Adam Haggerty's Mono B Attrition
 
Type: Deck Idea
Format (invalid) staStandard
Approx. Value:
$145.33

0 Likes 0 Comments
Avg. CMC 2.43
Card Color Breakdown
Card Type Breakdown

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Main Deck - 60 cards, 15 distinct
Columns
Name  Edition $ Type Cost
Rarity Color
Creature (26)
4 Archfiend's Vessel
$0.15 Creature - Human Cleric
2 Egon, God of Death // Throne of Death
$0.22 Legendary Creature - God // Legendary Artifact //
4 Eradicator Valkyrie
$1.47 Creature - Angel Berserker
4 Koma's Faithful
$0.03 Creature - Elf Cleric
4 Mire Triton
$0.13 Creature - Zombie Merfolk
2 Nullpriest of Oblivion
$0.65 Creature - Vampire Cleric
2 Rankle, Master of Pranks
$1.07 Legendary Creature - Faerie Rogue
4 Silversmote Ghoul
$0.09 Creature - Zombie Vampire
Instant (8)
4 Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire
$3.66 Instant // Land
4 Village Rites
$0.18 Instant
Sorcery (6)
4 Agadeem's Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt
$17.53 Sorcery // Land
1 Bloodchief's Thirst
$0.09 Sorcery
1 Inscription of Ruin
$0.06 Sorcery
Enchantment (2)
2 Demonic Embrace
$0.25 Enchantment - Aura
Land (18)
18 Snow-Covered Swamp
$0.80 Basic Snow Land - Swamp
Sideboard - 42 cards, 32 distinct
Name  Edition $ Type Cost
Rarity Color
Creature (20)
1 Acquisitions Expert
$0.04 Creature - Human Rogue
1 Ayara, First of Locthwain
$2.65 Legendary Creature - Elf Noble
1 Dream Devourer
$0.32 Creature - Demon Cleric
1 Elderfang Disciple
$0.08 Creature - Elf Cleric
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
$0.80 Creature - Zombie
1 Massacre Wurm
$3.46 Creature - Phyrexian Wurm
1 Murderous Rider // Swift End
$0.51 Creature - Zombie Knight // Instant - Adventure //
1 Nighthawk Scavenger
$0.24 Creature - Vampire Rogue
4 Priest of the Haunted Edge
$0.03 Snow Creature - Zombie Cleric
1 Skyclave Shade
$0.11 Creature - Shade
1 Tergrid, God of Fright // Tergrid's Lantern
$8.76 Legendary Creature - God // Legendary Artifact //
1 Tymaret, Chosen from Death
$0.07 Legendary Enchantment Creature - Demigod
1 Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire
$4.90 Legendary Creature - Demon Rogue
4 Woe Strider
$0.39 Creature - Horror
Instant (5)
1 Cling to Dust
$0.18 Instant
1 Drag to the Underworld
$0.09 Instant
1 Eat to Extinction
$0.21 Instant
1 Heartless Act
$0.12 Instant
1 Poison the Cup
$0.09 Instant
Sorcery (12)
1 Agonizing Remorse
$0.04 Sorcery
1 Blood on the Snow
$0.12 Snow Sorcery
4 Call of the Death-Dweller
$0.22 Sorcery
1 Cauldron's Gift
$0.07 Sorcery
1 Crippling Fear
$0.27 Sorcery
1 Duress
$0.05 Sorcery
1 Necromentia
$0.62 Sorcery
1 Skull Raid
$0.03 Sorcery
1 Witch's Vengeance
$0.13 Sorcery
Enchantment (1)
1 Tymaret Calls the Dead
$0.15 Enchantment - Saga
Planeswalker (1)
1 Liliana, Waker of the Dead
$2.18 Legendary Planeswalker - Liliana
Land (3)
1 Castle Locthwain
$4.09 Land
2 Faceless Haven
$0.25 Snow Land

Notes
 
This deck concept is the natural evolution of the reanimation deck that I was tinkering with at the end of the zendikar season. Gyurda not being a combo makes the draw to blue much lower, as well as the relative lack of game ending high CMC creatures. What the deck does pick up though is this core:

4 Eradicator Valkyrie
4 Silversmote Ghoul
4 Koma's Faithful
4 Mire Triton
4 Archfiend's Vessel
4 Malkir Rebirth
4 Village Rites
? Agadeem's Awakening

This is a 32 max card package, 8 of which can be considered lands. This means a minimum adds of 4 cards, 24 land, or a maximum of 20 cards, 16 land. So even thought the package is expansive, because of the dfc's we still have a lot of room to play and the list is far from optimized.

What does this core do? Well there are a lot of power synergies. The Valkyrie is a powerful finisher with natural protections. Combined with silversmote ghoul, we have a one-sided abyss that also hits planeswalkers. The ghouls are happy to swing and trade for creatures (as are all creatures in this deck. I should trade everytime I am able I think), as well as offer card draw. To bin the ghouls we are self-milling with mire triton and koma's faithful. Koma's Faithful is a sleeping card I think. If I cast on 3 from behind, my oppnent is kind of forked on decisions. Kill it immediately offers me more cards for the next turn, and I might rebirth or rites it. Swing into and Ill gain life and trade, again milling for options. Let me untap with it and I'll swing in unafraid, recurring any ghouls I have or might hit off the trigger. These cards also gain life for the ghouls, are power on rate, and have bonus abilities. We should churn through our deck pretty well with these as a base. Archfiend's vessel also has lifelink, so we have a full compliment of cards to try to trigger ghouls, and should be fine in races. The vessel offers a T2 combo. Vessel on 1 offers 1 damage or chump block on T2 (with a lucky triton we also snag a recurred ghoul or two) and if we have rites+rebirth, we draw two and create a 5/5 flyer. These cards also provide value with just about every creature we have, and thus I'm likely to rebirth as a spell first and land second. Agadeem's awakening scales all the way, this deck wants to cast it at seven often. Valkyrie, faithful, mire triton, and a 5/5 flying demon from the vessel for 1. This should basically ensure ghouls, and win any race upon resolution. We were originally 4x Call of the death dweller deck, but upon further reading the card specifies a combined mana cost of 3, making 3 drops actually quite undesirable. Even still that card provides a lot of vlaue and is a worthy consideration as a prime reanimation spell. Any two drop plus and archfiend's vessel on 3 is going to be a great play. This core is rolling, happy to trade card for card, then reloads and is able to do it again. We are live for big plays most turns, are almost always able to utilize mana, it should be fairly rare to peter out. Even in the face of graveyard hate and exile effects this deck curves out just fine and attacks on face just fine.

Then what do we want with these cards? First are answering the slam dunks. Egon, God of death, is likely a 4 of in this deck. it will always be a 3 mana 6/6 in this deck (although his constant eating of the graveyard might prove too antisynergistic with ghoul and agadeem's awakening, only testing will tell.) That is a great rate, but we already glut on three drops, so I'm not adding it particularly for the 3 drop. what would make it a 4 of is the throne on the back. Throne offers us a significant T1 play, I will always cat the first copy, and a further layer to utilise resources reinforces our core plan. My hesitation is the legendary status. We don't particularly remove cards from hand any which way unless we add something to do so, so we can get marooned on ghouls and excess egons. A hand full of three drops and no other action is going to feel bad. These three drops and clunky solve themselves, but that is likely the roughest restock in the deck. I also will not play egon into a small yard of ghouls, or if I am setting up an agdeem and are light on options. The back half helps with this, but you get the idea. The next is are we a call of the death dweller deck. We still have all the potential for grave based company, but neuteured. the antisynergy with 3 drops is disappointing, if we had memnite in the deck that would be a tipping point. Some amount of time 3 for a single card is going to happen (60%?) and that is still probably functional, but not amazing. If I have archfiend that will almost always be my target, and hopefully snagging another 2 drop. If we get more 2 drops I think it's close, but without that I think I just want more agadeem's awakening.

Then there's the next tier of good cards, inscription of ruin, nullpriest of oblivion, rankle, and demonic embrace. If we concede call, inscription looks really good. It provides the same function with a lower ceiling but can still create a turn 3 5/5 flying demon. It also has a mind rot mode, which is very good in our attrition based build, and a early removal mode which is serviceable. the ceiling is the cruel ultimatum mode, which is realistic given our desire to hit 7 for awakening and propensity to play dfc's as cards not lands. It offers a lot in a single card, and beacuase we are very creature based, it's important to not get to too diffuse on noncreature spells. Nullpriest offers us our next best 2 drop. It passes the same test all the other creatures in the deck do, offers even further lifelink, and has the 6 mana reanimation mode. That's going to always be fine sometimes great, a lot depends on my flex options. Rankle is the perfect compliment and embodiment of this deck. It seems desirable to have 1-2 to join the top of our unkicked or x curve. Rankle in this deck is probably going 2-3 modes a lot of the time, which make him better than a planeswalker (on top of being reanimatable). It also gives us a discard outlet, which makes egon more desirable. Speaking of discard outlets, demonic embrace is probably another consideration for 4 of. This card is just unreasoanble. The cost associated with it are voided in this deck, as I might want to discard a card (but certainly have something to pitch) and the life loss is already buffed and probably voided as this can go one of many creatures with lifelink. I mean, even the vessel becomes a 4/2 lifelink flyer swinging on 3, and that's a fail rate. Faithful swing for 6, nullpriest swinging for 5, or just always having a six powered flyer probably busts the fail rate on this deck, and offers another series of cards that increase our clock at quick pivot points beyond reach. Oh, did I mention this card gives us reach (a couple copies in the grveyard can be sandbanked at the opportune time to fireball. A silversmote ghoul with two embraces swings for 9 in the air all the same).

Then there are the two dueling packages: Snow and Devotion. A few cards could build me into either strategy, but they have tension so probably can't overlap. The tension is faceless haven. we are a mono-colored deck, so we are basically free to pick up a playset along side snow-swamps. If we do though casting a 3b creature on curve becomes dicey. We could probably still play a copy or two, but it's unclear if we even want this effects as we have so many outlets for excess mana, we basically never run out of action. Devotion offers us Ayara, which is very serviceable in the deck but not playable for it's own sake. Ayara let's have busted gray merchants. Grey Merchants offer us further reach, and play well with reanimation. Our reanimation effects are lower scale than 5 in this version, but this is compensated for by increased nullpriest. As a a curve topper and another reanimation target massacre wurm is a huge payoff. This version closes well, but it is more dependent on specific conditions to thrive, and each card is worth slightly less than it's functional counterparts.

The Snow version gets the previously mentioned faceless havens for free. It also get's a big pick up of priest of the haunted edge. This priest blows out our aggro matchups, is another recurrable card at the all important CMC of 2, and scales throughout the game as a creature based removal spell. Biding our time and trading resources card for card is what this deck does. The priest let's us do this very efficiently, squeezing people trying to pay attrition to the Valkyrie. As a further payoff we get Blood on the Snow, which is redundant version of our deck encapsulated in one card. Although this package is less dependent and offers more valuable cards, it is not free. The cost is DFC's. DFC's are anti synergistic with the priest, who we want scale as quickly as possible. 1 or two played dfc's will significantly weaken the priest's effect in what might be pivotal turns. DFC's also can't fire up the haven, which is significant if think we want to swing with it on T4. Every DFC pushs that back by at least 1 turn. We can still have them and play them, but they aren't as free as in the other versions for this reason. If we find that x=4 or more is largely unneccessary though, then this is probably the best pick up package.

As of 01/28/21, the above list is where I would start. The sideboard would be something like:
4 Duress
2 Agonizing Demise
2 Necromentia
3 Bloodchief's Thirst
2 Inscription of Ruin
2 Tymaret, Chosen From Death
2 Massacre Wurm
2 Tergrid, God of Fright
The sideboard plans lean into causing attrition by more direct means. I'm not sure what is sideboard able as of yet, but the thought is post board i strip the cards that matter the most and then proceed with my primary game plan. 4 Duress is a no-brainer, as hosng black sweepers is paramount as they exile. Agonizing demize supports this, and also acts as graveyard hate. Necromentia supports this by removing them forever, and should have low down side if I hit their hand hard enough. Inscritption can also support this as a mind rot, and Tegrid offers an 8 rack mode to the deck that sidesteps creature and graveyard hate that incidentially is enabled by all our discard. This switch is very appealing. it's creature based mode is also insane with the Valkyrie. Bloodchief's thirst is our duress against creature decks, inscription is another removal spell, and massacre wurm offers us a smash win against these decks. On 8 with a rites and a rebirth we have some sick plays where we get two triggers off the wurm. Tymaret offers us graveyard hate (important with so much recursion around and us playing attrition), further lifegain, and a creature based option which is easier on the sideboard. This might be main deckable, and certainly is a staple in the side. I would have to shave 2 to start depending on what I thought fit.

Also, Elderfang Disciple might be good post board on the draw, and liliana acts as the 3 Tergrid.
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