My playgroup is anywhere from 3 to 6 players usually playing FFA but where anyone can block for anyone. Decks that are commonly used are Angels, Goblins, Simic +1/+1 counters, Izzet Instant/Sorceries, Dimir Mill. There is also a guy who uses a R/B aggro/burn deck that rushes me down first 100% of the time regardless of the deck that I'm playing. Some cards that I like the look of from other threads are Gray Merchant of Asphodel, No Mercy, Grave Pact(have one of these in my commander deck so I know it's lethal) and Bloodchief Ascension. My budget for the upgrades is about $100 and with no hard banlist(except money and how much hate you want directed at you) I'm sorta baffled with the amount of choices there are. Also hoping Prid3 chimes in as I've seen him/her help quite a few people with their Black multiplayer decks.
Grave Pact and Gray Merchant seem like good additions. Gary played well with Underworld Connections in Standard, and Phyrexian Arena is pretty similar.
I would recommend more creatures. Grave Pact only works with creatures, and having stuff to defend you really helps in multiplayer. Having a wall on the board doesn't mean you're blocking a creature, it means that creature is going to be hitting someone else instead. Wall of Corpses and Wall of Souls just scream "Don't attack me, or else". Souls has the extra advantage of allowing you to cooperate with someone else to take down another player - "If you swing at me, I'll make sure Bob takes the damage". Seal of Doom can be kept on the board until a creature actually starts threatening you. "If you swing that Angel at me, I'll kill it. Maybe you'd like to swing at Bob instead?" Hissing Miasma is also a way to avoid being attacked.
Mutilate is powerful, you might want to pick up a fourth copy because it's even better when you have more opponents with boards to wipe.
Some additional pump effect might be in order to make Lashwrithe and Korlash big enough to survive Mutilate.
8 defensive 2 drops + Nighthawks should give you protection against the aggro player and help trigger your Ascensions. You want access to mass removal if needed, your meta has a lot of creatures, but you don't need a ton of it I don't think. IMO you need more powerful 6 drops like Grave Titan or Massacre Wurm to stabilize the board and clock the players trying to take you out. If you want to run 3x Grave Titan since it's now a $2.00 card, go for it, just run something that will dominate the board.
The card that I'm least sure about is Thrull Parasite but I feel like it's a "must answer" threat for the aggro player because I don't think that he can actually beat it. If he kills that then Black Knight or whatever can block all of his aggressive beaters and eventually Gray Merchant will just take over the game.
I obviously don't think that Black Knight/Vampire Hexmage are amazing, in the dark I would run things like Nantuko Shade + Stromgald Crusader instead, but if I 100% knew that a BR aggro deck would be trying to rush me down then I would play with these kinds of marginal 2 drops that can't be beat past. I might even consider playing something like Phyrexian Crusader over Vampire Nighthawk, especially if my Hawks were just getting Bolted down.
The alternative deck that I would propose would basically be a Skullclamp deck because that card is just horrendously overpowered. It would be similar except it would have things like Ophiomancer at 3 CMC. That deck would basically be strictly better but it would also have the card Skullclamp in it. Since I generally don't like playing with oppressive cards that will completely suck the fun out of the game that's not necessarily a good thing. Still, hey, it's worth keeping in mind in case you wanted to play with a really busted card. Something like:
Thanks for the suggestions Mysticake, blackflame1990 and Prid3. During the games we played yesterday, someone brought out a deck which created infinite mana and then used Blue sun's zenith to make people pickup their entire library. I guess if people are going to start using decks like that, I might as well jump in and use a Skullclamp/Grave pact deck
Did some play testing with the deck the other night and the results were promising, even with the gamestore not having any Vampire Hexmage and having to sub in Reassembling Skeleton. We did 4 player FFA and some 1v1. The games were I pulled a Skullclamp, I usually won. Thrull Parasite/Extort became one of the most hated things of the night as I may have been a bit over zealous with the extorting (triple extort on a already big Gray Merchant of Asphodel ). I lost a few games to some big +1/+1 countered creatures with trample (also the games where I didn't draw clamp or pact) and was thinking about cutting the Bloodchief Ascension's and 1 Thrull Parasite for either Phyrexian Arena and try and get my pieces together or Go for the throat and stop the threats that way. But overall, very pleased with the deck.
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4 Exsanguinate
3 Mutilate
3 Sign in Blood
4 Cabal Coffers
17 Swamp
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Volrath's Stronghold
4 Go for the Throat
4 Victim of Night
4 Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
4 Vampire Nighthawk
My playgroup is anywhere from 3 to 6 players usually playing FFA but where anyone can block for anyone. Decks that are commonly used are Angels, Goblins, Simic +1/+1 counters, Izzet Instant/Sorceries, Dimir Mill. There is also a guy who uses a R/B aggro/burn deck that rushes me down first 100% of the time regardless of the deck that I'm playing. Some cards that I like the look of from other threads are Gray Merchant of Asphodel, No Mercy, Grave Pact(have one of these in my commander deck so I know it's lethal) and Bloodchief Ascension. My budget for the upgrades is about $100 and with no hard banlist(except money and how much hate you want directed at you) I'm sorta baffled with the amount of choices there are. Also hoping Prid3 chimes in as I've seen him/her help quite a few people with their Black multiplayer decks.
I would recommend more creatures. Grave Pact only works with creatures, and having stuff to defend you really helps in multiplayer. Having a wall on the board doesn't mean you're blocking a creature, it means that creature is going to be hitting someone else instead. Wall of Corpses and Wall of Souls just scream "Don't attack me, or else". Souls has the extra advantage of allowing you to cooperate with someone else to take down another player - "If you swing at me, I'll make sure Bob takes the damage".
Seal of Doom can be kept on the board until a creature actually starts threatening you. "If you swing that Angel at me, I'll kill it. Maybe you'd like to swing at Bob instead?"
Hissing Miasma is also a way to avoid being attacked.
Mutilate is powerful, you might want to pick up a fourth copy because it's even better when you have more opponents with boards to wipe.
Some additional pump effect might be in order to make Lashwrithe and Korlash big enough to survive Mutilate.
Siphon Mind and Siphon Flesh get stronger the more players there are.
17 Swamp
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Exsanguinate
4 Mutilate
3 Sign in Blood
4 night's whisper
4 Go for the Throat
4 Victim of Night
3 consuming vapors
3 grasp of darkness
2 drain life
2 phyrexian arena
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 nirkana revenant
1 phyrexian etchings
1 liliana vess
19x Swamp
3x Cabal Coffers
2x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Volrath's Stronghold
Creatures (21)
2x Thrull Parasite
4x Black Knight
4x Vampire Hexmage
4x Vampire Nighthawk
4x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
2x Grave Titan
1x Massacre Wurm
4x Bloodchief Ascension
2x Exsanguinate
3x Phyrexian Arena
2x Grave Pact
1x No Mercy
2x Mutilate
8 defensive 2 drops + Nighthawks should give you protection against the aggro player and help trigger your Ascensions. You want access to mass removal if needed, your meta has a lot of creatures, but you don't need a ton of it I don't think. IMO you need more powerful 6 drops like Grave Titan or Massacre Wurm to stabilize the board and clock the players trying to take you out. If you want to run 3x Grave Titan since it's now a $2.00 card, go for it, just run something that will dominate the board.
The card that I'm least sure about is Thrull Parasite but I feel like it's a "must answer" threat for the aggro player because I don't think that he can actually beat it. If he kills that then Black Knight or whatever can block all of his aggressive beaters and eventually Gray Merchant will just take over the game.
I obviously don't think that Black Knight/Vampire Hexmage are amazing, in the dark I would run things like Nantuko Shade + Stromgald Crusader instead, but if I 100% knew that a BR aggro deck would be trying to rush me down then I would play with these kinds of marginal 2 drops that can't be beat past. I might even consider playing something like Phyrexian Crusader over Vampire Nighthawk, especially if my Hawks were just getting Bolted down.
The alternative deck that I would propose would basically be a Skullclamp deck because that card is just horrendously overpowered. It would be similar except it would have things like Ophiomancer at 3 CMC. That deck would basically be strictly better but it would also have the card Skullclamp in it. Since I generally don't like playing with oppressive cards that will completely suck the fun out of the game that's not necessarily a good thing. Still, hey, it's worth keeping in mind in case you wanted to play with a really busted card. Something like:
19x Swamp
3x Cabal Coffers
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Volrath's Stronghold
Creatures (24)
4x Thrull Parasite
4x Nantuko Shade
4x Vampire Hexmage
2x Bloodghast
4x Ophiomancer
4x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
2x Grave Titan
4x Skullclamp
2x Bloodchief Ascension
2x Exsanguinate
3x Grave Pact
1x No Mercy
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