[Deck] Mono Black Workshop

[everythingitouchdies]

Mono Black Workshop

Creatures (11)
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Juggernaut
3 Sundering Titan

Black Control (9)
4 Duress
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
2 Nether Void

Artifact Control (10)
4 Trinisphere
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Null Rod

Black Utility (8)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
4 Dark Ritual

Mana (22)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
10 Swamp

Sideboard:
4 Ankh of Mishra
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Coffin Purge
4 Infest

Creature Choices:

Hypnotic Specter: The traditional values of mono-black lie in three essential factors: Land Destruction, Hand Disruption, and Undercosted Brute Force. Hypnotic Specter seeks to fill the role of hand disruption, pairing with Chains of Mephistopheles to attempt to force your opponent into top deck mode. Duress is the focused disruption, and Hypnotic Specter is the lockdown.

Juggernaut: Juggernaut serves to fill in where Phyrexian Negator has failed. With a lesser drawback (being an artifact as opposed to having to sacrifice permanents,) his added synergy with Workshop and 5 power makes him a powerful clock when your opponent has been forced into recovering a hand or finding an answer.

Sundering Titan: The current broken creature of the format, he becomes an easy drop and difficult threat for this deck. Between workshops and rituals the 8 in his casting cost is manageable. The likelihood of him being drained is reduced behind the presence of Specter, Chains and Duress.

Black Control Choices:

Duress: Perhaps one of the most efficient and consistent staple cards of the color, this card helps eliminate the threat of counter magic and stall combo to give you a chance. Backed by specter, early duress helps set up the hand lock behind Chains and Specter.

Chains of Mephistopheles: The black balance, this card helps keep control decks from outdrawing you and answering your every threat. A mandatory resolution most control match ups, this card is ineffective against a small number of decks but that is not enough to outweigh its strengths.

Nether Void: The questionable card in this build, it is possible that Chalice of the Void may be the better play in this slot. This is a staple mono black control card, and this alongside of Trinisphere makes most decks incapable of playing anything. A tear of joy ran down my bruised cheekbone as I once again put this card in a decklist.

Artifact Control Choices:

Trinisphere: Because of Workshop, this gives mono black the control that it once gained through nether void.

Crucible of Worlds: The new land destruction means for mono black, this replaces the slow and inefficient Sinkhole as the way to lock out your opponent’s lands. The same as many workshop decks, a Crucible/Wasteland lock can define the game, and this time is backed by null rod to shut out artifact mana as well.

Null Rod: The ability to run Null Rod in a Workshop deck is obscene. The strength of this card lies in its ability to gain advantage against other Workshop decks, as well as its ability to stop your opponent from getting around the Crucible lock with Moxes. The ghoul amongst girlscouts, so to speak.

Black Utility Choices:

Demonic and Vampiric Tutor: The true utility of black is its ability to find the cards it needs. These staple pieces allow the deck to quickly find the tools it needs for the early game or the threats it needs for the late game.

Yawgmoth’s Will: The most powerful black card in the game (except maybe Contract from Below, but that’s a biased opinion and a banned card, and therefore an issue as dead as Bruce Springsteen.) This is both the kick to the junk and the second chance auction of this deck. It can seal the game after a strong lead, or recover from early denial. If Houdini were still alive, he would play this card in his deck.

Necropotence: Strong synergy with Chains of Mephistopheles, this card finds its home comfortably in this deck. The ability to outdraw your opponent or fill your hand while they top deck is not one to pass up.

Dark Ritual: This helps fill in when you do not draw a Workshop, provides for broken plays off Yawgmoth’s Will, and excels early beats with Sundering Titan. Though it is bad after a Trinisphere or Nether Void, the benefits outweigh the weaknesses.

Mana: The choices of mana producers for this deck should go with little explanation, off color moxes were left out so Null Rod could be included, and the single fetchland was an experimental choice for its use with Crucible.

Sideboard Choices:

The sideboard for this deck is flexible within different metas, and since I am not currently playing this deck it is not tweaked to accomodate any specific atmosphere

Ankh of Mishra: Excellent against other Crucible decks as well as fetchlands, this card alone can net a majority of the damage needed to win a game against mana intensive decks.

Chalice of the Void: Extremely powerful, this card perhaps belongs in the main deck. Playtesting will tell, but for now it has come to reside here.

Coffin Purge: I considered running Withered Wretch in this slot, but settled for Coffin Purge due to its non-creature status and lower casting cost. In play testing this deck had problems with a multitude of graveyard residents, including Wonder and Worldgorger Dragon.

Infest: To help against the Goblins and Fish, this is probably a replaceable card for a sideboard that will be developed with further testing.


Okay so there is the deck and the mentality behind it, thrown out for discussion or ridicule. Comments and Criticism desired. Unless those comments are about Bruce Springsteen not being dead, because you simply will not change my mind on that. A little Team Gone Fishin' humor, laugh at it or ignore it, but dont let it distract you.

EITD

[Methuselahn]

Don't you ever wish you had 5 moxen for those awesome 'Workshop-Mox-Juggie' starts?

It is likely that you would get Trinisphere or Nether Void out before Titan.  This would make Rituals slow.  Plus you are not running full Moxen, how often do you hardcast titans before turn 6-7?

[Mixing Mike]

Any results about playtesting?  Like, even just a few games at all?  You can't expect us to do all your testing for you.

I'll tell you though,  this looks promising with a bit of work.  Besides some unsynergystic choices....Null Rod, 3Sphere, Crucible and Chains all in one deck.  I'd like to see 3 Smokestacks in there as well, espically with Crucible, it's some good I hear.

The only problem is that this deck has no engine at all outside of a lone Necropotence.  Maybe Mind's Eye?  It let's you draw 1 card per turn under Chains with no effect during your opponents draw step.  Just a suggestion.

[EDIT]: Bad gammer  <-- see what I mean?

[doomhed]

The only problem is that this deck has no engine at all outside of a lone Necropotence.  Maybe Mind's Eye?  It let's you draw 1 card per turn under Chains with no effect during your opponents draw step.  Just a suggestion.

Well, the problem with engines in a deck maindecking Chains is that they are VERY dead once you have it in play. Necropotence does not technically draw cards, so it gets around chains.
 I like Seeing all this hate in one place, but does it work at all? you need to have testing data for us before just vomiting up a random deckist and saying "STFU!!! this deck is Teh R0x0rz" (no hate intended).
Test Before posting. isn't that some random rule?

[eastman11]

This does seem like a fairly well put together deck, but my primary concern is with threats if they do hit the board. This has always been my trouble with black, that it has trouble removing some threats if they get to the board. 3sphere should help to slow them down, as would Duress, but if they resolve a Welder before you can drop a 3sphere or (much less likely) a Void, there's an okay chance that its game 1, because the graveyard removal and creature removal is stuck SB.  Plus loading your opponent's graveyard with artifacts discarded due to Chains and Specter, game one should end pretty quick.  Thanks to the great search power of black though, I would think one main deck answer, like a Smother should eliminate worry of an early Welder.  This is a major concern seeing as how many other Workshop decks could walk all over you with an early Welder that throws Null Rod in your graveyard.

Another concern would be the lack of a draw engine.  The Necropotence has great synergy with Chains, but in most cases it isn't going to be enough.  Night's Whisper is a possibility, it's a cheap cantrip that can net you an extra card early on before you try to lock them down with Chains and all of the other hate.

I would see the Voids getting in the way most of the time, seeing as how once you can get it into play, there's a pretty good shot you had a Titan lined up shortly thereafter.  I would test it a little bit cutting Voids, a Null Rod and maybe a Titan, the extra draw plus the already present search shouldn't make getting the Rod and Titan too difficult.

PS  Testing appreciated

[everythingitouchdies]

Yes I have done some playtesting with this deck. Excuse me for not including it with the rest of the post, for some random reason I had it saved in a different file and it was omitted from the post.

I have had the opportunity to playtest this against the following decks so far: Dragon, 4cc, Fish, U/G madness, and R/G madness.

Dragon: This was an extreme problem game one. Much like Stax, without a first turn 3sphere this goes horribly wrong. Chains did not work nearly as well as hoped, because the end result is to get things in the g-yard anyway. The majority of the time game one was a loss, save the few broken hands vs. the mulligan to 5 hands.

Game two and 3 against Dragon improved with Coffin Purge, but a FoW'd Sundering Titan becomes an animate target and a juggernaut blocker. Crucible only impacted the games where I could get it behind a 3pshere and landlock, and while duress was helpful it was simply not enough to stop the brutality. Adding Coffin Purge still only seemed to get this to a 50/50 match, and even then problems ensued. In essence, without a broken lead I seem to roll over and die here.

4cc: A fair amount of delight in comparison to the Dragon games, early Control artifacts and Chains defined this matchup. Ritual duress chains was a bomb. STP caused problems in a few games, removing a juggernaut when I didnt have another creature or removing Hypnotic before he could wreck their hand. Necro was a fantastic play, giving me enough answers to make this work. There were times when I would have loved Diabolic Edict, because if they resolve an angel (force 1st turn sphere, drain 2 turn jugg, play angel) its neigh impossible to win. Overall I won about 70% of these games, usually off the strength of Chains, 3sphere and Crucible in the first few turns.

Fish: This matchup seemed to be an auto win alot. Resolution of a Sphere, of Crucible with Wasteland, or Just Dropping a Titan 3rd turn seemed to leave him without answers. Post sideboard the Chalice helped a ton. There was a game where I foolishly threw down a CoM and he played standstill, breaking it to mill me. Overall this was a great match.

U/G madness: The things that fish should have been able to do this deck did better. Countering early spells waspainful, and this is the matchup where I got to make use of broken will plays. I only got a handful of games here and it was about 50/50, and I dont feel I saw enough to determine the strength or weakness of the games.

R/G madness: I was steamrolling here. Mana Denial was everything, and the games were slanted to me having good hands and my opponent having bad hands. I didnt see his full build but I believe it was unpowered.

I have handed this deck over to another player in my area who is testing it further, I sort of backed off in favor of old flavors. The obvious need for tweaking is there, but the results were promising. My immediate observance is that sometimes there is too much hate and not enough threat.

Methuselahn: I did not test the deck with 5 moxen at all, and the person who is now running it is restricted by the lack of ownership. As for the titan, alot of times he doesnt come down before turn 6, but occasionally he explodes on turn 2 or 3. You dont always have 3sphere, so sometimes ritual makes for strong leads.

Mixing Mike: The idea behind this is not to optimize on draw spells but to deny the ones your opponent has. That, in essence, is never the strongest strategy, but sometimes it works very well. Its the reason Fish impacted the format.

This deck runs null rod for the same reason as chains. They are not the Optimal cards of this broad and spectacular format, but they level the playing field and actually give some advantage against the optimal decks. Its not about having the best cards, just answers to them.

Its still experimental, but I think it can be tweaked and strengthened and I thought it would be a worthy topic of discussion or that someone may have more innovation for the concept.

[Mixing Mike]

I thought Fish played 4 Curosities and 4 Standstills.  That's card drawing, right?

You're more reliant on your opening hand and topdecks than every other pre-existing prision decks.

[Nijo]

The inclusion of 3sphere AND void looks like over-extending to me. Also the rituals really suck when topdecked under a 3sphere and you are playing without a reliable draw engine or a way to get rid of unwanted cards. Have you tested further hand-disruption in this slot, like Hymn to Tourach?

Also Demonic Consultation seems to be the better choice over Vampiric Tutor, since you don't run alot of 1-ofs and Consultation gives u the card u need right now and doesnt have bad synergy with Necro.

[Akuma]

You can actually run Mind's Eye in conjunction with Chains of Mephistopheles. Chains does not affect the first card drawn during the draw step, so if you control a Mind's Eye, you can always use it during your opponents draw phase to get one extra card (the rules gurus can step in and explain it in more detail if they choose).

[everythingitouchdies]

EDIT: TOOK THE DOUBLING OF THE LIST OUT


I have someone else testing this deck, and he said the following:

"...After everyone left yesterday, Trevor and I
played about seven games of U/G Madness versus this. I
think that U/G won almost every one. It happened for a
few reasons. (1) Juggernaut is extremely easy to get
rid of. It may be a cheap beatstick, but it dies to
just about everything that aggro posesses.  (2) This
has little creature removal."

Considerations made, between suggestions here and from the playtesting group that I have given this deck to, I have revised the list to the following:

Mono Black Workshop

Creatures (11)
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Juggernaut
3 Sundering Titan

Black Control (9)
4 Duress
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
2 Contagion

Artifact Control (10)
4 Trinisphere
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Chalice of the Void

Black Utility (8)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Necropotence
4 Dark Ritual

Mana (22)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
4 Mishra’s Workshop
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
7 Swamp

Sideboard:
4 Ankh of Mishra
2 Contagion
3 Coffin Purge
3 Engineered Plague
3 Tsabo's Web

Further testing will tell, but the acceleration gained by moxen seems to make a major difference. Nether Void was dead, and Consultation is far more effective (and fun) than vampiric tutor.

The sideboard still needs work, but the deck has been seriously improved.

The debate: Mind's Eye or Necropotence?

EITD

[Mixing Mike]

The debate: Mind's Eye or Necropotence?

Both.

[JesseRiver]

Ankh of mishra is very good against dragon because they can't animate dragon without dying.  It looks okay but I would also suggest night's whisper.

[Kowal]

Did you forget Necromancy exists?

[MuzzonoAmi]

I definately think you should use both Necro and Mind's Eye. In Slax, which ran only minimal acceleration for budget reasons, Mind's Eye was a bomb. Here, where it's easier to cast, it should be an even bigger bomb because it comes down faster. Necro just wins games by itself against any deck. It's so broken, there's not a reason to cut it from any deck that can support it.

[Nantuko Rice]

I was bored one day and was tetsing a deck similar to this.

It ws basically the same thing... workshops, rituals, and fat men like Jugger, Su-Chi, and Titan.

My conclusions? The deck sucks horribly.

You're more reliant on your opening hand and topdecks than every other pre-existing prision decks.

Yup... that's what my testing showed. You're opening hand better be workshop, 2 fat men (assuming one dies to something), or workshop and disruption. When I first had the deck together I really like it because I've always loved suicide black and I thought this would work (I called it Sui-Sh*t.... or Sui-Brown).

However... the deck is just worser than Legend Suicide Black. After spending your entire hand in the first two turns... you'll have about 2 threats on the table and possibly a few lock components that don't lock very well.

[everythingitouchdies]

Did you forget Necromancy exists?

I am not sure I follow this... was it in response to Ankh of Mishra?

Also I agree that it needs both Mind's Eye and Necro, and I am considering Razormane Masticore SB against Aggro.

Night's Whisper is solid, but I just cant find a place for it. This deck is a tender build at best, trying to do more things than a deck can really do. The idea is sound, but it needs to work much harder than most workshop decks to win.

[Kowal]

If I'm playing Dragon and you control Ankh of Mishra, I cast Necromancy on your turn, and mill your library away with a jillion Ankh triggers on the stack. Then I Ancestral targeting you and you lose before I do.

[Zherbus]

Sundering Titan: The current broken creature of the format, he becomes an easy drop and difficult threat for this deck. Between workshops and rituals the 8 in his casting cost is manageable.

Um, doesn't Trinisphere and Nether Void make your Rituals (and Will to an extent) piss-poor? When I ran Nether Void 2 years ago, we could get away with Rituals and Will since there were only 3 Voids that were only dropped into play to seal a superior board condition.

The difference here is that with an effective SEVEN Nether Voids (Trinisphere and Void) and only running 12 black sources INCLUDING Lotus, you are drawing a poopload of dead Rituals and quite possibly a dead Will through the course of the game. Trinisphere will be played whether you're winning OR losing, so it's not like Void where you'd wait for the right time.

This all leads to the big question of HOW does Titan get reliably cast? Even Workshop decks WITH Moxen (read: permanent mana sources) rely on Welder to get him into play as often as it does.

UPDATE: I just noticed the new deck has all the moxen, which seems to make running Titan a little less nonsensical, but now you have 3 fewer black sources to use for Rituals.

[serialjester]

Sundering Titan: The current broken creature of the format, he becomes an easy drop and difficult threat for this deck. Between workshops and rituals the 8 in his casting cost is manageable.

Um, doesn't Trinisphere and Nether Void make your Rituals (and Will to an extent) piss-poor? When I ran Nether Void 2 years ago, we could get away with Rituals and Will since there were only 3 Voids that were only dropped into play to seal a superior board condition.

The difference here is that with an effective SEVEN Nether Voids (Trinisphere and Void) and only running 12 black sources INCLUDING Lotus, you are drawing a poopload of dead Rituals and quite possibly a dead Will through the course of the game. Trinisphere will be played whether you're winning OR losing, so it's not like Void where you'd wait for the right time.

This all leads to the big question of HOW does Titan get reliably cast? Even Workshop decks WITH Moxen (read: permanent mana sources) rely on Welder to get him into play as often as it does.

UPDATE: I just noticed the new deck has all the moxen, which seems to make running Titan a little less nonsensical, but now you have 3 fewer black sources to use for Rituals.

I worked on this deck Myself when Darksteel came out, much different but with the same idea and here's what I found.

3sphere makes Rituals and Will dead draws after it hits, sure. But you treat them as Workshops 5-8 for purposes of casting 3sphere and Chalice 1st turn with no Shop in hand. That they speed out the black components as well is gravy. I did run a few more Swamps than his build, because of 3sphere.

Under 3sphere this deck always disrupted well(and this was before Crucible) but couldn't reliably pump out threats, which is why artifact creatures were mandatory and morphs drew some attention, as they were the easiest to drop under 3sphere. Karn was a house, with his multipurpose approach. Ravager was cool in a way, as My version had Tangle Wires and let Me tap the opponent down on his turn, then sac it eot to pump the Ravager. It also gave Me an out when the 3sphere or Chalice I had cast was messing with casting the spells I had in hand. I also tried Masknought in this, because of Mask being unaffected by 3sphere, and that was good if I could start with heavy disruption, then dropping the Mask off a Shop was no big deal. There weren't as many Null Rods as there are now, so this option is tenous at best. It also sounds janky, but creatures like Bane of the Living and Grinning Demon weren't all that bad, I think that at least the Bane has some merit in today's field, with the kind of disruption this deck can pack.
I don't think 3 Titans should be in the deck. 1 and 1 sideboard would be good. I'd run a Platinum Angel in one of the slots and maybe a Triskellion in the other.

However, I do think this is one of those 'shelf it for later' ideas, as it has alot of strong points but is lacking creatures that will work with the rest of the deck. Unfortunately the creature base of Black right now sucks and doesn't lend alot to this deck, and the presence of Null Rod makes some artifact creatures I'd like to run kind of pointless.

[Zherbus]

I know what rituals are supposed to do. The fact remains that the disruption in the deck confuses itself. Also, I would hate to be on this side of a Workshop mirror. A trinisphere means nothing to them, but nails a few of your cards, the Duress and Chains do sqaut when they have Welder, and Chalice doesn't really nail all that much.

[everythingitouchdies]

The idea behind this was to try and work on something different. I agree that the disruption inconsistent, the sphere being the most effective and not synergistic with the entire build.

I indeed intended on shelving this deck for later, incapable of making it flow the way I wanted it to. However, I posted to see if I could get some insight that I was missing. Through discussion and criticism I have certainly made the deck stronger, but at best it is an inferior deck for the current era.

I have thought that it may be considerably better with Illusionary Mask. It changes the direction some, but it gets around the trouble caused by its inconsistency.

EITD

[Gabethebabe]

Well, Zherbus said it more or less what is quite clear to me: To put Sundering Titan in a deck with no other way to get it into play then collect 8 mana and hardcast it is a very very VERY bad idea.

So if you further want to improve the deck: my idea is to kick out the Titan or find an alternative way to get it into play.

[Covetous]

I have contemplated a deck like this for a long time, but from a different angle.  I wanted to build an aggro deck around The Abyss (my favorite card ever).  Thus, I made the deck an all-artifact workshop aggro deck that turned out to be mono-black.  The Abyss is a very powerful weapon against anything that has non-artifact creatures (duh), and can solve some of your problems with a lack of removal.  I also feel that, while contagion is a really good card in many situations, it's not that good under 3sphere.  Same with DR--unless you go DR-->3sphere, you will not be happy with the DRs.  I'm also not thrilled with Hippie in a deck with workshops.  Unless you go DR--> Hippie, it's not that strong.  Negator is probably better, and still probably not good enough.  

For acceleration, I have found that Metalworker is strong, but not that useful after the initial few turns, in general.  He does, however, allow early titans to hit the table.  I'm not sure if chains is better than having your own card advantage engine--chains can be huge, but it can also fall flat, and can be played around by a wise opponent.  When I build my Abyss deck, I tried to stay away from anything with BB or BBB in the CC, to prevent problems with workshop, etc.  I used cabal therapy instead of hymn, and also used su-chi and solemn simulacrum, which synergize well with cabal therapy.  Su-Chi/Cabal therapy is a decent way to poop out a titan early (turn 1 workshop/mox-->su-chi, turn 2 cabal therapy/flashback-->titan).  Night's whisper is a good card-draw spell in a deck like this--it's cheap and effective.  I ran mishra's factory in my build because it was 1.5, and thus had no moxen, etc.  They wouldn't be bad in a deck with crucible, but might dilute the black sources (i.e. the use of solemn despite the fact that he's not beefy).  Just my 2 cents.  

I still think that the use of welder is much stronger than any alternative, so mono-B will have trouble competing with any red-based deck of this type.

[ump]

What's the advantage of Hypnotic Specter over Withered Wretch?  It seems the Wretch's graveyard removal as well as being 2/2 is better than the Specter whose only advantage seems to be flying.  The Specter also has a disadvantage with a Chains in play causing your opponent to draw instead of discard.

[SimpleHiker]

What's the advantage of Hypnotic Specter over Withered Wretch?  It seems the Wretch's graveyard removal as well as being 2/2 is better than the Specter whose only advantage seems to be flying.  The Specter also has a disadvantage with a Chains in play causing your opponent to draw instead of discard.

You should have some idea of what you are talking about when you post about card and rules interactions. Please check out the thread about chains in the rules forum.
Chains question in rules forum

The Specter also has this crazy discard ability in addition to its flying that can make it a great choice.

SH

[jdl]

The Specter also has a disadvantage with a Chains in play causing your opponent to draw instead of discard.

The line on Chains that reads "If the player discards a card, he or she draws a card." doesn't live in isolation.  All of the card text together is one replacement effect for a draw.

Maybe I'm just not getting what you mean.

[ump]

Sorry.  I'm not a rules expert so I probably made a mistake on the Chains interpretation.  I'm sure I'm not the first one.

[Jacob Orlove]

With 6 voids and chalices and crucibles, wouldn't mishra's factories be a better threat than the Titans?

Specter really does seem weak, but Wretch doesn't look any better.

[Matt]

No, Wretch is pretty good right now, foiling Welders and Crucibles, and participating in everyone's favorite hobby - beating for two. But specter is ass.