Mono-black legacy

[FatherVenom]

My local shop is running a mono-black (mostly, a few artifacts are allowed) legacy tourney to celebrate Halloween this year seeing as the new set only dropped recently and mono-black type 2 is a little difficult at this point unless we want to see everyone running the same deck.

It's been a long time since I've played legacy, but I happened to have a gimpy ThrummingRats deck cobbled together.  Looking at it now it's not really acceptable.

Previous decklist:
17 Swamp
22 Relentless Rats
4 Thrumming Stone
4 Dark Ritual
4 Diabolic Edict
2 Diabolic Tutor
2 Bone Harvest


My feeling is that bone harvest is too reactionary and it's a free one or two turns for my opponent.  Diabolic Edict takes care of Reanimator (very likely to see at least one), but that doesn't really fit the deck theme of getting in there with a bunch of rats.

So I was thinking that I'd drop the Edicts and Harvests and replace them with 4 Duress and 2 Cranial Extraction since Rats really only hates Extirpate and Cranial Extraction, and gets slowed down by Damnation.  Also in the running were Thoughtseize, Extirpate and Cabal Therapy, but those were just preliminary thoughts.  Another fun idea was to run Soothestoke Kindler to try to cut the deck down a turn, but it seems a little fragile.

I was also thinking about taking out two rats and four swamps for 2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and 4 Cabal Coffers since they accelerate the deck around the turns it wants to go off.

I'm not expecting to see a heck of a lot of competition at this level of deck building, but thought that this would be a good exercise in theoretical deck building.

Comments? Suggestions?  All ideas are welcome... except compost (haha to the last guy who recommended that.).

[ShoryuuReppaX]

How about Peat Bog from Mercadian Masques for acceleration?
Damnation seems rather good against your deck, since I think the fastest you can attack is turn 5. Instead of Bone Harvest, how about Haunting Misery? (Weatherlight)
Ever considered Innocent Blood? It kills your creatures too, but once you have your army out you shouldn't care that much anymore.
Ever considered Desperate Ritual, Insidious Dreams, or Tainted Pact for search?
This is kind of an oddball idea, but what about Serum Powder?

[FatherVenom]

Peat Bog is much better than cabal coffers for the acceleration I would need.
Haunting misery seems good, especially considering I wanted a non rat win condition just in case.  I'd run it as a one of as a backup... potentially.  Definately as a sideboard card if our meta runs a lot of damnations.

Search isn't normally a problem because you can't keep a hand without a stone unless you have three lands and only rats and rits and think you can kill with aggro.  Some of your suggestions require removing cards from my deck, which is a really bad idea since you lose rats most of the time.  Tainted blood is nice, but except for Reanimator (which usually has other options anyway) you can normally just run the other guy over.

The problem is with the way the deck is played.  Generally you don't flood the board with rats because it makes the deck vulnerable.  One damnation and you scoop.  You traditionally only thrumm up 6-8 rats depending on any earlier rat drops.

Btw with a perfect hand the deck can win on turn 2 (all four rituals, swamp, stone, rat), and with a very nice hand can win on turn three.