If the card is released as shown, I'm really gonna love Waste Not

I have 1x Mana Confluence of which I'm adding to the deck. I believe it can work well with Nightveil Specter . In total I'll be having 2x Mana Confluence , but I don't have a second one.

I think Prophetic Prism isn't bad, but it also isn't good, i'd rather the scry instead, only because the prism costs 2, setting you back (maybe) a turn, or stopping you from playing a turn 2 Brain Maggot

Mana Confluence on the other hand is a good card to see with nightveil.

And being able to get Notion Thief out with it is great!

Just make sure not to kill yourself with it before you slam Gary for a million devotion.

Lol yeah. That's why I'm only including 2x Mana Confluence . Prophetic Prism was really me just thinking out loud. Not including it. Thanks for the input, again.

I did very well against am Orzhov deck earlier today, which included Athreos, God of Passage , Angel of Thune, Obzedat, Ghost Council , Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Gideon, Champion of Justice , just to name a few. The only card that gave me trouble was Gideon. But I still walked away 2-0. StealingAthreos, God of Passage with Nightveil Specter was hilarious, seeing as I had already stolen a Godless Shrine on the previous turn. I ended the round with something around 40 life.

Can't wait to play this version of the deck at this Friday's FNM!

Thanks for the shout out! I was a staunch promoter of adding Corrupt to the previous build (and it was very powerful) but I decided to go ahead and add in 3X Notion Thief and what a difference! Obviously corrupt has no place in this list now but this deck is very competitive (I took out the 2 Reavers and 1 cremate).

I haven't changed the sideboard at all but those damn burn decks are still kicking my ass! Now that i have splashed blue (4x Temple of Deceit 3x Dimir Guildgate 11x swamp 5x island) I'm going to test out Dispel and Negate in the SB. I'll replace the 4 dark betrayal & 2 pharika's cure. Dark betrayal is a good/great card but with all the hand disruption and removal main board, dark betrayal is a "win more" card against black builds and (I think) the slots could be better used for counter spells. The curve remains the same as well so that's perfect.

I'll let you know how the testing goes with counters in the SB.

Have you been using Duress from a Sideboard? I've not really had a problem with burn decks, but theirs might be different. I just refrain from putting my maggots out until their hand is drained. In the case of red-wins some patience may be in order. If you're splashing blue those cards you mentioned will work well. What do you remove? The cremate? Seems like a viable option.

Good luck!

Not going to run Notion Thief . I just realised he has no bearing on Master of the Feast because that draw they get is on my upkeep, NOT on their draw step.

Criticism needed!

Im watching to a similar deck that I have on my mind, but more concentranted on discard, with 4 Duress and only 2 Thoughtseize because I dont have anymore, also 4 Mind Rot and Rakdos's Return Im going to test it this FNM and probably the Game Day

Also, its a bit rare when you want to make the opponent discard and give them a free card with Master of the Feast and IMO Underworld Connections >>>> Cremate by far

I gave way to Underworld Connections a long while ago for various reasons. Good for devotion, yes, good for card draw, yes, but clogs up the valuable 3 drop slot where I've got a lot going on. Typically I wouldn't be able to use it until T4, either. I opted to get my devotion from my creatures, instead. I want to have action every single turn; a threat. I feel Cremate to be a highly underrated card that really shines in this deck due to the amount of dedication to discarding. If I could run more, I would.

I'm confused, "Currently rated a #19 top deck!" of what?

Anyway, I did a test-run against my prototype Let's BEG, and let me tell you...

I hate this deck's guts.

Don't get me wrong, I hate it in a "taste your own medicine" sort of way. Mine too uses burst-discarding with aggressively-priced creatures. It takes a bit of setup though, while this one starts whacking away right from the start with Thoughtseize which was what crippled me every time.

Master of the Feast ... never, ever get rid of him. When you have a Master of the Feast and Liliana's Reaver standing next to eachother the phrase "between a rock and a hard place" repeatedly came to mind.

Honestly, I can't really say anything bad about this deck. I disagree on Underworld Connections , the ability to cast several spells in a row is great in this deck, and you shouldn't worry too much about the long run. The life-gain is more like making sure the afore-mentioned monsters can wrap everything up at the speed they damn well please, since the opponent really can't do much about it.

Don't change a thing, +1. I'd give more if I could.

P.S. Ch3nnn, I wish you would put your deck up on TO as I'd really like to see it. Rakdos's Return is an excellent card and something I'd really like to use if I had the 4x Temple of Malice .

In fact, I'd really appreciate if you had a look at the deck I used. It's rather similar in what it wants to do, it's just a bit more gimmicky about it. For example...

• Your deck has a lot of removal via spells, while I have creatures that grow to mow stuff down.

• You have Mind Rot , I have Ordeal of Erebos .

• You have Nightveil Specter , I have Riptide Chimera .

• You have Cremate , I bounce Scourgemark with the Chimera.

Come to think of it, there's a lot of paralells. Your's is way more focused on the Control-ly part, though.

Lol Anublet90, your bold text was the first thing I read and it scared the shit out of me. Btw, how do you Playtest this against your own deck? Do you just use your physical deck vs my digital deck or is my phone incapable of showing me everything the Playtester has to offer? I really wish the Playtester could allow vs matches. Anyhow, thank you for the incredible positive response. I'll swing on over to check your deck out.

As for the "Top Deck" mention, I'm just going by what it says on the right. "Top Rank", is what it says. I'll fix that.

The play-testing can be done by clicking Playtest on both decks in separate windows. Granted, you'll be playing against yourself, so every now and then you'll have to go "well, if I didn't know he has that card in his hand I guess I'd play this card* then subsequently kill your deck. At least that's what I did, and it kinda sucked. But that's how you learn the weaknesses, so I guess I can't complain!

And thanks for having a look! It's gimmicky because I'm trying to keep it budget-friendly (except for the lands), but it works pretty well, regardless. I suspected Control decks like yours would quickly own me, but I've had a nice bit of success against Naya Monsters and some more creature-heavy variants of mono-Black Aggro.

Ah, right. Whenever I build my next computer I'll probably Playtest a lot like you mentioned. I might even start paying MTGO, however. Dunno what all I have to do just to get a copy of my physical deck running in mtgo, though.

So, I've gone back to a strictly mono black list. The notion thief just didn't perform as well as I had hoped. It's very inconsistent. Either I had one in hand and no master of feasts or had the master with no thief, etc. He has a very flimsy body as well - he dies to everything.

An additional change I made to the deck is swapping out Mind Rot for Altar's Reap . The 3 drop slot is already clogged and mind rot just didn't perform well for me. It has its place, specifically against control, but against just about any other deck I was boarding it out. With altar's reap you get so much more value. It's instant speed, only costs 1B and still generates the card advantage that mid rot gave.

"But wait, sacrifice one of my own creatures? That's dumb."

Not true. Not true at all. Yes, every one of the creatures in this deck are critical to our success and sacrificing one just to draw 2 cards WOULD be a bad idea, unless you are sacking a creature that they are killing any way! A lot of times if an opponent has removal in hand and you play Master they won't remove it right away. They'll wait until your upkeep so they get the card draw THEN remove it. The cool part is that you got to untap as well so when they cast removal - BAM! Sac that bad boy and draw 2.

Mind Rot got weaker as the game wore on (opinion) but this card gets even better the longer the match goes because you will have more lands in play and the ability to cast this when they remove one of your threats! "Wasting" a kill spell on a tiny little maggot hurts the opponent as it is - wasting a kill spell on a tiny little maggot only to find out you sac it and draw 2 cards is downright DEVIOUS! Love it. You may prefer mind rot but altar's reap is my card of choice for card advantage...

I think this can be a very competitive deck and is really fun to play. Blood Baron is still an auto scoop if he hits so I may just -1 nightveil, -2 Liliana's Reaver, +3 Lifebane Zombie for that ULTRA controll-y vibe but I'm not at that point yet. Zombie also helps out against those pesky hexproof and weenie decks.

Great build though! I'm enjoying this as my change-of-pace deck and will probably take this to FNM this week so I'll let you know how it performs!

Another thing I love about altar's reap over mid rot is that now I can side out 4x cremate for 4x duress and not lose all of my card draw! Boss!

I posted earlier that I had realised that Notion Thief doesn't actually even work with Master of the Feast , because they are drawing the card on your turn instead of theirs.

Altar's Reap is another card I had considered, but ultimately backed out of it. And today was a perfect example why. I played a Mono Black Constellation deck just a little while ago, which was interesting, but it proved no match and I won 2-0. I NEVER saw a Brain Maggot in my hand, the bastard lay deep within my deck. I was able to T1 Thoughtseize , T2 Thoughtseize AND Cremate which got me the card I needed. If all I had was an Altar's Reap it would have been 100% useless as I certainly wouldn't have sacrificed my Master of the Feast nor Nightveil Specter . That was what I needed to experience to solidify my decision on running Cremate . Not to mention, if I take a card with Brain Maggot 9 times out of 10 I didn't want them to have it to begin with.

And Mind Rot emptied his hand out twice.

Nooononono, Notion Thief and Master of the Feast work together just fine. It's any card besides the one in their draw step.

Oooh....I see. Thanks for correcting me on that.