Duskmourn has officially made its mark on the meta, as we have some emerging archetypes that get kills so fast, people are already calling for bans. Aside from the aggro decks getting their payoffs even faster, it seems that most other archetypes got some type of boost as well. There's a question everyone is asking though: How do we deal with the turn two kills from the red decks? The short and lazy answer is a ton of removal. You basically need to have at least two removal spells in your starting hand, which means that in order to start with that in a hand consistently, you will probably want close to ten removal spells in the deck itself. It's unfortunate that it's come to this, but we can't keep losing to red decks or be forced to play them if we don't want to. There has to be another way. I managed to put together a mono black deck that got a trophy in a Standard Event and I faced red decks six different times. What I would add onto my solution earlier along with removal, is that it was definitely key for me to have multiple instances of lifegain in my deck. This was often able to buy me time, and allow me to stabilize to get an advanced board state against the aggro decks. We will take a look at the deck, and I apologize. There aren't a ton of new cards, but the ones that are there serve their purposes well. This is best of one this time, maybe we can start testing it for best of three later. I specifically wanted to do this for best of one for now, because that is where I heard the most of the people complaining about red decks.
It's kind of funny to think that a typal deck performed well. While we do have plenty of good vampires in the format, you typically detract from a higher power level by forcing creatures of a certain type when there may be better synergies with other creature types that could give you a higher chance to win. In this one though, we do include six non-vampire creatures, and I think they allow the deck to be properly functional. Let's check out some of the cards that we like in the deck.
Duskmourn Cards in the Deck
This is the card that I particularly wanted to build around. I felt like I didn't get a good chance to test it out in early access, and with focusing on ladder, I felt like I had neglected this card that was so highly anticipated. I decided vampires would be a good build around for it, as they often have lifelink creatures, and already have a bit of gain and drain to them. What I found surprising was that we don't actually have that many instances of lifegain in Standard currently. One of the cards I was really thinking would pop with this card was March of Wretched Sorrow, but it sadly has rotated. We ended up using cards like Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal, and some other creatures with lifelink to get the job done. We also have a new lifelink pump spell that we will get to shortly.
This one is kind of silly in all honesty. It is kind of win more, and ultimately a combat trick designed for draft, so I didn't want to lean into it too heavily, but it is a fun spell to include as a one of for flavor purposes. It also definitely catches people off guard. They do not think to play around this card. I didn't want to include more than one of it, however because we needed to save the majority of our two drop noncreature spell slots for removal because of the red decks.
This is one of the new cards that I was very high on. It has not disappointed me up until now either. It really gets the job done, and gives us an opportunity to remove problematic cards that we were not able to deal with previously.
All of the other cards we have seen multiple times before, so I won't go into detail on all of those - just know that there are a bunch of good vampire spells and we want to gain life and make the opponent lose life while also being able to remove as many threats as possible on the other side of the board. Since I won't be going over as many cards, we are going to check out some of the gameplay with the deck!
Gameplay
In the first video we are able to defeat a Red-x deck and we have a little bit of luck. They got greedy and kept a one land hand, and we were able to get our larger creatures on the board. By the time they draw their second land, it is pretty much too late because I've already resolved an Aclazotz, and I'm gaining plenty of life. Making them lose the life from life gain with the Enduring Tenacity on the board was also helpful too, it was almost like getting in for an extra attack. After we survive the onslaught, we are able to get the bloodletter on the board for double damage and end the game.
In the next video, we are able to take down a full on mono red deck, and they do have some good creatures at first, but we are able to trade effectively with their threats while also gaining some life. This allows us to stabilize and put them in a position where they are pretty much out of gas. Once again, bloodletter comes down towards the end and finishes things for us. We aren't sure if the opponent was running the leyline or the fling spell, but either way we are glad we didn't see either of them. It would have made winning a bit more difficult. There is a good argument that leyline actually makes the deck more inconsistent, but it does of course allow for extreme levels of high rolling.
Alright, so you get the point by now about how we are dealing with mono red, and how prevalent it is. We faced 6 different red decks in this event, and we were 5-1 against them. I wanted to include this video to show you a bit of the diverse gameplay that we have in standard currently. We were able to defeat domain control in this match, and it felt pretty good. I believe this is a matchup where we benefit from having so many creatures. They even hit us with a Sunfall on curve, and we were still able to maintain pressure on them. Withering Torment once again proved its worth because we are now able to deal with Leyline Bindings and get back some of our threats that otherwise just had to sit there. In this particular instance, we once again finish the game with bloodletter by getting it back from under a binding. It was also pretty flashy, because we were able to use our lifelink spell for exact lethal at the end!
Final Thoughts
I think this deck is great for best of one, and I'll have to do some more testing for best of three. It is really fun to have these typal decks perform well in any format, and it was kind of nice because I have been missing a good vampire deck after Vein Ripper got banned in Pioneer. I believe that the deck still has a tough matchup against the boros enchantment decks, so that is definitely something to be mindful of. We don't run board wipes, because we have a lot of creatures. We kind of just hope that we get enough stuff on the board and it sticks. Bloodletter once again proved its worth as the ultimate finisher for Mono Black.
