Not bad at all. What cards aside from Deathrite Shaman would you consider adding if money wasn't a factor?

Griselbrand . Grave Betrayal is, at the moment, a placeholder.

Oh! And this deck is also begging for a few Liliana of the Veil .

What about Skirsdag High Priest ? With all the creature removal you will definitely get the opportunity to active its ability ;)

Figured the Lili would be one of the cards you would add. Luuckily, its playable as is and can only get better with the addition of the other cards. Good luck.

Thanks for the comments. I'm not sure I have enough creatures to make Skirsdag High Priest work, but I'll make sure to give it a shot at some point.

This is good. Also you definitely have enough creatures to make High Priest work.

I'll give it a shot!

I went onto tcgplayer.com and this deck was about 35 dollars when I added a few expensive cards to it. So if your thinking about buying online just remember that its a lot cheaper

I'll get whatever I can afford/trade for.

the problem with a Geist of Saint Traft is that most likely when you force your opponent to sac a creature, and he only has geist out, most likely snapcaster will be flashed out and a counter card will be cast from the grave or worst case scenario, the snapcaster gets sac'd and geist stays on the board.... at least that was my experience. of course, duress helps you take a peek.

There are not a ton of decks running both Geist and Snapcaster right now in their mainboard... They are kind of mutually exclusive of archetypes.

@11something the only deck i lost to last fnm was a deck running those cards. i since adjusted my deck for such a case. Demonic Harvest

It's not a common mix right now and the scenario you mentioned has nothing to do with Geist. Most likely geist is getting ran in Azorius, American or Bant aggro decks main board. Those decks are almost never running Snapcaster main. Even if they are, the point Pan is making is that the best response to an opponent playing Geist on t3 is Tribute or Lili.

well that's good advice for sure. i was not disagreeing, its just that i do plan for those other decks with sweeping removal or cards that force a sacrifice... but in the case that someone counters a tribute then it is good to have a duress to play first to see... which is why i put duress in my main deck.....

I think duress and appetite in some combination > 4 are obviously huge here. Other discard spells in general, like mind rot, have my atention too.

I'll see how it goes this Friday. If I feel like I need more discard, I'll put in more discard.

This deck has inspired me to attempt it/construct it myself. +1.

i would like to know how well it does for you guys. i'm running a mono black deck as well. Demonic Harvest i have been working on mono black for awhile. playing a lot of discard, unfortunately, weakens your attacking and sometimes leaves you with a handful of useless cards, once your opponent has nothing to discard.

@expmky putting our opponents in top-deck mode by turn 3 is ridiculously powerful. We don't really have a ton of options though. Mind Rot, Lili, Duress, Appetite for Brains (and Rakdos' Return if you splashed red). That pretty much makes up for holding an extra card in hand to discard to Lili later down the line anyways.

i was playing a discard/rat deck. i totally agree, discard is awesome. especially when you get to pick the cards to discard.

@11something

you say there are not any top decks running snapcaster and geist, and i agree, there are no top decks that run mono black either. at fnm you will not just play against top decks and will be up against a variety of things that people are experimenting with. what are we discussing here? are we discussing what decks are going to be top decks? or decks that are both fun to play and competitive a fnm? im talking about fun and competitive. i don't have a lot of experience in mtg, and im not telling people what to and not to play, i'm only making suggestions based on what i have experienced with mono black and the weaknesses that mbc can have. and yes, discard is awesome.

Well, speaking personally about my own area, there is a surprising variety of creative decks. Of course, you have a few jackasses running three-hundred+ dollar Bant Control decks and you have one or two Jund midranges, but there's also someone running a five-color psychic spiral deck, there's an Epic Experiment deck, there's a Selesnya aggro deck...and I'm sure there's plenty more that I'm forgetting. I'm extremely grateful for the variety, but it makes it tough to make my deck more effective on a purely local basis. That's probably good for me in the long run.

Mono Black , why not card:Geralf's Messenger ? I'm love this card.

Ooo, don't tempt me. In all seriousness, while Messenger is an amazing card, I'm not sure that he'd be put to best use in a deck that's primarily control. Also, those suckers are fifteen bucks a pop.