchantment, and slightly better than Dark Tutelage. If you're looking to keep the deck power level under control, this is an easy cut.
-
Phyrexian Arena
: Also a 3 mana enchantment, and slightly worse than Necropotence. Works out to be fairly similar to Dark Tutelage. These two are among the weakest card draw options you have.
The Thrumming Stone
Thrumming Stone
is an obvious inclusion in this sort of deck. Shadowborn Apostle density is important both for drawing enough of them, and for getting Thrumming Stone to properly ripple through the entire deck.
I ran some simple Python simulations to predict a rough % of time you'd ripple through the whole deck if you hard-cast 1, 2 or 3 apostles. An underlying assumption is that your "deck" would consist of the other 98, 97 or 96 cards respectively. In practice, you've drawn other cards and additional apostles. For example, if you have 30 Apostles in deck, it's turn 5 and you've drawn 4 cards total plus your opening 7, you've played 3 apostles already and you're casting your fourth, you actually have 88 cards left in the deck, of which 26 are apostles. In this case, my simulation would have assumed 98 cards in deck of which 29 are apostles.
The percentages are based off 1000 tries.
I calculated a 50% chance to ripple through the whole deck if you cast 1 apostle and you have 31 total, 62% if you have 34, 73% if you have 38, and 80% if you have 40.
If you have two apostles in hand and cast them both, I calculated a 53% chance to ripple through the whole deck if you have 28 apostles total, 61% chance if you have 29 total, 70% chance if you have 30 , 80% if you have 32, and 90% if you have 36.
If you have three apostles in hand and cast all of them, I calculated a 47% chance to ripple through the whole deck if you have 26 total, 61% chance if you have 27, 69% chance if you have 28, 80% if you have 29, 93% if you have 31.
33 felt good in my playtests, even before I ran any of these numbers. At that rate, you have a solid 50%+ chance to get them all out even if you only keep one in hand (or draw Thrumming Stone after playing all the apostles in your hand). Still, if Thrumming Stone is in your opener, there's a good reason to keep two apostles in hand.
The Mana
With mono-black, we can run lots of swamps. Even running only basic swamps is functional. In fact, since the apostles don't have colourless mana in their costs, every non swamp is a small liability (think
Swamp
,
Swamp
,
Cabal Coffers
in your opener, trying to cast Taborax on turn 3).
Speaking of turn 3, over 80% of the mainboard has CMC 3 or less, so if we can hit 3 on 3, we're usually good to go with any additional mana sources and card draw (think untapping on turn 4 with
Shadowborn Apostle
,
Shadowborn Apostle
,
Skullclamp
,
Taborax, Hope's Demise
).
Cabal Coffers
,
Cabal Stronghold
,
Crypt of Agadeem
,
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
all have a ton of enablers and are good at turning any random colourless mana (not that we make much) into black mana. On that note, this is the worst performance I've ever seen out of
Sol Ring
. Swamp/Swamp/Sol Ring with a handful of black 1-drops is a definite feels bad moment. If your group has a ban on Sol Ring, you're probably better off than your opponents.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
is pretty marginal here. It helps with colourless mana-producing lands in the early game, and it's cute with the Cabal lands, but another easy cut if there's a reason for it.
The Miscellaneous
This is for anything else not mentioned yet.
Expedition Map
: As mono-black, there's not a huge need for special lands, but if there are any that you really want, Map helps a lot with that.
No Rest for the Wicked
: Yet another strange card. Just remember you have actually hard cast any cards you get back, and you'll have to discard to hand size if you can't afford them all.
Echoing Return
: I have tutored for this card. Like No Rest, you have to manually cast any card you get back, but with access to big mana, it's very doable.
Secret Salvage
: Once again, you need to hard-cast the apostles, but this is a "any number of" situation, so you can choose to only fetch as many as you can cast plus however many you can keep at the end of turn. It's harder to cast lots of them after already spending 5 mana on this card, but something like
Carnival of Souls
is great here.
Demonic Tutor
: This is the only tutor spell I run, as I generally don't like them in EDH. I keep it here for flavour and because you're generally not going to be fetching the same card every single time you cast this. A lot of EDH decks have that one card that's so much better than all the others, or a handful of 2-card combos with the Commander, but I find this deck isn't quite like that. Still, if your group is against Tutors, this is an easy cut.
The Maybeboard
I won't talk about every card here, as that list is liable to get pretty big.
Falkenrath Noble
, etc: ETB/LTB cards like this are getting too expensive to include. You could put these in and ditch the zombie sub-theme, but I don't think that's a smart play.
Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond
: Cute combo that was initially in here, but I don't think it fits. Exquisite blood started as a way to mitigate all the life lost from paying various costs in the deck, but my experience is the
Zulaport Cutthroat
effects are good enough to offset stuff like
Taborax, Hope's Demise
.
Staff of the Death Magus
,
Venser's Journal
, etc: more life-gain stuff that dilutes the deck and isn't strictly necessary, in my view.
Pitiless Plunderer
: on my short-list of cards to bring in. I need to try it out and see how handy the mana comes in.
