Hobbez9186 I'm probably bothering you at this point with all of these questions but.. Where do I fit The Rack in this deck once I splurge and buy 2 or 4 of them..?

Also, Hobbez9186, did I find a card that just makes this deck.. and your Legacy deck even more broken? Mindcrank

Basically.. get Megrim on the field.. get Mindcrank on the field.. do any damage.. infinite health loss.. game over..

Or even better.. Liliana's Caress + Mindcrank = Win.

I lied.. Mindcrank mills cards.. not discards cards.

Maybe Mind Rot?

Lol, we'll nice find. Mill is not a bad thing, it's punishment as well, it's just too bad it doesn't activate anything else in the deck. I like it though. And Mind Rot is alright, it's the 3 cost that makes it less desirable. By the time you would have 3 land down they should already be down to 1 card.

Also, The Rack would directly replace Shrieking Affliction for the same mana cost and it triggers with 0,1, and 2 cards in hand. Otherwise, you could go down a Fate Unraveler and an Underworld Dreams and put two in that way.

Thanks Hobbez9186, always coming through in the clutch. I'll eventually get 4x The Rack in time.

Also, I wonder if there are any good mill combos with Mindcrank because I really do like the idea of that card.

We could try to create a black and/or blue mill deck around that card. Could be unblockable blue creatures and mill effects and black direct life loss and discard. I'm sure I can come up with something. I did just post a Tribal Homunculous Mill deck that is pretty awesome for a budget deck using terrible cards.

Homunculus Amonculus

Hobbez9186 $5 Mindcrank Combo looks incredibly fun to play. Tutors, Mill, Infinite Cycle.

Dark Deal hits both discard and draw triggers for double the pain to the opponent!!

Hobbez9186 so after playing four games with my buddy with this deck against his U/W Warrior/Heroic deck and only coming away with 1 win (barely, I had 2 life left). I can see some major set backs. For some reason I had a really hard time getting lands out.. on top of that, I feel as though the draw/discard idea is too spread apart.

I feel like just making this a discard deck would be more powerful. I don't know. I want this to be good but I was just having trouble really getting anything going.

Any suggestions?

Hobbez9186 but at the same time I'm really loving Master of the Feast and the immediate threat he exposed. I wonder if playing more removal from my sideboard like Geth's Verdict or Despise or Duress would help. Also.. Dark Deal would trigger both draw and discard enchantments.. right? I should get those..

Ok.

Cut the draw aspect down a little and focus more on the discard/control. At least reconfigure a little anyways, you don't have to actually remove/add much.

I would sideboard 2x Underworld Dreams and remove 2x Fate Unraveler which leaves 4 slots open in Mainboard. Fate is nice, but the 4 cost does slow you down maybe too much. Underworld is great on it's own since it guarantees 1 damage an upkeep, and having 4 plus the Fates is a little much for Mainboard it sounds like. In sideboard against the many decks that like to draw cards it could be just as or even more devastating than discard. Mainboard all 4 Geth's Verdict. It is amazing control for cheap if you can use it early when they only have 1 creature which is likely if they are discarding basically every turn. Just stop them from getting too wide to deal with and prevent the early aggro damage.

I would also remove one Master of the Feast and one Sign in Blood and replace those two Mainboard slots with 2x Hypnotic Specter. It's a great 3 drop like Master but fuels the discard more consistently without giving an advantage like Feast does if you don't already have Underworld or a Fate. I might try removing one Call to the Netherworld and bumping Dash Hopes up to three as well for a little more control.

The last two sideboard slots that would now be open could be used for a little wider board control like Languish, Damnation, or even Deadly Tempest. Tempest would be especially deadly against token decks and would rarely effect you since this deck is not creature heavy. Plague Wind works too, but now you are getting really mana expensive. Languish is probably your best option. Damnation is a really freakin' expensive card...

It sounds like your problem is just being up against aggro. If this is still an issue, in those situations you can go ahead and drop out Fates or Underworld and trade in your Hero's Downfall for more control. I'd say really against aggro, which doesn't draw much typically, you could swap out all of the Fates, Underworld, Sign in Blood, and Damnable Pact for everything else in the sideboard since it all does better against aggro anyway.

I don't think it was the cards, I think it was just the wrong combination for the match up you had. Also, getting mana screwed just sucks anyways. I've played many games against aggro heavy decks with my discard deck and having the right balance of control and sustainable discard/damage is the key to victory. That's what the sideboard is all about :)

It really is a shame that Dark Ritual isn't Modern.

As much as I like the creepy little Black Cat, I think those Dark Deals would be great sideboard if you can get a good mix of both draw and discard on the board. Nice find.

Also, for the sake of mana, I would drop the Megrim and just go to 4x Liliana's Caress. I wouldn't change it in my own deck just because Megrim is a classic, but without Dark Ritual you need to save mana wherever you can.

Alright so the deck itself isn't awful. I just had a tough match-up and I needed a little more control to give my discard/draw engine that much more time to finish him off.. Hobbez9186 thanks again for the help. I'll sideboard 2 Dark Deals and I'll have to pick up a few other cards.

Hobbez9186 Why not have 12 enchantments available where 4 are just a cheaper version of Megrim.. or is that too many enchantments?

That's how it goes :)

I just got home from FNM and learned a few things about my Goblin deck and was even shown a really nice card that I hadn't considered that will fit wonderfully in the deck. I've playtested the deck hundreds of times and devastated our home games, but it's not until you play against a deck that handily whups your ass that you will learn how to make it even stronger.

That right there is what I love most about this game.

One guy I beat tonight played a deck similar to my Ally deck except he went the allied BW Vampire route. Most of his cards had Rally which was not triggering most turns since he wasn't always able to play a creature. I asked him if he had Captain's Claws in his deck, which he didn't, so I showed him mine and explained how it could exponentially improve his deck. He took out his phone and ordered 4 copies before his next game started :)

It's too many enchantments. If they did something else on their own, like have an activated discard mechanic that would be different, but the chances of you having all 12 of them out is pretty slim and you really only need 2-3 (like one of each) to win. If you did have 4 Caress and 4 Megrim and you played even a single Ravenous Rats it would be 16 damage just from one card. That board state just would never happen because by the time you had enough mana to have played that many enchantments you wouldn't have forced any discard and your opponent would be just free to attack or do whatever.

It's all just a balancing act. More isn't always more.

Try it with those tweaks I posted above using the Playtest button and see how your hands look. It should be pretty evenly distributed between everything you can do in the deck. Hold creatures and spells until you can combo them with your enchantments if you can. A second turn Caress followed by a Funeral Charm and Augur of Skulls on turn three is 2 damage and 1 cards lost. Turn 4 you can start by sacrificing Augur for 2 cards and 4 damage and then play two rats for another 4 damage and they are already about out of cards. Then turn 5 you can play Master of the Feast and another Augur, turn 6 you can sac the Augur again for another 4 damage and attack for 5 in the air, already 19 damage dealt and your opponent has no hand left. If you had also dropped a Shrieking Affliction on turn one, they are definitely dead.

That's a pretty perfect hand, but not impossible and you just won in 6 turns pretty easily and your opponent was able to play precisely nothing, and all you needed was one Caress and one Affliction. Turns 7-10 can only get better as you start to stack up enchantments to double or triple the pain. The draw aspect on Master of the Feast actually helps fuel your discard in a way because they draw the card on your turn and unless it is an instant then you are free to make them discard it right away. That's where Hypnotic Specter is awesome because it keeps the discard rolling without having to cast a spell or use any mana, so you can use any open land to stack enchantments or drop another creature.

Luck of the draw is always going to be against you though, it's just important to remember what order works best to drop your spells. Everything is made stronger by those enchantments, so if you have one in your hand and know you can play it before forcing the discard it is always best to wait. If you don't have the enchantments it is a little more of a gamble to choose whether or not to wait to do the most and hope you draw a Caress or Dreams, but if you wait too long then they might have played their hand already and now have nothing to discard. But that's where Affliction comes in handy.

There should be a "Plan B" ready to go, it just takes more and more play to get used to what you can expect to draw and find out what is going to work best while also understanding how your sideboard can help you.

Ballerfacemcgee I have to give credit to you for Dark Deal, I'm going to run 2 of them in either my sideboard or mainboard. Thank you!

No problem! Learning a lot by your deck list and these comments. Thank you guys.

Hobbez9186 The more I play around with this deck the more I realize how ineffective it is.

What can we do to make this faster.. drop the draw cards and focus on discard only? Take out Underworld Dreams for Megrim to accompany Liliana's Caress?

I'm frustrated that this deck isn't as good as I wish it would be.

Try sideboarding the draw.

Move 3x Underworld Dreams (keep one)

Move 2x Sign in Blood (keep two)

Replace those five cards with 3x Hypnotic Specter and 2x Dash Hopes.

Then remove the 2x Megrim from the deck since you already have 4x Liliana's Caress.

Move 1x Geth's Verdict from sideboard and add a third Shrieking Affliction (which should eventually be 3x The Rack).

Sideboard the Damnable Pact and the Dark Deal and replace with an additional Funeral Charm and Call to the Netherworld.

Now you will be 100% focused on discard and control, while your sideboard allows you to shift gears into draw punishment and discard. This will be a great reversal to remove creatures or control spells that get shut down by Blue or Red control and replace them with a completely different win condition.

Speed is hard to achieve in this kind of deck, you just have to control the first 3-5 turns until your opponent is out of cards and has to top deck and it should be much easier to win. Focusing on one half of the coin should make it more consistent, but not necessarily faster.

Hobbez9186 I don't know what I would do without you. Thank you so much! I'll have to pick up some Hypnotic Specter's then. They're better for what we're going for now. What about Liliana's Specter? I like that card better anyway and it doesn't rely on hitting the opponent to trigger a discard.

I'm just throwing the idea out there.