Oh, uh, clerics. Right. Ok, nevermind :D
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BLOOD SEEKER!!!! OMG WOOO!
Hmm, looks like your list went down to 97 cards? Anyway, I was checking the differences, and should make a correction. I left the Grave Titan in and swapped the obliterator for the butcher (needed the obliterator for another deck). Last game I played was a four player game and I ended up taking a lot of hate after an early small pox to kill another player's lighthouse chronologist (brutal). I ended up riding my lake of the dead to get out sorin to kill one player, managed to drop oppression, megrim and lilliana's caress and killed a second player with pox. Never had any defenders, so the final player just pounded my face in. I like oppression in these circumstances, there's usually something I don't care about discarding, and every spell costs opponents 4 life - and makes people rage quite when painful quandary is out too. It's also nice to have a fairly threatening enchantment out if someone is threatening the board with a wipe. I always have trouble fitting everything into EDH decks. The other day I set out to build a GW deck and had so many white cards that I just turned it into monowhite :P
Took out Despise, Praetor's Grasp, Inquisition, and Grave Titan. Put in Oppression (pretty brutal), Butcher of Malakir (another Grave Pact), Sign in Blood, and Smallpox. Maybe put in Dread as another No Mercy.
Putting this together for some EDH this week/weekend. Let you know how it plays in my group. My current monoblack deck is fun, but has gotten a little stale - big fat fatties and reanimation can only take you so far. My Zur deck just gets me killed ASAP. Hopefully this will stay under the radar until it's too late.
Field report: I took this deck verbatim to the local standard tourney this past Saturday morning. I should begin by saying two things: 1) I’ve only played standard with this group once before 2) I had never played this deck before. I felt comfortable with my approach to handling the games. I knew what I had to do – remove as many threats and enablers as I could as quickly as I could before they hit the table. Sweep in for the kill with the obliterators, metamorphs, and creepers. I thought psychic surgery was interesting, but didn’t realize just how punishing it can be, more on that later. Like I said, this was only my second match of standard with this group, but I’ve been very tuned-in to the modern meta. However, I know things have been changing recently with the release of M12, the bans, and people testing new decks with the October changeover looming on the horizon. I got completely dismantled. Went 0-4, and don’t think I won a single game. Here were the match-ups: Round 1 vs Mono Green Eldrazi Round 2 vs Venser Birthing Pod Round 3 vs Tezzeret Rage Extractor Round 4 vs mono green assortment of random crap Round 1 was probably my most favorable match up. Obviously ramping quickly into Emrakul or Ulamog and then basically just winning in one or two more turns. I can’t remember much of the first game. I quickly discovered my inability to disable her fast mana ramping. I think she was on the play first and cleared most of her hand – leaving a few behemoths for me to choose for my first despise. I took some cmc7/8 beast (either Avenger of Zendikar or Terastodon) thinking it would hit the deck first. I basically had no chance. I didn’t hit the right draws (a constant theme), my opponent was rampant growthing like a madman, and I succumbed to Ulamog shortly thereafter. Game 2 I actually controlled the board for most of the game. I went after her ramp cards as best I could, extracted all her Eldrazi, and had psychic surgery down on turn two. Unfortunately things slowly got out of control when I held an obliterator for several turns without drawing the fourth swamp. Eventually she got a Terastadon and sealed the fate on my obliterator by axing my lands. I drew a metamorph and copied her terastadon, but facing down a creature heavy deck brought me down. At least I was getting better at piloting. Round 2 game one was very much the same, strong out of the gate, but petering out to eventually get overwhelmed. Both games in round 2 I was able to stymie his birthing pod shenanigans, but was unable to get rid of Venser before he hit the deck and used his ultimate to bury me. The biggest problem I was encountering was the inability to clear threats from the board. Game two for most of the rounds I was taking out the missteps and spell pierces in favor of the ratchet bomb, BSZ and dismembers – which never came up when relevant. Again, psychic surgery performed well here, but it came in too late both games. Round 3 was an interesting match up. Game one I pulled a metamorph with praetors, but never got the chance to play it. I got an obliterator down, but he copied it with another metamorph. I knew he had tezzeret in his hand for most of the game, but I never got the despise I needed early enough. I really sensed the problem with having such specific discard spells. I never could target the biggest threat at any given moment. Again, psychic surgery was strong here, but once tezzeret came down, I had big troubles. Game two was very much the same. Unable to answer the specific threats in the hand at the right time. Round 4 was downright depressing. The poor kid I was playing against was 0-3 just like me. I could tell why, his deck was an assortment of green cards he probably felt was the best deck he could throw together. Unfortunately for me, this meant extracting wouldn’t be particularly useful. Game one I inquisitioned and all I got was a sacred wolf. With psychic surgery down, I thought, ok, how about I extract it. Of course he only has one sacred wolf. His board was empty for a long time, but I again I suffered from only 3 black mana available. Game two was even more depressing as I had to resort to grasping artifact walls from his deck to block with. Later on in that game my obliterator got killed by a deathtouch cobra with lure. So, my first playtesting with the deck was very very shaky. I think I got screwed by bad draws and timing. But also, there are obviously some bigger issues at hand. Any suggestions? Other thoughts: I boarded in the archive traps probably during all the rounds, but never saw them. I thought, perhaps I’m wasting my discard spells too early, and I should wait until there might be a bigger threat in my opponent’s hand. This doesn’t work if they have resources.