Nationals Nostalgia.

My original intent was to make this post about the MagicHouse Cube, but my lack of access to the Cube itself -- it being at home in the United States -- severely hinders my ability to do so.

As such, I'll share an idea that's been lurking in my head for a while now.

US Nationals is at the beginning of August. I fondly remember last year's Nationals, even though it was where I made my single most embarrassing Magic mistake. While I played UGW Blink in that tourney, I qualified for it by winning South Florida regionals with a deck I loved: Mono-Black Rack.

3 Plagued Rusalka
4 Dark Confidant
4 Withered Wretch
4 Ravenous Rats
3 Yixlid Jailer
3 Garza's Assassin

4 Cry of Contrition
4 Smallpox
4 The Rack
3 Stupor
2 Slaughter Pact
1 Phyrexian Arena

1 Pendelhaven
20 Swamp

SB:
4 Blackmail
3 Deathmark
2 Extirpate
3 Last Gasp
3 Leyline of the Void

Unfortunately, this deck was focused around a number of number of Ravnica Block cards that really made the deck function. Dark Confidant in particular was incredibly important to the deck and Cry of Contrition was an amazing role-player. The deck's immense synergy was what made it work, as none of the cards besides Confidant are particular powerful on their own. The deck could even afford to play some pretty generic two-drops in the form of Withered Wretch and Yixlid Jailer for an advantage in the Dredge matchup; the quality of the creatures that get sacrificed to Smallpox or get in some early damage were relatively unimportant, as long as they had two power.

On the other hand, the deck had a fairly weak matchup versus aggro (Gruul being the popular aggro archetype at the time). Kird Ape's three toughness and fast clock were particularly hard to handle. However, I managed to still win the matchup four times over the seven rounds of Swiss, mostly because many of my opponents didn't really know how to manage their hand versus MBR's salvo of discard.

Overall, the deck loses:

Plagued Rusalka
Dark Confidant
Cry of Contrition
Phyrexian Arena
Blackmail
Last Gasp
Leyline of the Void

Most of these are either unnecessary in the current metagame (due to the lack of Dredge) or have easy replacements. However, the loss of Confidant and Cry were so devastating that the archetype fell to the wayside.

However, with the release of Eventide, I think that there are now equivalents for both of these cards, although they may be a bit deceptive. In addition, with the lack of Dredge, the deck can become much more focused.

The new Eventide card that fits into this archetype is Raven's Crime. While this card is not exactly equivalent to Cry of Contrition, as it will never be a two-for-one, it has the ability to be a virtual two-for-one (in discarding an unnecesary land, since the deck's curve is extremely low) and has the additional ability to give The Rack more reach later in the game.

The replacement for Dark Confidant, on the other hand, requires a bit more stretching: Bitterblossom. While the two cards have different functions -- drawing cards and making tokens, obviously -- but both fill a very similar role: creating a wave of advantage at the cost of life. Of course, Bitterblossom is a constant cost while Confidant was variable, and Confidant was extremely possible to remove with your own cards (Smallpox and Rusalka). As such, including Bitterblossom changes the deck somewhat, but it gives the deck an extremely powerful card with which to combat the current suite of powerful Standard decks.

Before starting the construction of this deck, I want to address a card that many, seeing its immense synergy with Smallpox and discard in general, splashed for: Tarmogoyf. This card is obviously incredibly powerful, and with the new Eventide BG filter land is easier than ever to include. While I'm going to consider a mono-black version of the deck at first, it seems almost inevitable that this card will get included.

To begin actually crafting a decklist, let's start with what I believe is the pure core of the deck:

4 Bitterblossom
4 Raven's Crime
4 The Rack
4 Smallpox

This is the essential engine of the deck. Raven's Crime and Smallpox help empty hands and cripple boards, while Bitterblossom and The Rack do the job of actually killing the opponent.

Beyond these cards, we need creatures to fill out the curv and some more spells -- most likely more discard or removal.

The first card I believe is an auto-include here is Thoughtseize. This card not only fits the discard theme of the deck (subsequently increasing the power of the other discard spells, as well as The Rack) but also solves a huge number of potential problems for this deck -- most importantly, other Bitterblossoms and Chameleon Colossus. MBR has no good answers to these cards once they are in play, so including Thoughtseize gives the deck a cheap, effective solution.

For the same reasons, I believe Stupor is an incredibly powerful card for this deck, in addition to being an actual two-for-one. While it will probably not ever hit a Bitterblossom, it can quite possibly hit Colossus, which is actually the bigger problem for this deck.

Since we're adding a whopping seven discard spells, four of which cost one, it seems reasonable to reduce the count of Raven's Crime by one. Unlike Cry of Contrition, drawing multiples is not terribly exciting, so this shouldn't reduce the card's effectiveness at all.

4 Bitterblossom

4 The Rack

4 Smallpox
4 Thoughtseize
3 Raven's Crime
3 Stupor

This should be the last of exclusive discard spells to be included, as there are still no actual creatures in this deck, and room for removal is needed as well.

Let's handle both problems at once. I think that one of the more exciting sub-engines that could be included here is Scarblade Elite + Nameless Inversion. The Elite fills nicely the role of Withered Wretch -- which was mostly just a 2/2 for two -- and Nameless Inversion is a versatile, unbounded removal spell (unlike Terror, the other big removal consideration) and gives the Elite four more cards to activate itself with. This package adds both a good creature and a strong package of removal to the deck. Note that these eight Elf cards will significantly facilitate a green splash for Tarmogoyf, as it gives Gilt-Leaf Palace a decent chance of coming into play untapped.

If we're adding this Assassin sub-theme, it seems perfectly logical to include Garza's Assassin. This card was responsible for a large number of wins at the South Florida Regionals and gives the Elites more Assassins to devour.

Another playable Assassin is, of course, Murderous Redcap. Redcap has a lot of synergy with the deck as it stands now -- Persist is pretty exciting with Smallpox, after all -- so he's certainly worth consideration, but isn't quite the auto-include that the rest of the assassins are.

4 Scarblade Elite
3 Garza's Assassin

4 Bitterblossom

4 The Rack

4 Thoughtseize
4 Nameless Inversion
3 Raven's Crime
3 Stupor

The next cog of the deck to address is the "Rats". In my Regionals list this was taken care of by actual Ravenous Rats, which fit nicely into the deck, being an instant one-for-one and providing a great creature to use with Smallpox or Cry of Contrition.

While Rav Rats is still as good as ever for the purposes of discard and sacrificial lamb, its body has become stunningly irrelevant with the presence of higher-quality early drops, Chameleon Colossus (so it isn't even a dependable chump-blocker), and most of all Bitterblossom.

Eventide presents an interesting alternative in Hag Hedge-Mage, which provides a significantly better body at a higher cost. The issue, of course, is the two-swamp requirement on the Hag's ability. This won't be an issue if the deck remains monoblack, but a splash for Tarmogoyf will be stretching it.

The final option is one that was used in a lot of lists similar to mine at 2007 Regionals: Augur of Skulls. This guy is really just much better than Ravenous Rats, having both a relevant ability and a greater discard power. With the Rats' body nearing total irrelevance in this metagame, the fact that Augur can be killed before his discard goes off is less important. Trading Augur for a removal spell is virtually the same as casting Ravenous Rats anyway, except you probably hit a more relevant card!

4 Scarblade Elite
4 Augur of Skulls
3 Garza's Assassin

4 Bitterblossom

4 The Rack

4 Thoughtseize
4 Nameless Inversion
3 Raven's Crime
3 Stupor

The last slots in the deck should probably be devoted to another creature (as the creature count is still quite low) and it should probably shore up some of the current configuration's weaknesses.

Let's quickly list out this incomplete decklist's weaknesses:

• Great deal of self-imposed life loss (Bitterblossom + Thoughtseize)
• No large creatures
• Issues removing large Black creatures and pro-black creatures (Chameleon Colossus in particular)

While the addition of a card like Tendrils of Corruption coupld offset some of the life loss, the deck needs a good creature to help combat opposing creatures immune to the deck's removal, as well as increase its conventional clock.

Some of the aspects we're looking for in these last few creatures are: efficient power/toughness to cost ratio, evasion, low cost, castability in monoblack. Some kind of lifegain ability would be highly prized as well.

Dusk Urchins
Creakwood Liege
Stillmoon Cavalier
Dauthi Slayer
Stromgald Crusader
Hypnotic Specter
Graveborn Muse
Magus of the Abyss

Of these, the most exciting to me are Dusk Urchins and Creakwood Liege.

Dusk Urchins is a decently sized creature that is highly expendable, and can keep up the card flow. Getting two counters on Urchins and casting Smallpox seems like good times.

Creakwood Liege, on the other hand, shores up a ton of holes in the deck. It makes Bitterblossom more effective and able to combat tokens enhanced by Scion of Oona, it makes all the deck's pretty marginally-sized creatures more impressive (especially amusing with Dusk Urchins) and, of course, produces an army of tokens itself, gaining some card advantage versus decks where one-for-one removal might not be efficient enough. However, it does cost four, which will be a bit much with the deck's low land count and propensity to lose lands to Smallpox and Raven's Crime.

Stillmoon Cavalier seems pretty strong versus Faeries, as it is both unblockable by Bitterblossom tokens and immune to their removal spells, and can even survive combat with Mistbind Clique on both offense and defense.

My initial round of testing will be with this:


4 Scarblade Elite
4 Augur of Skulls
4 Dusk Urchins
2 Garza's Assassin
2 Creakwood Liege

4 Bitterblossom

4 The Rack

4 Thoughtseize
4 Nameless Inversion
3 Raven's Crime
3 Stupor

4 Mutavault
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
16 Swamp

A note about the mana. My instinct is that having all four Mutavaults could seriously hinder the deck's ability to cast spells. However, the Urborgs should help with that, and I think the deck's gameplan is greatly enhanced by Mutavault. The other problem is the low land-count, but only two spells in the deck cost over three mana, and most cost two or less. There's a good chance this manabase is way too greedy, but testing will reveal the truth of that.

Unfortunately, this deck will only be relevant for a short period of time. I'm going to really try and make this deck competitive -- I love the concept and the way this deck plays -- but in all likelihood it will not reach a finely-tuned state before it becomes completely irrelevant. Hopefully I'll be able to mop up some FNMs and such with it, though.

The sideboard is something that will be borne out of testing as well, but I think my initial skeleton will involve some number of Damnation, Puppeteer Clique, Cruel Edict, Extirpate/Faerie Macabre, Soul Snuffers, and Stillmoon Cavalier. There is also the possibility of splashing Green in the deck, but I'd rather keep it mono-black for the time being until I can figure out if the core of the deck is still competitive or not.

Tomorrow is GP: Madrid. It looks to be a huge event, and honestly I'm quite nervous about it. Spending a month in Spain with little to do other than prepare for this event has built it up greatly in my mind. While I don't particularly expect to Day 2 or finish well, I do have strong hopes for it, and I believe I've done everything I can to set myself up for it if the right Sealed Deck shows up.

Good luck to everyone in their Eventide release events over the weekend, should you attend. I'll be back with a tournament report for the GP, regardless of my level of success.

~Andres