Mono-black drain/blood-arts

[nauticus]

Hello, this is a deck I built out of my Blood-artists and Bloodflow Connoisseur.
I've tried some competative tournaments with it and is quite pleased with the result, for being a beginner, i took myself to the top 10 of 24 in the latest FNM, and was able to beat some higher tier decks during this time.

I want to advance this deck, but so far every card I find have a huge pricetag on it if im going to use it. As you will see it needs a sidedeck and got some cards that doesn't really fit in there, wich are just fillers and cards that Im trying with the deck.

I find this deck very entertaining to play and I hope you enjoy this thread and are able to share your ideas with us all.

The deck

Deck
Land(22): 22 Swamps Creatures(26): 2x Gravecrawler 4x Butcher Ghoul 4x Blood Artist 3x Bloodflow Connoisseur 4x Soulcage Fiend 3x Falkenrath Noble 2x Maalfeld Twins 1x Reaper from the Abyss 1x Harvester of Souls	Spells(12): 2x Tragic Slip 2x Dead Weight 4x Bone Splinters 1x Altar's Reap 3x Unhallowed Pact 1x Consume Spirit 1x Killing Wave	Sideboard: 4x Crypt Creeper 2x Human Frailty 2x Death Wind 2x Dead Weight 2x Tragic Slip 1x Vengeful Pharaoh 1x Bloodflow Connoisseur

WISHLIST:
2x Gravecrawler
1x Killing wave
1x Falkenrath Noble
4x Geralf's Messenger

?x Card with 5 mana cost



Personal View and breakedown of the deck:
Most of you probably know or see how this deck works, but I'd like to mention some cards and why I put them there:

Gravecrawler is a great card for this deck, unfortunaly I still only got 2 of them, I'm aiming towards having 2 more but I've been unable to trade myself any and at my local store they are being sold for 9$-12$, ouch.
I am balancing the lack of gravecrawlers out with having more Butcher Ghoul.

Blood Artist is one of my keycards for this combo as it will take most of my opponents health during a round. I added Falkenrath Noblewhen I found out it exsisted, it may cost 4 mana but it got the same effect as Blood artist, and as a 2/2 flyer it got some other usefullness than just having an active ability. Im in search for 1 more Falkenrath Noble to make 4 of them.
Together with Gravecrawler and other zombies, and Bloodflow Connoisseur, and we have a good combo that beefs up my creature while draining his life. Just circulate that gravecrawler up and down from the graveyard with Bloodflow Connoisseur, simple.

Soulcage Fiend is a fun card, and is kind of my current replacement for not having Geralf's Messenger. I think most would neglect it couse of the effects habit of hitting you aswell, doh, but together with your creatures drain ability it makes for a fun card to play since your Blood artist will even out the damage you recive, and give your opponent will just get alot more damage for blocking/killing that creature.

Bone Splinters is sick. Cheap, and with my undying creatures it's additional cost can be more or less ignored. Together with your Blood Artist it makes for an very effective card to use, for example: 2 creatures dies, and take that times the number of drains you got on the battlefield, and you increase your life advantage, and removes a creature.

Unhallowed Pact, I like this card alot and have lots of uses for it. It can be used together with my cheap removal to take over a creature of my liking, or simply protect a creature of my own if it's in danger of being killed.

Altar's Reap: A card Im trying out at the moment, it's quite helpfull, although for 2 mana AND sacrifice a creature I feel that there should be better options out there.

Killing Wave, awesome card, I want more of theese! Question is how many, I think 2 of them will be a decent ammount for my deck.

Reaper from the Abyss
Harvester of Souls
Maalfeld Twins

If you look closley my mana curve is kinda ****ed up at this point, no 5-costs and mind blowingly 4 cards with 6-pointers. Reaper from the Abyss and Harvester of Souls are kinda self explained; more stuff dies, and you get to draw more cards couse of that. Maalfeld twins is a card I found out about recently, and since it counts as up to 3 creatures it makes for a decent card in my deck, have not had the honor to try the twins properly, but I hope that you can share your opinion on if its a keeper.

Consume spirit is just a filler until I get a new card, it works I guess.

Sideboard: I'm quite unexperienced when it comes to tournaments but in my latest I learned alot about how to use the sideboard to your advantage. Ofcourse I knew that it's used to bring in other cards that can counter your opponents deck better. But finding cards to use along with this deck has been hard. Considering the high ammount of human tribe decks along with the release of Avacryn restored, I think Human Frailty will make for a nice sideboard card.
During my last tournament I had the honor to be matched up with the two players that would end up in the top 3 later. Both utilized cards such as Unburial Rights to bring up their strong cards. After this experience I've decided to take Crypt creeper into my sideboard.

Cards I'm thinking about to add:
Ghoulcaller's Chant
- Usefull card, to keep my butcher ghouls in play or incase I loose any other important creature such as blood artists.

That's all I have to say about my deck, I'm sorry about the messy setup but I hope you will be able to share your ideas with me to improve this deck.

[card_wizard]

Drop the twins, reaper and harvester because of the casting costs. Consider adding these cards:

Dross Hopper - another sac outlet

Phyrexian Metamorph - can clone an artist

Perilous Myr

For your sideboard, drop Human Fraility for Deathmark.

Hope that helps.

[ChallengeFate]

Id say put 1-2 sorin's vengeance in there. Great finisher. I like the other suggestions too. Also that 5mana enchantment that whenever your opp loses life, you gain that much

[ARubin41]

I personally run the "full" version of this exact deck, and I think you are on the right track. Your wishlist is very accurate, but the Gravecrawlers and Messengers should be of primary concern at the moment. The only card that I would consider to be a "must have" that you are missing is Mortarpod. With a Blood Artist on the field, it can be amazing. I would say start off with 3, but anywhere between 2-4 is fine (plus they are relatively cheap). 3 more cards to consider are Skinrender, Skirsdag High Priest, and Porcelain Legionnaire. The legoinnaire is especially useful, and I'd say you should put 2 in for you missing Gravecrawlers for the time being, then keep them in your sideboard when the deck is finished. Also, I prefer Diregraf Ghoul over Butchered Ghoul, but it isn't a necessary switch.

One more tip is you may want to cut your 6 drops, and just forget about adding 5 drops in the first place. When I first started using this deck, I found that I rarely got to play my Harvester or Demonlord in the first place, and when I cut the deck down to 4-drops and lower, I was much more pleased with the speed at which it ran.

Clearly there are a few pricier cards that could help you out a lot, but for now I would just focus on the Mortarpods, Gravecrawlers, and Messengers.

Anyway, I hope this helps, good luck!

[SyntaxError]

Originally Posted by ARubin41

I personally run the "full" version of this exact deck, and I think you are on the right track. Your wishlist is very accurate, but the Gravecrawlers and Messengers should be of primary concern at the moment. The only card that I would consider to be a "must have" that you are missing is Mortarpod. With a Blood Artist on the field, it can be amazing. I would say start off with 3, but anywhere between 2-4 is fine (plus they are relatively cheap). 3 more cards to consider are Skinrender, Skirsdag High Priest, and Porcelain Legionnaire. The legoinnaire is especially useful, and I'd say you should put 2 in for you missing Gravecrawlers for the time being, then keep them in your sideboard when the deck is finished. Also, I prefer Diregraf Ghoul over Butchered Ghoul, but it isn't a necessary switch.

One more tip is you may want to cut your 6 drops, and just forget about adding 5 drops in the first place. When I first started using this deck, I found that I rarely got to play my Harvester or Demonlord in the first place, and when I cut the deck down to 4-drops and lower, I was much more pleased with the speed at which it ran.

Clearly there are a few pricier cards that could help you out a lot, but for now I would just focus on the Mortarpods, Gravecrawlers, and Messengers.

Anyway, I hope this helps, good luck!

Mortarpods are way too slow. Dross hoppers as a sac outlet with an artist on the field does so much more damage. Moreover, it's a 2/1 flying beater too. Let's say you have 6 mana total and a zombie, gravecrawler, artist, and a hopper on the field. You can sac the crawler 6 times for 6 damage, and gain 6. With a mortarpod, you can only sac it twice, gaining 2 life and pinging for 4. Tell me which one is better.

[jmdt]

Originally Posted by SyntaxError

Mortarpods are way too slow. Dross hoppers as a sac outlet with an artist on the field does so much more damage. Moreover, it's a 2/1 flying beater too. Let's say you have 6 mana total and a zombie, gravecrawler, artist, and a hopper on the field. You can sac the crawler 6 times for 6 damage, and gain 6. With a mortarpod, you can only sac it twice, gaining 2 life and pinging for 4. Tell me which one is better.

Bloodflow Connoisseur is much better than dross hopper as a free sac outlet in mono black. The +1/+1 from each sac can get silly late in the game.

However, I like Mortarpod better purely for the defense it offers. Dropping a turn 2 Mortarpod and killing delver, birds, champions, etc has won me a number of games.

So while Connoisseur can lead to some huge blowouts, mortarpod is probably responsible for winning more games in my testing.

[ARubin41]

Originally Posted by SyntaxError

Mortarpods are way too slow. Dross hoppers as a sac outlet with an artist on the field does so much more damage. Moreover, it's a 2/1 flying beater too. Let's say you have 6 mana total and a zombie, gravecrawler, artist, and a hopper on the field. You can sac the crawler 6 times for 6 damage, and gain 6. With a mortarpod, you can only sac it twice, gaining 2 life and pinging for 4. Tell me which one is better.

Exactly what jmdt said, Mortarpod isn't just to trigger Blood Artist over and over, it is a defensive measure as well.

Also, keep in mind that you can't rely on getting a Bloood Artist every game. For those games where you don't happen to come across one, Dross Hopper loses a good chunk of its value, but Mortarpod is still an extremely useful card.