The Murder Party

Commander / EDH Mono-Black

Skydra2

Combo (5)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Grave Titan
• 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1x Nim Deathmantle
• 1x Triskelion

Creature (5)

• 1x Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
• 1x Grave Titan
• 1x Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1x Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon

Discard (2)

• 1x Myojin of Night's Reach
• 1x Syphon Mind

Draw (10)

• 1x Custodi Lich
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Harvester of Souls
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Ob Nixilis Reignited
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Read the Bones
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Syphon Mind

Edict (2)

• 1x Blighted Fen
• 1x Custodi Lich

Land (36)

• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Barren Moor
• 1x Blighted Fen
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Desert
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 22x Swamp
• 1x Tower of the Magistrate
• 1x Urborg
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Vault of Whispers

Protection (1)

• 1x Maze of Ith

Ramp (10)

• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Caged Sun
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Extraplanar Lens
• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Reanimation (17)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Cauldron of Souls
• 1x Dance of the Dead
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Ever After
• 1x Grave Betrayal
• 1x Liliana Vess
• 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1x Mimic Vat
• 1x Necromancy
• 1x Nim Deathmantle
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1x Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1x Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
• 1x Victimize

Removal (6)

• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Go for the Throat
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Ob Nixilis Reignited
• 1x Snuff Out
• 1x Tragic Slip

Sacrifice (1)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar

Targeting (15)

• 1x Aphotic Wisps
• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Cauldron of Souls
• 1x Desert
• 1x Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
• 1x Glaring Spotlight
• 1x Hex Parasite
• 1x Maze of Ith
• 1x Profane Command
• 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 1x Tooth of Chiss-Goria
• 1x Touch of Darkness
• 1x Tower of the Magistrate
• 1x Unspeakable Symbol
• 1x Urborg

Tutor (8)

• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Liliana Vess
• 1x Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Utility (2)

• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Vedalken Orrery

Wipe (3)

• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Decree of Pain
• 1x Toxic Deluge

Commander (1)

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Maybeboard

Other (38)

• 1x Bubbling Muck
• 1x Command Beacon
• 1x Contagion
• 1x Damnation
• 1x Dark Petition
• 1x Dauthi Embrace
• 1x Death Cloud
• 1x Deserted Temple
• 1x Diabolic Servitude
• 1x Erebos, God of the Dead
• 1x Herald of Leshrac
• 1x Insidious Dreams
• 1x Jet Medallion
• 1x Karn Liberated
• 1x Karn, Silver Golem *oversized*
• 1x Liliana of the Veil
• 1x Liquimetal Coating
• 1x Mortuary Mire
• 1x Necrologia
• 1x Nefashu
• 1x Nezumi Graverobber  ^Flip
• 1x Night's Whisper
• 1x Nihil Spellbomb
• 1x No Mercy
• 1x Ob Nixilis Reignited
• 1x Oversold Cemetery
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Retribution of the Ancients
• 1x Sadistic Sacrament
• 1x Scale of Chiss-Goria
• 1x Scrying Sheets
• 1x Scuttlemutt
• 1x Sepulchral Primordial
• 1x Sorceress Queen
• 1x Strands of Night
• 1x Thespian's Stage
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

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Hello, and welcome to the realm of mono-black! I don't think your creatures are going to survive, sorry. I was totally planning on giving all your creatures persist with Cauldron of Souls because I'm just that great of a person, but Horobi, Death's Wail doesn't like that, so they're all going to die. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience.

Anyway, this is my Horobi build that I'd like to show off a bit and explain a few intricacies.

Horobi Theory: The Two Ways to Play

Horobi is weird. His presence temporarily changes the rules, and can change the pace of the game even if he only remains on the battlefield for a small amount of time due to is ability affecting all creatures you control, even including himself. I believe there are two main options of playing Horobi, and you can either build wholly around one method or ensure that your deck has the resources to play either method.

Method 1: Kill all the things

Horobi's ability enables a lot of cards, especially multi-targeting tools like Touch of Darkness or Cauldron of Souls, which can turn into a Plague Wind effect, barring hexproof and shroud.

This is the more commander-centric method of playing Horobi, which can make the battlefield a horrible place for creatures. Even if he dies, he's not difficult to get back on the field with Reanimate or similar effects, or even recasting due to the ramp of Cabal Coffers and other big-mana black cards.

This strategy encounters two main problems. For one, being the harbinger of death to an EDH table that wants to play their Timmy creatures or hates having their Commander executed by atypical cards such as Urborg or Hex Parasite can make you a target and can be "unfun" for some. But more importantly, some Commander decks don't really play a lot of creatures, and have win conditions such as Doomsday, and Blue Sun's Zenith off an non-creature infinite mana combo, neither of which Horobi (or any other mono-black deck, really) has a way of stopping, outside of winning the game first. Which leads into our second main strategy...

Method 2: Horobi as Support

You don't ever have to cast Horobi if you don't want to; mono-black, while lacking certain types of removal, is pretty adept at winning through combos or goodstuff play. This deck, like many other mono-black decks, can kill everyone with deadly synergies such as Mikaeus, the Unhallowed+Triskelion. With very effective tutors, these combos become very dangerous, and can go off fairly early with the right ramp.

Horobi's Strengths and Weaknesses

Though, in my opinion, Horobi is an underrated commander, he still has significant flaws. Matchups need to be adapted to often, depending on the meta.

Strengths

I may be repeating myself at this point, Horobi is very good at combating creature based strategies and combat-damage win conditions. Horobi nullifies aura-based strategies as well, so even if you can't do anything about an opposing card:Uril Miststalker, your opponent will either end up doing it for you out of desperation or just end up with a vanilla 5/5 as long as Horobi is out.

Weaknesses

By himself, Horobi and his targeting machines have no answer to hexproof, shroud, or indestructible. These weaknesses can be built around, however. Hexproof is countered by Glaring Spotlight and Arcane Lighthouse, and the latter also gets around shroud. Since we're black, only two copies of this effect isn't a horrible problem due to tutoring power. Indestructible creatures also like to pretend you don't exist, but that will end when you drop an easily tutorable Black Sun's Zenith or Toxic Deluge, killing them for having 0 toughness despite indestructible.

The most difficult strategies to combat, that don't have a good answer other than win first, are "degenerate" strategies such as Doomsday that I have mentioned previously. We can combo too, but usually not as fast. Lack of anything outside mono-black makes us very vulnerable to enchantment-based or spellslinging strategies. My only recommendation against such play is to not hold back with your win-conditions, edit your deck to fit your meta, and don't be afraid to mulligan a few times to get a fast win-condition against such decks.

My Deck

I've opted for a bit of a combination of strategies 1 and 2, which in my opinion is the best way to play Horobi. Like any other Horobi deck, lots of easy targeting makes it easy to wipe any annoying creatures from the board. I'm prepared to draw plenty of aggro with this deck, and I'm including a lot of reanimator, ramp and doublers to be recasting and reanimating Horobi when he inevitable dies to his own ability (reanimation also helps for power cards such as Sheoldred, Whispering One and Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon).

My win conditions include a lot of easily tutorable nonsense with Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and his interactions with cards like Triskelion, Puppeteer Clique+Ashnod's Altar, or big infect creatures with evasion like Blightsteel Colossus and Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon. Reanimating other peoples stuff can also work wonders if you've been killing a lot of things with Horobi.

Important Rules with Horobi

Common Rules Errors

Say I have Horobi, Death's Wail out, and I want to kill your thing with Aphotic Wisps. As much as I would love to have a 1-cmc cantripping kill spell, I don't get a card because your creature dies on the stack before my cantrip resolves. As a result, the spell is countered. I still kill your thing through Horobi, but Aphotic Wisps cannot resolve and I get no card.

Counterspells and Horobi

If you're looking to play control and keep your creatures, don't let Horobi hit the field unless you have a Stifle effect, which may not even do much anyway. Countering a spell like Touch of Darkness does absolutely nothing for you, since they die to Horobi's ability, which happens before Touch of Darkness resolves and is put on the stack once for each creature targeted. Unfortunately, you're going to need quite a few Stifle effects if you want to save your field, depending on how many creatures you have out.

Date added	9 years
Last updated	8 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 35 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.65
Tokens	Copy Clone, Emblem Ob Nixilis Reignited, The Monarch, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Owned Decks