The Dark Design

Mono Black Control

I know I go on about blue players and in particular Jace the Cash Guzzler, but I can’t deny that blue decks are a lot of fun and a lot of blue decks are control decks.  

Control decks, do exactly that, they seek to win games by controlling them. They may try to counter your spells or affect your library and basically ruin your day. Blue cards are particularly strong in this field and therefore a lot of control decks are blue or partially blue, but there have been more recent control decks that have no blue cards at all. Mono white control is possibly the most notable and is an excellent deck, but I’ve been coveting and planning a black version for a while so here it is...

I call it... 

The Dark Design

You will need...

4 Duress

4 Inquisition of Kozilek

1 Sadistic Sacrement

4 Diabolic Tutor

4 Everflowing Chalice

4 Voltaic Key

1 Contagion Engine

4 Throne of Geth

4 Prototype Portal

4 Elixir of Immortality

1 Temple Bell

1 Liliana Vess

1 Lux Cannon

1 Exsanguinate

Lots of swamps and a calculator, because once this thing gets going, you’ll have mana falling out of your ears.

This deck works in a very different way to most. What you are effectively trying to do is to leave your opponent with NO cards, none at all.  At the end of the game if all has gone well your opponent will have no deck, no hand and no permanents.

To play you have to achieve two different goals and keep yourself alive in the process...

The first thing you’re going to need is mana and lots of it, so half the deck is a great big mana battery...    

Here’s how it works...

What you are looking for in an opening hand is a prototype portal and a voltaic key. As soon as you have mana open you need to start generating keys. Because Voltaic key only costs one mana and its ability is pay one un-tap an artifact, the mini combo here is to un-tap the portal and make another one and so on until you use all your mana. When you get an everflowing chalice out you can really start to ramp, add the Throne of Geth and you’ll start to see the picture...  There’s so many ways to use this system it will get very confusing, but basically once it’s under way, within a few turns you should be able to generate hundreds if not thousands of mana. 

So, whilst you’re charging your battery how do you stay alive? Good question, but since you asked, you'll have to snatch the threats out f your opponents hand before they can play them. Turn one use Inquisition of Kozilek to take any 1/2/3 drop creatures and have a good look at their hand. Write down what you see and use your judgement as to when and how to steal the other threat cards... Don’t worry too much about cards out of the range of inquisition, if your deck behaves they’ll never get the chance to play them. 

So you got mana and your opponent’s graveyard is filling up, what next?  Well what you’re actually trying to achieve here is to play a kicked Sadistic Sacrament as soon as you can (possible on turn 5, I think).  

What you’re trying to do here is take out your opponents land. With most decks running 24 lands and assuming they’ve played one each turn that means they should have 5 in play and another 4 in the deck which they are never going to find now with the odds  you’ve just given them.  Now you want to use an elixir to get your sacrament back in the deck and do it all again until naturally they have no cards left. 

Use the tutors to find Liliana then use Liliana to tutor for your combo bits, you can use the Temple bell to draw the card on the turn too or you can use your keys to un-tap the Temple Bell and just draw lots of cards. 

Another trick here is to mill them to death by repeatedly tapping the temple bell with keys and masses of mana. For best effect do it during their end step forcing them to discard them before they have a chance to use them.   

Once you’ve exiled all their lands and any spells that they could have played it’s time to power up the doomsday laser... So go and get the Lux Cannon, with keys and thrones already in play, its possible you could destroy all their permanents in one turn. If you’ve done your job that will mean they have no way of playing any of the spells left in their deck and you will have effectively shut them down...

Ok here is how it works...

Dream hand - 2 x Everflowing Chalice , Prototype Portal, Voltaic Key, Inquisition of Kozilek and a pair of Swamps. 

Turn One - Drop swamp, play inquisition remove negate or goblin guide or the biggest threat and pass turn...

Turn Two - Hopefully draw a swamp lay the other swamp and drop chalice for two

Turn Three – Draw Throne of Geth, lay swamp and drop the portal imprinting the key, fasten seat belt and pass turn...

Turn Four –It’s going to get mental in a minute, let’s say you’ve drawn the god hand and this next card is another swamp... Tap chalice for one and pay one from a swamp for the other chalice -tap chalice and one more swamp for throne – tap another swamp to tap portal and make a key pay the last mana to un-tap the one of the chalices and then pass turn...

Turn Five - Draw a card, let’s say it’s a swamp... First tap one swamp and tap portal to make a key - sac key to throne proliferate. - Putting chalices to 2 -  tap one for 2 mana - use one mana to un-tap portal  use the other to make a key – tap a swamp use one to un-tap the portal make another key - tap chalice for two use one on  key to un-tap portal with last mana make another key lay last swamp to un-tap the throne - sac a key to the Throne and proliferate... you now have 4 swamps two chalices with 3 charge counters each, a Throne Of Geth,  3 voltaic keys  and a prototype portal with a voltaic key imprinted on it...

Next turn you could proliferate the chalices to 6 each and make 16 keys...

On the turn after you could proliferate them to 22 each and make 40ish keys or tap and un-tap one of them 17 times generating over 70 mana, after that it starts getting silly...

Alternative Win conditions...

We already looked at the milling element with temple bell but there are quite a few ways for you to win with this deck.

Alt win 1. Liliana’s ultimate. If you try to target creatures with the Inquisitions you’ll find it’s easy to proliferate liliana to her top ability.  So go rob the graveyard and swing...

Alt win 2. Exanguinate - Once you have the mana (and it shouldn’t take long) go get this little baby and you win....

Sideboard...

The world’s your oyster here you could swap out the snatches (duress, inquisition of Kozilek) for removal (doom blade, Grasp of Darkness)or add some reanimation with Rise from the Grave. If you come across any planeswalkers add Vampire Hexmage and if you need some life in a hurry Corrupt will see you through and even give you another win condition. And if you need graveyard hate then add leyline of the void or Bojuka bog...