Been wanting to try my hand at making a discard black deck for sometime with the madness ability. In addition, I've been really wanting to try out
Demigod of Revenge
with Buried Alive.
The general concept of the deck is to make your opponent discard large swaths of their hand with cards like Hymn to Tourach,
Mind Twist
, and
Hypnotic Specter
, while gaining benefit from Waste Not.
Haunting Echoes
should be used as to further lock out your opponent's deck. Once you have some variety (or something really valuable to them) in their graveyard,
Haunting Echoes
will choke them out. (This might simply be replaced with Surgical Extractions depending on how it playtests because it can be used much earlier in the game, choking opponents out of their win conditions or simply removing counterspells and other threats.)
Originally, this deck was chock-full of cards that caused both my opponent and I to discard. To benefit from this, I ran with cards that had madness effects. Overall, the effectiveness of that strategy was just too inconsistent and didn't fit my personal play style (see grandiose and obnoxious). What would often happen is that both the opponent and I would have zero cards in hand and be playing off the draw. Once there, the opponent effectively had me beat since even if I got discard cards on my turn, my opponent would have already be back to 0 cards in hand. To deal with this, I decided I needed card draw so that even if the opponent has 0 cards in hand,I have options. So, I went with the following:
Necropotence
, Ivory Tower, and Reliquary Tower.
Depending on the stage of the game
Necropotence
can allow you to draw a massive number of cards in exchange for life. At the beginning of your next turn Ivory Tower will simply bring you back up, rewarding you for the massive hand size. Reliquary Tower will allow you to keep that gigantic hand rather than discarding during your next cleanup phase.
In order to allow for big plays with your big hand, Dark Ritual, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Cabal Coffers, and Urmorg, Tomb of Yawgmoth should provide plenty of black mana. Urmorg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is solely to make the non-swamp lands back into swamps and really help Cabal Coffers ramp you up. I haven't had much time to playtest the mana ramping but if it gives a ton I may see what giganto black spells/creatures I can put in here.
All that said, once the game is clearly tilted in your favor with card and life advantage, most opponents will likely concede. However, in the event they don't there are plenty of creatures to help get to the win. The primary creature wincon here is
Demigod of Revenge
. Using Buried Alive, you can throw three of them into your graveyard and cast the guy as early as turn 3 (maybe earlier) and swing for 20. It's a really fun win condition by itself and may warrant a stand alone deck focusing on just that. Additionally,
Nyxathid
is a huge creature for dirt cheap which really benefits from the discard. Vampire Nighthawk is a 3 of rather than
Nyxathid
in this deck because...flying, deathtouch, lifelink? It's simply too good for protection to pass up and can help get you into the midgame if you're still waiting for cards you need. Finally there are some removal cards such as Go for the Throat and Consume Spirit to help keep the enemy off your back and regain some life.
I'm not a great deck maker so please provide suggestions (including which you would recommend replacing) and links to your own decks and I'll make suggestions for you as well.
Thanks!
