Mind twist is a fun card, I love it. It might be unnecessary if you are already packing Duress/Hymns, but it's a great card nonetheless and most of all fun to play. ^^

You are wrong about that, I am talking about the interaction between Fetchlands and Impulse. I'm just trying to figure out whether I should keep the Fetchlands in a monocolored deck with 4 Impulse and 1 Brainstorm or not.

So in a few words, there is no reason at all to run 4 Fetchlands in a deck just to add a shuffle effect when using Impulse, right?

-3 Mutavault
-2 withered Wretch
-1 Vampiric Tutor
-1 Null Rod
+4 Sinkhole (Fast disruption combined with 5 Strips for awesome tempo advantage)
+3 Mishra's Factory (Much better than Mutavaults)

Wretches are a meta choice in my opinion, thus more suitable for the Sideboard. Vampiric is useless in this deck and it costs you 2 precious life and -1card in your hand. I also believe 4 Null Rods are too many. With 4 Bobs you will get more than one Null Rod which is a dead card in multiples so 3 is the perfect number.

Something else I would like to add: I believe Thoughtseize and Dark Confidant is a bad combination if you are not playing Divining Tops for library manipulation, the damage you will deal to yourself is just too much, I would rather run 4x Cabal Therapy or Hymn to Tourach instead.

I'm well aware of the rules, I'm just asking whether shuffling effects are bad in your deck if you are playing Impulse. As a general rule and statistically speaking does Impulse benefit from a shuffle effect or not?

Hey there, I just wanted to ask for you feedback on this since I can't figure it out myself.
After playing Impulse would you rather shuffle afterwards so those 3 cards that will be put on the bottom of the library will be shuffled back to the deck, or would be better for those 3 cards to stay on the bottom of the library since they will be worse quality compared to the one you will select and put in your hand?
I know that sometimes those 3 cards might be needed while other times the can be useless, but as a general rule and talking statistically does Impulse benefit from a shuffle effect or does it defeat the whole purpose of the card?

After doing loads of playtesting I concluded that the Tombstalker version was winning a lot more games than the Dark Confidant version.
While the card advantage of Bob was welcome, he was slow, fragile and resulted in lots of life lost in the process, while 2 out of 3 times Tombstalker was sealing the game.

In order to make sure Tombstalker would drop fast I decided to run 8 Fetchlands instead of the 4 I was using, seems to work pretty decent so far, each fetchland counts as 2 mana towards casting Tombstalker and once he drops only a few decks can survive him early game.

Does this manabase look solid for a monoblack deck with lots of BB's ?

Mana:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Sol Ring
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
8 Swamp

The Sol Ring is there in order to negate Nether Void's drawback and to accelerate Negators/Tombstalkers/Void into play.

How about replacing the Diabolic Edicts with Powder Kegs? Does it sound like a good idea, or would you consider Powder Keg to be too slow for this type of deck?

This is a monoblue version of the famous Necrodonate deck, however I would advise you to splash black for Demonic/Vampiric Tutor, Necropotence, Will and 4x Duress. It will boost the deck a lot.
Not sure which cards used to play in this deck, but it's a classic Type1 deck and it's definitely fun to play!

edit: I believe it also splashed White for 4x Academy Rectors in order to fetch Yawgmoth's Bargain/Illusions and it also played 3-4 Phyrexian Towers in order to sacrifice them and start the combo. But this version is different from yours, no Chronatogs/Smokestacks were used.

Having only 2 Creature removals in your deck and only 3 tutors to fetch them might be problem when you play your Negator first turn and you won't be able to attack because of the Tarmo/Meddling/Random creature your opponent will play on turn 2.

Thanks for your feedback, but the only issue is that I want to avoid splashing green to play for two reasons. First being that I can't afford to buy the Bayou/Tarmo and second that there is a lot of land hate in my meta and you see 4 Wastelands in almost every deck.

With that in mind do you think I made a good choice running 3x Tombstalkers and 4x Fetchlands instead of Dark Confidants? Should I stick to 4x Diabolic Edict for fast and instant creature removal or should I run Kegs even in a meta without Power and limited artifact combo? Should I replace my Sol Ring with a Vampiric Tutor or a single Tendrils?

Greetings! I'm working on an updated version of an old classic Void deck. The deck is mostly tailored to suit my local metagame, which is more or less a non powered and slower Vintage meta. I will introduce the deck at first:

Disruption:
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole

Creatures:
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Phyrexian Negator
3 Tombstalker

Control:
4 Diabolic Edict
3 Nether Void

Broken:
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Demonic Consultations
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Mana:
4 Dark Ritual
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Sol Ring
4 Polluted Delta
12 Swamp


The concept of this deck is to disrupt your opponent early game, play a fatty and seal the game with a Void, your opponent should be behind and won't be able to recover. Sometimes the Void is not even needed, but it surely helps if you have the advantage.

Why no Chalice/Null Rod:
I didn't include Null Rods or Chalices, since there aren't many artifact threats around to justify it and no one is using moxen.

Edicts over Kegs:
I chose to run Diabolic Edict instead of Powder Kegs for removal, due to the fact that it's very fast and can deal with bigger creatures as well. the most important thing during the fist turns is the Negators to hit and finish the opponent fast, which I find almost impossible by using Kegs instead of Edicts.

Tombstalkers over Bobs:
Tried to run 4 Dark Confidants instead of the Tombstalkers, but I was not very impressed about it, the average life loss was 2-3 per turn for an extra card, and they don't pose a serious threat, while the Tombstalkers win games by themselves.

Tried to splash green for Tarmogoyfs + Pernicious Deeds, but I felt the deck had problems dealing with Wastelands/Strip and my meta is full of them. 4 Bayous are just not enough to establish reliable mana base and this deck needs loads of mana.

the single Sol Ring is there to make sure threats such as Negators/Tombstalkers/Void drop fast, and it almost negates the Nether Void effect for me, not to mention it makes Will even better.

Someone also suggested me to run Vampiric Tutor or a single Tendrils of Agony, however I'm unsure whether they fits into this deck. Tendrils should be useless with Void in play.

Any suggestions on how to improve this deck would be more than welcome! Keep in mind that my metagame is unpowered and not very competative, you won't find any Tez, Storms or other nasty combo decks often, if not at all. 

I strongly disagree, by playing the Life from the Loam and Raven's Crime combo, you are wasting 6-8 MD slots in order to disrupt your opponent more efficiently midgame, however a Hymn played during the first turns could be more devastating and it only costs you 4 MD slots.

This deck needs an explosive early game in order to overwhelm the opponent and win, you can't make compromises and rely on slower combos such as Crusible/Waste lock or Life/Raven. This isn't Legacy, if the deck fails to deliver during earlygame it's pretty much doomed.

I'm builting a Ponza deck and I want to include cards like Tangle Wire, Sphere of Resistance and Ruby Medallion, my question would be:

If I tap a Sphere of Resistance and a Ruby Medallion during my upkeep, due to Tangle Wire, do they lose their abilities or will they still be active? For example will my opponent's spells cost 1 more mana to cast even if the sphere is tapped during his turn?

I would also suggest using 4x Sinkholes, combined with the discard and fast creatures they will disrupt your opponent a lot.

-2 Mind Twist (Duress, Hymns + Hypnotics are more than enough)
-4 Land Grant
+1 Strip Mine (Black deck without it makes no sense)
+1 Swamp
+4 Sinkhole

Drain Life is not a reliable card and it's way to expensive. Stick with 4 Diabolic Edicts to kill the fatties, or you can add some Snuff Out since they are free to play.
Zuran Orb is not a good choice either, I would replace it with a Strip Mine.

I will have to agree with you, after playtesting this the last days, I think I'll replace the Back to Basics with something else. I am thinking of adding 2 Control Magic + 1 Ponder or Merchant Scroll, perhaps even an extra island, I am not sure yet.

There is also the choice of Old Man of the Sea or the 2/2 creature that has the same effect as Control Magic, but since it's a creature it's very easy to remove so I will probably stick to control.

How about Merchant Scroll and Ponder, are those good enough for this deck?

Since 80%+ of all decks are multicolored, Back to Basics seems like a core card to me. I read some primers too and they all agree the deck is pretty much crap without it.

I am not running any Mana Leaks.

My main question regarding this deck is whether it's worth running 4 Wastelands along with the Back to Basics, since as soon as B2B hits play they will become a dead card. Not to mention that perhaps a Wasteland could mess with the manacurve, where UU will be needed on turn 2.

Anysuggestions about that?

Edited my post and reduced the number of questions to two, I would really appreciate your experience on this.

Greetings there, this is one of my favorite decks even though I am not in a possession of any Power9 cards. It doesn't matter much though since my metagame is almost unpowered as well:

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Counterspell
4 Force Spike
2 Misdirection

4 Ophidian
2 Morphling

4 Impulse
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Brainstorm
2 Control Magic
4 Powder Keg

1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
13 Island

My metagame persists mostly of aggro, control decks such as White Weenie, Dryad to Madness and Stax and Keeper. All of them unpowered as I mentioned before, but all other nasty cards are included.

Should I consider adding Ponder or a Merchant Scroll? I'm not sure it's worth it since I don't own an Ancestral Recall so it will be used in order to fetch the occasional Force, Mana Drain or FoF.

Not sure whether Old Man of the sea would be a better option than Control Magic either, guess it depends on the metagame?