Magic the Gathering

Casual

Budget Mono-Black Control — Changes

By Ben Mcdole ⋅ October 13, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

In my last arti­cle I men­tion tweak­ing and test­ing our bud­get mono black list, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. Though work com­mit­ments keep me from attend­ing the EDH league held every Thurs­day night at Armada Games, I was still able to get plenty of test­ing done Fri­day before the PTQ in Tal­la­has­see and Sat­ur­day late into the night.

After only a few games I noticed sev­eral cards that, to be hon­est, either were inef­fec­tive or just not as fun as I had ini­tially hoped. The sit­u­a­tions where these cards have been most use­ful for me were in two player games, which is def­i­nitely not the norm for EDH in my area. If your local meta-game is mostly com­prised of duel decks then many of these choices should con­tinue to make the cut.

The first card which ended up being very dis­ap­point­ing was Eter­nity Ves­sel. Maybe I had my hopes set too high for this one, but I just had visions of drop­ping the ves­sel turn 3–4 when in a mul­ti­player for­mat I’m either still at 40, or maybe higher due to a well timed Ten­drils. The real­ity of the sit­u­a­tion is that when I cast Eter­nity Ves­sel the aggro play­ers seemed to view the card as some­thing of an affront and would band together to show me that while land­fall is great with this card, if I die before it’s my turn I can’t get another land into play anyway.

My replace­ment for Eter­nity Ves­sel helps solve a large prob­lem in our area, grave­yard recur­sion. The league I play in is typ­i­cally wide open as far as deck con­struc­tion goes, though grave­yard recur­sion is a pretty com­mon theme. Preva­lent in almost all col­ors, the abil­ity to return crea­tures directly to the bat­tle­field can be very prob­lem­atic, espe­cially with my only mass grave­yard removal being Relic of Prog­en­i­tus.

My expe­ri­ence is that the MBC deck is very adept at killing crea­tures, but not so adept at keep­ing them killed. Green proves espe­cially trou­ble­some with Gen­e­sis and Eter­nal Wit­ness lead­ing the charge. While is no slouch with rean­i­ma­tion either, usu­ally return­ing a Reya Dawn­bringer to do their dirty work, though some­times a sim­ple Eme­ria, the Sky Ruin will get the job done. Debtor’s Knell also seems to rear its nigh unkil­l­able (for us any­way) head. With these thoughts in mind I real­ize that it would be eas­ier to sim­ply rid the grave­yards of the rean­i­ma­tion targets.

I spent a while look­ing for a suit­able answer for crea­tures which would also be fun. My ini­tial reac­tion was to use Nezumi Graver­ob­ber, but after a lit­tle time I ended up dis­card­ing the idea. Graver­ob­ber is flex­i­ble in the fact that he can remove mul­ti­ple tar­geted cards each turn, but lim­ited in the fact that once he flips I can no longer remove cards. His abil­ity as Nighteyes the Des­e­cra­tor (which is a pretty awe­some name), is use­ful and poten­tially game break­ing, but once a mass removal effect has hit the crea­tures are going to be right back in the grave­yard where they started, tak­ing Nighteyes with them.

With Grave Rob­ber dis­carded I turned to Cof­fin Queen. A quick check­list for Cof­fin Queen:

1. Removes crea­tures from grave­yards. (check)
2. Pro­vides an advan­tage to me in doing so. (check)
3. Bud­get (check, under three dollars)
4. Cool look­ing art that reminds me of Shiva the destroyer (check)

From here it looks like Cof­fin Queen has all the bases cov­ered. Eter­nity Ves­sel is out, Cof­fin Queen is in. There are a few quick notes on Cof­fin Queen, all of which are great for us. Cof­fin Queen’s cur­rent crea­ture type is ‘Zom­bie Wiz­ard,’ mean­ing we can pull her back with our Unholy Grotto! Also, if Cof­fin Queen becomes untapped before the crea­ture she’s return­ing actu­ally makes it into play then the crea­ture will not be removed. Good times if we decide to do some­thing tricky, per­haps Thousand-Year Elixir is in our future.

The sec­ond card that has been under­whelm­ing has been San­guine Bond. I had big ideas about San­guine Bond and Wound Reflec­tion with Con­sume Spirit just out­right crush­ing dreams. The prob­lem is that this deck just doesn’t gain enough life to have the pay­off of San­guine Bond be worth the slot. By the time all of those cards are in play with enough mana to power out large spells the odds are pretty good that the Con­sume Spirit itself is enough to kill your oppo­nent, no tricks nec­es­sary. I am cut­ting San­guine Bond for a card that helps the con­sis­tency of our deck on two dif­fer­ent fronts, Grim Dis­cov­ery.

Grim Dis­cov­ery helps our deck in two sep­a­rate but impor­tant ways. First and fore­most Grim Dis­cov­ery gives black a way to retrieve lands that have been destroyed. Cabal Cof­fers is enemy num­ber one once peo­ple see the absurd amount of mana it can pro­duce. In the past week I’ve had more Acidic Slimes, Strip Mines, Waste­lands, and Wood­fall Primus type effects sent my way than I care to think about and Grim Dis­cov­ery will go a long way to com­bat the issue. Addi­tion­ally, Grim Dis­cov­ery allows us to get back a crea­ture, which can allow for some great card advan­tage inter­ac­tions. Undead Glad­i­a­tor and Pup­peteer Clique both love to be returned for future use, with the Clique being par­tic­u­larly devastating.

I want to list the next two cards to be cut together, because they have the same func­tional effect, Night­mare Incur­sion and Nev­erend­ing Tor­ment. Night­mare Incur­sion is very good at mak­ing some­one your ded­i­cated enemy. Again we go back to the idea of want­ing to spread around an effect, and Night­mare Incur­sion doesn’t allow us to do that. If you have a combo player in your area and are con­cerned about need­ing a way to remove those pieces then Night­mare Incur­sion should prob­a­bly stay in your deck, but that instance aside, it has been much less fun than I expected.

Nev­erend­ing Tor­ment has the same issue as Night­mare Incur­sion, but with the added draw­back of essen­tially remov­ing you from the game. The other Epic Spells can be great fun. I’ve cast Eter­nal Domin­ion in games and ended up hav­ing a blast because I was still actively doing some­thing each sub­se­quent turn, even if I could no longer cast spells. Nev­erend­ing Tor­ment does not grant that sort of flex­i­bil­ity. Each time my epic trig­ger resolved I essen­tially looked around the table to decide who I was going to be a jerk toward this turn, not some­thing you want in a fun, casual format.

Our replace­ments on the other hand, pro­vide some wel­come relief in a few prob­lem areas. In place of Night­mare Incur­sion I now run Tainted Aether. Token decks are very big in our league with phrases like “Cycle Decree of Jus­tice for fif­teen” hap­pen­ing a lit­tle too often. Now token play­ers are forced to decide if they’d rather have that army of 1/1 crea­tures, or the lands to be able to do some­thing pro­duc­tive after­wards. Tainted Aether should go some dis­tance toward keep­ing large Liv­ing Death type effects in check as well, some­thing Shel­don Men­ery is famous for in our area.

Another dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion to over­come is oppo­nents who are able to dom­i­nate the game through card draw­ing. Unfor­tu­nately black does not have a lot of mass card draw and can quickly get behind, par­tic­u­larly since draw­ing lands is inte­gral to the suc­cess of our deck. While we need lands to func­tion we need busi­ness spells to make actu­ally have some­thing to do with that mana. In comes Mind’s Eye. I liken Mind’s Eye to Rhys­tic Study for blue decks. Mind’s Eye lets me use my opponent’s own card draw­ing against them, fill­ing my hand as well as theirs. Once my hand is full, it’s not dif­fi­cult to pro­duce some mass dis­card effect to gain more card advan­tage. So out with Night­mare Incur­sion and Nev­erend­ing Tor­ment, in come Tainted Aether and Mind’s Eye.

Another card that hasn’t quite lived up to what I had hoped is Altar of Shad­ows. Maybe I’m just a dreamer, but I was hop­ing Altar would be not just a crea­ture destruc­tion card, but a fuel source for those large Magas I hoped to cast. Instead Altar ended up sit­ting in my hand with me wish­ing it were any­thing else. I guess even in EDH pay­ing seven mana to destroy a crea­ture, no mat­ter how large, just is not worth the investment.

Instead of Altar of Shad­ows we look to a dif­fer­ent Mir­rodin card along the same lines, Tower of For­tunes. Tower of For­tunes lets us pay one more mana for four cards at instant speed. Oppor­tu­nity makes the cut in blue decks, I think by the same logic Tower of For­tunes is about as good as we can hope for instant speed card draw­ing. Addi­tion­ally, the addi­tion of Tower of For­tunes bumps the total num­ber of tow­ers in the deck to two, which gives us the option of some twin tow­ers type nick­name. If I end up includ­ing Reli­quary Tower the pos­si­bil­i­ties are lim­it­less (get it, like my hand size!).

The final card which needs to be changed is Infest. While I respect the effort Infest is putting in, it’s just not up to par with the for­mat. The effect is fan­tas­tic, but I just think we can find a bet­ter option. With our deck tooled to make gobs of mana I have no prob­lem pay­ing one addi­tional mana for Infest at instant speed. While Infest has tried its best, Hideous Laugh­ter is com­ing in. A great side effect of Hideous Laugh­ter, is the option to splice onto arcane, should we decide to go that route later on down the road. In short, I just feel Hideous Laugh­ter is a stronger card for the needs of my league.

I’ve received a few e-mails ask­ing me about some mem­bers of the league at Armada, so I’d like to take a sec­ond to describe them a bit fur­ther. The god­fa­ther of our team (and of EDH in gen­eral) is Shel­don Men­ery. Shel­don founded team Lives in the Red Zone, whose mem­bers are ded­i­cated to liv­ing in the red zone when­ever pos­si­ble. Our team motto is you must attack each turn if able, which makes for some pretty wacky antics. Obvi­ously Shel­don and I are team mem­bers, with the other two being Bren­nan De Can­dio, another local L1, and Todd “Woody” Palmer.

Todd “Woody” Palmer was once Todd “Jaz­zhands” Palmer, a nick­name given to him since at the out­set of EDH Todd didn’t live in the red zone so much as occa­sion­ally jazz hands his way through. Todd’s part­ner in crime is one Matt Williams. Matt had orig­i­nally been given the nick­name “Mrs. Jaz­zhands,” but through bribery and skull­dug­gery he man­aged to get rid of it. One fate­ful evening Matt decided that watch­ing Toy Story was more impor­tant than EDH and was thus sad­dled with the nick­name ‘Woody.’ Once I real­ized that if I renamed Todd “Woody” I could nick­name Matt with the name of the female cow­boy from Toy Story 2 and thus keep the husband/wife dynamic intact. I acted imme­di­ately. Todd became “Woody” and Matt became “Jesse the Yodel­ing Cow­girl,” which I had to Wikipedia to find. Imag­ine my delight when Matt’s new nick­name was greater than his old nickname!

Next week I hope to get some great EDH in at PT Austin with a lot of high level judges. With any luck I’ll be able to report back that bud­get MBC held its own, and maybe even have a list of fur­ther improve­ments. If you plan on being in the Austin area and want to chat about EDH make sure to come and find me and I’ll be happy to talk with you.

My name is Benjamin McDole and I’m a level 2 judge from Tampa, Florida. When I’m not teaching math at a local college or spending time with my wife I’m usually playing EDH at Armada Games or running some events. My long term goal is to make sure everyone enjoys Magic and especially EDH as much as I do. I’m a member of a few organizations, Team Lives in the Red Zone and the American Association for the Advancement of Pie (I’m the only member!)

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