This is my take on the classic modern deck known as 8-Rack. For those who aren't familiar with the deck it's a discard/control deck built around The Rack and Shrieking Affliction to deal damage. Anyway, below I'll explain the choices for the deck:
-----Mainboard-----
Buried Ruin helps us get back Ensnaring Bridge, The Rack, Grafdigger's Cage, Stony Silence, or Torpor Orb, all of which are cards that help us either win the game or control the game.
Dakmor Salvage is one of our combo pieces. We use it in conjucntion with Raven's Crime so we always have a way to make our opponent discard.
Dismember is one of the best black removal spells out there and helps to get rid of almost any creature our opponent decides to play.
Ensnaring Bridge basically turns into "Your opponent can't attack you" since we'll have little to no cards in our hand. This is one of our main control pieces and it stops every creature based strategy right out of the gate.
Hero's Downfall is used in the case of a creature that can survive a Dismember or in the case of a Planeswalker on the field that is causing problems whether it be Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, or Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver.
Inquisition of Kozilek is a great discard card that will make sure that we stop our opponent from any early game threats or to remove counterspells that could stop us from playing down some of our more important spells.
Liliana of the Viel is arguably one of the best, if not the best Black Planeswalker. Besides being very attractive and distarcting our opponent with her seductive ways, she helps our entire discard strategy with her +1. Her -2 is also very helpful in the case where we don't have a removal spell, Ensnaring Bridge, or the creature is just to big for Dismember. It's also helpful in the case that our opponent is playing a creature heavy deck and we can't deal with their army just yet. Her -6 is probably not going to be used very often, if at all in this deck, although it is a nice option to have to make the game out of reach for our opponent, even if we're just seperating lands.
Mutavault is an alternate way of generating damage against our opponent. If they don't have any creatures on board we can swing in for 2 damage if we have nothing better to do. It helps seal the game faster and in some cases our opponent won't attack just to block it and save themseleve from taking some damage.
Raven's Crime doesn't let us pick the card that our opponent discards, but that's okay since you're probably not going to want to cast this until later on in the game when your opponent should only have one or two cards in hand thanks to our shenaningans. This card is one of our more useful discard spells just because when utiilized with Dakmor Salvage we can use this card every single turn. Ensuring our opponent will always be taking damage and always having nothing to do.
Shrieking Affliction is one of our main ways to do damage. You don't need toplay this until later on since you want to get your opponent's hand down to little to nothing as fast as you can to ensure as many threats are taken out of the way as possible. Basically play this down the turn they have two cards in hand or fewer since there's a chance they won't cast any spells just to make sure they're out of range from Shrieking Affliction. Remember, this card stacks so multiple copies means lots of damage!
The Rack is basically a better version of Shrieking Affliction in the sense that it can still do damage to our opponent if they have more than one card in hand. With 0 cards in hand it deals 3 damage, with 1 it deals 2, and with 2 it deals 1. 1 damage might not seem like a lot but in this deck it puts an incredible amount of pressure on our opponent and for the most part it will be doing 2-3 damage. Multiple copies works just like you'd expect and do even more damage.
Thoughtseize isin my opinion, the best discard spell you can have. 2 life might seem like a steep price to pay but we can discard any nonland card regardless of what it is or how much mana it costs. This allows you to get any threat out of your way and to break any combo your opponent might have coming your way. When you use this card just remember that our other discard spellsare limited to what they can do so make sure to pick something that they can't pick out. This will enable your deck to work more consistently. The only time you should pick something that another card could have grabbed is if it is an immediate threat.
Waste Not is one of the coolest and best enchantments ever to come from a Magic set. The versatality of the card is astonishing and in some cases may even win you the game. Getting 2/2 Zombies puts a clock on our oppononent while also acting as a shield for us. The adding of BB to our mana pool is fantastic since it will enable us to cast multiple discard spells a turn or just multiple spells in general. This puts ahuge amount of pressure on our opponents and helps us achieve victory that much quicker. Finally, who does't like drawing cards? This will make sure your hand is full of discard spells to use as well as to help get whatever card(s) you might need to help in certain situations. It also helps us get over Dakmor Salvage when we Dredge.
Wrench Mind is -2 cards for 2 mana. That's amazing when comparing to other cards that do the same thing. Granted, our opponent can just discard an artifact card instead; however, even if they do it still helps us get to our goal of making them have minimal cards in hand and can get rid of threats like Arcbound Ravager, Wurmcoil Engine, etc. It's also a great card to side out if you want to put something in.
------Sideboard------
Bile Blight is more removal and can help take down certain strategies althougher such as Affinity or RDW.
Grafdigger's Cage is our answer to Snapcaster Mage, Melira Decks abusing Persist, and Gift decks.
Hero's Downfall because I'm a sucker for removal.
Stony Silence helps stop any deck using stupid artifacts or just helps against Affinity.
Surgical Extraction helps permantley get rid of a threat as well as slimming down the cards in our opponent's deck. This is helpful since it should in theory increase the chance of them drawing a land card which is useless against our deck since they need to be aggro as fast as possible or be able to cast counterspells against our enchantments and artifacts.
Torpor Orb stops all those pesky ETB's you have to worry about, most notably it helps stop Splinter Twin decks.
------Maybeboard-----
Necrogen Mists helps to keep our opponent's hand down, but also forces us to discard which is why it's over here.
Smallpox is just a fun card that does so much for its cost. I love it but I had difficulty finding a place for it in the deck.
