The Black Mulligan Deck

[alcaeus]

Guys I need help!

I've been working on a deck that abuses Leyline of he Void to the fullest extend. Which, at first, is not such a bad idea, given the increasing abuse of the yard lately.

For now, it is a monoblack list, but I am open to suggestions.

The list:
14# swamp
4# gemstone caverns
2# urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
4# dark ritual
4# cabal ritual

4# serum powder
4# leyline of the void

3# cabal therapy
4# exhume
4# buried alive
4# gravestorm
4# ill-gotten gains
2# living death

1# akroma, angel of wrath
1# razia, boros archangel
1# spirit of the night

//sideboard
4# duress
3# smallpox
3# smother
3# null rod
1# akroma, angel of fury
1# blazing archon

Deckchoices:

Serum Powder: This card greatly increases your chances of getting the leyline in your openingshand.

Gravestorm: Excellent synergy with the leyline. Hence the rituals. Gravestorm is key to powering back the card-disadvantage created by mulliganing for leyline of the void.

Exhume: With the leyline in play, exhume becomes even more powerful. Obviously, the inclusion of exhume really sets the reanimator-theme for the rest of the deck. Perhaps, instead of reanimating, comboing with Oath of ghouls might be more viable.

Living Death: Again, great synergy with leyline. Contributes to the reanimator-theme, and acts as a damnation as well. CC is an issue though.

Ill-gotten Gains: Combo's very nastily with the leyline, and can act as a way to get a fattie in the yard.

Gemstone Caverns: Seems like fun to me, but then again, it is only usefull half of the time.

I really like some response on the viability of such a deck, and whether other colors should be considered. Thanks!

[GGoober]

Seems like a really funny deck to me.

You seem to be playing Reanimator. Why don't just stick to UB Reanimator so that you protect your reanimation spells and targets? What is the point of having maindeck Leylines if you don't have a strategy to abuse it besides hating out certain decks in the meta when you might not even play against? I can say if you really wanted to play Mulligan, sideboard all 4 Leylines and 4 Serum Powder (this is in fact done by a World Champion playing Black Suicide because the deck has answers for everything except graveyard hate, hence the desperation for graveyard hate using Leyline+Powder). Otherwise you're just wasting 8 slots MD where you could have played better spells.

[FoolofaTook]

I've tried a lot of MD Leylines ideas recently and the common fault they all displayed was draw dependency. If you design the deck to work well with a Leylines in play then it increases the pressure to mull to find one because if you don't you wind up with later draws that are suboptimal because half of their effect is missing.

As an example: with no Leylines in play at the start you have 12 cards that are very unlikely to make you happy down the road in Serum Powder, Leylines of the Void and Ill-Gotten Gains. That's a huge dependency for the deck to carry and it will cause you to mull to 4 fairly often to find your Leylines.

Now the tradeoff for that kind of dependency has to be large to make it worthwhile. You have to win probably 75-80% of the games where you find the turn zero Leyline to break even overall.

The one suggestion I would make if you try to put the effect you are looking for in play is that you include MD Tormod's (at least one) and ways to fetch it, since that would allow a turn 5 Leyline not to be a dead draw with whatever your opponent already had in the yard probably sufficient to kill you when you Iggy.

My solution was 3 Trinket Mage and 1 Tormod's but that was also suboptimal because Trinket Mages are really weak except for the fetch effect and fairly slow to come out anyway.

[Media314r8]

my changes would be:

3 cmc black enchantment draw suite: (if for some reason you cannot play bob)

-4 gravestorm -> +4 phyrexian arena

In general:

-1 bad deck based around gravestorm-> +1 good deck not based around gravestorm

Now don't take me to be a complete dick, but phyrexian arena seems like a much more reliable, consistant way to draw cards, with the same CMC and the negligible drawback of losing 1 life a turn. The fact that you run 8 dead cards just to abuse an enchantment that has a suitible replacement that's less contingent upon the stars aligning, at the same CMC makes your deck seem less credible. When you build a deck around exhume, it's usually the case that your opponent gets back a goose, goyf, or lackey, while you gte back akroma or SSS and don't care about their small threat. There really seems like little to no reason for the 4x leylines and 4x power to be in your deck, as these could be spells like FoW, daze, or brainstorm that will actually increase your chances of winning. I feel bad dismissing this deck, but you must provide in your deck primer a reason to play this over other, proven re-animators.

[alcaeus]

Thanks for the response & constructive criticism!

The decklist, as it is now, is certainly suboptimal, as the cards are chosen for their synergy with the leyline, rather than with each other, let alone for effectively dealing with opponents.

I sifted through quite a few starting hands on another site.
And I have to agree that the mulligan card-disadvantage, the difficulty in getting the combo-pieces together, the amount of dead draws and poor capacity of dealing with opp's threat's, makes this a very unreliable deck indeed.
Yet, the number of near perfect powder/mulligan-enabled starting hands wasn't very low either. So I am still confident that the leyline can be broken.

The issue is, I think, how to make this deck reliable in abusing leyline of the void (if possible). A statistician would be handy I suppose.

To be clear:
The grave-hate created by the leyline is very strong indeed, yet this deck is about abusing the difference in having a yard as well. Ill-gotten Gains is an obvious example in this respect.

The reanimator theme is probably not the brightest idea, but it seemed like the obvious candidate as a kill condition in a leyline-deck. However, it just leads to more combo-requirements, hence making this deck more unreliable.
So I'm not very hard-headed with regards to the reanimator-slots. Although, I wouldn't like to exclude Living Death, it is simply a powerhouse in combo with leyline.

So here is a list of auto-includes, maybe we can go from there...

Auto-includes
4# Leyline of the Void
4# Serum Powder
4# Dark Ritual
4# Gravestorm
3# Ill-gotten Gains
2# Living death (SB)

So there are still many open slots, like to hear your ideas on them.

With regards to Gravestorm:
I'd rather play additional draw, such as arena, than to outboard gravestorm.

I certainly like the suggestion to maindeck Tormod's Crypt, to avoid suboptimal draws, when there is no leyline in play.

Perhaps Scrabbling Claws might be a better option than the crypt to reliably exploit the Gravestorm and Ill-gotten Gains. On the plus-side the claws can be cantripped if I do have leyline, and it can be used as selective goyf-evasion, while keeping the grave-advantage intact.

Keep posting!