Increasing Ambition is simply better than Dark Petition at this point. Fleshwrither doesnt have any options to bring in your deck other than Erebos. Black Market is good and synergizes with your commander. Tree of Perdition too specific and is a creature Sorin way better. If you can, get Pithing Needle as it can shut down some decks and you can name Lethal Vapors effecively dealing with its downside.

Holy crap! I'd never even thought of Pithing Needleing your own Lethal Vapors, that's brilliant. I don't know how reliably you can get that combo online, but damn.

Hey Tyrant-Thanatos. Thanks as always. I was thinking maybe drop gravepact and Dictate of Erebos. Bring in Black Market and Phyrexian Obliterator as another "rattlesnake". Maybe drop Myojin of Night's Reach for an Ulamog, new Emrakul, or maybe Phage the Untouchable, as she works with Dauthi Embrace and Shizo, Death's Storehouse without Horobi in play.

I would make the change to Black Market and Phyrexian Obliterator.

Phage would work with Shizo and Embrace, but she wouldn't be my preferred tactic. She just seems too easy to stop. Besides, the anti-synergy with your commander turns me off as well. I'm much more a fan of something like Ulamog, or something else fat with Hexproof/Indestructible and Trample or some other form of evasion inherently. I'm thinking Darksteel/Blightsteel Colossus. That or Ulamog.

Phage is certainly an option, but I like the idea of something a little safer.

Alondith. Love the Pithing Needle idea though not sure I have the slots for it.

Tyrant-Thanatos. In terms of pure pound for pound value Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is always going to exile two permanents + you get the indestructible.

Darksteel Colossus maybe doesn't scream game ender quite as much so maybe makes us appear less of a threat. There's maybe a nice synergy if we brought in Arena of the Ancients. Locks down opposing commanders and legends, and the activated abilities of Drana, Karn, Erebos and Horobi don't require tapping.

On the subject of eldrazi, Endbringer has some nice Horobi synergy, particularly with how it untaps in opponents untap phases.

Kuro, Pitlord was another mono beater, although chances of having it and Horobi out are pretty low.

Soul of New Phyrexia is potential anti Horobi wipe tech.

Have you tried Darkblast? I run a Meren of Clan Nel Toth deck where I use Darkblast, Horobi, Death's Wail and Harvester of Souls to destroy my opponents - + 3 cards off the top to wreck my opponents. Of course, the self-mill helps me out.

I would at least give Darkblast a look. Overall, the deck seems quite solid. +1!

Hey 2gherkins thanks for the up vote! Haven't tried Darkblast. We do have some reanimation effects like Reanimate and Beacon of Unrest, but we probably get less value from it than a Merengue deck. Touch of Darkness is our Allstar.

Draw_Wurm I agree with most of your analysis, Ulamog does seem like the best value play.

Kuro, Pitlord is a personal favorite that I've used as a commander before. I can see where he'd synergize well with Horobi, though he boasts no protection.

I'd thought about mentioning Soul of New Phyrexia earlier, but I wasn't sure about it.

Tyrant-Thanatos. Yeah Kuro, Pitlord is cool. Just maybe not for this deck.

I couldn't really see where Soul of New Phyrexia would fit, much as I like it.

Swapped in Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger.

Thawing Glaciers and Mimic Vat are both on my to test list.

Contamination is my favorite win-con in my Horobi.

Draw_Wurm Sounds good. I kinda agree on Kuro and Phyrexia. They're cool cards, but idk how well they'd fit. :)

Hey rob_shifflett. Contamination is great but not sure we have the creature fuel Infernal Darkness may work better. I thought about subbing that in for Temporal Extortion.

Ophiomancer and Abhorrent Overlord both synergize well with your deck when you are mainboarding Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos. Like that, Contamination's upkeep cost is something your deck wants to do and does not inflate. Without them Infernal Darkness seems only slightly better, in some situations. Wound Reflection Head Games and Temporal Extortion seem like the easiest cuts, because of their ability to draw your foes together against you. Yes, there are times that these cards won games, but more often than not they win you more hate than you want to handle. IMHO.

What? Wound Reflection incentivizes your opponents to attack each other. Gunning for you is inefficient while it sits on the board.

Head Games might earn you the ire of your target, but not everybody else. It's a one time effect that indicates no additional threat to the other players.

Temporal Extortion I can see drawing hate, but those other two, really?

Besides that, Draw_Wurm was looking at removing Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos because the creature base is too small for them to have much impact.

With only 19 creatures, none of which recur themselves (i.e. Reassembling Skeleton, Bloodsoaked Champion, Nether Shadow, Nether Traitor, Bloodghast ect. ect.) and no token producers, cards such as Contamination, Grave Pact, Eldrazi Monument, Smokestack and Dictate of Erebos lose all their appeal despite their prevalence in other Horobi decks.

My main gripe with Wound Reflection is that it feels more like a win-more card. At 6 cmc you're most likely going to spend that sort of mana recasting Horobi or using it to cast some other win condition. However, nothing is quick with Horobi, he likes to slow everything down a bit. But to make more use of WR, we'd need big stompy (preferably indestructible) things or massive non-combat damage spells which Horobi typically lacks (since creatures are destroyed easily due to Horobi's ability).

Head Games is amusing but not as useful in a multiplayer game.

Temporal Extortion is good enough, 1/2 a players life or an extra turn for 4 cmc is pure value. Extra turns are always a good thing.

Different play styles for different playgroups. Everytime I have dropped Wound Reflection, everyone focused me. Anytime I take extra turns, I get focused. Anytime I remove someone from playing the game(as Head Games does for a few rounds), I get focused. Not because it was an efficient play, but because most EDH(casual) players make decisions with their heart not their head. 4 out of 5 times the bully will be bursted down on principle alone. This is just my view from my experiences, though. What do I know. . .

It probably does come down to what a playgroup sees as a threat. In my playgroup something usually has to be a continuous threat to create focus. Ironically cards that would seem like they deter focus, such as Propaganda, usually get you focused in my playgroup. At least as much as they can afford to. Whereas something like Wound Reflection or Curse of Shallow Graves that creates an incentive to focus another player usually works. They want to net as much of that advantage as they can.

It may have to do with how competitively minded the group is. See, in my group, there's basically nothing I can do to become a "bully", because we're all playing to win. Obviously we want it to be fun and interesting, but I'm not going to become the focus until it becomes clear that I stand in a position where I have a significantly better chance of winning than everybody else.

Hey rob_shifflett, Tyrant-Thanatos, Flagellum. Interesting discussion! I guess the first thing is that this is a 'Political' deck, rather than a pure 'best Horobi' deck. It's kind of evolved over time from mono black good stuff into its current form. When I kicked off I was running Bloodghast, Nether Traitor, Nether Shadow, Reassembling Skeleton, Abhorrent Overlord etc. along with the dual Grave Pact\Dictate of Erebos package. Now it's paired back so that each creature we drop is either a rattlesnake or makes people think before attacking like Havoc Demon.

We play a lot in 3-4 person groups. No Mercy\Dread, Noxious Vapors and Spreading Plague make people think about attacking while Maze of Ith, Crawlspace etc. provide defense. We don't worry about building a board position of creatures, but build up our enchantments, all the while keeping the wider board state in check. Head Games is a way of reigning in somebody (especially combo players) who begin to pull ahead. It can also be used as a tutor to bring a struggling player, such as somebody who's mana screwed, back into the game. There's also a cool "woah" effect on people who've never seen the card before. But I take the 'only affects one player'.

We play a bit of a Fabian Cortez role. Sometimes we use things like Dauthi Embrace to boost other people's creatures or Maze of Ith to protect them.

Wound Reflection works really well with Polluted Bonds, but it also affects damage that other people are inflicting on each other. We may become a target, but that often means people attacking into the rattlesnakes. I've also acquired a Sorin Markov as another political card, with the ability to instant kill off Wound Reflection by dropping somebody's life. We're never going to tutor to drop it early, but it's about disguised power. My 2 cents anyway. Cool to see different peoples build ideas! Makes it a great format.

If painful enchantments that you build up over time is what you want, then Painful Quandary is a wonderful little fella! Haven't seen him mentioned here yet.

Flagellum painful quandary is a good shout. I've got Bloodchief Ascension in as well. May trial Infernal Darkness.

This looks interesting. If you want everyone to play politically, you need to have cards that drastically lower everyone's life total very quickly. At 40 life I don't think people are trying to negotiate their way out of bad situations.

Pox is a great card to make everyone come closer to 0 very early in the game. I would also say an early Sorin Markov bringing one player down at 10 is a method to have that player on his balls for the rest of the game. It may not be fun for that player in particular, but the other players will all try to use his low life total to convince him to work for them in certain situations.

Hey Winterblast. Thanks. forgot about Pox!

Awesome deck list! +1. I've been working on a version of Horobi for some time and want to know if you could take a look at it and give me some feed back. Here's the link Don't Touch Anything! (Horobi EDH).

This is actually kinda interesting, I've never seen a commander deck with this guy before. I'm not sure how to perceive your build, as I'm not prone to mono black or control schemes, but it looks solid enough. My only thoughts truly are that you might consider splashing red for the extra control effects over the opponent like Blood Moon, Stranglehold, and War's Toll. The second one in particular combos nicely with a Maralen of the Mornsong since between the two you may only get one card per turn, but it is whatever card you want and your opponents get nothing.

If you don't splash colors any, I'm not really sure what I could say though as, again, I'm less experienced with mono black than I am splashing other colors. Maybe you could run "Newmarkul" or something?

Splashing a color would require a different commander TheRedGoat. With the whole deck built around Horobi, switching commanders at this point would require a complete overhaul of the deck.