Famine, Drought and Pestilence

by BasilicaNero on 10 March 2017

Main Deck (60 cards)

Sideboard (32 cards)

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Deck Description

Just playing with an idea to make a really annoying black control(ish) deck of all things.

I like the whole enchanting half their shit so its hurts them, the fact it has no real creatures, and the fact that the focus is on using lands for me and destroying theirs.

I know most land destruction decks are Red Stone Rain decks and I have never come across a black control deck like this before.

How to Play

I have play-tested this a bunch, and it doesn't do too badly actually. Its very simple in concept: negatively affect their available choices by enchanting their creatures, their lands, and general battlefield control. All in all try to be a controlling little dick and turn their deck against them.

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Control their creature choices:

4 Sinister Possession
4 Contaminated Bonds
4 Hissing Miasma
4 Corrupted Zendikon

Affect the playing field in your favor: make it not worth it to attack you long term. The auras I spread onto the high priority attackers (or blockers) and the Miasmas stack up. Turning my own land into 3/3's lets me attack then and combine with the auras to give them bad blocking choices, usually giving me free damage for a couple of swings at least (and when they finally give in and kill it I don't lose the land).

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Control their lands:

2 Evil Presence
4 Contaminated Ground
4 Pooling Venom
4 Sinkhole
4 Rain of Tears

The most annoying aspect of this deck: starve them out. It helps keep them behind you on the mana curve so you can build up your enchantments and hold off their big drops. Especially effective against multicolored decks: pick a color and sabotage it mercilessly, then they can't play half their deck (or worse). Turning their lands into swamps will really screw with their mana production as well.

NOTE: In case there is ever any disagreement (whilst you kick someone's ass), here is the official ruling on cards like Evil Presence and Contaminated Ground and what "enchanted land is a Swamp" entails exactly:

"6/15/2010: The enchanted land loses its existing land types and any abilities printed on it. It now has the land type Swamp and has the ability to tap to add {B} to its controller’s mana pool. Contaminated Ground doesn’t change the enchanted land’s name or whether it’s legendary, basic, or snow." - Source: http://magiccards.info/gtc/en/59.html
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Control the rest of the game:

3 Storage Matrix
3 Underworld Dreams

Underworld Dreams essentially puts a ticking clock on the game. They can no longer sit back and wait for the perfect combo to get through: they have to try to do something and it forces them to make less than optimal choices. Adding Storage Matrix to the mix forces them into more bad choices. Basically the can only untap creatures or lands on their turn but for you always choose lands. Even the one 'creature' you have in the Zendikon is "still a land" so untap it with the rest of them. No downside for you, but really hampers your opponent.

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As you can't enchant or counter EVERYTHING it comes down to being strategic and lining up as many bad choices for your opponent as possible while doing your best to starve them out.

Essentially you make them kill themselves for you.

Deck Tags

  • Control
  • Land Destruction
  • Mono Black

Deck at a Glance

Social Stats

3
Likes

This deck has been viewed 1,337 times.

Mana Curve

Mana Symbol Occurrence

004900

Card Legality

  • Not Legal in Standard
  • Not Legal in Modern
  • Legal in Vintage
  • Legal in Legacy

Deck discussion for Famine, Drought and Pestilence

I am interested in any suggestions, thoughts on alternate cards, or links to similar decks for ideas (if you know of any).

Thanks for looking!

0
Posted 14 March 2017 at 18:25

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I love land destruction because it is so challenging to build decks that win. I also love 3-4 player games, but have yet to make a successful deck for more than 1v1. From my experience, destroying enough lands to really mess up my opponent is difficult.

In this deck you have only 8 land destruction cards (12 if you count Pooling Venom). Everything is fairly low mana cost and you have no way to draw. I see Underworld Dreams as being weak here because it will only be worth playing against an opponent who is drawing lots of cards. I would suggest something like Death Cloud and/or Smallpox instead.

Some other suggestions are: Murderous Cut and Consume the Meek.

Here is my land destruction deck if you feel like looking. http://www.mtgvault.com/1111222334/decks/destroy-the-world/

1
Posted 20 March 2017 at 15:30

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Interesting take on it. The only trouble with translating the "everyone sacs stuff" mechanic to this deck is they will simply sac the lands and creatures I enchanted to get rid of them, but then again maybe that doesn't matter.

0
Posted 20 March 2017 at 20:09

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Good point. One of the reasons land destruction is challenging. Black doesn't have much for board wipe other than Damnation, which is pricey, unfortunately. I see you added Storage Matrix to the sideboard. I think that would be an interesting addition. Perhaps something like Exsanguinate would be good for late game too. I felt compelled to do some work on my 3-4 player land destruction deck. Let me know what you think http://www.mtgvault.com/1111222334/decks/freeforall-land-destruction/

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Posted 20 March 2017 at 20:44

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Yeah Im seriously considering swapping Storage Matrix for Underworld Dreams...

And I really like your uses of Price of Glory, then playing spells they are tempted to counter. Nice.

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Posted 20 March 2017 at 20:54

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Thanks. Considering buying the cards, but I'm afraid I'll just get hate killed when I play it.

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Posted 20 March 2017 at 21:48

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