strom
11-25-2013, 01:26 PM
Hi.
I have been working on this deck for quite some time because I love MonoBlackControl but I always hated it's slowness.
Like NicFit, my deck tries to abuse Veteran Explorer and Cabal Therapy to ramp your early turns. This fixes the problem of being too slow and basically puts you to midgame two turns earlier. That's exactly what a control deck like this needs because it can easily capitalize on the high amounts of mana. Maybe the idea isn't new but its still a different deck compared to MonoBlackControl so I didnt want to post my list in the old Helldozer Thread.
General deck idea (how it should work):
Turn 0-3: Disrupt your opponent with Therapy and Hymn to Tourach and lay down a Veteran Explorer asap. Flashback therapy with it or use Innocent Blood to sac the Explorer (and let your Opponent sac his first turn drop like Mother of Runes, Death Rite Shaman, Delver and so on) and ramp your mana. One of the best plays this deck has to offer is a first turn Therapy followed by a second turn Explorer. Flashback Therapy and use the two new lands to play a hymn. Result: 4 Lands in play by turn two and an Opponent, who discarded 3 to 5 cards. Bonus: If you get lucky having two Korlash in your starting Hand and you are on the draw you will have three mana on your first turn to work with.
Turn 3-5: If our gameplan worked properly we will now have access to a lot of mana. Now we have some options depending what we are up agaist and depending on the board state. If we have drawn Korlash we can hardcast him now to put some pressure on the board. But usually we are going to play Sensei's Top and/or Beseech the Queen now, which come in handy netting us either the best suited kill or utility card (mostly Deed).
Turn 6-X: We should now be in a commanding position. If the board got too crowded we could use Pernicious Deed or one of the edicts to remove pesky creatures like TNN to clear the path for a big creature or walker and go for the win from there.
The deck
Lands
10 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Phyrexian Tower
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Polluted Delta
3 Bayou
Engine
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
Utility
4 Beseech the Queen
4 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Staff of Domination
Disruption
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Hymn to Tourach
Removal
3 Innocent Blood
1 Chainer's Edict
4 Pernicious Deed
Win
1 Massacre Wurm /Army of the Damned
1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
1 Liliana Vess
1 Vraska the Unseen
// Sideboard
SB: 1 Consume Spirit
SB: 3 Abrupt Decay
SB: 2 Cursed Totem
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Haunting Echoes
SB: 1 Withered Wretch
SB: 2 Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 2
Card Choices:
Lands: I prefer to run a very stable manabase with nothing too fancy. The deck needs a good amount of basics lands because of Veteren Explorer and you need about 6-8 Fetchlands to get green mana on the early turns and to have enough shuffle effects for Top. Volrath's Stronghold can do some nice tricks with Korlash and gets back creature win conditions if they got countered or destroyed. Phyrexian Tower is another out to sac Veteran Explorer giving you 4 mana right away. It also can save one of our creatures from getting exiled. My early versions of the deck included a full playset of Cabal Coffers. In the end, they didnt make the cut because – as I stated above – I prefer a stable mana base over a land that does nothing on its own.
Veteran Explorer: Already explained. Explorer ramps you into two more lands, once it hits the GY. Remember that our Opponent will also Profit from the effect. Luckily there are enough greedy decks which dont run Basic lands at all. Note that the lands enter the battlefield untapped. So you can use the mana right away. The best follow-up play would be a Hymn to Tourach.
Korlash: At first he seemd weak to me and maybe you think the same right now. In my testings so far I was always happy to see them. If you get lucky to have two you can ramp into two more lands. With Volrath's Stronghold you can do the trick every turn eventually hardcasting it and go to town. Note that it has regeneration which works very well togehter with Deed.
Cabal Therapy: Early Disruption and part of the Explorer-ramp-engine.
Hymn to Tourach: Still the best handdisruption ever printed. Two-for-ones are always good.
Sensei's DiviningTop: Library manipulation is important, because in midgame we may end up in topdeck mode and Sensei helps us to find what we Need. The deck runs a lot of shuffle effects just in case the top three cards are useless. Top also has great synergy with Liliana.
Beseech the queen: This Tutor fits so well in the deck because we usually have pretty fast a lot of lands in play. I once played two and added the full playset subsequentley, because of their power to net me any card.Beseech is like a Demonic Tutor for just three mana.
Pernicious Deed: In my opinion Pernicious Deed is still the best sweeper in Legacy. Ist rather cheap and hits all the problematic creatures, tokens, artifacts and enchantments. The only downside is that it doesn't hit Walkers.
Innocent Blood: I use sacrifice effects instead of targeted creature removal because they work so well togehter with Deed and are the best way to handle hexproof creatures or TNN's.
Think about how many decks have very strong first turn creature Drops (Mother of Runes, DRS, Delver, Lackey and so on). Innocent Blood answers them all for one mana.
Chainer's Edict: I splitted the 4-edict slots to put in one Chainer's Edict because the deck can easily capitalize on the flashback ability. Innocent Blood is still better overall because we can use it on turn one.
Liliana Vess: The one sided discard effect oftentimes keeps our opponent locked out of the game. If he still manages to come back, use Liliana's second ability. The built-in win condition using her ultimate is a nice bonus. Having a permanent way of playing Vampiric Tutor is broken.
Vraska: Vraska is mainly there to fight other planeswalkers or big creatures using her second ability. Afterwards we can start to add more loyalty counters and eventually use her ultimate as a decent win condition. Pernicious Deed is nice here if you use it to sweep the board before you use her ultimate for an almost guaranteed win.
Oona: 5/5 Flying ist pretty decent. Her ability allows use to capitalize on our huge mana pool and create an army of flying chump blockers or annoying attackers. Note that our oppnent has to Exile the Cards from his library which is a nice bonus.
Massacre Wurm: Debatable main deck choice. Right now he is in, because against some decks he acts like Deed #5 with the nice bonus that our Opponent loses life immediately, which may result in an instant win.
Army of the Damned: Seems horrible? Well 8 mana is a lot, but Army has three benefits: 1. Its one of the few kills in the deck which is immune to Karakas and Swords to Plowshares. 2. Its a fast kill in terms of setting a one turn clock to answer it (even if our opponent has some blockers). 3. If it gets countered you can play it again.
Sideboard:
As always its meta dependant. I would try to fit in at least some GY-hate, more removal spells like Abrupt Decay/Maelstrom Pulse, and Pithing Needle.
Consume Spirit: The lifegain can be nice. Consume Spirit can hit creatures or players (and therefore Planeswalkers) so its another versatile card. Sometimes it even acts as the final strike.
Abrupt Decay: As a general useful card
Cursed Totem: Hits our Oona but that's it. A pretty useful card against soo many decks.
Pithing Needle: Hits Karakas and Wasteland, Equipment and opposing walkers. Basically everything where we might have problems to deal with.
Haunting Echoes: An alternate win condition which can come in vs Combo or Control.
Withered Wretch and Nihil Spellbomb: Two different ways of dealing with GY-based decks.
Cards that didnt' make it (I will mention just some of the most obvious ones)Cabal Coffers: See above.
Liliana of the Veil: Yes, „little“ Liliana is one of the best planeswalkers. However I like to run her bigger sister because this deck should easily be able to afford the two extra mana for 5cc-Liliana, which has a better first ability and second ability.
Death Rite Shaman: Again, a very strong card, but it doesn't fit in the decks concept. Let me explain: Explorer does a better job at mana ramping because we get the lands permantly and Explorer also synergises with Deed, which is one of the key cards in the deck. I never missed DRS so far.
Maelstrom Pulse and Abrupt Decay (maindeck): Both cards are very good removal cards but I decided to go all-in on Deed which happens to have a bigger impact on the board.
So what do you think? The deck should beat any decks that try to win with Delvers and has no problems dealing with Hexproof Creatures or TNN. On the other side, the deck doesnt do too well against combo if our disruption plan doesnt't work out. Moreover it simply loses to Burn which is played in my local meta. Maybe I should try to add a little white splash (+Scrubland) to run some CoP: Red or Aegis of Honor in the sideboard. But i am not usure about that.
Any suggestions that help to improve the deck are really appreciated.
I have been working on this deck for quite some time because I love MonoBlackControl but I always hated it's slowness.
Like NicFit, my deck tries to abuse Veteran Explorer and Cabal Therapy to ramp your early turns. This fixes the problem of being too slow and basically puts you to midgame two turns earlier. That's exactly what a control deck like this needs because it can easily capitalize on the high amounts of mana. Maybe the idea isn't new but its still a different deck compared to MonoBlackControl so I didnt want to post my list in the old Helldozer Thread.
General deck idea (how it should work):
Turn 0-3: Disrupt your opponent with Therapy and Hymn to Tourach and lay down a Veteran Explorer asap. Flashback therapy with it or use Innocent Blood to sac the Explorer (and let your Opponent sac his first turn drop like Mother of Runes, Death Rite Shaman, Delver and so on) and ramp your mana. One of the best plays this deck has to offer is a first turn Therapy followed by a second turn Explorer. Flashback Therapy and use the two new lands to play a hymn. Result: 4 Lands in play by turn two and an Opponent, who discarded 3 to 5 cards. Bonus: If you get lucky having two Korlash in your starting Hand and you are on the draw you will have three mana on your first turn to work with.
Turn 3-5: If our gameplan worked properly we will now have access to a lot of mana. Now we have some options depending what we are up agaist and depending on the board state. If we have drawn Korlash we can hardcast him now to put some pressure on the board. But usually we are going to play Sensei's Top and/or Beseech the Queen now, which come in handy netting us either the best suited kill or utility card (mostly Deed).
Turn 6-X: We should now be in a commanding position. If the board got too crowded we could use Pernicious Deed or one of the edicts to remove pesky creatures like TNN to clear the path for a big creature or walker and go for the win from there.
The deck
Lands
10 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Phyrexian Tower
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Polluted Delta
3 Bayou
Engine
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
Utility
4 Beseech the Queen
4 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Staff of Domination
Disruption
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Hymn to Tourach
Removal
3 Innocent Blood
1 Chainer's Edict
4 Pernicious Deed
Win
1 Massacre Wurm /Army of the Damned
1 Oona, Queen of the Fae
1 Liliana Vess
1 Vraska the Unseen
// Sideboard
SB: 1 Consume Spirit
SB: 3 Abrupt Decay
SB: 2 Cursed Totem
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Haunting Echoes
SB: 1 Withered Wretch
SB: 2 Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 2
Card Choices:
Lands: I prefer to run a very stable manabase with nothing too fancy. The deck needs a good amount of basics lands because of Veteren Explorer and you need about 6-8 Fetchlands to get green mana on the early turns and to have enough shuffle effects for Top. Volrath's Stronghold can do some nice tricks with Korlash and gets back creature win conditions if they got countered or destroyed. Phyrexian Tower is another out to sac Veteran Explorer giving you 4 mana right away. It also can save one of our creatures from getting exiled. My early versions of the deck included a full playset of Cabal Coffers. In the end, they didnt make the cut because – as I stated above – I prefer a stable mana base over a land that does nothing on its own.
Veteran Explorer: Already explained. Explorer ramps you into two more lands, once it hits the GY. Remember that our Opponent will also Profit from the effect. Luckily there are enough greedy decks which dont run Basic lands at all. Note that the lands enter the battlefield untapped. So you can use the mana right away. The best follow-up play would be a Hymn to Tourach.
Korlash: At first he seemd weak to me and maybe you think the same right now. In my testings so far I was always happy to see them. If you get lucky to have two you can ramp into two more lands. With Volrath's Stronghold you can do the trick every turn eventually hardcasting it and go to town. Note that it has regeneration which works very well togehter with Deed.
Cabal Therapy: Early Disruption and part of the Explorer-ramp-engine.
Hymn to Tourach: Still the best handdisruption ever printed. Two-for-ones are always good.
Sensei's DiviningTop: Library manipulation is important, because in midgame we may end up in topdeck mode and Sensei helps us to find what we Need. The deck runs a lot of shuffle effects just in case the top three cards are useless. Top also has great synergy with Liliana.
Beseech the queen: This Tutor fits so well in the deck because we usually have pretty fast a lot of lands in play. I once played two and added the full playset subsequentley, because of their power to net me any card.Beseech is like a Demonic Tutor for just three mana.
Pernicious Deed: In my opinion Pernicious Deed is still the best sweeper in Legacy. Ist rather cheap and hits all the problematic creatures, tokens, artifacts and enchantments. The only downside is that it doesn't hit Walkers.
Innocent Blood: I use sacrifice effects instead of targeted creature removal because they work so well togehter with Deed and are the best way to handle hexproof creatures or TNN's.
Think about how many decks have very strong first turn creature Drops (Mother of Runes, DRS, Delver, Lackey and so on). Innocent Blood answers them all for one mana.
Chainer's Edict: I splitted the 4-edict slots to put in one Chainer's Edict because the deck can easily capitalize on the flashback ability. Innocent Blood is still better overall because we can use it on turn one.
Liliana Vess: The one sided discard effect oftentimes keeps our opponent locked out of the game. If he still manages to come back, use Liliana's second ability. The built-in win condition using her ultimate is a nice bonus. Having a permanent way of playing Vampiric Tutor is broken.
Vraska: Vraska is mainly there to fight other planeswalkers or big creatures using her second ability. Afterwards we can start to add more loyalty counters and eventually use her ultimate as a decent win condition. Pernicious Deed is nice here if you use it to sweep the board before you use her ultimate for an almost guaranteed win.
Oona: 5/5 Flying ist pretty decent. Her ability allows use to capitalize on our huge mana pool and create an army of flying chump blockers or annoying attackers. Note that our oppnent has to Exile the Cards from his library which is a nice bonus.
Massacre Wurm: Debatable main deck choice. Right now he is in, because against some decks he acts like Deed #5 with the nice bonus that our Opponent loses life immediately, which may result in an instant win.
Army of the Damned: Seems horrible? Well 8 mana is a lot, but Army has three benefits: 1. Its one of the few kills in the deck which is immune to Karakas and Swords to Plowshares. 2. Its a fast kill in terms of setting a one turn clock to answer it (even if our opponent has some blockers). 3. If it gets countered you can play it again.
Sideboard:
As always its meta dependant. I would try to fit in at least some GY-hate, more removal spells like Abrupt Decay/Maelstrom Pulse, and Pithing Needle.
Consume Spirit: The lifegain can be nice. Consume Spirit can hit creatures or players (and therefore Planeswalkers) so its another versatile card. Sometimes it even acts as the final strike.
Abrupt Decay: As a general useful card
Cursed Totem: Hits our Oona but that's it. A pretty useful card against soo many decks.
Pithing Needle: Hits Karakas and Wasteland, Equipment and opposing walkers. Basically everything where we might have problems to deal with.
Haunting Echoes: An alternate win condition which can come in vs Combo or Control.
Withered Wretch and Nihil Spellbomb: Two different ways of dealing with GY-based decks.
Cards that didnt' make it (I will mention just some of the most obvious ones)Cabal Coffers: See above.
Liliana of the Veil: Yes, „little“ Liliana is one of the best planeswalkers. However I like to run her bigger sister because this deck should easily be able to afford the two extra mana for 5cc-Liliana, which has a better first ability and second ability.
Death Rite Shaman: Again, a very strong card, but it doesn't fit in the decks concept. Let me explain: Explorer does a better job at mana ramping because we get the lands permantly and Explorer also synergises with Deed, which is one of the key cards in the deck. I never missed DRS so far.
Maelstrom Pulse and Abrupt Decay (maindeck): Both cards are very good removal cards but I decided to go all-in on Deed which happens to have a bigger impact on the board.
So what do you think? The deck should beat any decks that try to win with Delvers and has no problems dealing with Hexproof Creatures or TNN. On the other side, the deck doesnt do too well against combo if our disruption plan doesnt't work out. Moreover it simply loses to Burn which is played in my local meta. Maybe I should try to add a little white splash (+Scrubland) to run some CoP: Red or Aegis of Honor in the sideboard. But i am not usure about that.
Any suggestions that help to improve the deck are really appreciated.