Placed 8th out of 30 participants in FNM, went 3-2 overall.

Round 1; 2:0 vs B/W/G, Sacrifice outlet deck, ran Varolz, the Scar-Striped /Voice of Resurgence , Lingering Souls as a sack outlet, etc.

First hand, I turn-1 Duress and saw a 3 voice/lingering souls in hand, and was pretty sure i was gonna lose. Choice souls for discard, A couple turns later, i forced him to discard 2 of his voices and won with Pack Rat and Shrieking Affliction .

Round 2; 1:2 vs U/B/R, Plains-walker heavy deck, was difficult to get past the heavy creature control and both losses were from Ral Zarek ultimate. On game 1, I was mana-flooded and he brought ral out turn 4. I didn't have any creatures to keep him down, so he used ultimate and got 4 extra turns. Similar situation in round 3.

Round 3; 0:2 vs Bant Control - I was hitting him pretty hard, but the Thragtusk lifegain was just too much. Ran the usuals of Restoration Angel , Supreme Verdict s, snapcasters, etc. During match 2 I flashed in a Notion Thief when he Sphinx's Revelation for 5, but he still had enough mana open to counter the thief... Simply had too much card draw to make shrieking affliction useful.

Round 4; 2:1 vs Gruel Werewolves - Round 1; I had my standard non-sideboard deck ready to go, took a 1-land hand after mulligan to 5, and quickly regretted it. Didn't get any land for 3 turns, and by the time i got my second land, my opponent already had 4 creatures on the board. I was quickly beaten down, but I also realized that if i could get a quick defense out against the deck, shrieking affliction would be an easy kill. Sideboarded in Vampire Nighthawk , Undying Evil , Tragic Slip to deal with the creatures while also keeping the werewolves from transforming. Both of the next 2 hands were very close, but Nighthawks and PackRats quickly overwhelmed the werewolves deck, along with Soul Ransom when no cards in opponent's hand.

Round 5; 2:1 vs R/G/W - Another thrag deck, this time much more focused on tokens with Parallel Lives , Assemble the Legion , Advent of the Wurm and Lingering Souls . All three hands were VERY close and very enjoyable since neither of us were mana-screwed any hand. What really saved me against this deck was my Far / Away s. Voice of Resurgence wasnt too much of a problem because when it died, I just used far to trash the token it left behind. In round 3, we had an aggro race, trying to kill each other with as few blocks as possible. I barely won this race due to topdecking two nighthawks and drawing a Pack Rat s when i was mana flooded earlier in the match.

where is that 1 Wit's End ?

i could see a Desecration Demon fit well in the deck for a fast kill once they have no cards in hand and nothing on the field.

A 7-drop discard is rather silly in a deck based around discarding. The only times it would be worthwhile would be against decks with a large amount of card draw, but that would mean a blue deck, which would also mean a 7-drop sorcery would be very easy to counter.

Instead, I use Notion Thief to stop their card draw before they can get it out. As it is, notion thief didn't seem very effective against the control decks, but it is a better card overall than Wit's End , in my opinion.

(also, considering main-boarding notion thiefs and combining them with Sign in Blood and Toil / Trouble to draw 2 and deal 2 damage at the same time...)

As for the desecration demons, I may substitute them in replace of Hover Barrier since I haven't seen much use for the barrier yet, and the demon is a 6 toughness flyer as well, and is hard to kill with red. (and it can help wipe the opponent's board of creatures...)

Thanks for the suggestion, that will be a very plausible addition to the deck.

Not a problem. What this site is for. I love me some demons.

Admittedly, it's a must for a mostly black discard deck, but as you said, it's just too expensive.

Splashing red in the deck now, made a new deck in my profile... (new to tapped out, don't know how to link) xD

have to copy and paste the url

and then just delete everything before the deck's name in the url

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/budget-mono-black-discard-controlhelp-wanted/ for example type in Budget Mono-Black Discard Control(Help Wanted) using the same thing with cards And

Fog Bank for the stall... Instead of Hover Barrier

Remember, Trample only cares about lethal damage to a target. Once it assigns it's 2 points to the Fog Bank, the rest will just run over. If your meta has a lot of trample effects, or is burn heavy, Hover Barrier will do better.

i'd use Ogre Slumlord instead of Vampire Nighthawk but it looks good :)

Took this deck to a Sunday standard tournament, 12 participants, placed 6th going 2-2... (Deck wasn't prepared as I was making several changes to it, a friend convinced me to try the tournament anyways)

Round 1; 2:1 vs Selesnya Midrange - Round 1, win from opponent mana screw... round 2, loss from mana screw... round 3, Win from early Pack Rat combined with enough creature control to keep threats at bay. We played a 4th hand for fun since none of the early hands were particularly fun to play for us, I won that round as well with enough creature control to slowly poke to death with Vampire Nighthawk and smaller rats.

Round 2; 1-2 vs Mono-Red Creature-Aggro - Round 1, turn-1 stormkirk noble (while being on the play) dealt too much damage for me to handle with little creature control in opening hand. Didn't get a defender out until turn 2 which was a 1/1 rat, and by then stormkirk noble already had the counter it needed to survive. Lost turn 5 from being overwhelmed, wasn't able to stabilize the board fast enough to turn things in my favor. Round 2, Vampire nighthawk completely halted the deck after using duress to get rid of any creature removal in the deck, and since there was a lot of 2/2 creatures in the deck such as Burning-Tree Emissary , Lightning Mauler , and Ash Zealot , a 2/3 lifelinker gradually killed off the creatures while keeping me alive at the same time. Round 3, opponent had a very fast hand and I couldn't do anything about it on turn 2... since I won round 2, he was on the play. Turn 1, stormkirk noble... I played a land tapped. Turn 2, burning tree into lightning mauler, swinging 5 damage on turn 2. Same as round 1, didn't have enough time to stabilize the board before being killed.

Round 3; 0:2 vs Naya Tokens - Round 1, loss from mana screw. Round 2, opponent top-decked every card he needed for the win. Turn 1, I duressed call of the conclave, turn 2, Appetite for Brains on Huntmaster of the Fells  ^Flip and Advent of the Wurm . He then topdecked the mana source he needed, (after i contaminated grounds 2 of his red sources, then he topdecked another huntmaster after getting parallel lives out, and things went downhill from there. We played a third game, and I overwhelmed him with pack rat while keeping his board under control.

Round 4; 2:0 vs Esper Tokens - Round 1; Overwhelmed the numerous 1/1 lingering souls tokens with nighthawks and pack rats. Round 2; After getting 2x Intangible Virtue on the board, he had trouble getting tokens on the board and I wore him down to 3 life with Shrieking Affliction . By then, he had a sorin lifelink token on the field (3/3) along with 2 other creatures and I used Rakdos Charm for the kill.

Planned changes to deck

Remove - 1x Killing Wave , 3x Contaminated Ground , 2x Ogre Slumlord Add - 2x Mutilate , 2x Notion Thief , 2x Skullcrack

Deck has been majorly revised, no longer a discard-emphasis deck.

Changes ---

Removed- 1x Far / Away 2x Tragic Slip , 4x Shrieking Affliction , 2x Soul Ransom , 2x Mutilate , 4x Drainpipe Vermin , 4x Ravenous Rats , 3x Contaminated Ground , 1x Killing Wave , 2x Ogre Slumlord , 2x Rakdos's Return , 2x Sign in Blood

Added- 3x Syncopate , 2x Dissipate , 3x Essence Scatter , 1x Frost Breath , 1x AEtherize , 3x Pillar of Flame , 2x Searing Spear , 1x Faithless Looting , 1x Turn / Burn , 2x Hypersonic Dragon , 3x Nightveil Specter , 1x Desolate Lighthouse , 2x Quicken , 2x Warped Physique , 1x Cyclonic Rift , 2x Inspiration

Post-rotation plans for deck ---

2x Dissipate -> 2x Counterflux

1x Think Twice -> 1x Quicken

2x Searing Spear -> 2x Shock

2x Vampire Nighthawk -> 2x Desecration Demon

2x Vampire Nighthawk -> ???

2x Pillar of Flame -> 2x Mizzium Mortars

1x Appetite for Brains -> 1x Lifebane Zombie or Duress

1x Witchbane Orb -> 1x Pithing Needle

there something wrong.. your mainboard is not 60, your sideboard is not exact 15... how did you win in a tournament where you would clearly loose by default?

I'm still getting used to this website, and after I posted the results, I did some edits to the deck. The 3 cards missing in the listed sideboard (that I used during the tournament) are Electrickery x1, Tragic Slip x1, and Turn / Burn x1. As for mainboard, I ran 3x Vampire Nighthawk at the tournament, but because it was extremely useful, I was considering making it a playset, which is why there are currently 61 cards listed.

Sorry for the miscommunication, that was my mistake.

Liliana's Reaver is probably going to slide into my Grixis list for Nighthawk, interested in how the demon does as my meta is full of Jund and Doom Blade -_- Mine is shifting towards a Superfriends type of deck, but with some effective removal rotating out I can see the creature based control decks on the rise.

I would stay away from Liliana's Reaver if you're trying to stay within control, I've been trying to think of uses for it, and i'm really struggling. Some combinations I've considered are using it with Nightveil Specter , Fireshrieker , Strionic Resonator , and a couple others. I feel it's a decent single to have in a discard deck, but grixis control doesn't seem to do all that well with discard alone, (though Rakdos's Return saves me in MANY games...) and I feel there are better cards for a control deck.

As for replacements for nighthawk, I have several VERY important purposes for nighthawk... #1 - lifelink to help cancel out damage dealt by 'Blitz' decks. If you are running against someone swinging 5 every turn, swinging 2 lifelink every turn GREATLY increases the amount of time you can stay alive, even if you don't use nighthawk as a defender. (though sometimes it's admittedly necessary) The other use for nighthawk is a very tough, FLYING wall. A large number of game losses I've come across in the past is simple things like Lingering Souls swinging 4 in the air every turn. With nighthawk, you can gradually kill those off and gain life to cancel the other damage, severely limiting their damage. However, from my personal experience, the lifelink is what keeps Vampire Nighthawk in my deck.

As for a replacement for nighthawk, that's obviously impossible. The lifelink is what I prefer though, and currently, the best replacement for that in standard is probably Child of Night It's a small body, but it has the 2 power, lifelink, and it's a 2-drop, making it a no-extort Tithe Drinker without running white. Let's now test what this would do against a blitz gruel deck... Turn 1, rakdos cackler, (or some other 1-drop)... Turn 2, Burning Tree, Burning Tree, Flinthoof Boar. That's a board presence of 9 power that will be swinging on turn 3, not including other potential hasters. If you throw out a child on turn 2, this buys a large amount of time. You can either block 1 attacker, kill one and lifelink away another attacker that got through preventing 4 damage and killing a creature for 2 mana. The other option is to not block anything, and to start swinging 2 lifelink every turn if you are confident you can quickly stabilize and clear their board. In either case, it is the lifelink, not the flying/deathtouch that I like about nighthawk, thus I feel Child of Night is the closest replacement I can find in standard.

I think vs a draw like that you're going to be in a bad spot anyway haha, unless your hand happens to be full of removal anyway, it's pretty hard to come back from that start as they're likely to have a Ghor-Clan Rampager bloodrush on Turn 4 ready to negate any profitable blocks or life gain that turn. That's a match I look for a removal/counter heavy hand and hope I draw into a Aetherling to close things out haha. However, I can see where in other situtations a 2/1 Flier with Lifelink is nice to have as a Grixis player. In my metagame, I'm not looking for discard as without Nephalia Drownyard and Jace, Memory Adept a discard strategy would be, well...wishful thinking haha, but I do like 4/3 with Deathtouch for my needs, I mainly want something to slow down the game against control decks and stall the board, make some profitable blocks, and hope I draw into what I need, and against control decks you're likely to get at least one swing in if you commit, or at worst it's counter bait and possibly a tell of their hand in my eyes. I'm definitely keeping all my options open as Theros is right around the corner and the metagame will be ripe for some innovations to the archetypes.

Slow down aggro decks blah lol.

Also wondering how the Hypersonic Dragon is working out? Must be a U/W control players worst nightmare, the thought of an instant Return right after they Sphinx's lol.

The dragon is working wonders for me, I think 3x is the right number as well. I'm working on getting more sorcery speed kills, recently picked up 2x more mizzium mortars and i'm excited about getting those instant speed. As for instant rakdos return, I find there are better uses than stopping sphinx. vs a control deck- you wait it out until they tap out (sometimes with nephalia drownyard) which is when you slam that one on the table while they have no mana. It works VERY well along with aetherize against haste decks as well. You return their haste creatures to their hand, they already tapped out since they were haste, then on your turn you make them discard 3. (assuming it was a turn 4 aetherize)

And on-topic, hypersonic dragon is also a great game-ender against control decks with the haste. If they bounce it, you can swing it next turn. If they blink in resto, the angel dies, the dragon lives. Against azor charm, they put it on top, you're swinging next-turn. It's a poor-man's thundermaw hellkite with the added potential of instant-speed sorcery. (perfect for grixis...)