Sit back, relax, and watch your opponent die. This is a passive mono black burn deck that drains the opponent's health over time.

Core Strategy

Play this when you are stressed at the end of your day and just don't want to think anymore. The basic strategy is simple: We play our passive damage cards and then sit back and wait. We remove threats the opponent is playing with our removal spells.

We have a few cards in our deck that put a tax on the opponent's life for him to do the basic actions of a turn: draw and attack. They just sit around on the field and stack up damage over time. We have a few drain bursts with Serrated Scorpion and Gray Merchant of Asphodel. But otherwise the oponent is dying slowly. Besides these cards we are a selction of creature removal and graveyard hate. Just to make the opponent's life as miserable as we can!

The Cards

On the noncreature side of our drain plans we have three simple spells: Sanctum of Stone Fangs to consistently draw a life from the opponent on each of our turns, Underworld Dreams to make him loose life whenever the oponent draws, and {{Revenge of Ravens]] to drain him on attacks with his creatures.

We are light on creatures in this deck. The drain package here consists of Serrated Scorpion, an excellent blocker, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, and Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. We can get to a high devotion to black over the course of the game - with our Underworld Dreams, Tymaret, Murderous Rider, and even the small single pips of blak n our other permanents. This can make the Gray Merchant suddenly come out and drain the opponent for a decent amount of damage while also bolstering our life total back to a healthier point in the later game. Vito accelerates our life drain. we have quite a few effects that also net us life gain. Vito converts that into damage. The Gray mMerchant can hit with him on the field for double!

That's it for our main damage dealers. You probably gather that the damage is slowly creeping up on the opponent with those. The remainder of the deck is removal of various sorts.

Basic creature removal is represented by Murderous Rider, who can also drain the opponent in combination with Vito, Drag to the Underworld (mostly cast for only two mana), and the board wipe Extinction Event. Extinction Event is a really great card, able to pull of one sided wipes and putting things into exile, which is - with all the Uro, Elspeth Conquers Death, Lurrus, etc. around, a pretty darn important factor. Grasp of Darkness is an alternate "death by weakness". Helps against those pesky Selfless Saviors.

Erebos's Intervention is a mix between creature removal and graveyard hate. Used based on the situation and can also help drain the oponent with Vito. For graveyard hate we have otherwise Cling to Dust and Tymaret, Chosen from Death. Both can gain us life and, again - like a broken record -, help us drain with Vito. Additionally Cling can also draw us a card and Tymaret is a nice blocker with his big booty.



As reaction to the opponent's removal of our creatures we are playing a pair of Village Rites, letting us waist the opponent's removal and draw us two cards for one measly mana.

P.S.: Make no mistake! This is a jank deck! Wins with this are funny, but it does not keep up with the top decks of the format. It's just hilarious to see mono red or knights being drained on the attacks with their little critters! Or making the Solitaire loving Cycling players suffer each time they draw a card!