This deck is a powerful casual, but very fair version of Mono-Black Control (MBC) with Geth at the helm. It is highly synergistic and I rate it around a 6.5 in power level. It purposefully features NO tutors aside from those that can get lands or are lands themselves. Think Expedition Map and Urza's Saga but no Demonic Tutor or Sidisi, Undead Vizier.

The deck itself really only does 3 things: Ramp hard, draw cards, and control the board. Geth is the finisher and is the 'reliable' win-con...but unlike the current fashionable trend, the deck works perfectly fine without him. It doesn't 'need' him to ramp, draw, or impart control on the board state. Once you have the board in check and are generating gobs of mana, however, you use Geth to steal your opponents' creatures and artifacts and use them against them. It is a very satisfying way to win as they have no one to blame but themselves when you use their Sidisi, Seedborn Muse, or Dockside Extortionist better than them.

The beauty of purposefully removing tutors to limit power and increase variance is that you can put more interesting cards in the deck than you normally could - either in flex spots to do neat things or to provide further redundancy to what you want to do in the deck. Because of this, there's no lame Torment of Hailfire win (as great as the card is, it IS boring) as a way to utilize all the mana, and instead I can put in a knowingly weaker card like Brass Knuckles to augment my artifact count and equipment strategies.

If you don't like it, change to taste but I have purposefully capped the power with no tutors and not putting in cards like Mana Crypt or Candelabra of Tawnos (those are in stronger versions of Geth). I find this makes the deck more palatable to a broader range of deck power levels while still being able to play a satisfying game against all of them. This is primarily due to the deck using your opponents cards. Weaker decks, will have weaker cards as targets and vice-versa for stronger decks.

The recommended play pattern goes like this: in the early game, ramp as much you can prioritizing ramp over protecting yourself from early threats. You may get hit with utility creatures and whatnot, but it plays into other players committing to the board, not viewing you as a threat, and all of them getting set back more than you by the board wipe you likely have and will use against them. After the wipe, that is when Crypt Ghast or Nirkana Revenant make a showing and you start to control pesky permanents with spot removal. This is when the various swords in the deck also start doing work. You may need to wipe again, so be it; you can get your creatures back a number of ways. The beginning of the end game is when Geth gets deployed and you have the ability to generate 20+ mana. E.g. you use that Reclamation Sage or Eternal Witness in an opponent's graveyard to further constrain the board; you use the Seedborn Muse to make every turn also your turn with Geth; you go infinite with a Dockside Extortionist and a sac outlet like your Phyrexian Altar. It doesn't matter if Geth gets killed and you have to cast him again. You have 40 mana (and that is just the start). Meaner versions of the deck have already iced the game by using Mindslicer, Sadistic Hypnotist, or Myojin of Night's Reach to destroy your opponent's hands. This version plays it out. Many times people will scoop when you can generate 400+ mana from the Doubling Cube and Clock of Omens and they see you can just straight mill everyone out. Other times, people will force you to play it out, but that is fine. Do you know how satisfying it is to steal an Eldrazi Titan from a graveyard with the shuffle trigger on the stack? What about having a HUGE board full of your opponent's permanents so large that you are running out of space on your mat, and then you kill them with it? It feels great. That is what Geth does, and he does it well.

The uninitiated (and there are many) will blow Geth off the first time they see him...to their detriment. They won't be so blasé the second time and they will still struggle to contain him. If you want a unique, powerful and fun deck that no one else has and you are looking to play MBC, then I suggest you try Geth out. I have a budget version (that is almost as good as this version) and my full power version here on Tapped Out as well.

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Updates Add

You will notice a purposefully high count of snow-covered swamps. This does four things.

1) It better ensures that your Cabal Coffers and Cabal Stronghold actually come online to generate more than one Black mana. This is the primary reason and it should be; Cabal Coffers may be the best card in the deck. It is abusable in so many ways (and I purposefully kept out Rings of Brighthearth comboing with Deserted Temple).

2) It turns on the snow-based board wipe synergies in the deck - which are great and under-utilized in Mono Black decks. There is very little opportunity cost when you already want to run Cabal Coffers. You can lean into this more if you wanted to put in a Cold Steel Heart or Withering Wisps.

3) It means that you are not running cards like Field of Dead. A very good card in many decks...but the land diversity that one card demands sacrifices the efficacy of points 1 and 2 above. While incidental zombies are great, you really want reliable ramp from Coffers, Caged Sun, Crypt Ghast, etc.

4) You are less susceptible to non-basic land hate. I find that mass land destruction is frowned upon, but mass non-basic land destruction/hosing is palatable to most playgroups. You don't have to worry about it nearly as much with all those basics.

Comments

93% Casual

Competitive

Date added 2 years
Last updated 2 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

19 - 0 Mythic Rares

38 - 0 Rares

13 - 0 Uncommons

6 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 4.09
Tokens City's Blessing, Construct 0/0 C, Copy Clone, Copy Clone, Goat 0/1 W, Plant 0/2 G, Shapeshifter 3/2 C, Spirit 2/2 C, Treasure, Treasure
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