MonoBlack: NOT suicide

[Discozombie]

Suicide black is dead, dead, dead.  But that doesn't mean that monblack in general has to be dead.  Here is a variant I was working on during the reign of 4 gush GAT, I have tweaked it for todays environment.

PC Void (Planar/Chalice)

The Team (16)

4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Withered Wretch
4 Plaguebearer
4 Nantuko Shade

The Tools (18)

4 Chalice of the Void
4 Planar Void
4 Chains of Mephistopheles
4 Powder Keg
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Demonic Tutor

The Fuel (26)

4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Sol Ring
15 Swamps
4 Mishra's Factory

The Reserves
4 Cranial Extraction
4 Duress
4 Null Rod
3 Nether Void

Methods behind the madness

Phyrexian Negator- big beats and with all the enchantments and other stuff to drop down in the deck the sac a perm drawback can be reduced.  Also a pinch way to get rid of your own chaice if it is stopping you

Withered Wretch- shoot the graveyard, stop welders

Plaguebearer- shoot welders/soldiers

Nantuko Shade- pumpable fat for mid-late game

Chalice of the Void- I almost always set this at 1 to stop brainstorm, STP, welder

Planar Void- just too damn good in the current format

Chains of Mephistopheles- stops draw engines dead. and combinded with planar void it becomes even better

Powder Keg- generic removal.

Demonic Consultation Demonic Tutor- search engine

Dark Ritual Black Lotus Mox Jet Sol Ring- XL

Mishra's Factory- extra mana plus extra beats.

Board Choices

Cranial Extraction- just too damn sexy to not run, it is the super lobotomny!  Kills combo dead

Duress- against control

Null Rod- against artifact decks/slaver

Nether Void-this lets the deck go kind of transformational

There are some omissions that may be leaving a few of you worried...

Yawg Will:  planar void and this do not play well together.  I do not miss it.

Waste/Strip/Sink:  these are just not cutting it.  If suicide black is no so bad why to people keep trying to rebuild monoblack with the same formula, the same goes for Hymn.  Land kill is not the best form of disruption available anymore and hymn helps out too many decks now.

[leviat]

Don't you think Withered Wretch + Planar Void MD is overkill?

I think before you can replace Suicide black you need to figure why it's dead. Duress and Strips were the very best part of Suicide, getting rid of those does not "fix" your bad matchups.

Plaguebearer however is extreme hotness with Oath becoming so popular.

In short, I think you have some good ideas here but your not really fixing the deficiencies of Sui. (Negator just isn't that great anymore)

[Limbo]

Plaguebearer however is extreme hotness with Oath becoming so popular.

With the plaguebearer you can eat spirits, but the plaguebearer itself is not invisible for oath of druids...

If you want to continue with this list, please add necro. Anything running 4 rituals + lotus should add it. It even dodges chains.

[leviat]

Plaguebearer however is extreme hotness with Oath becoming so popular.

LOL, oh yeah. Yep... umm... go back to the drawing board.

[andrewpate]

At the very least, the MD Factories should be 1 Strip, 3 Wasteland.  With Crucible so prevalent, you don't want nonbasic lands to be a factor in your kill condition, and without Duress and Sinkhole you don't have the disruption that Suicide used to use to create the long games where Factory was good.  Keep in mind that this will also render opposing Wastelands, etc. completely null:  you will have no nonbasics.

At cursory glance, my suggestions would be:

-4 Mishra's Factory
-1 Planar Void
-1 Chains of Mephistopheles
+1 Strip Mine
+3 Wasteland
+1 Necropotence
+1 Vampiric Tutor

And with a bit more diddling I guarantee that Duress would end up maindeck, and you might consider running fetches just to get your swamps for deck thinning.  That was pretty hot in Standard and merits a look in monocolored aggro with such low threat density.  Again, that's just after a quick look.

[MSR9889]

i hav to agree that the wrech and the void is overkill. personally i would just go with wrech, main deck duress in its place, and DEFINETLY put in 4-5 strips. maybe even sb the crucible with it. duress hurts EVERY DECK. 4 chalice might also be a bit much. maybe 2-3 and add a necro and a vamp tutor

[Machinus]

Don't run chalice, don't run void.

Add duresses, will, and null rods.

Plaguebearer isn't good against oath because it_is_a_creatre.

Chains is nice, but that leaves you with 0 library manipulation besides the two demonics. Whisper is good in black control.

[Joblin Velder]

Is it me, or is this build moving closer and closer to sui?

[jpmeyer]

Is it me, or is this build moving closer and closer to sui?

Wow.  You're right  :shock:

[Discozombie]

the point of having wretch and planar void is to throughly prevent all the graveyard tricks out there.  This would prevent the crucible waste recursion some people seem to be scared of.  Also to address the will questions, will sucks with planar void, it is not worth the addition.  

Yes the match up against oath is horrible, the mishras do help.  If oath is a major concern dystopia can be added to the sideboard or diabolic edict for darksteel colossus.  Hell cranial extraction for their win condition might put a bit of a damper on their strategy.

Again and again the problem occurs whenever anyone brings up a monoblack deck the same two things seem to happen.  People say suicide sucks and it is a dead archetype, then they make suggestions for how to turn the deck right back into stock suicide.  What a brilliant bunch of netdeckers.

Sinkhole/Waste/Strip are just not as effective in this deck as its other tools it has.  with the abundance of fetch lands players simply wait to use their fetch effects until their lands are targeted.  Mishra gives the deck another creature and mana at the same time.

The deck is modular with parts coming in and out from the board to the main depending on your play style and meta.

Here are the tools that can go in the 4 maindeck slots

Chalice of the Void
Planar Void
Chains of Mephistopheles
Powder Keg
Null Rod
Duress

for control
Duress
Chains
Chalice
Keg

in an artifact heavy meta

Keg
Rod
Planar Void
duress

[Necrologia]

You do realize that Planar Void does nothing to stop Welder right? It's a triggered ability, so all a player has to do is discard a fatty/slaver/whatever, and weld a mox in response to the void trigger.

Duress also needs to be main. Is there any deck you wouldn't want to bring it in against? Aggro maybe? Even then it's not dead, so I can see no reason to run it SB.

Right away that gives us:

-4 Void
+4 Duress

Moving on, Cranial Extraction does nothing at all for the combo matchup. It's a 4 cc sorcery, and outside out Belcher it's dead. Death Long runs 4 Death wish, a Burning Wish, and a Tendrils main. The best you can do is knock it to 2 maindeck win conditions. TPS will still have Colossus or Cunning Wish. Not so hot. This is of course assuming you can resolve it. No matter what it does it's still a 4 cc sorcery, and you don't have nearly enough accel to cast it consistently before combo can kill you.

As a dedicated combo player I can tell you I'm much more afraid of Duress and Null Rod than I will ever be of Cranial Extraction.

[serialjester]

Or you could maindeck Engineered Plague, because calling one of the following:

Goblin, Pentavite-Slaver, Welder.dec
Spirit-Oath
Faeries, Wizard-Fish
Sliver-Dragon
Gorilla, Soldier-4cC, Tog

And so on and so forth, granted some of those are situational at best, but are at least viable. At the moment, I think to play monoblack is to play a very narrow, very unforgiving hate deck. The problem it faces is that the creature base of monoblack absolutely sucks, which makes your next best bet artifact creatures, which suffer from the fact that everyone is packing answers to artifacts in one form or another. Karn, Juggernauts and Solemn Simulacrum are decent choices, from the forays into nonsuicide monoblack I've made.

[Jacob Orlove]

Moved to newbie.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

Like other people said, wretch is good but void is unessesary and doesn't even do that much.  Wretch is certainly sufficient.

4 chains might also be overkill.  I would probably drop it to 3 as you do have acess to tutoring.  (although multiple chains are not necessarily redundant, you only really need one to make draw and brainstorm suck)

I like chalice alot; it gives you a good hate disruption card against combo and control game 1.  4 is not overkill becasue multiple chalices just keep getting more and more evil   .

After you take out the voids adding will is a good idea.

Wasteland and strip mine are just really good.  Notice that although sinkholes have dissapeared the strip effects are still rampant?  This mean 1: they are strong so you should run them, 2: mishra's aren't that good because you lose the ability to laugh at the aforementioned rampant quantity of strip effects, which is an important strength and maybe the only reason to play a monocoloured deck.

Duress is also quite common, once again because it is really good.  Excellant replacement for voids; there are very few/almost no matchups where it is bad.

so, -4 factory -1 random mana source, +4 waste 1 strip.  Also, I'm not sure sol ring is that good in this deck, or even better than off colour moxen/lotus petal.

As has been mentioned extraction is really slow (even with rits) and narrow.

The weakness of sui was always it's inability to deal with things effectively in a non-proactive manner, however.  (you topdecked will?  Oh fuck)  Thus, although you have better disruption for the current meta than classicial sui (chains, keg > hym, sinkhole), you are still relying on proactively disrupting your opponent and hopeing not to die to shit you can't deal with, while killing at a slow speed for Vintage standards.

So, although all my suggestions might make it better, it probably won't be good.

[xrobx]

whomever says sui black is "dead dead dead" is wrong wrong wrong.

i don't want to explain this in great detail, but anyone who has half a brain can figure this one out.  DEPENDING on your meta, sui black can be extremely powerful.

hence, if you play in a heavy control meta, sui black flourishes.  you just need to accomidate for the basic idiot proofings, ie. play null rod.

artifact hate is huge, as blue is dominant in many meta's right now, as it hates out artifacts, and sui hates control blue.  sui doesnt mind hating control 4c/5c either.  if it's built right, it can do extremely well.  crucible of worlds DOES help sui's huge 9 LD base, and again null rod shuts down many highly powered environments/artifact based decks.

you need to be creative to play magic.  no deck is really ever dead, you just need to improve it.  granted, sui black hasn't gotten any new toys from new sets in awhile, but it still has great old cards that can be used effectively.

cuombajj witches own, as does null rod.  2 examples of how you can dominate the field with a sui black deck, by ass raping anything that plays:
monoU, fish (the witches eat them), welders, gro, hell they even kill pesky 1/1 stupid colorless spirit tokens, etc etc etc.  

use your brain, not what your dumb ego says about how sui black is dead.  if you believe it's dead without even trying it you are just following mindless rumors and don't deserve to live. please.

thanks.

[Necrologia]

i don't want to explain this in great detail, but anyone who has half a brain can figure this one out. DEPENDING on your meta, sui black can be extremely powerful.

So, in what matchup would you prefer to have sui black over fish? Both are budget decks that can be fully powered with 5 proxies. I remember JP posting about this ages ago, and he essentially couldn't come up with a single matchup.

Free counters + Draw engine > anything sui could ever hope to be.

[ROLAND]

I am a fanatic player of black. But I have to side with Necrologia on this one.  

I have a un-tested version of "fish" and at worst it takes 1 of 3 games from a version of Nether void pretty similiar to the one listed on the primer page by "OS-Vegeta". At best it goes 3-0. That is a deck not containing all the cards from a well constructed version of fish.

My Pox deck has a much harder time and it's been constructed from what little threads there are on the topic.

The best play you can hope for opening hand is to:

dark Rit+duress+hymm.
 
If they force it, you just got rid of two cards. If they daze it, not so much.

I had to dust off my cuombajj witches and look at the text. Not a card I would want running around with a negator. Anything that allows your opponnet to choose=not good for you.

I'm not trying to be mean or harsh, but black has limitations. It's best left to splashing a color to deal with  artifacts & enchantments. Also if you want to get rid of lots of creatures use infest  or pernicious deed.

The top type one players and alot of the top people in these forums know what they are talking about.  They wouldn't tell you something that wasn't true.

Net decking has also become popular and alot of kids in cards shops around the world are building fish decks because they are cheap. And they win!

I have beaten some of the top decks in today's metagame (with my Void Deck), but more so because of bad draw or lesser skill than myself. I'm not bragging, I'm just telling you my experiences. Take them for what you will.

I would choose fish over suicide black for tournament play.

Roland

[Joblin Velder]

As much as I dislike the lack of synergy between the witches and the negators, they do wonders in the fish match up. With 3 toughness, they're sticking around if they resolve. I tried them against slaver. It helped, but it's still pretty much unwinable.

[ROLAND]

The witches stick around assuming two things:

1. Your opponent is not playing any bounce spells in the deck.  In which case he will bounce and wait to counter it.

2. Your opponent has no cards in hand. Which is unlikely because one of blue's strengths is card drawing.

Some Fish decks run echoing truth to take care of this problem.

Roland

[Toad]

artifact hate is huge, as blue is dominant in many meta's right now, as it hates out artifacts, and sui hates control blue.  sui doesnt mind hating control 4c/5c either.

Suicide Black hateD Control. Now Control runs Brainstorm and Polluted Delta. And sometimes Goblin Welder. Then Suicide Black loses to Control. Duress sucks when the Control player has Brainstorm in hand. Hymn to Tourach sucks when the Control player has a Goblin Welder on the board. Sinkhole is horrible when facing Polluted Delta.

[AggressiveDude]

artifact hate is huge, as blue is dominant in many meta's right now, as it hates out artifacts, and sui hates control blue.  sui doesnt mind hating control 4c/5c either.

Suicide Black hateD Control. Now Control runs Brainstorm and Polluted Delta. And sometimes Goblin Welder. Then Suicide Black loses to Control. Duress sucks when the Control player has Brainstorm in hand. Hymn to Tourach sucks when the Control player has a Goblin Welder on the board. Sinkhole is horrible when facing Polluted Delta.

What if Suicide would cut Sinkhole for something like Smother.
With 4x Diabolic Edicts and 4x Smother I guess Hmyn would still be good.

And what if Sui would run Crucible and some Fetchlands?With Fetchlands you have a lesser Chance of entering the Top Deck Modus and Cruncible with Waste/Strips combined with Discard seems powerfull.

[Jacob Orlove]

What if Suicide would cut Sinkhole for something like Smother.
With 4x Diabolic Edicts and 4x Smother I guess Hmyn would still be good.

And what if Sui would run Crucible and some Fetchlands?With Fetchlands you have a lesser Chance of entering the Top Deck Modus and Cruncible with Waste/Strips combined with Discard seems powerfull.

Then you start getting hands like Swamp, Fetch, Smother, Crucible, Hymn, Shade, Negator--which just loses to pretty much everything.

[cssamerican]

The best Suicide list I have ever played is just a fast consistent aggro deck with discard. It sucks versus other aggro decks, but it is decent vesus anything else. Most people seem to want to make it this fancy control deck  using Nantuko Shade and Hypnotic Specter which is always going to suck against everything.

[Veru_]

How would you feel about altering your creature base around plague spitter? You'd get a bit slower deck in the end, but I think that the ability to take out EVERY problematic utility creature/weenie AND deal three damage a turn would be worth it.

Your other creatures could be Withered wretch, and whatever you are fond of, as long as it has more than one toughness.

[martyr]

Plague Spitter kills most of your other creatures, causes you to sacrifice a creature/land/whatever if you have negator at the same time, is a mana sink with Nantuko Shade, and is generally anti-synergistic with the whole deck. However, it is really powerful, and you coulld probably heavily modify the deck to take more advantage of it.

I played MBC in T2 when it was Mercadian Masques block and Invasion, and  Plague Spitter was sick. It took out mana from fires and was as close to an auto-win against standard builds of Blue Skies (which is very similar to Fish).

Plaguebearer, however, still hoses man-lands. w00t for 'bearer.

[The M.E.T.H.O.D]

Its funny that when you mention Mono Black in the title, you have to mention "not sui".

Despite the deck not being suicide black, it looks like it peforms worse then the original which is a horrific thought to me.

The deck worked against OLD SCHOOL control decks and that was the only time the disruption/ld worked.  Since then there have many cards printed and deck types have evolved consistantly which drowns this deck and gives it the same fate of all the other outdated decks.

No matter how many tweaks and changes you give it, you can't teach this dog a new trick.  It's disruption/fast beats or fastbeats/random cards configuration that you currently have won't work.  You bow before the power of workshop, the speed of combo, and new age control that draws a billion cards like control slaver or tog.  Shade and Negator might seem like good creatures, but they don't beat juggernauts, sundering titans, togs, exalted angels, pentavus, and a crapload of threats which are hard to get rid of and usually come back into play if you manage to get rid of one.

Im not being elitist, or an asshole, or sui-bashing which is in style now, but its just important to let a dead deck stay dead.  Maybe in the future there might be some insane card printed that brings it back (doubtful), so until then just give it a rest.

[BigMac]

I played a black deck with some white splashed in there (balance, seal of cleansing and vindicate, with an option to STP) that did very well. Its worst matchup was critterdecks with dd. (FCG and fish spring to mind)

It was described by people as a black/white control deck and that pretty much is what it is. At the time CoW wasnt here yet but that could easilly be put in this deck and Nether void can be replaced with Trinisphere easy.

Here is the decklist i recommend
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duress
4 Nantuko Shade
1 Necropotence
4 Sinkhole
3 Crucible of Worlds
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Withered Wretch
1 Yawgmoth's Will
3 Vindicate
1 Balance
2 Seal of Cleansing
34 spells

Lands (26):
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Plains
4 Scrubland
1 Strip Mine
8 Swamp
4 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath

As for sideboard i would say at least have a couple of orim's chant and abeyance, as well as planar void and null rod. Last but not least chains of mephistopholes.

This deck is very good in a control matchup. So perhaps worth a look at.

[ReAnimator]

This is copied from a thread i posted on further down the page concerning nethervoid and it is really similar to BigMac's list so i figured i'd post it since  if 2 people came up with similar ideas maybe there is something to it.

as far as mono black goes it has to be a control/mana denial deck or else it just wont work for all the already stated reasons (card drawing, speed, ect)

This is a deck i've been working on to lend to my unpowered friends to play at turnies,
The deck is focused on mana denial but it has a lot of room for custimization and meta gaming.

Dark Harvest

4 cumbajj witches
4 Withered Wretch
2 Greater Harvester
4 Duress
4 Sinkhole
4 Crucible of worlds
4 Dark rituals
3 Null Rod*
3 Pox
1 VT
1 DT
1 Will
1 Necro
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Lotus
1 Jet
1 Petal
1 Chrome mox**
5 Strips
1 Volraths stronghold
12 Swamps

SB (obviously this is meta dependant so i will list what should and what could be in here)
4 Chalice of the Void * These go maindeck instead of null rods sometimes
3 Chains of Meph (this can be a 5 proxy deck and these are proxies 3-5)

These are the only necessary sb things the rest is just what could be in there

Hymn, Dystopia, Nevs Disk, Nether Voids, more edicts, mutilate, Drinker of sorrow/negator, Spawning pit/helm of obiedience/Eon hub/any anti oath teck, Tormods crypt, cabal therapy,

Chrome mox is better in here as you dont need off colour moxen for anything, all the key spells are solid black.
The artifact mana is never really dead even if you have a rod/chalice in play as you can discard them to pox.

This is obviously a very metagame dependant deck, there is little combo in my area but lots of workshops and LOTS of control, which is the reasoning behind running cards like C witches and Edicts main deck, they could easily be replaced with something like Nights whisper or Nether void.

It would be quite easy to do a splash sideboard with 4 fetches main deck i just didn't like the extra pain with the witches and pox. You could run blue for energy flux, or red for R&R Viashino heretic, or white for Vindicate and swords, its really up to you.

[martyr]

Here is the decklist i recommend
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
4 Dark Ritual
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Duress
4 Nantuko Shade
1 Necropotence
4 Sinkhole
3 Crucible of Worlds
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Withered Wretch
1 Yawgmoth's Will
3 Vindicate
1 Balance
2 Seal of Cleansing
34 spells

Lands (26):
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Plains
4 Scrubland
1 Strip Mine
8 Swamp
4 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath

You're going to hate me for suggesting this, but perhaps you should play Mishra's Workshop in this? If you're going to play Trinisphere and Crucible in such numbers, you might as well, and then you could replace Negator and friends with more solid artifact threats, like Razormane Masticore, Su Chi and Juggernaut. Keeping the ridiculous black disruption and the versatility that White gives you is easy, as the majority of the best spells in each color (with the exception of Hymn and possibly Sinkhole) have only single colored mana costs. Perhaps something along the lines of...

3x Razormane Masticore
4x Su Chi
4x Juggernaut

3x Swords to Plowshares
3x Seal of Cleansing
4x Duress
2x Vindicate

1x Demonic Tutor
1x Demonic Consultation
1x Balance
1x Yawgmoth's Will

4x Trinisphere
3x Crucible of Worlds

4x Dark Ritual
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Jet
4x Mishra's Workshop
4x Caves of Koilos
4x Scrubland
1x Strip Mine
4x Wasteland
1x City of Brass

This way your threats are large enough that you can side in Plague Spitters against bs like Fish, and you have white's excellent sb'ing options.

Man, Trinisphere looks hot in that list.

[BigMac]

I have actually thought of playing workshops in this deck but even though you only need 1 colour for a spellit is hard to get a stable manabase for it. I will not dismiss is upfront though and will certainly look at it soon.

I wouldnt play Su/Chi though, as there is no way i can use that kind of mana when it dies. But there probably are a number of great artifact critters that could accompany the juggies.