MTG Salvation

Anyone have any experience running Night of Souls' Betrayal in EDH? Specifically in a mono-black control shell?

My initial thinking is that it's just not big enough of an effect for EDH unless you're pairing it with Humility. In Legacy or Modern when you're dealing with plenty of X/1 creatures it's very good. Hitting my own creatures is irrelevant since I don't run any X/1s, but outside of punishing token decks and hosing mana dorks I don't see it doing too terribly much in a format with big fat fatties. Still, because it's got those two glorious black pips in the casting cost for enabling devotion, helps protect your life total, and has incredible art and flavor text I'm tempted to give it a shot.

It's not bad really. There's a surprising number of random x/1's even in EDH that this card can hose (Goblin Welder), but realistically it's not going to do a ton in multiplayer. It does start to get fun with Grave Pact and Bloodghast in your GY though.

Think of all the mana dorks and other utility dudes that it gets you. Its also possible to pair it with cheap 1 toughness dudes of your own that have death triggers or even Grave Pact effects. And sometimes making those giant beasties of the format 1 smaller is significant.

If youre only using it to punish token decks then run Illness in the Ranks instead.

i don't have direct experience with it, but there are a huge number of 1/1 tokens and mana dorks that see play in my group, this would wreck shop. we don't have a lot of black players so it never comes up, but i think its solid in any deck that wants to stop shenanigans like that.

I run it in my mono black train wreck deck as a general purpose way to keep shenanigans under control. It seems like everyone and their mothers are running tokens or elves or small utility creatures, and this says "up yours" in the nicest possible way....

...what’s a train wreck deck?

Key combo piece of Vhati il-Dal. Not that I have any experience with that deck.........

(spoiler alert: I do. That was my first deck!)

It's pretty low impact, but can be fun with Forbidden Orchard and Burning Sands.

I run it in Thraximundar stax to keep the board clear of chump blockers. It's also great at keeping Animar off the board, or Skullbriar if you manage to get rid of his +1/+1 counters.

I also run the similar Curse of Death's Hold in my curses deck, which frequently enchants the same player as Overwhelming Splendor.

Quote from Dunharrow »

It's pretty low impact, but can be fun with Forbidden Orchard and Burning Sands.

Falkenrath Noble (mostly so it survives the debuff) and Massacre Wurm are also nice for that Forbidden Orchard combo, as a type of slow win condition.

Another option is Curse of Death's Hold for when a particular player is bugging you, such as Barrin, Master Wizard, Rayne, Academy Chancellor, Ertai, Wizard Adept, Animar, Soul of Elements, Rhys the Redeemed, or Skullbriar, the Walking Grave. (Yeah, it's mostly blue.)

Illness in the Ranks hits tokens specifically.

Carnifex Demon is another option, as are things like Mutilate and Black Sun's Zenith. Those, however, do let the creature survive long enough that an opponent can take countermeasures; they're not instantly killed by SBAs.

If you're in white, you have Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, which does let your tokens survive, and even boosts them, but costs a lot more. Good for Ghave, Rith, Breya, Alesha, and anyone else who needs a bunch of small critters, but bad for everyone else. There, the price is generally not worth it. (Though she can keep Kaalia off the board, if you've been able to Swords Kaalia twice already.)

Old school name for mono black big mana board/hand control. I run lots of mana (like many MBC decks), tutors, hand discard, etc. As I said, night of soul's betrayal has been a house for me.

I'm glad other people have been having success with it, because I really wanted to give it a shot and see for myself. While my suite of board wipes typically can keep things in check Edgar Markov decks are becoming more common and being able to dump all over his gameplan until he digs up a Vindicate seems good.

Legacy Pox taught me the value of persistent disruption in the form of enchantments and artifacts over one shot effects. Not that I'm going to be running out and buying The Abyss or Nether Void any time soon but you get the point. Night of Souls' Betrayal might not be as potent as, say, Damnation but the ability to generate incremental advantage somewhat makes up for it I suspect.

Thanks for the input, gang. Now to find room to test it...

Quote from Artaud »

Ascendant Evincar is much better in mono-black assuming you don't face other MBs.

I'm not sure I agree. I suppose this discussion inevitably leads down the path of ease of recursion vs difficulty of being removed, but the deal-breaker for me is cost. 4cmc and 6cmc are worlds apart to me. NoSB comes down earlier when it's more likely that there are dorks and tokens that haven't been wiped yet. In my deck in particular that is very creature light where the anthem effect of ol' Crovax is wasted I believe Betrayal to be the better card for my deck.

Of course, in the right list that can better capitalize on all of his effects he's probably better. If I recall correctly your list is staxier and has a higher creature density than mine so it makes more sense for you to run the Evincar. I just don't think it's a clear cut case of one being better than the other.

Even in Oloro, well, first, you're running Propaganda effects to keep weenies off your back, and secondly, if you run Night, you might want your own anthems so you can use either Blood Artist and the soul sisters (because "kicker 1: cantrip" makes anything awesome), or possibly lifelink token generators (e.g., Sorin, Lord of Innistrad). My Oloro even uses "big or evasive creatures with lifelink" as a last resort if all else fails.

It's good in reanimator.

I would run it kn mg PW deck if i could garjbtee drawing it and humilty almost every game early on.

I used Curse of death's hold in my Glissa, the traitor deck with the Forbidden orchard combo. also Massacre wurm. I took it out when I lost it for half a year without realising (one of my opponents scooped it up with thier cards). It basically stopped people playing Prosh because I got him everytime with it. I unfortunately play too many x/1 tokens to run Night's betrayl.