…this October - mono black control

Features

Sitromis

5 October 2009

1476 views

October has always been my favorite month of the year, and Zendikar is only adding to that enjoyment. Rather than breaking down the awesomeness of all the cards we’ve all seen, how bout we put something together, in the spirit of the season and in effort to exact some attention to potential archetypes! This one, the Bloodcult of Borja, is intended for competitive play in the standard format; and yes, juxtapose to what you’ve heard sung, it is time to fear the reaper again my friends as the perpetual dusk of October sees MBC returns to standard!

SPELLS (24)

• Duress x4
• Sign in Blood x4
• Carnage Altar x3
• Soul Stair Expedition x4
• Quest for the Gravelord or Bloodchief Ascension x4
• Feast of Blood x3
• Marsh Casualties x2

LAND (21)

• Crypt of Agadeem x2
• Swamp x19

CREATURES (14)

• Gatekeeper of Malakir x4
• Bloodghast x4
• Vampire Nighthawk x3
• Fleshbag Marauder x2
• Gravedigger x1

Breaking this down a bit, I’ll take it from the top -

Placing your opponent under early duress to remove key enchantments or creaturesless threat is key. Late game Duress will only feed your quest cards.

Signing in Blood and creating a bit of Carnage at the Altar are all hand advantage mechanics that you WILL need with the significant boost in tempo that our beloved Black magic is receiving this season. So many “1 drop” option available!

The Soul Stair Expedition is an obvious choice to keep the creatures you need coming back to play. The real question I’ve struggled with here, Quest for the Gravelord vs. Bloodchief Ascension. Both have good synergy here, so I’d throw it back to my audience to make the final call. Maybe a combination and/or addition of them both would be appropriate. Either way, you can expect them to go off in short order. Soul Stair Expedition is some good necropotence aswell! You’re basically working on a rotating graveyard, and these enchantments are conditioning factors. Some of you may recall the former Grave Pact you once had? As a recovering Green Mage, I know I do. We’re working on something very similar here, only it’s slightly more advantageous, albeit there are more mechanics involved.

Feast of Blood was selected over Doom Blade simply because it plays against black better and a common game will have you hovering between 2-3 creatures. Not much, but that should be about 2-3 creatures more than your opposition.

Marsh Causalities is like a tailored version of Infest. Tailored for the demise of that sorry fleshling sitting accross from you! Infest was not a very good combat trick, but Marsh Casualities changes all that by working against your opponents armada and not your own! This allows for more than just straight up creature removable, although, that's fine too! Very handy and incredibly versatile.

Gatekeeper of Malakir will be staple product for board control. It deals with a good deal of creature hate. Things like Baneslayer Angel are just another chew toy when this card is played properly. Couple it with repeatable return and it can be virtually impossible for an opponent to maintain any board advantage. Bloodghast acts like any good Vampire or Zombie should. Hard to kill, doesn’t enjoy being tied to the grave, I mean can you blame him! With all that card draw, landfall should be creating quite a mess on the Carnage Alter; feeding your “one drop” enchantments and keeping the pulse of pressure high with whatever nemisis has drawn your ill will.

Given the card count, I’ve left off at 59 now what?! It’s been argued a few times in and out of the office that Rise from the Grave should make an appearance here. You may indeed have a good selection of creatures to choose from when/if it's time that something indeed rise from the grave but why settle for just ONE creature to return. Why not invite Liliana Vess over for some fun! You won’t really require her to teach you anything, but letting her casually forget spells your opponent held at hand may play into more then one concept here, no? Then again, maybe it’s time the Fallen Demon, Ob Nixilis demonstrate his capacity for land play. You can see his dollar count rising already. That demon will be summoned up for some fun'a'plenty this season for sure! So the 60th spell is the “game changer” spell, and I’m going to leave it entirely alone at the option of my reader(s) to decide. My own choice will be made on the 2_nd of this month.

Now, let’s take a look at the competition –

Burn is going to be tough, it always is. You can maintain your board advantage however and prevent the creature(s) attacks, but the direct damage is going to require a strong chin. Side boarding for Tendril’s of Corruption or other life gain mechanic may be required for the long haul. Day of Judgment and other control decks may play into your concept, and with the amount of grave interaction, it’s not of great concern. 5cc is taking a hit with Zendikar, so I’m not going to cover that just yet. The lack of information on whether or not that archetype will remain is unclear. Turn Go or heavy counter magic’s will once again be prevalent. Mindbreak Trap, as a prime example posses a significant problem. You’ll be casting and drawing plenty. The Exile mechanic requires your full attention as it will interfere with your grave born nature. Decks like that will necessitate a crafty sideboard and/or incredibly aggressive play and be sure to pick up your deck set of Vampire Hexmage early. Her ability will simply become a staple sideboard option against the Questing spells of Zendikar (and then some!)

Like any good change of a season, Autumn’s release of Zendikar is not at all different. Change is in the air for better, not worse. We’re going to be seeing some interesting things as a new surface for Standard is laid out, etched and scratched. The depth of that grevious wound however is yet unknown, so let’s see what the October harvest heralds!

It's likely appropriate that I remind folks of Matt's comment in his previous article regarding a few missing cards that are being referenced above. Seeing as how I've linked many Zendikar cards, I might suggest the use of "gatheringmagic.com/images/Cards/CardNameWithoutSpaces.jpg" to assist us all in acquiring an Image Base for TappedOut here.

- {updated 10/5/09} -

Welcome to your first week of Zendikar Standard! I hope you’re enjoying it.

Before I get to the update, know that this past weekend was Greekfest followed by an awesome draft hosted by a few of our TappedOut local’s to the Portland area. We started at 3’ish and finished 9’esk Sunday evening. There were ten individuals in total and we each dueled in single elimination form. The ultimate victor, to whom went all the spoils mind you, was our own mattlohkamp! His construction of an Ally theme proved ridiculously effective in draft as he completed with a 10/0 record!!! I used to have some clout in draft, having pulled off a successful mill deck or two in my time, but that record is simply unprecedented in our prior drafting experience!

!hats off!

Having said that, I also wanted to gift the experience of where our own meta-game is already headed. MBC, or at least Mono Black is exactly where went! As a result of both that direction and the draft, I didn’t get a terrible variety of play testing in. I knew Mono Black was going to be the gift of Zendikar to the format, but I didn’t foresee three of us building black magic decks in our meta so quickly! I dueled garrisod and drewskig several times with my own Bloodcult of Borja and their versions of similarity. Drewskig caught onto the what Mark Rosewater had suggested about the “two card kill combo” in one of Wizard’s articles, and is hosting Blood Tribute with Sanguine Bond that combo’s to win you the game. I managed to lose a few games to poorly timed control or duress on that. It’s a fun kill mechanic. Try it out! Garrisod on the other hand is running something I’d consider a re-Vamp (pun intended entirely) of his prior Vampire builds. It hosts a vampire bevy of heavy hitters. He’s lacking the Vampire Nocturne and hasn’t tried the new equipment yet, but when I failed to maintain board control, he would win (period). As for board control itself and my deck topic discusion near mirror matches are tough, black vs. black is even tougher! Of the four games I recall with Garrisod, I believe we ended up 2/2. Dreskig on the other hand we played so many games between the hours of 10pm to 3am that it’s difficult to say exactly. I had the Mono Black, and two others that I’ll cover later. He played his Mono Black exclusively. I recall a fair amount of curses being hurled my direction from across the table, but I can tell you that I lost my share as well. The Bloodcult of Borja has an incredible amount of hand advantage and board control available to it, and it played as intended. Gatekeeper of Malakir has incredible sysnergy with the recursion mechanics featured here. Bloodghast + Carnage Altar are a great parlor trick that netted me all the hand advantage I required; couple that with Sign in Blood and it’s close to over the top. Fleshbag Maruader + Bloodghast placed a whole new light on a card that would otherwise remain neglected. There were well over a half-dozen games that I was able to draw out to the point where the opposition simply ran out of steam with by the sheer amount of forced sacrifice I employed. Vampire Nighthawk was a large stall mechanic and/or life gain mechanic and/or win condition. More so then I anticipated. However, the real star of the show was Bloodcheif Ascension. Once the requirements for activation on that card are met, this type of deck deals out a deadly amount of death, quickly! Activating the card is the only difficult part. I believe I can improve upon that for the future.

Couple final notes- Little attention was paid to the sideboards of our games. No Pithing Needle was used to rule out the kill mechanics of my opposition! Given the mechanics of that card in conjunction with Zendikar, I suspect a slight increase in value.

Drewskig made effective use of the Vampire Hexmage but multiple copies of Enchantments and/or forced sacrifice and/or attack made it impossible to shut off the tempo entirely.

Landfall is very awesome, but many rookie mistakes were made as we all got used to timing the mechanics.

Playing against large creatures was not at all difficult via the use of Feast of Blood when forced sacrifice was not an option.

Crypt of Agadeem was useless in the current build and required the aid of the sideboard. I generally had more mana then I needed and no place to spend it all. Consume Spirit or other options may be sought after as alternative win conditions.

Bloodchief Ascension MUST activate; when you can’t sneak a creature attack in, you need another way cause them harm. Spells or even common land drops in the latest set can suite your needs.

All in all, I would seriously expect to see more from MBC or MBV (mono black vampires!) it may be time for me to go investigate the lighter side magic however, especially if this trend continues in our meta games ;}~