Simple Black Magic.

Disrupt your opponent's hand and kill your opponent's creatures to get full value from Torment of Hailfire and Remorseless Punishment . If there is no hand and aren't any creatures you can close the game swiftly with loss of life. The main game plan is to stop your opponent from being able to build any kind of board presence and become forced to top deck, which is a dirty plan but a plan nonetheless.

Torment of Scarabs is repeatable punishment that makes keeping anything on the field that much more difficult (or at least costly) and the abundance of spot removal means bad things either way. Cruel Reality is a costlier version of this to top off the curve, but looks specifically at creatures and planeswalkers which should be in short supply by turn 7 when you could play it.

Dreamstealer got the only creature spot because of how it picks away at your opponent's hand easily with Menace, but also Eternalize gives it extra value as it can return as a 4/4 Menace that can drop your opponent's entire hand. It's a solid 3 drop that does it's job very well. Once the Curses are in play and your opponent is top decking they might try to save cards in their hand to discard instead of taking damage. Dreamstealer makes that impossible by making them just discard it anyway and then hopefully your opponent just has to take the damage. I've since added Thought-Knot Seer and Distended Mindbender to the deck which all get along just so well... the bodies are all big enough to avoid most burn and their cast triggers and etb effects keep your opponent in the weeds by further taking away cards from their hand. Sometimes there are no cards to take, but that's ok because then you can just start the beat down strategy and win that way. If things line up you can Emerge the Mindbender off of a Dreamstealer as early as turn 4 which can take down up to 3 cards from your opponent's hand and leave you with a 5/5 and now your Dreamstealer is ready to Eternalize by turn 6. Mindbending a TKS on turn 5 means they have to draw a card before you get to discard it. Its awesome.

Cards like Unburden and Razaketh's Rite can be useful or completely dead which is why Cycling makes them so much better. Harsh Scrutiny is best within the first three turns, but the information is awesome at any time, especially because of the Scry 1. Doomfall is incredibly versatile and works towards either end of your goal as it can hit their hand or their board. Perfect. Torment of Venom was my favorite removal spell during our draft and fits perfectly in this build as it can kill or cripple any creature while forcing another bad decision on your opponent.

What makes this deck unique against other black builds in the past with similar goals is that there are several effects that can deal with non-land / non-creature permanents which black doesn't typically have access to. I played a watered down and much weaker version of this in limited draft and fell in love with the playstyle all over again and cards like Torment of Scarabs and Torment of Hailfire proved incredibly powerful against a weakened opponent that can't keep a hand or a board after taking many hits to both throughout turns 4 through 7.

This polished version looks super spicy and I can't wait to give it a try in this ever evolving Standard format.

The sideboard has even more removal, board wipes, and Noxious Gearhulks for good measure. Dispossess and Lost Legacy are amazing sideboard staples for black that eliminate your opponent's win conditions once you know what they are. Take down the scariest things that can't otherwise be dealt with.