#Monoblack

[usausa-art]

recent doodles

[gothzelda13]

Lady Liliana Vess

My love for Lili has been long and unending. She is strong, beautiful, and masterful. I have had a Lili Tribal EDH deck for many years. Originally helmed by Chainer, Dementia Master. Built solely on being a reanimator deck. Even after Origins Lili I kept Chainer in charge. But then WotC had Lili focus on Zombie tribal. Eventually gave in and now have Lili Heretical Healer commanding the deck. To get value out of most of the Lili 'Walker cards I had to restructure the deck. Lili's key focuses are:

Discard

Reanimate

Removal

Luckily there are a handful of cards that force and reward opponents discarding and sacrificing. Chief among them is Tergrid, God of Fright.

I know the deck can be mean. That's part of the fun. That's part of Lili's charm. Though the low land count does bite me in the ass often. But the offset is that I ignore high costs because I can reanimate the big ones. As well as people ignore Dark Realms long enough I can get that emblem. I hope to get a Cabal Coffers for her. But right now Cabal Stronghold works just fine since I only run basic Swamps.

With each new set I look for cards to go into my decks. Only find a few for Lili these days. Though a couple of my dream cards for this deck are the ones with Lili art, Snuff Out and Demonic Tutor. Anyways, here is my Lili Tribal deck Lili Defies Death.

[beatsandskies]

(p)Reconstructed: opening a portal to Otaria

Time again for some photos I took of a bunch of cardboard. You love it. I’ve decided I’m going to be a bit more selective when doing these: just highlighting decks that I’ve assembled which are notable for a reason, ones I can say something about, rather than just having a bunch of “this is another core set UR Spells deck” and “look at this exciting new take on a +1/+1 counter strategy”…

[futchgunk]

beating a precon deck feel rly good.

[takato1993]

darn just noticed today that Mirri Weatherlight duelist and Jetmir Nexus of Revels are kind of a nonbo together

also that the 2 Shelobs together are a nonbo just like people have been saying.

[evisso]

fun in the hallway 

[macabresymphonies]

It's very funny and in-character that this card is technically supposed to be zombie support/commander, but the amount of zombies she spits out, combined with all the inherent protection makes actually running zombies in decks with her unecessary. Like, she's zombie support AND the zombie army in one, the rest is just standard monoblack control.

[lesbianralzarek]

mtg standard decks i think the bg3 origins would play

astarion: monored aggro, but tbh i dont think hed even like it. he heard someone say its easy to pilot, and thats all Mr. Not Really The Planning Type needed to hear. bored and barely pays attention when hes playing. outside of the pun, i think orzhov bats would be a perfect fit for him, and make him feel smarter even if hes not the best at it

gale: keeps making combo decks and getting bored with them after a handful of wins prove to him that the concept works. still trying to break 2-mana jace. unwinds with azorius control and gets defensive when people call it winconless, because technically he has manlands and sunfall tokens. wants to think that his opponents are also having fun, but why tf would they be?

wyll: oh he had fun at the bloomburrow prerelease. still hasnt given up on frogs yet because he likes helga for both lore reasons (he loves an underdog! she just has to believe in herself!) and because hes a massive timmy who loves big creatures. totally isnt mad when his opponent efficiently removes 3 of his vaultborn tyrants in one game. why would he be mad? its just a game. he takes a smoke break after the match for completely unrelated reasons

karlach: hasnt played in years, so she had to rebuild her entire collection for standard (mostly plays edh for that reason. her fav is her rin and seri deck with mostly older cards in the 99 that she refuses to acknowledge are bad in 2024). plays the greediest lizard deck youve ever seen because shes also a timmy. i think shed like boomer jund if any of her friends (other than gale) played modern

lae'zel: prowess and she fucking loves it. "gruul is brain dead"? not the way she pilots that shit. she runs her deck like the navy. takes forever psychoanalyzing her opponent and thinking 4 turns ahead. cant play edh because she thinks the social contract is dumb. why doesnt everyone try to win? winning is fun? fight her like you mean it. genuinely a good sport when she loses so long as it was a good fight

shadowheart: looks like somebody misses the 8 rack. 4 cut downs, 4 go for the throats, 4 deep cavern bats, 4 bandits talents, my god she wishes thoughtseize was standard legal but liliana keeps her bloodthirst sated. gets mad when she loses to zoo decks but deep down its 70% jealousy. feels a weird sense of loyalty and duty to stick with monoblack, but shed convert to naya in 3 seconds if she ever tried it

[markrosewater]

I know Hornet Queen is pretty famously a color pie break, so that begs the question, what color(s) would it properly be? And may I request a version shifted into that color identity? I would love to have another Hornet Queen for a 5 color deck.

Hornet Queen would be fine in monoblack.

[txttletale]

I never got the "Day and Night is hard to keep track of" shit. No it's not, it's extremely simple and mostly unimportant unless one side is running a pure werewolf deck.

Day/Night's problem is its trigger is ridiculously restrictive. If you're trying to run werewolves you have to hold off on casting ANY spell your whole turn (including putting something out there to become a werewolf in the first place), totally gimping yourself and giving the strategic initiative to the other player in order to give your creatures what are effectively a very few +1/+1 or +1/+0 counters, which won't matter because when it's your enemy's turn if they cast two spells it goes right back to being day again on your turn so you're right back to square one. You either have to hope your opponent doesn't cast any spells, or just one spell, sitting around juggling your wolves warforms with a creature/color type that relies on fast early game aggro to win. As soon as someone gets three lands down it's a near guarantee that it will never ever be night again for longer than one turn and rarely on yours. It's a mechanic that actively punishes red/green for putting creatures out on the field. lol lmao

Day and Night sucks ass because it's irrelevant. Either the other guy's deck is so shit you can win with a pile of untransformed humans after having 3-5 turns of free reign to out enough out there to matter, or the other guy's deck is competent or better and your humans sit around all game because it's extremely easy to turn night back to day and tempo will usually make it so that you're the one wasting your turns not casting anything trying to make it night because your opponent will never not cast spells unless they quite literally have nothing in hand to cast and if that's the case it's almost always a sign that they've run off so hard that their board is already full of shit that will skin your wolves.

the fact that it's mostly unimportant is why people hate keeping track of it so much. it's not difficult, it's just really fucking annoying how if you or your opponent are playing, like, a monoblack midrange deck with two copies of graveyard tresspasser and no other day/night carsd in either of your decks, the moment the first tresspasser hits the board you are both forced to keep track of day/night for the rest of the game even if it gets removed immediately becuase of the miniscule chance that the second one might hit the board and whether it's day or night when that happens might matter.

[usausa-art]

[thegreatyin]

mr veils plays monored aggro or an infuriating minigame heavy deck where it takes 45 minutes to finish a turn and you need to keep track of 2.357 mechanics depending on its mood.

mr pages plays monoblue.

mr stones doesn't play mtg but it has all the very rare cards in a vault somewhere

mr hearts plays grixis

i have the feeling the scoundrel is an annoying combo player. Caeru plays monoblack because he's an edgelord

[beatsandskies]

deePRECONnaissance: beginner battling in Shandalar

I felt like taking a look at something a wee bit older for a change of pace. And what’s better than slapping Holy Armour on a Benalish Hero turn two and smashing in? Not much, I’d say. Enchanting a Savannah Lions instead, of course, but that’s a given. I’m not sure how much explaining of Shandalar I need to do. It was the first Magic computer game. Despite being released in 1997 all the cards…

[futchgunk]

wow i won on turn 6 with out losing any life

[bace-jeleren]

Yes, but it only affects me negatively if I don't play it.

For anyone who needs context, my Erebos commander deck is legit cursed. I started playing Magic back when OG Theros was coming out and immediately became a monoblack devo girlie. It was all I played, even after Tarkir came out and neutered monocolor decks. And even after cards cycling out made my deck absolutely useless, I made an EDH deck and made Erebos my commander (obviously).

I have tried to either switch up commanders, or play another type of deck instead all of three times, but three times was enough. My car broke down twice, the second absolutely totaling it, leaving me car-less, and the third time I got super sick, like my health has never gotten that bad before or since, and it lingered for months. Now, I'm not about to tempt fate and try for personal tragedy number four. No thank you, absolutely not.

I am cursed to run Erebos until the day I die.

[thecornwall]

Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #863: Lightning Helix

Lightning Helix is an uncommon from Ravnica: City of Guilds, seen here in its Ravnica Remastered printing.

Lightning Helix: the card so nice they printed it....every Ravnica block. I remember wondering why one wouldn't simply play monoblack for this effect when I was just getting into the game, before "mana efficiency" was really much of a thing on my radar. This is about as good a 3-damage, 3-life spell can get, since the harder mana cost makes it able to be printed at a lower overall cost.

The symmetry is also pretty nice: 3 damage, 3 life, you get it. When they first printed Boros and didn't quite know how r/w would be going from then on, they included some cards which could facilitate a control style, also a possibility with r/w, and this card nicely slots into either style. Sarcasm aside, I can see why this gets reprinted every Ravnica block.