So, even though its absurdly expensive Chains of Mephistopheles is what's really going to push tinybones over the top. I've been working on a list to if you'd like to check out it out :) I believe abby315 also has a popular build so they might be able to provide additional insight.

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tiny-stax-1/

Thank you for your comment RNR_Gaming! You’re right, the Chains are awesome...I was hesitant to include it because I do not own one, but it makes the build very solid. I’m going to proxy it for now and work on obtaining one.

I like the direction you go in your Tiny Stax deck! You and abby315’s builds are great and have been very useful for me. If either of you or anyone else has any further suggestions, I welcome them! :)

Whenever I brew I just try to come up with whatever the best possible iteration is. Even if I dont own the card I can just proxy. Most of the people I play with would rather play the player not the wallet. :)

Aw, thanks for the shout-out! I like your build - if you have access to good tutors, it's definitely more streamlined to go the infinite-mana route. Since you need a good few pieces, though, I would definitely recommend Asylum Visitor as an additional draw engine (plus it's card advantage itself if you play it for Madness).

The other card I 100% recommend for competitive is Noetic Scales. It's a really potent and lopsided effect to keep the board clear and can help remove problematic threats by stacking the triggers so that they bounce a creature before a Bottomless Pit-type trigger.

Also, definitely stealing the idea of No Mercy, thanks! Can't believe I forgot about that card - I pulled an Invocation of it at an HOU draft and it was hilarious to see players try to deal with it in a limited environment. :)

Oh, and Plaguecrafter is very versatile and I think worth a "My Turn Discard" slot. I should add, though, are you making this competitive for "regular" EDH, or are you making it a cEDH deck? The cEDH meta is incredibly specific so I'd have different recommendations there.

Same here RNR_Gaming, my group is very chill and we proxy whatever we like to make the most optimal decks. Also part of the fun for me is starting with a deck of proxies and slowly replacing them with real cards until I complete it!

abby315, thank you for commenting! Great points, I have taken your advice and made room for Noetic Scales and Asylum Visitor. I had missed the interaction between the Scales and opponent upkeep discard effects until you mentioned it! I like Plaguecrafter too, I’ll consider squeezing it in.

I’m glad you picked up No Mercy from my list, it is very effective.

My goal is to make this build as competitive and brutal as possible, so if you have any cEDH specific advice, I would love to hear it!

So, I feel he's going to come in around high power. Nath and Kroxa just do discard better.

You’re probably right about that, but I think Tinybones (also known as Tiny Frank Castle) is a sleeper because he’s super cheap to cast, doesn’t need to rely on the graveyard, and has a built-in win-con. But we’ll see!

I have to agree that it's not going to be a cEDH archetype, mostly because it's a pretty big liability to have to run mono-black. But there are some things to run if you were looking at a cEDH table and you wanted to have a shot. Caveat, I don't play cEDH, I just check out the decks occasionally, so I'm by no means an expert! You could always start a forum about it or join the Discord; a lot of the cEDH folks hang out on the site. Here's what I think makes sense:

• Inquisition of Kozilek
• Duress
• Leyline of the Void
• Planar Void
• Chain of Smog
• Withering Boon
• Deadly Rollick
• Slaughter Pact

Possibly:

• Praetor's Grasp
• Lotus Petal

These changes help your discard be more targeted, to break up combos, and add more disruption for common deck archetypes. It also would give you more free removal, important to be able to advance your agenda while not dying to creature-based combos.

Awesome suggestions abby315, thanks!!! This helps a lot, I appreciate it. I will consider your recommendations carefully.

Been playtesting a bit with Tinybones and discard axis concepts the last week or so, and the one thing I've found to be the most powerful play pattern possible within the concept is the combination of Geth's Grimoire or Waste Not and Words of Waste. The discard angle of attack is very potent when you can use the additional draws from one or the other to trigger multiple Words of Waste activations in one go to mass discard all opposing hands and basically lock them out of ever having resources in hand to do anything relevant from that moment on. This trio feels very much like a must run for concepts playing along that axis.

How's the deck been faring in general for you and what cards have felt like they've offered solid performance within the concept so far?

Oh, and before I forget I've been playing around with some mono black lists that didn't quite leave me satisfied so I'm doing more watching of your list (and other mono black lists) while I branched out to try to apply the concept in additional color shells. The one I worked on today and played around with some is here: Abzan Attrition. I'd definitely be interested to hear your thoughts on how discard oriented concepts could be competitive in both mono black and Bx shells.

Hey jaymc1130, thank you for your input!! I agree that Geth's Grimoire is very effective with Words of Waste. I initially questioned whether to include the Grimoire because of its cost, but your explanation sealed the deal for me.

Before I can answer your question in detail, I need to test the deck out more. I made several changes as suggested by abby315 and I think the deck is stronger now. I have encountered a lot of graveyard hate recently, and most of the other Black, Red, and/or Green discard-oriented decks I have come across use reanimation or depend on the graveyard in some way. I am attempting a different strategy with this deck to mitigate this weakness. Library of Leng is especially useful because it allows you to protect your discarded cards from Planar Void, etc. and draw them back at will with Necropotence.

Abzan is an interesting color combination for discard I haven’t explored before. I like your list and I found the comments very informative as well. While I agree with the analysis on your deck page regarding mono-color EDH builds (this is my first attempt at Mono-Black), I think Tinybones presents a unique situation due to its cost (playable turn 1), built-in draw engine, and win-con rolled into one. Put this together with consistent mana sources and a low mana curve, and together this may be a winning combination. When I have done more testing I will definitely let you know.

epic

I love this deck. It's a great change of pace from the five color Reaper King deck I've been playing around with. I'm curious what you would use instead of those few really expensive cards? I'm not sure how my group feels about proxies. Honestly I'm kind of on the fence about them myself. What I'm not on the fence about is ever in any scenario paying triple digits for a single card.

Thank you casual_competitive and stinkybot!

I recommend the following changes to make this build more budget-friendly:

Chains of Mephistopheles -> Mind Rake or Imp's Mischief

Mana Crypt -> Lotus Petal or Arcane Signet

Imperial Seal -> Insidious Dreams

Vampiric Tutor -> Diabolic Tutor

Liliana of the Veil -> Syphon Mind

Thoughtseize -> Mire's Toll

Also, you can take out the 5 fetchlands for 5 Swamps.

Great suggestions. Thanks.

Hey thanks for building this so I don’t have too, lmao. Definitely gonna be slotting this into one of my untap decks

Personally when tuned this probably wants a few more pieces to properly abuse the graveyard, specifically your opponents' graveyards, as they, when stocked as this list does so well, can be value your opponents gain in the cases of Kess, Gitrog, and many other decks. Cling to Dust acts as a cantrip that exiles a card, as does Cremate, and while both can be run, cling is repeatable from your graveyard, however is perfectly fine for gaining life for a Necro or for Tinybones triggers when need be.

Cling is my best suggestion for this build.

Separately, I would suggest Mikokoro, Center of the Sea and Dark Confidant (however for confidant, I'd make sure to drop Awaken the Erstwhile, Beseech the Queen, and a few other high rolling cards).

Mikokoro serves triple in the deck. It draws you action in a pinch, and can be played politically in a pinch too, however secondly can fill opponent's hands when they are empty just for the discard triggers. Thirdly, it can stop all Thassa's Oracle combos, as when the trigger is on the stack if they draw a card and have no cards in deck, they die.

Yes, it's worse than Geier Reach Sanitarium, however is a second copy for consistency!

I’m going to steal your Magus of the Coffers + Umbral Mantle combo. Just sayin :)

stinkybot and Daveslab2022, y’all are welcome!

And thank you for your comment SynergyBuild, great points! I’m conflicted with Dark Confidant. This is the thought process I used when deciding whether to run Bob:

Pros: Increased draw potential. Bob can be cast turn 1 and immediately helps dig for more lands. If Bob’s life-loss gets out of hand, you can kill him via board wipes. With less 5+ CMC cards, the deck will be more consistent if you don’t draw ramp.

Cons: I think the handful of 5+ CMC cards in this build are important for it to function properly. I worry that all the life-loss from Tinybones, Bob, Necropotence, etc. may be excessive. Asylum Visitor is Bob-lite with Madness. The deck has the potential to generate so much mana that’s it’s a shame to not run at least a few 5-6 CMC cards. Plus Necro lets me draw what I need at the cost of 1 life per card and is harder to remove.

Based on this analysis I decided not to run Bob. But since you suggested it, I will make a parallel list which runs Bob and fewer high CMC cards to test it out.

Cling to Dust is a great suggestion, I will consider what to cut for it. And Mikokoro, Center of the Sea is a card I overlooked since it gives your opponent a card, but you bring up an excellent point about Thassa's Oracle, so I’m cutting a Swamp for it.

And 0rc, go for it! The Magus/Mantle combo has been around for a while. :)

Oh for sure run Necro over Bob, and Visitor as well, but more pieces are good, Mindblade Render is great too, however the weird big mana thing is my largest issue with the deck.

Umbral Mantle, Magus of the Coffers, Nirkana Revenant, Torment of Hailfire, Exsanguinate, Bubbling Muck, etc. All are destroyed by cheap removal and interaction. A ton of other random cards in the deck feel weak or just low value, and I believe could be swapped for nearly directly better cards, and the deck could have almost strictly better wincons.

Yes I do like the amazing Tinybones backup plan, but mana dumping isn't necessary, and could just work given the stacy peices and the time they give without all the fluff that makes mulligans and opening hands much worse.

I think this list shows a lot of potential, but isn't tuned for the current metagame, if that makes sense. I'll write up a list of changes and maybe will post it later on!

Btw Horrifying Revelations was probably something you accidentally tossed in the deck. It only targets one opponent, you don't get to choose, and it just gives them additional grave value lol.

SynergyBuild, I appreciate your input. My knowledge of the EDH meta is lacking and I could use more guidance from people like you who spend more time with the format. I’ve played a lot of Modern and wish I had more time to dive into EDH. I would love to hear more detailed suggestions when you have the time. My goal is to try to make Tinybones as competitive as possible. It would be interesting for a Mono-Black deck to have a chance against multi-colored decks, if it’s possible. It’s going to take some time to refine it.

SynergyBuild, I followed your advice and made some major changes to the deck. Your comment inspired me to do a deep dive in EDH world, and I think this build is a lot more competitive now. I am curious what you and others think about the changes.

The curve is still a bit high, keeping the average cmc as low as possible is a big factor for competitive decks in terms of the consistency of their opening 3 turns worth of plays. Ideally you're gonna want to be in the 1.6-1.8 range to be able to compete with most of the tier 1, 2, 3 and 4 decks in the competitive edh meta. I'm very much enjoying checking in on this list as it gets tweaked, it's rather exciting to watch a new archetype in the process of gestating into a full fledged competitive contender.