My second mono-black cEDH primer in two months. They seem to keep printing these big dumb mono-black creatures with really insane text.
Naturally, they decided that the mechanic that DEFINITELY wasn't a mistake and has never been broken for this one would be:
Phyrexian Mana
One of the biggest design mistakes R&D has ever made, 2 life is most DEFINITELY not equal to 1 mana.

So, let's first lay out what we intend to do with this deck. Our objectives are:
Generate Infinite Mana
Find an Infinite Mana Sink
?????
Profit
These are the steps to take to make sure this happens as easily as possible.

Mulligan to fast mana, slam K'rrik as SOON as possible.
He has exceeded my expectations on power, by FAR.
Happy Hunting!
You go through that 40 life like nothing, I promise.
Playtesting lets me slam our commander very early (typically turn 2-3) very regularly, but my god do we eat through our life total after that. We generally want to attempt to win the turn we play our commander.
I've included Gary in the main just to attempt to get some of this back. Our two primary sources of life gain are Gray Merchant of Asphodel , Staff of Domination , and Aetherflux Reservoir . Also, we can TECHNICALLY Exsanguinate if we REALLY need to get some more life, but generally we should try to save that for our kills.
Blood Celebrant is here to produce the mana we need for generic mana costs, but it is very inefficient. 3 life for 1 mana is only a bit worse than our commander though, and traditionally it's quite strong.
Our Ad Nauseam can be very greedy. Our average cmc is very low, so you can generally feel safe drawing down to around 5-10 life, but be aware this will make it march harder to make large amounts of black mana.
We want to minimize the colored mana spent on our spells. Reduction effects and colorless generation effects are very helpful here. Helm of Awakening and Jet Medallion are for reduction, and we have a full suite of mana producing artifacts, along with Krark-Clan Ironworks to cash those artifacts in once they've outlasted their usefulness. We can generate infinite mana in many ways, I'll list all I've thought of, but be aware that due to the nature of this deck, I'm probably missing a couple.
Let's Begin:
- Astral Cornucopia with 4+ counters, Voltaic Key / Manifold Key (after this we're just gonna call these cards "a key"), and Rings of Brighthearth . Tap Cornucopia for 4, untap with 1 with a key, copy with rings, net one black mana.
- Everflowing Chalice with 4 counters on it, same as above. Nets Colorless mana.
- Rings of Brighthearth and Basalt Monolith Copy the untap ability, net one colorless.
- If you find an infinite mana combo not included, please leave a comment and I will update the list to include it as soon as possible. Thanks!
Simple enough, mostly it's our infinite mana sinks:
- Torment of Hailfire
- Exsanguinate
- Codex Shredder , a key, and Rings of Brighthearth
- Gray Merchant of Asphodel . With a majority of our black pips out, we can play it once, replay it with Yawgmoth's Will , and it should hopefully be a kill.
Stax
This deck has a horrendous matchup into stacks. We can play through sometimes, but anti-storm and anti-artifact pieces, both of which are very popular, make us very, very sad.
Control
Our control matchup is rather good, since we can get Defense Grid and let them know that they can only counter one of our spells, tops.
Combo
We are thrilled to race, as we are often much faster than combo decks, even cEDH ones. This deck can threaten kills on turns 1-2, assuming you don't fizzle out, and turn 3-4 with more consistent lines.
Thanks for checking out my deck, and if you give it a try, I hope it does well.
Good Luck.
Disclaimer: I accept no responsibility for ruining your friendships.

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(5 years ago)

Top Ranked
Date added 5 years
Last updated 5 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

28 - 0 Rares

27 - 0 Uncommons

17 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 1.78
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