Black Discard,............again

[Rando]

Well, I think I've become obsessed with making an all black deck that is not...
A:-typical beat down
B:-typical control

So here is the 3rd or 4th revision of the black discard deck I've been working on. I've sold all of my negators, so don't bother to tell me to put them in there. With 24 of the 35 spells being 3 or less mana (not including the dark rit.'s), I might be able to lower the land count some.

Creatures(16)
4 Ravonous Rats
4 Chilling Apperition
4 Caturan Enforcer
2 Thrashing Wumpus
2 Phyrexian Plauge Lord

Spells(18)
4 Duress
4 Stupor
2 Snuff Out
4 Vicious Hunger
3 Vampiric Tutor
1 Rystic Tutor

Artifacts(1)
1 Disrupting Scepter

Mana Sources(25)
4 Dark Ritual
2 Dust Bowl
2 Rath's Edge
17 Swamp

 

[Gizmo]

This was my signature deck a while ago, Accelerated Black - Beatdown + Control elements blended into one deck.
I never missed a Top-8 while I played it (but then I never do, no matter what I play) and came away with 2 wins to boot. Struggles Vs Replenish a bit, but what can you do - beats everything else though (probably loses to RDW2K).

4 Skittering Horror
3 Phyrexian Negator
2 Masticore
2 Cateran Enforcer

4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
3 Vendetta
2 Vampiric Tutor
2 Vicious Hunger
1 Engineered Plague
2 Yawgmoth`s Will
3 Forced March
2 Unmask
2 Persecute

Land (24)
4 Rishadan Port
4 Crystal Vein
4 Peat Bog
12 Swamp

And back when I was regularly writing my feature articles for Starcity I wrote one about this deck, so have a look at it for more on choices for this deck, have the article on the team website:
http://members.tripod.co.uk/candiman/msota8.htm

I`ve not played in a tournament for over two months because Prophecy and Nemesis were SO bad that I hate T2 right now, but if I did go to one (and I`d lost my copy of RDW2K) I`d be playing this.

 

[Hetemti]

...you need brink of madness brink of madness is the best card ever the first legacy pack i bought had foil brink of madness in it out of all the legacy packs i have bought i never got the same rare twice except for brink of madness which i got four of two of which are foil yea for foil brink of madness do you want four brink of madnessess i have four brink of madnessess two of which are foil you need brink of madness kerrick the old guy will watch over you and ensure your safety and maddess that the brink of will help your deck since it is a discard datcard card and two are foil and two are not because it is legacy and there are foils in legacy but i never got a might of oaks.
_______________
"his madness is just a cry for help you can see it in his eyes they were drawn by donato giancolla donato does good art but he puts hands in to many of them but there are no hands on brink of madness not even on the foil ones"

 

[Gizmo]

...you need puncutation punctuation is good it makes your posts easier to read if you cant find the punctuation on your keyboard they are the little . and , symbols in the bottom right corner if you start to use punctuation it will prevent me from having a psychotic episode in all my posts i use punctuation and it helps people read what i am writing and otherwise all my sentences would blend into one and it make it sound like i am speaking at a hundred words per minute

 

[Spiderman]

LOL.

 

[Rando]

Hey!
Make fun of the freak later.
Make suggestions for my deck now.
Freak later.
Deck now.

 

[Spiderman]

Now I'm ROFLMAO.

This is funny.
I've got the giggles.
Must be because it's Thursday and I'm leaving in 30 minutes and I'm off tomorrow.

 

[Zadok001]

LoL. It's later. Making fun of freak now. Hahaha!

Ok, done with that. Time for the deck!

First of all, you may have been to quick to trade/sell Negators. They make wonderful sideboard material. I rarely have them maindeck, but if I'm going to a tourney with black, chances are I have 4 Negators in the 'board.

I really only question one card in the original decklist; Stupor. This may be personal prejudice speaking, but I hate that card. People think of it as the replacement for Hymn. Nopes. Doesn't work that way. Hymn killed people by messing up their game plan before they could stop you. It costed two mana. That means that you could Ritual, and play it and something else on turn one. Or you could just wait and play it turn 2, while your opponent had only one land and probably no threats. With Stupor, you're paying three mana. That's a Ritual away, and 2 for 2 ain't that hot, and probably not worth wasting a Ritual for.

Furthermore, playing it on turn three means the other guy has either 2 or 3 mana available to them. Counters cost two or three. Major ground-pounding threats like Albino Troll and Veteran Brawlers cost two mana. Which means that if you wait 'til turn 3 to cast Stupor, chances are the problem is already on the table, and it's too late to force them to discard it.

It doesn't help that Stupor is a dead draw late game. Duress is too, but it's so good early that it makes itself worth it. Stupor ain't that hot early on. Ravenous Rats isn't dead, it's a 1/1 (yeah, yeah, close to dead, but not dead) creature that will help overrun the enemy faster. And, should they have a card, they'll discard it. Good deal.

So, why play Stupor? If you _really_ want 4 more discard spells, I would recommend *insert 2/2 Feared uncommon guys from Saga that force a discard if unblocked*. That's discard, and a creature, and not a dead draw late game. It won't force discard as quickly as Stupor, but the mere fact that they give you a 2/2 can make them worth it. Actually, Absyall Spectre might be better, as it lives through the standard Wumpus blast.... I dunno.

"We stumble in a tangled web, decaying friendships almost dead, and hide behind a mask of lies. We twist and turn and we avoid, all hope of salvage now deviod, I see the truth inside your eyes..."

 

[Inyatha]

2x/1x Greel, Mind Raker.

He has his downs, and he kills card advantage, but he's a Mind Twist you can fire off every turn. You could even have one, just for cases when you don't have a discard spell. He is hard to get a handle on, though. I'd only put him in if you could really use some more discard.

2x Order of Yawgmoth

This might have been the "Feared 2/2 discarder" Zadok was referring to in his post <Not sure if it is Saga>. This guy can definitely do damage to non-black players.

 

[DÛke]

Rando, where the hell are the Unmasks?
You know that you can't play a black deck without Unmask/Duress...

 

[Captain Caveman]

This is my take on Discard/Control black. Its sort of a
cross between one of Gizmo's Control Black decks and Flores
Black.

3 Ravenous Rats
3 Ticking Gnomes
3 Cateran Enforcer(or Plaguelord)
2 Skittering Skirge
1 Thrahing Wumpus

4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
4 Vampiric Tutor
3 Vicious Hunger
3 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Stupor
1 Massacre
1 Eradicate
1 Powder Keg
1 Engineered Plague

17 Swamp
3 Rishadan Port
2 Dust Bowl
2 Spawning Pool

Sideboard
4 Phyrexian Negator
3 Rapid Decay
3 Cards of Choice(thran lens,Plagues,processor,
whatever)
2 Perish
1 Persecute
1 Rebel Informer
1 Stromgald Cabal

 

[Hellion]

Well, let's get down to business,
A T2 discard deck needs the following staples in their proper amount, no questions ask. Discard is black's form of control, if it never was in your opponent's hands, it will never be a threat.

Discard staples:
4 Duress
3 Unmask
3 Stupor (or 4)

You might want to try Parallax Nexus. They are pretty good despite wat many ppl say. I strongly suggest you throw in a few of them. The "trick" to playing the Nexus is to just make your opponent "discard" a few cards and stall them for a few turns. Trust me, the Nexus is a strong card. I regret selling them cheap.

Followed by:

4 Dark Ritual
3 or 4 Vicious Hunger
3 or 4 Snuff Out
2 Forced March
2 or 3 Powder Keg
3 or 4 Vampiric Tutor
3 or 4 Yawgmoth's Will

These are the control elements of the deck. Of course they need to be sided out against control based decks like Draw GO and ACC Blue for more beatdown.

Chilling Apparition is a strong card, even though it is a rather weak Hypnotic Spector reprint. It's ability to regenerate is a steal for 3 mana. Since half of the deck is based on denying you opponent creatures, Chilling Apparition is a good call for this deck.

The rest of the deck is up to you. Your area's metagame decides what other additions are supposed for this deck. Looking at your deck, I can see that it already is very well tuned. So now I guess it's up to you to go give it a few tests to check out for any leaks.

Your deck is pretty solid as it is. You'll reach a point that you cannot tweak the deck anymore. This comes to one of the truths of Magic.

There is no perfect deck.

 

[Cateran Overlord]

Ahh, Parallax Nexus. The most underrated of the 3 Parralax big enchantments. I see everyone say they're terrible, and when I ask why, they say "because they choose the card, and it's played as a sorcery". Let me say right now, if you think that the point of Nexus is to "discard" one or two cards, you get a cookie and a kick in the ass, you're wrong!

Nexus is just like the rest: it is a surrogate discard. just like Wave mimics creature removal and Tide mimics LD, Nexus pretends it's discard. However, it's not.

Now for the point of this post: how I use Parallax Nexus to win games. Nexus has 2 colossal advantages for black, whether it's black aggro or control:

1. Nexus takes from your opponent that key card they;ve been holding, delaying them usually at least 2 or 3 turns. This should be enough for black.

2. Far more importantly, Nexus lets you SEE MOST OF THEIR HAND. This doesn't seem like much, until you remember a fun little black card called PERSECUTE. I can't even tell you how many times Persecute nets at least 3 cards because Nexus let me see them and let me get prepared to nuke it all. Best case scenario for my type of deck:

Turn 1: Ritual, Nexus for 5
Turn 2: Ritual, Persecute naming whatever you saw most of. You'll ususally be right. Now then, let me show you the might discard I've been using:

T2 Version
4 Nexus
4 Unmask
4 Duress
3 Persecute
3 Stupor
4 D. Ritual
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Order of Yawgmoth
4 Chilling Apparition
2 Yawgmoth's Will (so not fair)
4 Peat Bog
4 Spawning Pool
16 Swamp

Ext. Version
4 Nexus
4 Unmask
4 Duress
2 Persecute
4 Diablolic Edict
4 Dauthi Slayer
4 Dauthi Horror
4 Bad Moon
2 Megrim
4 Black Knight
4 Knight of Stromgald (IA pump knight, don't remember if this is right name)
3 Lake of the Dead
3 Volrath's Stronghold
14 Swamp

I haven't actually built either version in real life (yet...), but they both win massively on Aprrentice. Blue and white just die to them, as does green amazingly. Red still just burns all the little guys out (unless Bad Moon or Persecute hits the board, then they just start falling apart).

Hope this quick lesson on discard helps ya out.

BTW Gizmo, I still think discard is to black what counter is to blue