Hey y'all,
Been a while since last update. We're still currently at 3-8 which is just over 27% so the deck itself is sitting pretty, winrate-wise. I know a couple of those losses were still attributed to pilot issues, usually either due to mulligan decisions or in-game decisions. Still learning how to pilot the deck better and having fun doing it. Haven't had too many non-games.
With that said, here's the next batch of swaps:
-1
Rings of Brighthearth
+1
Peer into the Abyss
Rings of Brighthearth has always been on the chopping block for me. There are currently a couple different infinite mana combos we have with the rings (one of them produces only colorless). We do have a few ways to spend that mana to draw through our deck (if we end up producing infinite black mana) but we will need
Sheoldred, the Apocalypse in order to net neutral or positive on life as we draw, after which we can try to go for the win with the X-spells we draw and hopefully with recursion backup. It's definitely a legitimate way to go for the win, but it requires so many different and easily interactable with pieces that the surface area of the combos is simply too high for me for a 3-mana do-nothing card. I feel that we don't really
need to produce infinite mana to be able to win the game since our plan A is already to try to produce tons of mana in the first place and we are perfectly capable of doing so without the help of a card that is absolutely dead on its own. I thought it'd be cute to copy Drana's activation but the situation in which I would benefit greatly from doing so never came up. Spending 9 mana to kill 2 5-toughness creatures doesn't feel great in the grand scheme of things. I'd much rather spend that slot on something that will be more useful at either most or all stages of the game. So
Peer into the Abyss is taking its spot for now. This at later stage of the game (which is where we want to be anyway) should allow us to spend the tons of mana we have to do of the following:
1. Set up for win the following turn
2. Go for it that same turn (probably highly unlikely)
3. Dig for enough answers to make sure you're alive enough for #1
It also has a bonus of potentially killing one person if we have
Sheoldred, the Apocalypse out or possibly kill one or more players/creatures if we have
Orcish Bowmasters out. It's not going to be our plan A but the combination are there and the individual pieces are useful on their own.
This means we'll also have to adjust the ramp package accordingly:
-1
Basalt Monolith
+1
Decanter of Endless Water
Basalt Monolith was included because we could use a 3 mana "rock" (in this case it's not really a rock since it doesn't continue producing mana unless you net positive by untapping it) and it combos with
Rings of Brighthearth. Now that Rings are gone, we have no reason to run it and instead we can run
Decanter of Endless Water since it's also a 3 mana rock, produces colored mana, and is a second
Thought Vessel we can dig into or play with PitA. I still choose to not run
Reliquary Tower because I know that card is going to make me sad more than it save me some cards from being discarded. I wholeheartedly believe that
Reliquary Tower is way overplayed and belongs only in either decks that can afford running it without color issues AND that reliably and consistently exceed 7 cards in hand.
-1
Snuff Out
+1
Go for the Throat
I believe GftT will be a dud less often enough that I would prefer to pay mana instead of life for it.
-1
Revel in Riches
+1
Darkness
Revel in Riches was another test slot to see how often I benefit from the trigger and as a potential alternate wincon. Turned out, the alternate wincon is irrelevant in this deck since we don't reliably generate treasures otherwise (
Black Market Connections is the only other source) and it's usually a 5-mana do-nothing with a huge payoff the turn it comes in. The fact that it checks on next upkeep and that we don't have a real way to protect it also makes it very unreliable as a real wincon. Not worth the slot or the mana. If I ran more treasure-generating effects like
Blood Money, I may reconsider. But currently, it's out.
Darkness was previously mentioned as a card under consideration so I am going to slot it in here to try it out. It can sit dead in your hand in some cases but in those cases it means we already are probably going to live to next turn anyway. People usually do not play around this effect against monoblack and sometimes an extra turn is all I need to either win or stabilize.
-1
Temporal Extortion
+1
Bloodletter of Aclazotz
Ah yes
Temporal Extortion, one of the pet cards I just wanted to run just to see how it feels. The one time it got cast, it did great.
to make the last person in priority order before me lose 18 life felt nice.
Bloodletter of Aclazotz is interesting. There are so many ways to look at it and it seems to do a lot. At absolute baseline, it's a 4-mana flying attacker that hits for at least 4 which is not bad. Then it only gets better from there. Any life loss effects during your turn gets doubled, meaning our X for X-spells effectively gets doubled, and any drain effect that gains you life equals to life loss from said effects also doubles the life gain. Every wincon we run relies on life loss or damage so this seems like a card I really need to find room for. Funnily, if I had both of these, I believe whoever pays the half would just die doing it so it just becomes a
Time Walk, lol.
Cards I am considering:
Sensei's Divining Top and
Bolas's Citadel - Yes, the good ol' top citadel engine. I will choose not to also run
Aetherflux Reservoir for the potential combo because I want every piece of any particular combo I run to be useful on their own and the fishbowl does not satisfy that criteria since we are neither a lifegain deck nor a storm-type deck that can gain meaningful amount of life from just the fishbowl being around. With that said, both the top and citadel are indeed generically good. We won't be able to as reliably activate the Citadel's ability since we really don't run that many nonland permanents and we only have pretty much top to manipulate the top of the deck, which makes Citadel a lot less good. The two-card engine will always be considered though if other slots open up.
Reassembling Skeleton/
Ophiomancer/
Sedgemoor Witch - All of these cards belong in the same category so I will have them both for this line item. Repeatable chump blocker that can discourage some attacks that also can act as a target for
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief when opponents are creature-light. It's the reason we run
Forbidden Orchard in the first place and this time we don't give someone a creature. Worth considering but the fact that it's a 1 or more slot(s) and we likely will never spend a tutor for it, it's less appealing when put that way. Also not terrible with
Skullclamp, however. Just that I probably won't put it in just for these guys since we don't really make weenies to clamp otherwise.
Sheoldred's Edict/
Withering Boon - This is a potential swap-in either in place of an existing spot removal or another card from another category. Another edict effect is nice especially when it's modal. Boon is yet another cutesy black "removal" that people usually don't ever play around. Sometimes it's the ETB that's the part we don't want happening and this is pretty much our only way to deal with that. The fact that most of the time we just don't care since we'll kill it anyway makes it that appealing as an option, though.
Grim Tutor/
Dark Petition (and really other black tutors, really) - It's boring, but it makes our deck more consistent if we are willing to cut a card for it. We currently run only 6 tutor effects, 2 of which either only gets a basic swamp or a land, so we "only" have 4 true black tutors currently. I'd like to have access to at least 1 or 2 more tutors in order to be able to access the answers/cards I need more often. Again, it could make the deck more consistent (whether that's a good or bad thing depends on who you ask). Maybe it's what a monoblack deck like this needs to succeed but maybe we don't need it.
Updated decklist for those interested.
For the deck, I try to strike a balance between being consistent and good vs. running a few spicy/fun/pet cards just to make things more interesting. I also try to make the deck feel how it should, meaning when you play this monoblack control deck, you should feel like you're playing monoblack control. You should feel powerful when doing things that are within the color identity. You should feel at least somewhat punished or less powerful when trying to do things your color isn't good at, but that should feel more like a puzzle to solve or a challenge to overcome instead of feeling like you just can't play the game. I try to meaningfully hedge against certain strategies and weaknesses while at same time work towards having as few of "feel bad" draws as possible. I feel that this deck is getting closer and closer to that goal, slowly or otherwise.
I understand that X-Spells as a primary wincon can sometimes be essentially guaranteed in tables that give me enough time to get to late game or ones that don't have blue or ways to interact with the stack, but every other time the games have been a blast of a puzzle to solve.
Thanks for reading!
EDIT: Minor formatting corrections