why is Chromatic Lantern in here? it doesnt do much. another swamp would be just as good unless im missing something but seems like there are much more useful 3 drops you could have. Exsanguinate is rather fun since you have dark realms it is entirely possible to kill the table with it or at least knock people down a lot, might add Crypt Ghast and Nirkana Revenant and Caged Sun if you choose to add it just to make sure the mana is there. Exsanguinate can make that Hatred truly horrifying if anyone survives. Temporal Extortion would be good for you, someone counters it they lose a lot of life and die fast everyone lets it go you get to search from your commander first maybe twice if you cast her at the end of an opponents turn.

The Lantern is another method besides Urborg to make the lands produce black...there are some important lands that produce only corless or no mana. It's often essential that they produce black too, but there aren't too many options that do that in mono B.

I could indeed play crypt ghast. That's cheap enough...extort is also nice. I'm not so sure about the nirkana revenant though because that's one more creature that needs to be reanimated and mana producers should come early. Crypt ghast is a possible turn 1 or 2 drop but the revenant isn't. Same for caged sun...no way to cheat it into play in black either.

Exsanguinate looks good but needs a lot of mana. My experience with the deck is that I'm usually not having much mana. Sucking life from ALL players is great though...I will test that.

Temporal extortion was in the 2 player version of the deck but everytime I tried it in multiplayer it didn't work. Someone always managed to pay life and deal with it or it was obvious that the exta turn was the better choice and it didn't help me enough for BBBB. In duels it was a killer card because going from 40 to 20 does much if there's only one opponent.

I don't count on having a shitload of mana but instead on keeping everyone very low with mana. Pox, Smallpox, Desolation...also with mass discard and random discard I'm hoping to hit lands too. I've thought about adding Black Market but I feel it's a bit too slow and it often gets stolen, which is the worst that can happen.

Any idea what I could cut for crypt ghast and Exsanguinate? Ophiomancer is my first choice...

Guess I got to tag you here so you see the reply Bhaal666

ok lantern makes sense then. wish you could use Mindlock Orb but no blue for you :(. im not very good with knowing what to cut from a deck without having played it or seen it played but Rune-Scarred Demon is rather expensive for what it does, Ophiomancer is cool but im not sure that it does much for your strategy, im not a big fan of color specific hate like Gloom but if most your opponents use white then i suppose it works still feels more like a sideboard card to me, Dystopia since it hates 2 colors should be fine but token users which like those colors laugh at it. basically take a look at what colors your opponents use and if one of your color hate only affects one or a few of them i would sideboard the card, if you have constantly changing opponents then i would replace all those effects with more generic ones. unless those cards are helping a lot. have you considered some of the other discard happy enchants like Megrim? i could see some more of that sort of thing being rather strong in your deck of course if people are only getting one card a turn it could also be useless. hopefully some of my babble is useful.

Bhaal666 there is indeed a lock with Maralen besides Mindlock Orb or Stranglehold and I played it in the two player version until now: If you have Teferi's Puzzle Box your opponents can only cast one card per turn at instant speed and lose all their hand while you can play one card per turn normally (you stack the abilities so that your opponents search first, then put their hand on the bottom and you do the other way round). The problem in a multiplayer game is that - unless your opponents are at zero cards in hand anyway - someone might kill Maralen with an instant and then everyone can cycle their hands and actually profit from the puzzle box. It's the same problem that Leovold faces...if you kill the commander you can exploit the lock pieces for positive results instead.

Rune-Scarred Demon won't be cast from my hand anyway, it's the same with Sheoldred, Whispering One...I won't get 7 mana easily so there are reanimator targets. I used the demon because it can work with Shallow Grave at the end of turn, then search for hatred and attack on my own turn. Or reanimate it as a sorcery and attack with swiftfoot boots and hatred...it's the same with Sidisi, Undead Vizier. At least that's the main plan for these guys, even though they might search for something else when the situation requires it.

I would say someone always plays white or green or both and these two cards gloom and dystopia are absolute killers. I used to play Perish and Virtue's Ruin too but I've already cut them in favour of other stuff. If I notice that players abandon white and green in favour of other colours I probably can remove them...but everyone here has at least one deck including green and/or white. I have decks with white or green myself and it's unrealistic that in a 4 or 5 player game no one uses white/green. With 2 or 3 players it might be irrelevant but I rather have them in the deck for larger rounds...with 2 or 3 people the deck is better anyway, so for more players I need something that can potentially shut down one or two people completely.

I've considered the use of Liliana's Caress which is a better Megrim but it doesn't fit into the plan. I want to play mass discard like Ill-Gotten Gains (would be awesome with Leyline of the Void or Planar Void but the leyline interferes with the bloodchief ascension combo and planar void works against my own reanimator plan. I could rebuild the deck around these cards though, especially adding the leyline + Helm of Obedience combo but that's a different concept then), Mindslicer and the enchantments that make you discard each turn and get everyone very quickly to zero cards. Maybe I cut Duress and add Dark Deal instead because that would also be such a global discard effect - with the commander it makes everyone discard their hand and with Waste Not it would be a massive advantage with tokens, carddraw (not with Maralen of course) and mana. If you know similar effects like that...I couldn't find any useful ones.

What do you think of adding The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale? maybe instead of Maze of Ith? or instead of something else? I'd have to switch it between decks or get a prox though, because I only have one

I think I can cut Unearth too...only 4 targets in the whole deck for that. What do you think?

Ophiomancer went out for Dark Deal. I'd like to try Exsanguinate and Crypt Ghast as you suggested...maybe instead of duress and unearth? Duress isn't that good unless you know that a certain player absolutely needs his hand picked apart. Thoughtseize takes creatures too, that's why I won't cut that (and it's foil, lol)

for some reason it didnt occur to me the box and her could be done that way, i was thinking you had to give them at least one card. would Memory Jar be useful? the tabernacle is like the epitome of what you want to do to your enemies, maze is nice though. could you drop a swamp for tabernacle? if not then id drop maze or find something else that hasnt done what it should be doing. hmmm Delirium Skeins? especially right after Ill-Gotten Gains. duress does seem kinda silly next to your other discard and with so few targets for unearth it could be a dead card. though you do have a lot of search but then you would be searching to make unearth useful and not searching to win.

Yes Bhaal666, you give them one card but you can have them search before and if the card isn't an instant they can't cast it before it's put under the library. Unfortunately this lock has only worked well in two player games because in multiplayer someone was always able to find the correct instant to break the lock AND cast it...

Tabernacle is brutal, I could probably remove a swamp for it because one more or less won't make much of a difference. I could remove a spell for it too because it's another land that doesn't produce mana at all without help from Urborg or Chromatic lantern.

Memory Jar doesn't work well here. Either the draw doesn't happen at all because of Maralen or it happens and at the end of turn everyone gets the original hand back...there's also no method to reuse it here. That's a card for Goblin Welder and Megrim and/or for a Nekusar deck.

Delirium Skeins looks good, much discard for little mana. Should kill the whole hand in some cases.

...and without having played the deck yet, I think I can't put Exsanguinate in there. It simply costs too much to have any real effect, at least it will not deal much damage.

Did you consider Death Cloud to complete your pox suite?

I've considered it jiebie but discarded it again because it's so expensive mana-wise. I've only played this new deck a few times in 1 vs 1 against another mono B deck so I can't say much about how it works...The Reanimation part is excellent, also the design with the EOT actions and recurring tutor creatures, I missed something in the deck though. Not sure what it was, maybe targeted removal or more mass removal, I don't know. I might even have enough mana to play death cloud but I'd rather go for Toxic Deluge or Damnation.

I Need to update this list here according to what I actually play. I've put in Chainer, I don't have a Mindslicer (yet) and Lightning Greaves are also not in the deck for example.

My first win with the deck was achieved with Dark Depths and Vampire Hexmage. Waste Not also proved to be fatal with all the mass discard...and we were only two players then! Other games didn't go well because the other mono B is also a sort of Combo build with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and I had nothing to stop these tricks. Leyline of the Void would do the Job but it would also cancel some of my own tricks so I will probably have to accept that weak Point.

just to give you an Impression on what the Problems and great aspects are...

My idea was to replace Mind Twist with Death Cloud. This shouldn't make a big difference from a mana point of view. Mono black does not have an easy time with combo builds. It's probably even worse for Maralen of the Mornsong because she actually helps your opponents to combo off. Targeted grave hate could be helpful, but looking at your general I would probably try to go off faster than the opponents rather than packing answers to everything you could encounter. Or you could try to focus even more heavily on stax to keep your opponents from playing the game... (evil)

Oh no, mind twist is like a hundred times stronger than death cloud...death cloud starts doing stuff at 4 mana and then you have a smallpox for 4 while mind twist already discards 3 random(!) Cards for 4. You can even use it for 3 or 2 if you must while death cloud needs a huge lot of mana to do anything.

I see things a bit differently, with multiplayer eyes. At 4 mana, Death Cloud will usually discard 3 cards (one from every opponent) and cause the sacrifice of lands and creatures. Admittedly, you will also have to sacrifice stuff. From 5 mana onwards it becomes much more efficient than mind twist. In the end, it all depends on the number of players in your games.

My point is that mind twist usually takes out one opponent completely if it comes early, while death cloud is useless in the early game and only good in the late game if I have enough mana. Having everyone sac one or two things won't do much then. If I put it in the deck it could only be instead of something like diabolic edict, not instead of an early game destroyer.

jiebie Bhaal666, I've updated the deck so that it is what I actually played on wednesday. It was the first test of the deck and it worked enough to make me win a 4 player game.

My Opponents were The Mimeoplasm, Nekusar, the Mindrazer and the new cascade commander. The game was really weird right from the beginning because Nekusar started with Chains of Mephistopheles and I followed with Waste Not. We had quite a hard time determining when all the abilities trigger and resolve when the cascade player put out Dissipation Field and Nekusar attempted to wheel and mill everyone. I somehow managed to get Chainer, Dementia Master out as soon as I had 5 mana and then with all the drawing and discarding dropped down to 9 life because I reanimated quite a few creatures with him too. Chainer is really cool, I see why you play him as commander jiebie...I actually countered a spell by reanimating Mystic Snake once. Eventually I won by attacking the cascade player once with all my stuff, including a stolen It That Betrays, and Maralen of the Mornsong + Ob Nixilis, Unshackled reduced the other 2 Players enough to finish with a Kokusho, the Evening Star and Altar of Dementia although the board had been cleared with Damnation before. I have to admit the last move was a lucky draw because I got the Altar back from the graveyard with the dying Myr Retriever and Kokusho came from the top.

In this game I had a huge lot of mana in the end, so maybe an X spell such as Exsanguinate might indeed be possible. I don't know if this was a result of the twisted game with Chains right in the beginning or because I ploughed through the deck with my waste not...I'll Keep the deck as it is for more testing and then decide what will be changed.

You have almost all of the busted mana rocks already, does Grim Monolith not make the cut?

PlattBonnay I only have 2 grim monolith and they are in Augustin's $t4ks (Primer) and Goblin Commando. Usually I don't have a problem with colorless mana, so I'd rather think about adding Gilded Lotus instead of another colourless mana source.

Addinng something always means something else has to be cut. Anything that might be replaced?

Bro why do you have two, youll never need more than one..

Soren841 I have 5 now...also, this deck doesn't exist in paper anymore. My paper decks are Augustin's $t4ks (Primer), Najeela's Hulk Pod Project, Master the Infinite!, Brain Fart Stax, Sisay's Eldrazi Paradoxon and Der Urhunger - walking tall

Just have one, and proxy for all your decks (except real events) and if someone challenges it you can prove you own it without buying 5