My gameplay usually is to survive early game and control the game mid/late game with a lot of remove and draw engine. If i'm the focus, there's some lifegain in the deck to help breathe through the early.
Sorry that no one responded sooner. With all of the 5 and 6 mana cost cards, you may want to either remove some or add more acceleration in addition to the Mind Stones.
Some of my favorite cards that synergize with the cards in your deck are Blade of the Bloodchief and Thrashing Wumpus. Blade of the Bloodchief works well with Pestilence, but works even better when you have vampires. And Thrashing Wumpus plus Loxodon Warhammer will give you lots of life gain while killing creatures.
Gatekeeper of Malakir is good in 1v1 games. You kill a creature and still have a 2/2 to defend the ground. If you play multiplayer games, Plaguecrafter is pretty good.
Sign in Blood is probably better than Mind Stone. It draws right away and will draw you into more lands to get that +1 mana.
Cabal Stronghold seems slow. I realize that Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth are getting more expensive, but Cabal Stronghold doesn't give you additional mana until there are at lease six lands on the board. In general 6 cmc spells should be winning you the game, so the fact that you're playing a card to get more mana after that point probably isn't good. Coffer's by comparison achieves pariaty at 4 lands, and advantage at 5. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth reduces that requirement on both of them by one land.
Ok, moving out of the manabase, lets talk about the deck itself.
You've got Typhoid Rats and Vampire Nighthawk as early blockers. Nighthawk is a 1v1 all star, but it begins looking a bit silly when you throw it away to kill something and two other opponents are sitting there not having lost anything. Typhoid Rats is just bad in most formats as it can't stop flyers, can't pick a target to kill, and has no meaningful power, and doesn't survive combat. In 90% of situations a targeted kill spell or Innocent Blood is better in this slot. Keep the nighthawks if you want, but I'd definitely upgrade the rats to something where you have more control over what you kill.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel - This guy is amazing, but I'm not sure you're taking full advantage of him here. You don't have any 2cmc BB cards, three cmc BBB or 4 cmc BBBB. Usually BB and 1BB will be the bread and butter of decks running this guy. Some cards you might want to look at to synergize with him are gatekeeper of malakir, Necropotence (if playgroup allows, it's overpowered by a good bit), or Phyrexian Obliterator. You can also just search gatherer for permanents that cost BB or 1BB.
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief - *sigh* I'm not going to knock drana. She's common as an EDH ramp general, has reusable removal, and is downright scary to be hit with. I will say that your mana isn't good enough to play her, and she's questionable in 60 card at best. You have Loxodon Warhammer presumably to slap onto her for trample and the "I Can't Die" level of life. If you want to play her, I'd forget the warhammer and think about ways to protect her instead. Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots will keep her alive far longer considering how high of a priority she is for most decks to kill.
Harvester of Souls - Meh? I love card advantage, but there's just better ways to get it. 6cmc is a a huge amount, especially when you could just throw down a Phyrexian Arena, get a few cards, and power up your turn 5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Harvester would be better in some sort of combo deck, but it's too inconsistent when it doesn't draw for it's own death.
Desecration Demon Wrong deck for this I think. Desecration Demon is best when he's your top end creature and the rest of the deck is all about killing the opponent's stuff. (Heartless Summoning decks also like him.) I'm not convinced that you have enough control of the board with your 21 nonland, nonremoval cards.'
Noncreature: Diabolic Servitude - You have enough creature and none are impactful enough to warrant this. Your best reanimation target is Gray Merchant, but servitude exiles the reanimated card. Playing a setup to repeatedly reanimate merchant would be much better than paying 4 to get him back, and the 4 to get back a nighthawk.
Loxodon Warhammer - Ug, Thats a lot of mana for trample and lifelink in a control deck. If Drana is the core of your deck, and you start playing bigger ramp artifacts, then keep this. Otherwise toss.
Mind Stone - I can't say anything bad about mindstone, but I can't say anything good either. If you're playing black ramp without access to cabal coffers, you need something better than this. Ideas:
Tendrils of Corruption - I love the Corrupt deck design. It's a 1v1 deck that wins by controlling the board and gaining a life buffer while doing so. It drops one land a turn, and uses its life advantage to prolong the game before winning with a Corrupt to the face. Decide if this is your goal. You don't need to play Corrupt as Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief will work just fine, but you'll need some improvments over Cabal Stronghold and Mind Stone to keep up.
Overall, I think you have a few different decks slapped into one. Grey Merchant, Drana, Harvester, and Descecration demon all want to be the stars of their own decks. Each needs different types of support to work, and you don't have the appropriate support for any of them. You need more board control, and Pestilenece isn't enough by itself.
Great Analysis man, but i want to play budget, and here in Brazil is way more expensive than US. For example: Phyrexian Arena is about 40R$ here (12$~)
Land: Cabal Coffers is great, but it's expensive to me.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel: I don't have the budget for those cards, except Malakir. I think it's weak against multiple players, do you recommend take the merchant out? If so, who to replace them?
Desecration Demon: I see, but he's one win condition, who to replace? (There's a demon 6/6 that i can't win the game, i forgot the name, what do you think?)
Diabolic Servitude: Droped, but if i keep the merchant, i will need another graveyard card interaction
If you're going in on drana, Worn Powerstone orThran Dynamo would be the way to go. The Desecration Demons and Harvester of Souls can probably become more removal spells. Some light discard like Hymn to Tourach or Wrench Mind could also help.
Mono-black control is probably the cheapest deck in magic. Look online for some pauper lists for more card ideas. I built one variant for $7 for the entire deck (minus basic lands), though that was a rat control variant.
On a different note, do you know of any Brazilian shops that sell magic cards internationally? There's a number of cards that I'm looking for in specific printings in Portuguese, but they're really hard to find online. mtgbrasil doesn't ship overseas as far as I can tell, and also won't guarantee the language of the card in the order.
My metagame is 3-4 players and a lot of creatures.
Sorry for my english, i'm brazilian
4 Typhoid Rats
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
3 Vampire Nighthawk
2 Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
2 Harvester of Souls
4 Desecration Demon
Enchantment
2 Pestilence
2 Diabolic Servitude
3 Cabal Stronghold
21 Swamp
Artifact
2 Loxodon Warhammer
4 Mind Stone
Instant
3 Victim of Night
2 Tendrils of Corruption
Planeswalker
2 Ob Nixilis Reignited
2 Pestilence
3 Nevinyrral's Disk
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Crypt Incursion
3 Duress
My gameplay usually is to survive early game and control the game mid/late game with a lot of remove and draw engine. If i'm the focus, there's some lifegain in the deck to help breathe through the early.
What do you guys think? (I'm a newbie)
Some of my favorite cards that synergize with the cards in your deck are Blade of the Bloodchief and Thrashing Wumpus. Blade of the Bloodchief works well with Pestilence, but works even better when you have vampires. And Thrashing Wumpus plus Loxodon Warhammer will give you lots of life gain while killing creatures.
Sign in Blood is probably better than Mind Stone. It draws right away and will draw you into more lands to get that +1 mana.
If you're allowed to, play 1 Sol Ring.
You're Welcome.
I like that Equipment. If i remove Typhoid rats and adds 4x Gifted Aetherborn? I could add some.
Mind stone is more a ramp spell to my deck, the draw is just for late game recycle.
I wish to play sol ring, but it's out of budget
Ok, moving out of the manabase, lets talk about the deck itself.
You've got Typhoid Rats and Vampire Nighthawk as early blockers. Nighthawk is a 1v1 all star, but it begins looking a bit silly when you throw it away to kill something and two other opponents are sitting there not having lost anything. Typhoid Rats is just bad in most formats as it can't stop flyers, can't pick a target to kill, and has no meaningful power, and doesn't survive combat. In 90% of situations a targeted kill spell or Innocent Blood is better in this slot. Keep the nighthawks if you want, but I'd definitely upgrade the rats to something where you have more control over what you kill.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel - This guy is amazing, but I'm not sure you're taking full advantage of him here. You don't have any 2cmc BB cards, three cmc BBB or 4 cmc BBBB. Usually BB and 1BB will be the bread and butter of decks running this guy. Some cards you might want to look at to synergize with him are gatekeeper of malakir, Necropotence (if playgroup allows, it's overpowered by a good bit), or Phyrexian Obliterator. You can also just search gatherer for permanents that cost BB or 1BB.
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief - *sigh* I'm not going to knock drana. She's common as an EDH ramp general, has reusable removal, and is downright scary to be hit with. I will say that your mana isn't good enough to play her, and she's questionable in 60 card at best. You have Loxodon Warhammer presumably to slap onto her for trample and the "I Can't Die" level of life. If you want to play her, I'd forget the warhammer and think about ways to protect her instead. Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots will keep her alive far longer considering how high of a priority she is for most decks to kill.
Harvester of Souls - Meh? I love card advantage, but there's just better ways to get it. 6cmc is a a huge amount, especially when you could just throw down a Phyrexian Arena, get a few cards, and power up your turn 5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Harvester would be better in some sort of combo deck, but it's too inconsistent when it doesn't draw for it's own death.
Desecration Demon Wrong deck for this I think. Desecration Demon is best when he's your top end creature and the rest of the deck is all about killing the opponent's stuff. (Heartless Summoning decks also like him.) I'm not convinced that you have enough control of the board with your 21 nonland, nonremoval cards.'
Noncreature:
Diabolic Servitude - You have enough creature and none are impactful enough to warrant this. Your best reanimation target is Gray Merchant, but servitude exiles the reanimated card. Playing a setup to repeatedly reanimate merchant would be much better than paying 4 to get him back, and the 4 to get back a nighthawk.
Loxodon Warhammer - Ug, Thats a lot of mana for trample and lifelink in a control deck. If Drana is the core of your deck, and you start playing bigger ramp artifacts, then keep this. Otherwise toss.
Mind Stone - I can't say anything bad about mindstone, but I can't say anything good either. If you're playing black ramp without access to cabal coffers, you need something better than this. Ideas:
Tendrils of Corruption - I love the Corrupt deck design. It's a 1v1 deck that wins by controlling the board and gaining a life buffer while doing so. It drops one land a turn, and uses its life advantage to prolong the game before winning with a Corrupt to the face. Decide if this is your goal. You don't need to play Corrupt as Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief will work just fine, but you'll need some improvments over Cabal Stronghold and Mind Stone to keep up.
Ob Nixilis Reignited - Good card. I think he'd like some friends.
Overall, I think you have a few different decks slapped into one. Grey Merchant, Drana, Harvester, and Descecration demon all want to be the stars of their own decks. Each needs different types of support to work, and you don't have the appropriate support for any of them. You need more board control, and Pestilenece isn't enough by itself.
Land: Cabal Coffers is great, but it's expensive to me.
Typhoid Rats: I will replace for Innocent blood. I already have those.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel: I don't have the budget for those cards, except Malakir. I think it's weak against multiple players, do you recommend take the merchant out? If so, who to replace them?
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief: I can add Swiftfoot Boots. How many copies do you recommend? And Drana? Continue with 2?
Desecration Demon: I see, but he's one win condition, who to replace? (There's a demon 6/6 that i can't win the game, i forgot the name, what do you think?)
Diabolic Servitude: Droped, but if i keep the merchant, i will need another graveyard card interaction
Loxodon Warhammer: I will drop to Swiftfoot.
Mind Stone: I don't have any card with 6cmc+, but if you say, Hedron Archive seems to be the best for me (Ramp + Recycle late game)
Tendrils of Corruption: I use more for survival until i play the big stuff, but i don't want to play fullset. (There's a friend with Eldrazi deck)
Thanks for helping man, i appreciate it.
Mono-black control is probably the cheapest deck in magic. Look online for some pauper lists for more card ideas. I built one variant for $7 for the entire deck (minus basic lands), though that was a rat control variant.
On a different note, do you know of any Brazilian shops that sell magic cards internationally? There's a number of cards that I'm looking for in specific printings in Portuguese, but they're really hard to find online. mtgbrasil doesn't ship overseas as far as I can tell, and also won't guarantee the language of the card in the order.
I personally don't know, but i'll ask my friend about it.