Working on stealing creatures to sacrifice them for value. Fling and Thud are big win cards, and Unearth and Claim/Fame for abusing Vexing Devil and Kroxa.
Creatures:
Vexing Devil in this build is a menace to an opponent who is paying the 4 life because they can’t fight a 4/3 early in the game. With 7 spells to play him from the graveyard, often I can bring someone down to 8 life on turn 2.
Kroxa in this build is also a menace due to the same 7 spells to play it from the graveyard. Repeated ETB triggers from early in the game (potentially 4 total on turn 3) puts on control pressures if they aren’t drawing extra cards. With so many cheap spells, playing Kroxa’s escape cost is fairly easy to pull off on turn 4.
Dark Confidant was added due to its synergy with Claim and Unearth. I figure he is a good kill spell sponge and can serve the ends of Death’s Shadow and Scourge of the Skycleave. Easy enough to get back if he dies, and if I’m getting low on life, I can remove him myself with and of my spells that require a sacrifice as an additional cost to casting it.
Lightning Skelemental: Added because it is Unearth’s best friend. In addition, Thud and Fling are good friends also. People tend to let Skelemental through if they think blocking it is a waste of time and can’t remove it. After you land the 6 damage, you can use Thud/Fling to do another 6. If they already took life from Vexing Devil, they will be in a pretty bad spot. Since the deck is about maximum value out of T/F, I don’t include more elemental synergy, since Death’s Shadow and Scourge aren’t elementals.
Corpse Explosion is kind of a pet card I decided to try out. If I use Vexing Devil as the additional cost, the 4 damage won’t kill my own creatures besides Confident, but that’s fine. And if I don’t have anything going on, I can pay 1 Black to put Death’s Shadow in the grave when my life is above 13 and then do Corpse Explosion for 13, which kills most things.
I don’t know anything about Modern meta these days. This deck was created in a vacuum to play against my roommate, who is doing the same thing. If you have any good sideboard suggestions, I’m all ears, my general idea though is that most people won’t let me have a graveyard after sideboarding, and that lets me side out at least 7 cards without stressing it. A way to shift the how the deck functions without access to the graveyard would be pretty cool. Red Black have very limited means of fighting enchantments, so if the board in Leyline of Sanctity or Rest in Peace and the like, i probably can’t consistently fight against that.
Thanks for upvoting!!! If you like this Jank, check out some of my other Vacuum decks haha.
