Glad you like it! And yes, this deck is miserable to play against.

For Bontu's Last Reckoning, it very well might be the better choice. I went with Yahenni's Expertise because it has phenomenal synergy with our deck (doesn't kill our creatures, lets us untap for a huge Torment of Hailfire) but if you'd prefer to run Reckoning, more power to you.

Noxious Gearhulk is indeed still legal until around September. Most of the deck is falling out of legality at the same time so it will need a significant overhaul around then anyway, if it can survive at all. It's a good card but making room for it would be tricky. Herald of Anguish is better most of the time. Maybe it could work as a 1-of in the sideboard against aggressive decks.

Good, but it really doesn't stand much of a chance against a lot of zombie decks where people get about 4 zombies out in the first 3 turns

We're actually not that bad against aggro. Game 1 can be a bit rough if we kept a slower hand but Gifted Aetherborn really puts the kibosh on aggro in games 2 and 3.

Against zombies in particular, I like our chances. Zombies lost its ability to grind after SOI block rotated so all we need to do is stall them out a little bit and we'll be able to outvalue them from there.

This deck is almost what I'm looking for. But why there is no Doomfall in the deck? I think with Doomfall you can deal with big threads like Hazoret or Carnage Tyrant. Anyway great deck!

I went with Implement of Malice over Doomfall, half because Implement draws us a card and half because it has much stronger synergy with the deck. We need a critical mass of artifacts for Herald of Anguish, plus it's nice having another source of Revolt to supercharge Fatal Push. We can also board in Hour of Glory to deal with Hazoret or TSG.

That said, Doomfall isn't a bad choice for this deck. I wouldn't fault you for sticking it in over something else.

Just curious, but why do you pick Crook of Condemnation over Sentinel Totem?

Because I like being able to pick graveyards apart consistently, rather than once.

This deck is great! I just won on XMage against a UB control player whose timer ran out (25 mins) in the FIRST GAME! I still had 10 mins on my timer. The Wall of Forgotten Pharaohs pinged them down to 6 in the end. They gained life from a double Moment of Craving and I missed a couple of pings. They cast Commit / Memory.... But this deck had lots of removal for The Scarab God and Torrential Gearhulk in Vraska's Contempt and Walk the Plank respectively. I didn't get to cast the Herald of Anguish though.

Ahh, it's satisfying to be the Mono Black Control player and beat the Blue/Black control player (arguably, I know - timer etc.).

I think I might play this deck at the Store Championship next week!!

Hey really great deck +1!

I was wondering if you were to put whatever card in the deck (thinking of the $), are there anything you'd change? Would you include more copies of Torment of Hailfire? Change Duress for something else? Perhaps Dreamstealer? I know it ain't necessary the win condition of the deck, but ain't it a little short on creatures? Remove a few Removal Spells for cards like Dire Fleet Poisoner? If you could freely choose, would you pick Vraska's Contempt over Never//Return? Finally, do you see any space for Sword-Point Diplomacy? I'm looking to build this deck in MTGA, but since it's quite hard to acquire new cards, I'd like to build the best possible deck from the start. I like your deck a lot and hope you'll be really kind and respond:)

• Sorry, furthermore, Gifted Aetherborn over Dire Fleet Poisoner? Unburden over Heartless Pillage? Is Treasure Map  ^Flip worthy to exchange for (some) Renegade Map? Is The Eldest Reborn and Cruel Reality anything to consider adding? Or too mana expensive? Thank you!

@Hewer:

Thanks for the comments, glad you like the deck!

I didn't make many concessions for price with this deck so other than swapping in the Vraska's Contempts, I don't think you need to change anything up for that reason. That said, I haven't done much testing since Dominaria came out so it's possible there are places to tighten up the list. Cast Down is a pretty easy switch for Walk the Plank, for example. Of the 50 most-played creatures in Standard, the only creatures it can't kill that Walk the Plank can are Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, The Scarab God, Pia Nalaar, Lyra Dawnbringer, Ghalta, Primal Hunger, Gonti, Lord of Luxury, and Shalai, Voice of Plenty, and having to deal those using our other removal spells is probably well-worth Cast Down's upgrade to Instant speed.

To answer your specific questions:

More Torment of Hailfire: I'm running only 2 because I don't want to draw this card until later in the game. It's pretty bad with a low X-number and since we don't have ramp, we need a lot of turns of hitting our land drops before it's worth casting.

Duress: No, this card is great. You board it out sometimes but most decks play a number of important noncreature spells and being able to peak at your opponent's hand in the early game is very important for planning out sequences.

Dreamstealer: a fine card but it isn't a replacement for Duress and doesn't generally work with our artifact plan.

Dire Fleet Poisoner: I'm not very impressed by this card in our deck. You could play it and it might be fine, but it doesn't really do anything we can't do in other ways.

Sword-Point Diplomacy: I've tested this a little and have been generally unimpressed. Your opponent just has too much control.

Gifted Aetherborn: already in the sideboard, definitely better than Dire Fleet Poisoner in this deck. The life gain and extra point of toughness are really powerful against aggro decks.

Heartless Pillage: I could see this swap, but I really value being able to cycle away discard later in the game. Heartless Pillage has higher upside than Unburden but the fail-case is pretty bad. I'd say this change is up to you.

Treasure Map  ^Flip: I've done extensive testing of Treasure Map in this deck and I do really want to include it, but I want all our other cards more. You especially can't swap it out for Renegade Map because Map is why we get to run so few lands and Treasure Map is too slow to make up for dropping even lower. If you can figure out what to cut, though, I say go ahead. The obvious choice would be Implement of Malice, but then we drop below our critical level of forced discard, and everything else serves critical purposes. There's a chance that Wall of Forgotten Pharaohs is just too cute and we'd be better served by dropping Treasure Map on turn 2, but then we're setting ourselves up for really bad game-1s against aggro.

The Eldest Reborn: Might be fine in the sideboard for matchups against hexproof decks if those are a problem in your meta. Otherwise, it doesn't have all that much synergy with our deck. I could definitely see it playing an important role in a different discard deck that wasn't leaning into the artifact-matters theme.

Cruel Reality: Kinda the same thing as The Eldest Report, except 7 mana is a lot for this deck. We'll get there eventually, sure, but not until turn 7 at the earliest, at which point I'm concerned that Cruel Reality is just too slow of a finisher. I'd probably rather just run more copies of Torment of Hailfire, which gives us way more immediate value and can easily just win us the game on the spot. Cruel Reality makes more sense in a Golgari ramp deck that wants to stick in on like turn 4 or 5 so it can start nugging the opponent during the development stage of the game.

Actually, it occurs to me that Treasure Map  ^Flip might be a great fit for the sideboard against Control decks. We're already pretty good against Control thanks to main-decking Duress and all our other discard, but we don't have a lot of great things to board in when our removal is mostly dead.

Hmm. If you went down Never//Return and a Walk the Plank / Cast Down in favor of 3x Vraska's Contempt, then you could ditch Hour of Glory and 1x copy of Lost Legacy from the sideboard for 3x Treasure Map  ^Flip. That actually sounds pretty solid.

Thanks for the great and fast respond.

I'm discussing your great deck at reddit atm if you wanna have a look at the thin discussion;) Ty

Wanted to make a deck based off this, but this isn't standard legal like it's tagged as.

As you'll note, I last updated this 6 months ago, before rotation. TappedOut doesn't update deck legality as rotations hit.