I like this idea.

It's similar to an Azorius EDH deck I built.

+1

Endless Whispers maybe?

I've had loads of political fun with it, but it does have a lot of potential to backfire.

Love the idea. +1

Edit: also you've got two copies of Helm of Obedience in your maybeboard ;)

Bitterblossom combos nicely with Contamination, a very good mono-black combo. Teferi's Puzzle Box + Underworld Dreams is such a fun combo too.

Hey Argeaux thanks! Send me a link if it's still up.

Hey Tyrant-Thanatos. Yeah Endless Whispers is interesting. Feels like if you were going to run it you'd want to be running very few utility creatures yourself. Or at the very least have No Mercy.Wonder if you ran things like Crawlspace if you could make it work. We'd also want to run some similar effects. Will need to have a delve through gatherer, but see if you can think of any!

Shane.Allen. Like the Teferi's idea. Would also work nicely with Head Games.

I like Head Games that just fucks the combo player at the table and that makes me laugh. :)

Yeah Endless Whispers can be tricky to build around. You wouldn't want your Avatar of Woe, Grave Titan, Phyrexian Obliterator, etc falling into enemy hands.

It's a pretty specific build, but my favorite interaction is Horobi, Death's Wail.

Hell, risky as he is, Horobi would work well with Drana, who can pump out "targets" rapidly for BB each. With or without Whispers on the board.

And yes, defensive cards like Crawlspace can be very handy if whispers gets out of hand. You already have Dread and No Mercy. Anything with cheap Regeneration can help keep you protected, like Will-o'-the-Wisp, especially alongside something like Crawlspace.

If you do end up running Whispers, I found Bronze Bombshell to provide quite a bit of multiplayer fun. ;)

Here's a few suggestions that may fit your Political idea...

I wholeheartedly agree with Infernal Offering. It can be a great political tool, and can serve some pretty hefty value if you can pick opponents that can't benefit from it. (IE one opponent with no creatures on the board, and one with none in the grave)

This idea seems really cool.

Hey everyone braderus9, Tyrant-Thanatos, Eiti3, Shane.Allen. I've made quite a few tweaks to this to bring it on theme. Now running: Endless Whispers, Choice of Damnations, Head Games, Temporal Extortion, Lethal Vapors, Necrotic Plague, Spreading Plague and Wound Reflection to up the politics. Also trimmed the creature base to pure utility creatures, and took out Grave Titan and Phyrexian Obliterator as bombs that we don't want to see used against us.

Focused more on things that we can block with black creatures if they get Endless Whispersed against us. Still need to trim a few cards, so open to suggestions.

Havoc Demon and Reiver Demon are additional sweepers. Guiltfeeder is in as an interesting curiosity, than we can block if need be. Myojin of Night's Reach can't be used against us as it won't be cast from hand. The devotion cards like Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Erebos, God of the Dead are only an issue if we chose to give them to someone playing a mainly black deck. Shriekmaw and Bone Shredder can't hit our creatures. If kokusho dies we'll already have benefited from the life swing. Massacre Wurm is less of an issue to us because we're not running any creatures. That's the thinking anyway.

May need a Sorin Markov or similar?

Open to feedback!!

I don't like Choice of Damnations its a weak card at best in EDH, the other cards seem really solid. get that Sorin Markov he's really going to keep some players in track.

I kind of agree that Choice of Damnations feels kind of weak for a political multiplayer thing. It only hits one person and while it's a fun card, it's a lot of mana just to provoke somebody.

Lethal Vapors is a fantastic card that I absolutely adore. Hilarious with Endless Whispers as well if people decide to play into it.

Massacre Wurm should actually work fantastically with Endless Whispers. You aren't running much that would be eaten by -2/-2, and anything on the board that does get eaten by it will just be passed around on top of the life loss. If you can ensure that the Wurm continues to die and be passed around, he'll keep laying damage on whoever ends up with weak creatures, almost regardless of who your opponents pass him to.

On a similar note, I'm not sure if he was in there all along, but Withered Wretch is FANTASTIC with Whispers. He practically reads ": Remove target problem creature from the Whispers cycle."

Thanks Shane.Allen, Tyrant-Thanatos. I've dropped Choice of Damnations and Sadistic Sacrament to bring me down to 100 at the moment. Need to work out another one to drop to get Sorin Markov in. The other cute Endless Whispers thing would be to pass around cards like Lord of the Pit, Cosmic Horror etc. where there's an upkeep cost it's likely only a monoblack player could pay.

I like the idea behind something like Lord of the Pit/Cosmic Horror, but I feel like Bronze Bombshell would have essentially the same effect for cheaper, though I suppose she'd be less useful without Whispers.

Draw_Wurm Your most welcomed, I like the way the deck is looking :)

Here's a link to my deck: Whitewash

It's still a work in progress.

Hey everyone braderus9, Tyrant-Thanatos, Eiti3, Shane.Allen. Thanks as ever for the feedback. Played the first few games with this last night. Both games were pods of 3. First was me, RB vampire tribal, and a token/counters Varolz, the Scar-Striped. One change to list above was Dark Petition over the Guiltfeeder (haven't managed to get a copy yet).

Here I played early ramp (Charcoal Diamond). Dropped an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Vamp player was mana screwed to begin with and used Vampiric Tutor early, dropping a t3 Dark Depths, and taking the tokens off it with Vampire Hexmage. Both myself and the Varolz player had Grave Pact out. I used Fleshbag Marauder to sac vamp player's demon and a few of the Varolz players worm tokens. However token generation and his ability to drop creatures into the graveyard (Death's Shadow, Phyrexian Dreadnought) that were no use to me to steal with Animate Dead and that he could exile for counters caused me problems. I cast Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief twice but was forced to sac each time. Played Head Games on Varolz player to stall him. Then played Temporal Extortion which he paid the cost of. I also tutored for Withered Wretch for Grave Pact synergy and to hose his graveyard. Eventually I couldn't hold back his creatures and died. Vamp player had barely been in the game.

Second was me, someone running Progenitus and loads of colourless artifacts and equipment, and someone playing the RB Wade into Battle, Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas precon. Here I ran Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath as the commander instead of Drana. Here I accelerated out of the gate. Dropped Fleshbag Marauder, Reanimated it to control the board. Played Ob Nixils. Used its +2. Progenitus player swung for me to kill Ob Nixilis. I dropped No Mercy. Kalemne player was mana screwed. I dropped Kokusho, the Evening Star. Progenitus player swung with a Lodestone Golem with Worldslayer. Everyone sacked everything. I was up to 51 life. This let the Kalemne player back into the game. I had to slowly build up mana. Drew Extraplanar Lens. Kalemne player was able to play enchantments and equipment. Before I was able to get defenses up, I fell to Commander damage off Kalemne.

So fun games. We probably suffered from 1 opponent in each pod starting slowly, so we had a fair amount of attention. Worldslayer aside, g2 we were in a good position. G1 less so.

Things I'm thinking about adding:

More tutors? Vampiric Tutor, Rune-Scarred DemonMore hand filtering? Moonlight BargainMore planeswalkers? Liliana Vess, Sorin MarkovCounter removal? Hex Parasite, Vampire Hexmageindestructible mana sources? Darksteel IngotDefensive cards? Maze of Ith, Tree of Perdition

No Mercy causes a strong effect when it hits the table, and forces people to Alpha strike you. It definitely makes people (especially in a 3 person pod) think twice about attacking. Feels like we need a few alternative defences in case we don't draw it or Dread.

People have been suggesting Horobi, Death's Wail as an alternative commander, which could help manage the board state. Feels like equipped commanders could be an issue for us and this would help shut those down. Ob Nixilis felt better than Drana, but I could see Drana in a list with Horobi. I've got Ascendant Evincar but that feels like an expensive effect.

I absolutely approve of Horobi, Death's Wail for commander if you want to take that route. He's an absolute monster that shuts down so many things, and has a nice body to boot. He can have the potential to backfire, but the pros outweigh the cons imo.

Tutors are always nice. Consistency is strength.

If you do switch to Horobi commander, I might advise Touch of Darkness and/or Cauldron of Souls, as they have fantastic synergy with him. There's really nothing quite like a 1cmc instant-speed Plague Wind. :)

Other than that, defense is hard to find in mono-black. Koskun Falls was about all I could find via a quick Gatherer search, unless you want to try to use defensive creatures like Shield Sphere or Wall of Souls. :/

I mean cards like Paralyze could shut down one creature at a time, but that's probably not going to be enough.

you should consider AEther Snap Buried Alive

Hey good fighting, more tutors is always good, and think about creatures like Sheoldred, the Whispering One really controls the board.

I like a lot of what you've done here. Just keep in mind that Horobi's trigger goes off as soon as a creature is targeted, and will thus resolve before the effect which targeted it. This means that while he's on the board, effects like Duplicant, Necrotic Plague, and Enslave will become little more than glorified overpriced kill spells.

Inversely, if my interpretation on this matter is accurate (I'm not 100% sure on this though), Devour in Shadow will become stronger, as its target will have been destroyed before it resolves, causing you to lose no life.

I briefly touched on it before, but with Horobi as your commander, I highly recommend Touch of Darkness. Obviously it does little without him on the board, but it can be absolutely devastating with him on the board.

Cauldron of Souls can produce a similar effect every turn, but it costs quite a bit more. (Remember, the creatures are destroyed by Horobi before they gain persist) Though I can't recommend this quite as much due to a combination of the mana cost and the target it paints on your face. If you think you can hold the lockdown though, go for it.

Overall though this looks pretty fun. :)

The way I play horobi is lots of targeting spells to clear the board, like Touch of Darkness and Cruel Feeding, and then a bunch of one drop targets. Aphotic Wisps Death Wind Disfigure Eye Gouge Lose Hope Tragic Slip Virulent Wound Cabal Trainee Shambling Goblin and so on. I also like Avatar of Woe, cause it's easy to get cheap with a deck like this.

Also, this is commander.Cauldron of Souls costs five. You don't care, that's not bad.

One drop targets are nice, but you'll still only go one-for-one with them at best. Multitarget is where it's at. Cards like Cannibalize which take out two for just two mana, Ashes to Ashes or Reckless Spite which hit two for only 3 mana.

If you're really going to profit off of Horobi's effect, you need to be doing more than trading one card for one card at a time. It's all about the card advantage. One for one at instant speed can be useful in dire situations, but it really shouldn't be what you build around.

Without Horobi, Cauldron of Souls forms a neat little combo with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. It can also save your board from a wipe. With Horobi online it is brutal.