LILIANA OF THE DARK REALMS – ETERNAL BRAWL
Return to Ravnica/Theros blocks, Magic 2014, Magic 2015

Commander
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
Lands
23 Swamp
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Creatures
1 Festering Newt
1 Pharika’s Chosen
1 Typhoid Rats
1 Baleful Eidolon
1 Black Cat
1 Wight of Precinct Six
1 Herald of Torment
1 Nighthowler
1 Grim Guardian
1 Mogis’s Marauder
1 Burnished Hart
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Crypt Ghast
1 Squelching Leeches
1 Bogbrew Witch
1 Paragon of Open Graves
1 Akroan Horse
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Ogre Slumlord
1 Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
1 Marshmist Titan
1 Lord of the Void
1 Sepulchral Primordial
1 Abhorrent Overlord
Noncreatures
1 Bubbling Cauldron
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Dictate of Erebos
1 Ring of Three Wishes
1 Sign in Blood
1 Read the Bones
1 Corrupt
1 In Garruk’s Wake
1 Rise of the Dark Realms
1 Doom Blade
1 Hero’s Downfall
If Standard were a multiplayer format, we’d have seen Black Devotion look something like this. The early plan is to deploy small deathtouchers, Festering Newt, Black Cat, and Grim Guardian to ward off attacks while building devotion. Building around a Planeswalker Commander requires enough defensive creatures to protect it, and while Black isn’t overflowing with options, deathtouchers are enough. Akroan Horse can join the party in the midgame to ensure chump blockers; this deck isn’t winning on the ground, anyway, so it’s no threat to the Horse‘s well-being.
Black in this era had great mana acceleration available, from Liliana to Nykthos to Crypt Ghast, and they allow this deck to have a higher curve than other Brawl decks. There isn’t a Black Sun’s Zenith to pour the mana into, but well-established multiplayer finishers like Lord of the Void, Sepulchral Primordial, Abhorrent Overlord, In Garruk’s Wake, and Rise of the Dark Realms are available, while Ring of Three Wishes is too slow for almost every Brawl deck except this one. (If it’s too slow for you, Underworld Connections should take its place.)
Besides the finishers, several cards you’ve likely seen in Commander do good work here. Ogre Slumlord provides blockers and gives us back the Rat subtheme we lost when we excluded Pack Rat. Dictate of Erebos and Nighthowler have been pals ever since release. Whip of Erebos played a major part in Standard with Obzedat, Ghost Council; here, it keeps the life total high and allows two uses of Gary. Corrupt sees plenty of Commander play, but it’s only in less than ten percent of the decks running Cabal Coffers. Given how many reprints it’s had and the nature of Brawl games, you want Corrupt in every Mono-Black deck as a win condition.
As for breaking ground stalls – vital to winning any Brawl game – there are a few options. Mogis’s Marauder is much better here than in Commander since intimidate is better; it’s also a Black devotion card to preserve flavor. But the biggest thing is that Liliana herself circumvents ground stalls by giving +X/+X to a creature with flying or intimidate. Plus, you may even be able to use the ability twice in one turn! If you’ve got Nykthos or Crypt Ghast or Liliana‘s emblem, you can cast Liliana, -3 for +X/+X, send her back to the Command Zone, then recast her for a second +X/+X. Giving separate Harpy tokens from Abhorrent Overlord +11/+11 makes opponents’ lives both miserable and short.
If you sort Scryfall search results by EDHREC rank, you get a good sense of other options for this or any other deck. Depending on what you had in your collection or what you liked better, Sanguine Bond, Grave Betrayal, Soul of New Phyrexia, Pontiff of Blight, Necropolis Regent, Fate Unraveler, and Colossus of Akros all work well in this shell. Brawl and Eternal Brawl decks have a confined card pool, but they still have some choices on curve and support spells and style of win, usually with about two or three directions for each choice.
CONCLUSION
If you have a favorite Standard deck from a bygone era, it’s possible that it’s too synergy-based to be ported to Eternal Brawl, but it’s also possible that you can convert its style into a multiplayer powerhouse. Due to the card pool restriction, Eternal Brawl’s options for that kind of nostalgia are much stronger than Commander’s, and Mono-Black has been a classic Standard and Commander archetype for years. It’s fun to see the Standard and Commander strains of Mono-Black meet here, and I bet you’d have fun with it, too.