Bloomburrow Spoilers: Build Your Latest Mono Black MTG Deck

Bloomburrow is Almost Fully Spoiled - You Know What That Means: It's Time to Make a Mono Black Deck!

Uncover the latest Bloomburrow spoilers and create a powerful Mono Black MTG deck. Get top card picks, expert strategies, and tips to dominate your game.

We are less than two weeks away from the digital release of our new set of animal friends, and WOTC has done an excellent job of making sure that this set is packed with as much excitement and innovation as possible for the unique plane that we are visiting. Upon first glance, it appeared that it was going to be overshadowed by some of the high-powered Duskmourn Cards that were previewed. They took us for a spin with that, because there are some absolute bombs in Bloomburrow. Naturally, I have found a few powerful black cards that I think can give us a new archetype within my favorite color. We are going to look at playing a decent amount of these new cards, and we are going to see if we can fall into a pretty fun and valuable sacrifice combo to showcase one of the new Calamity Beasts from the Bloomburrow Plane.

With this deck, we are doing what we can to play Rottenmouth Viper as quickly as possible. We will play permanents and spells that give us other permanents that are easy to sacrifice, and in some instances we will get rewarded for doing so by some of our other permanents. Even if we don't see value, we can use these permanents to reduce the cost of our Calamity Beast, and start to amass some pretty ridiculous value. Our sideboard is also equipped with many different ways to deal with creature and control decks. We also have a couple of finisher spells if the Viper is not enough to get the job done. The deck also has a few tutors, because we have some pretty good answers within the deck, and just overall very powerful spells.

Relevant New Cards

The class enchantments are back with a vengeance! It appears that in this set, each color will have a good class enchantment that should help out the given archetypes. In this case, we are able to amass value from sacrificing creatures, also making our opponent mill cards to disrupt curve and playability, and then finally we can reanimate with this spell by doing its final level. The residual value that it provides can really help us get ahead in the game, and if nothing else will help us gain plenty of life.

This is basically a power creep Hero's Downfall. It gives us the option to sacrifice a food, or exile three cards from our graveyard by using the forage ability. This allows us to reduce the mana cost by one black mana, thus allowing us to cast a spell that destroys target creature or planeswalker at instant speed for only two mana. Since we will be sacrificing plenty of stuff, it is not out of the question that we are able to get extra value out of this card. We will also be generating food tokens with some of our spells as well, so this card appears to be the perfect removal that we need.

This is the bomb that I've been waiting for since the ban of my beloved Invoke Despair. It is a phenomenally designed spell, because it doesn't get too out of hand by allowing you to do everything on the card. You have to choose five paw prints worth of casting cost in this individual card (no, the paw prints do not carry over like energy - they can only be used as the spell is being cast). Since we are sacrificing a lot of cards and have a decent amount of creatures, we can get some pretty good value off of the final mode of this card. If nothing else, we can also make an opponent sacrifice a bunch of creatures. We can also use it as a post-combat method by drawing tons of cards after a bloody creature battle. Using the final mode on this with a card like Bloodletter of Aclazotz in the late game can really help us close things out, or just put our opponent in a position where they better win the game on their next turn, or we are simply taking over.

Maha is the legendary Calamity Beast from Bloomburrow. She is an owl that takes no prisoners. If the keywords alone on the card aren't impressive enough, how about we just make the base toughness of all opponent's creatures one. We have cards like Glistening Deluge in the sideboard that can combo with this that would basically be a one-sided board wipe. Not to mention, she automatically is a three-to-four turn clock just by being on the and attacking. I thought she was better served in the sideboard because she does really well against creature decks. I like having Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal // Temple of the Dead in the main deck because Aclazotz can make tokens, which help us to decrease the casting cost of the best card in our deck. Aclazotz also helps us draw cards, which always proves to be relevant.

Rottenmouth Viper has what some of the boomers call a "punisher" effect. I think that nomenclature is apt for this scenario because we are punishing our opponents who do not have permanents on the board, or cards in hand. If we do what we are supposed to do, we should keep their hands relatively empty, and the board relatively clear. This allows the blight counters on the Viper to accumulate and effectively force the opponent to either play to the board, or hold cards in their hand to discard if they do not want to die. This can effectively soft lock out our opponent and make it so that we can win with the Viper in just a few attacks!

This is my first look at what a fun mono black deck would look like after rotation. I wanted to get a good bit of new cards in there, and I think that these work pretty well together. It remains to be seen if this will be any good at all, but you can bet money that I will be trying this out as soon as I can burn my wildcards to make this deck on the 28th!

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I am a Magic The Gathering competitive player, and streamer. I specialize in homebrew decks. My favorite formats are: Standard, Pioneer (Explorer on Arena), and EDH. I first started playing MTG in 2001, and have played on and off since then.

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Explore the power of Rakdos Dragons in this midrange Magic: The Gathering deck. Unleash combos, removal, and ramp for competitive edge in Standard.

This Deck is Sneaky Good! Get Ready for RAKDOS Dragons!

You didn't think I could only give you one dragon deck, did you? I honestly saw too many fun options to do just Boros, so today I'm bringing you another. This one steers toward the more midrange, good ol' honest Magic side of things. I wanted to center a deck around something that is more consistent with the status quo of dragons: carnage and destruction. We have plenty of removal in this deck, and a creature that doubles as a board wipe when needed. Since we aren't doing a super fancy combo in this deck, I wanted to add element of ramp to get to the higher mana spells that we have in the deck. We will be able to use early creatures to help out with that, and also a new fancy artifact. We will torch the board and force our opponents to be more resilient than we are, while flying over the top of what they might manage to keep on the board. Let's take a look at the deck and then I'll tell you some of my favorite things about it. You can see some of the fun that we will have right off the bat with this deck. We are looking to smash aggro decks, and still punish other decks that don't play to the board. Although this one has fewer dragons on paper, we have a few permanents that can actually turn into them, and this leads to some cheeky interactions. Let's check out some of the new cards from Tarkir Dragonstorm that are in this deck, and then we will go over some fun combos! Key New Cards

It's Time to Mobilize the Aristocrats with Mardu Combo!

There is an ongoing argument in both Standard and Pioneer currently. What color combination is the best for aggressive decks? We have seen people try out Jeskai Aggro to try and incorporate the best of both worlds between Azorius Aggro, and Boros Aggro. Some like to stick with Gruul Aggro because of the high rolls that it allows for, and there is also an argument that sometimes all you need is mono red - and the results have proven as much in major events. There has been a bit of a surge of some Mardu Aristocrat/Sacrifice decks, and today's list will follow that to some degree. We went a little bit more aggro-based, but there is a combo element to it, along with a healthy sideboard that should provide for balanced gameplay. We will look to get a bunch of creatures onto the board, and then create a bunch more based on the amount that we have, while punishing the opponent when they die. If that isn't enough, the go-wide strategy should also allow us to swing for ample damage at an ample pace. A new ability called Mobilize that is being brought to us in Tarkir Dragonstorm is going to allow us to pull off some pretty powerful swings in combat. Mobilize allows us to create a bunch of tapped and attacking 1/1 tokens based on either the number behind it, or circumstances that pertain to "X." Something that is particularly fun is that we can benefit from our creatures dying, because the mobilize ability requires us to sacrifice the creatures that we get from mobilizing at the beginning of our end step. This is yet another deck that can allow us to win on the end step which is always fun. Another fundamental reason why I think the deck is good is because we are rewarded for something that would normally be considered a setback. If you find enough ways to turn negatives into positives, it usually can translate into the small margins that win you a match. Enough of me blabbing. Let's take a look at the cool new cards! Key New Cards

Demons Are Getting New Toys, and This Deck is ROTTEN

We have seen the vast majority of the cards that will be released in Tarkir Dragonstorm, and the excitement is definitely building. Magic players are expecting this to meet the hype that Duskmourn brought us, and hopefully more. We were left a bit underwhelmed with Aetherdrift, but this is proving to be all but a filler set. It's something that is so easy to be excited for. Who doesn't love dragons?! Anyone with an ounce of nerdiness is interested as soon as they hear the word. Although I don't have a dragon deck for you today, I am going to do my obligatory Mono Black Deck for the new set. If you have read my articles in the past, you know that I do one every set - and this one is no different. We finally have enough cards from Tarkir to give me what I needed to make a new-and-improved Demons list for you. We have a new one that will let us pull off some combos on earlier turns, and hopefully have a better body early on to put pressure on aggro decks. I think that should give us a better shot against the meta, since the threat of a 5 damage crackback can definitely give someone extra things to consider in combat phases. He also isn't a bad creature to discard, as he has an ability to activate from the graveyard. This will help us against the bounce/pixie decks. We have ample graveyard hate and removal for the graveyard combo decks, so I like most of our matchups against the current meta. The only thing we will have to see with time is if the meta shifts with this monster of a new set. We really have some fun cards to add here, and we are adding another type of threat to the deck. We have historically not used our graveyard for much, but now we are able to get additional value from it with a new addition. Our sideboard even has a dragon with an adventure that reads like The Meathook Massacre! I've said enough, let's check out these cards. Relevant New Cards

Free Dragons = Turn 4 Wins!

We are officially in the perpetual spoiler season of the MTG year, and Wizards has not been disappointing us. Most people can get behind a set centered largely around dragons, and it definitely helps that the plane itself is one that we have wanted to see them bring back for a long time. Over a decade later, we are going back to Tarkir. I played a good bit of Magic and did a lot of deck building the last time we had some fun dragons on Arena, and I knew that this set was going to call me back to those days. My favorite archetype a couple of years ago was Boros Dragons. I largely played that in the Alchemy format, but I am going to bring you a Boros Dragons Standard Deck today. We are going to take advantage of a combo that is used in Standard currently, but we are going to use a different payoff this time. We are going to cast dragons for FREE and then either they will have the opponent dead just from entering, or we will hopefully have a way to give them all haste! We will take a look at the new cards that are awesome. Then I'll let you know about the combo that will help us get there. We want to keep the board as clear as we can for our dragons and then slam them all on the board at once to clean things up. We also have some smaller creatures that we can use to chump block earlier in the game. When needed, we also have board wipes to deal with other creatures. New Cards from Tarkir Dragonstorm

I See a Monument and I want it Painted Black

It's been a few weeks since Aetherdrift came out, and we are starting to see the cards that are standing out in the meta. We didn't expect the set to change things too much with regard to what we have been seeing. What we did get from it is a nice supplement to many other decks. Although we did not get a ton of format-shaping cards, we have seen a couple that have lit up fringe archetypes. What I've brewed for today plays off of a familiar archetype, and it was one that we kind of already had, but it allows us to pivot in a certain way and get additional value from it that we may not have gotten in the past. One of the biggest things that our deck can do is have plenty of action on the end step/cleanup step. It's an interesting scenario because usually when we think of the cleanup step at the end of each turn, we remove damage, and we discard to hand size. Usually discarding to hand size is pretty much the final step, and there aren't any triggers... until now. We will be using Monument to Endurance to have triggers when we discard to hand size, and get additional value from it. Now we don't care if we end the turn with nine or ten cards in hand, because we are going to benefit from it. This will help us possibly get in some finishing damage against our opponent, or get extra value. It is worth noting that this will cause triggered abilities on the cleanup step, and this is something that our opponents can respond to. This has historically been a point in the turn where no player can respond to actions. We'll take a look at the relevant cards in the deck, and then I'll detail a few fun combos that we may see during gameplay. Relevant Cards

We've had a Couple of Weeks to Try Achievements on MTG Arena, and I have Opinions

The economy on MTG Arena has always been a pain point, and a grand debate over how far a digital version of a card game should go to ensure players feel as if they are getting proper value for their time. Wizards has two different versions of its beloved game on the internet, and they both seem to have their benefits and drawbacks. On February 11, Arena launched the Achievement System to reward players for hitting milestones in-game, and completing specific tasks. While it is always fun to do these kinds of things in each game, something that gamers always do is assess whether the reward for doing so in-game is worth putting forth the extra effort for the task. While there are some things in the achievement tab that I believe to be kind of fun, and certain things that I know people will want, I view the entire thing as largely a waste of time. Today we will look at why the new feature on Arena simply isn't enough for what the game should have, and what it could be. The Good and The Bad There are plenty of things that we love about Arena, with how it is the easiest way to play our favorite decks from Standard, and not spend thousands of dollars in doing so. It is probably the most efficient way to try out decks. We also love the wildcard system. Although it is not the easiest to obtain them, it is great that a rare/mythic wildcard could buy a rare/mythic card that is of any value and it still just costs one wildcard. This was especially helpful in getting a play set of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse. I still don't have a play set in paper simply because I don't want to spend that much money on it, but on Arena it was easy. I had the wildcards to do what I needed. The only part where this may be lacking is the economy itself. What if we could earn wildcards for hitting certain achievements (I.E. the achievement tab giving us wildcards instead of sleeves, etc.)? I believe that the rewards from this new feature being solely cosmetic underscores the ongoing issue of the economy on Arena simply not being enough for us.

This Deck is Sneaky Good! Get Ready for RAKDOS Dragons!