This is my take on mono black control for the Aether Revolt Format. I think this deck can become one of the top deck of the format after the banning, I just need a little help against aggro decks
Creatures I am using for are all effective in their own way. Gonti lets you steal one of my opponents cards from the top of their decks. I really like him, especially when you can steal a planeswalker from your opponent and play it against and win lol. Glint-Sleeve Siphoner is good early game card advantage and having menace is a plus. Noxious Gearhulk is a great removal and life gain and finally Demon of Dark Schemes is a game winner on its own.
As far for spells Its mostly hand removal with Harsh Scrutiny and Transgress the Mind then you have Live Fast to get more cards in your hand and then finally the rest are all removal. I don't know if I have too much removal but until now its been working pretty good. And finally Ob Nixilis take control of the field and more card value.
My sideboard is a work in progress. I'm not too good with sideboard so if anybody can guide me on the right track please do. But what I have right now, Yahenni's Expertise is really good against g/w tokens decks and other aggro decks. Fatal Push is also for those aggro decks. Lost Legacy i'm using it for combo decks. Pick the brain and the 4th Transgress the Mind I use it for combo and control decks. I also have the fourth Ruinous path for control and decks that uses many planeswalker and I have the Distended Mindbender because I really don't know what else to use.
All suggestions opinions criticisms are all welcome
I roll around an idea in my head for a list similar to yours. One thing I think your deck can make good use of is Panharmonicon. It makes your bomb creatures nuclear. It would take only slight changes to your deck too, little stuff like changing live fast to black puzzleknot, and stuff like that.
This is my take on mono black control for the Aether Revolt Format. I think this deck can become one of the top deck of the format after the banning, I just need a little help against aggro decks
Creatures I am using for are all effective in their own way. Gonti lets you steal one of my opponents cards from the top of their decks. I really like him, especially when you can steal a planeswalker from your opponent and play it against and win lol. Glint-Sleeve Siphoner is good early game card advantage and having menace is a plus. Noxious Gearhulk is a great removal and life gain and finally Demon of Dark Schemes is a game winner on its own.
As far for spells Its mostly hand removal with Harsh Scrutiny and Transgress the Mind then you have Live Fast to get more cards in your hand and then finally the rest are all removal. I don't know if I have too much removal but until now its been working pretty good. And finally Ob Nixilis take control of the field and more card value.
My sideboard is a work in progress. I'm not too good with sideboard so if anybody can guide me on the right track please do. But what I have right now, Yahenni's Expertise is really good against g/w tokens decks and other aggro decks. Fatal Push is also for those aggro decks. Lost Legacy i'm using it for combo decks. Pick the brain and the 4th Transgress the Mind I use it for combo and control decks. I also have the fourth Ruinous path for control and decks that uses many planeswalker and I have the Distended Mindbender because I really don't know what else to use.
All suggestions opinions criticisms are all welcome
Deck needs more card draw and targeted removal that can be cast on curve. You're also running far too many 6 CMC creatures that you will never be able to cast. Control will simply counter you every time you tap out for all that mana and aggro will run all over you before you even get started. You need a healthier balance between your creatures and your removal. Also, there is the question of which deck archetypes you expect to encounter. Are you looking to play this deck competitively in your local meta or do you plan on attending tournaments? I only ask because you're gonna need answers to protect yourself against the more popular decks like Jeskai Saheeli, BG Delirium, Mardu Vehicles, and the emerging control decks showing up. Going two colors may be a more viable option as well. Taking your list, I'd go with something like:
As you can see, the deck does everything black is good at/wants to do, which is hand disruption, spot removal, and card draw. Although B got the least amount of E producing cards from the KLD Block, there's still plenty of E generation in this deck repeatedly draw off of Glint-Sleeve Siphoner and and power Demon of Dark Schemes. So much so that I don't believe it necessary to run Aether Hubs in the deck. After having made this deck, I think I may give it a go. It should be relatively cheap to build, and fun to play.
Universal Solvent is a terrible card. If you want 7 mana kill something, Scour From Existence is much better. (especially since it takes care of artifacts, enchantments and indestructible creatures, which black can have trouble with).
Universal Solvent is a terrible card. If you want 7 mana kill something, Scour From Existence is much better. (especially since it takes care of artifacts, enchantments and indestructible creatures, which black can have trouble with).
This is where the "strictly better" argument comes up, in which case, I disagree with you. Solvent is a card with a repeatable effect that can be cast (but not used) on curve. Adding to this, what creatures in the format do we really need to worry about being recurred? Ishkanah? Prized Amalgamation? These are threats that are easily answered. And it removes all of the card types you mentioned.
It seems neither of us read the card completely lol. I, for some reason, thought it said creature.
You missed, Universal Solvent isn't repeatable. You have to sacrifice it as part of the activation.
As far as exile, I'm not worried as much about recurrence, which is a thing, as I am about Indestructible.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of either card. 7 mana removal isn't where anyone wants to be. I was just stating that if you want to use 7 mana removal, Scour is better than Solvent.
It seems neither of us read the card completely lol. I, for some reason, thought it said creature.
You missed, Universal Solvent isn't repeatable. You have to sacrifice it as part of the activation.
As far as exile, I'm not worried as much about recurrence, which is a thing, as I am about Indestructible.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of either card. 7 mana removal isn't where anyone wants to be. I was just stating that if you want to use 7 mana removal, Scour is better than Solvent.
LOL! You're right, I did read the card wrong! Definitely thought it was a repeatable effect, which is dumb once I think about it. Card would be too good and at rare value if it did. Taking it out of the deck post haste!
Sorry for no replying to anyone I been working alot this week but I have been practicing some with my original build and its been doing pretty good I have a good match up with jeskai shaelii but I have a rough time against b/g delirium and aggro. B/U control is more of a 50/50 and w/g tokens I have a somewhat of a problem. THis next couple of days I will playtest a lot more now that I have a couple of days off and I will start by trying marckarlock's build to see how it goes then I will try out Th3M4g1cM4n's deck and compare and see what really works well and what I can make officially cut out. Thanks everybody for their opinions and suggestions. Keep them coming.
Reporting in. As promised, I did build the decklist I theory-crafted above and got to test it out/play in a tournament with it early this week. The deck did surprising well, all things considered. I made only one last minute minor change to the list, removing -1 Glint Sleeve Siphoner and adding +1 Fatal Push mainboard because I wanted early interaction. Went 2-1 in a 3 round tournament, but, alas, no one was playing the more popular deck archetypes like BG Counters and Copy Cat. It was mostly jank with people trying out homebrews. My list was:
-Sorcery vs instant card draw changes how the deck plays considerably. As a control deck, we always want to be tapping out on our opponents turn. Succumb to Temptation allows us to do this. Live Fast does not. This is where it may be more viable to add U for card draw in the deck. Glimmer of Genius does everything we want to do, plus lets us see more cards. The same with Anticipate. And the good thing is that they aren't hard on the mana base and would be super easy to cast. Just a thought, but I haven't gotten enough testing in to make that decision. In any case, Temptation vs Fast feels like the difference between being pure control, and being control/midrange.
-I really love Demon of Dark Schemes. I got to use his E ability twice in one game and it's simply devastating should you manage to hate out via discard or kill your opponent's best creatures. Him plus Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is bonkers!!! I just watched D2 (The Mighty Ducks 2 film) again a week ago and inadvertently referred to them as the Bash Brothers (with Glint-Sleeve Siphoner being the little Bash Brother Kenny Wu or Julie Gaffney if you've seen D3).
-Glint-Sleeve Siphoner: I never cast this card as a Turn 2 play most of the time. You want to leave up mana to cast discard slash/kill spells 90-95% of the time. The card works better as a late game draw engine when you have more E to spare and your opponent has a very small hand/little to no creatures on the battle field.
Deck is predominately RB with a splash of U. Haven't solidified the mana base yet. I know that Torrential Gearhulk is a better card to play than Goblin Dark-Dwellers because it has Flash and can recur ANY instant or sorcery in the graveyard. A) I don't own any of them and B)haven't tested the build out yet. Dwellers does have more evasion though...
The basic idea is to go hard after the opponent's hand and creatures while applying pressure with efficient threats. The spells give you a bunch of 1-for-1s and then you pull ahead with the creatures and lands. It also tries to soften the sting of late game top decked discard by attaching it to useful effects.
Card choices:
Collective Brutality: Not the best removal, not the best discard, but usually good for one or the other. The flexibility pushes it ahead of Transgress the Mind for me.
Ruinous Path: A little expensive and slow, but I like having access to unconditional removal. Also gives a somewhat clean answer to Gideon. With six other instant speed removal available for Heart of Kiran duty I think it's worth it.
Sea Gate Wreckage: As the game goes long the discard cards get worse. I think it's important to have a card that gets better in the long game. I like it better than the card draw spells because it's an uncounterable repeatable effect.
Glint-Sleeve Siphoner: I like it a lot in energy aggro decks but here I don't think it's worth it. It's subject to a clean one for one to any removal spell and I'd rather not bend the deck to run more energy cards.
I feel like this kind of deck is in a pretty good place right now. If Ishkanah starts seeing more play it could get a little trickier.
The basic idea is to go hard after the opponent's hand and creatures while applying pressure with efficient threats. The spells give you a bunch of 1-for-1s and then you pull ahead with the creatures and lands. It also tries to soften the sting of late game top decked discard by attaching it to useful effects.
Card choices:
Collective Brutality: Not the best removal, not the best discard, but usually good for one or the other. The flexibility pushes it ahead of Transgress the Mind for me.
Ruinous Path: A little expensive and slow, but I like having access to unconditional removal. Also gives a somewhat clean answer to Gideon. With six other instant speed removal available for Heart of Kiran duty I think it's worth it.
Sea Gate Wreckage: As the game goes long the discard cards get worse. I think it's important to have a card that gets better in the long game. I like it better than the card draw spells because it's an uncounterable repeatable effect.
Glint-Sleeve Siphoner: I like it a lot in energy aggro decks but here I don't think it's worth it. It's subject to a clean one for one to any removal spell and I'd rather not bend the deck to run more energy cards.
I feel like this kind of deck is in a pretty good place right now. If Ishkanah starts seeing more play it could get a little trickier.
Interesting take. I like your creature package and land choices, but think that you need to diversify your removal options:
-For starters, Transgress the Mind hits so. Many. More. Cards. When it comes to making your opponent discard cards. Collective Brutality is only good against Control if you're using it for it's discard. Also, Brutality requires you to discard a card in order to Escalate. You don't have any ability to recur those cards built into your deck at all, so you're wasting resources by doing this. The other modes on the card could be substituted with better, instant speed cards such as Essence Extraction and Dead Weight, a sorcery speed card that can kill smaller creatures AND weaken larger ones.
-Grasp of Darkness is the best removal spell in the format. You should be running a full set of these mainboard.
-I don't know what you're considering for you sideboard, but I feel like you could be running a few less Ruinous Path mainboard and move some to the side. It works best when used against planeswalkers, but there are other, faster ways to deal with them preemptively. Transgress being one option. Plus your creatures are of sufficient size to force damage through.
-You need to figure out a way to make Fatal Push better in the deck. You don't have a reliable way to make use of it's revolt trigger unless one of your creatures dies.
Just going by what you have here so far, I'd run with:
My experience is that Collective Brutality is great against Mardu, ok against control, and quite bad against GB snake. Since more than half the meta online seems to be GB I think it needs to go to the sideboard. It's such a nice hedge against drawing the wrong mix of discard and removal, though. I don't think Dead Weight works as a replacement since it is bad against snake and control.
The issue I have with grasp is that the mana base isn't good enough to consistently have BB early. The spell is so good that I'll still run a couple but the full four is just asking for frustration. Ruinous Path doesn't have to come down as early and provides utility that Grasp doesn't. Essence Extraction feels more like a sideboard card to me. With copter gone it's not hitting anything relevant that Path doesn't.
Fatal Push is in my experience quite good even without revolt. Takes care of Heart of Kiran as well as most of Mardu and a bunch of the GB must-kills. Also Thing in the Ice if you still see those.
The Scourge is so that in incredibly grindy games the Scroungers never run out of fuel. I like Matter Reshaper better in general because it gives you the card advantage without any more mana investment. It's possible that it would be better to run the full set of Transgress along with Wasteland Strangler but that feels a little inconsistent to me without access to something like Relic of Progenitus.
I'm also not sure the top end is right. Reality Smasher is nice to close out games but it can be underwhelming. I'm tempted to try Ob Nixilis instead. It fits the removal blitz theme and provides card advantage in control matchups. It does feel worse against copycat where gouging out 5-point chunks of life is pretty clutch.
My experience is that Collective Brutality is great against Mardu, ok against control, and quite bad against GB snake. Since more than half the meta online seems to be GB I think it needs to go to the sideboard. It's such a nice hedge against drawing the wrong mix of discard and removal, though. I don't think Dead Weight works as a replacement since it is bad against snake and control.
The issue I have with grasp is that the mana base isn't good enough to consistently have BB early. The spell is so good that I'll still run a couple but the full four is just asking for frustration. Ruinous Path doesn't have to come down as early and provides utility that Grasp doesn't. Essence Extraction feels more like a sideboard card to me. With copter gone it's not hitting anything relevant that Path doesn't.
Fatal Push is in my experience quite good even without revolt. Takes care of Heart of Kiran as well as most of Mardu and a bunch of the GB must-kills. Also Thing in the Ice if you still see those.
The Scourge is so that in incredibly grindy games the Scroungers never run out of fuel. I like Matter Reshaper better in general because it gives you the card advantage without any more mana investment. It's possible that it would be better to run the full set of Transgress along with Wasteland Strangler but that feels a little inconsistent to me without access to something like Relic of Progenitus.
I'm also not sure the top end is right. Reality Smasher is nice to close out games but it can be underwhelming. I'm tempted to try Ob Nixilis instead. It fits the removal blitz theme and provides card advantage in control matchups. It does feel worse against copycat where gouging out 5-point chunks of life is pretty clutch.
I will be responding by paragraph:
1) How specifically does Brutality work better against Mardu than running faster removal and/or cheaper discard?
2) Again, Grasp of Darkness is the BEST REMOVAL SPELL IN THE FORMAT! I guarantee you any deck list you look at that has B in it runs either a full compliment main, or 2-3 main and 1-2 side. You NEED to make room for this spell. I'd go down -2 Blighted Fen and add +2 Swamp. Just looking at your curve, it appears you need B mana early and C mana later, turn 3 and onwards. So this might work.
3) Push by itself is good on it's own, you're right. Fair enough.
4) I didn't think about that. It's great as a "1 of" and really good for what it does. Kudos!
5) Smasher is definitely your top end. the question is can you get there before you're out aggroed or controlled. Ob may work as a sideboard option, but your gameplan is to smash face a push damage through each turn. Honestly don't know what call you should/could make on this one.
Brutality lets you two for two Mardu for two mana. At least in my experience they tend to be holding an instant or two and Brutality hits most of their early plays. It's a bit awkward that it doesn't hit planeswalkers.
I think Grasp's reputation as THE BEST removal is a carryover from the last standard. Grasp was freaking amazing against UW flash. It killed through selfless spirit, it killed through Avacyn, it killed Avacyn, it was perfect. The only cards anybody played that it didn't kill cleanly were Ishkanah and Emrakul. I've found it to be merely good in the current meta. It can't kill a Veteran Motorist-piloted Heart of Kiran and it can be hit or miss against GB (for example if your opponent goes snake -> Rishkar, or if you draw it the turn after they drop a gearhulk). It does kill Felidar Guardian at instant speed but it's not the kill everything card it used to be.
Frank Karsten wrote a nice article breaking down mana math. If you want to have one source of a color by turn three 90% of the time you want to have 12 sources in your deck. If you want to have two sources by turn two you need 20. If you want two by turn three the magic number is 19, two by turn four you need 18, two by turn five you want 16. One way to make it work would be to put in some number of Unknown Shores in place of the trick lands but it feels pretty underwhelming. At that point at least Complete Disregard takes care of Scrounger for good.
I tried running a 2/2 Smasher/Walker split and Ob Nix was pretty sweet as the top end of the kill everything package. The other one that I've played around with a bit is Distended Mindbender out of the side. Skysovereign might also be a nice sideboard card for some matchups.
I've been having good success with this list. It was originally mono black, but I cut a Ruinous Path and a Murder for two Anguished Unmaking, adjusted the lands, and it feels great.
Is it just me or are these monoblack control decks shifting towards monoblack midrange and monoblack aggro?
Well, to be fair, it's hard for any single color to play pure control on its own. Each color specializes in what it does best, but cant do everything on it's own. So we're forced to play creatures with effects that may exist outside of its color's wheelhouse. Ideally, midrange/control is the best way to do this.
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3x Harsh Scrutiny
3x Live Fast
3x Ruinous Path
3x Transgress the Mind
Creature (14)
3x Demon of Dark Schemes
3x Gonti, Lord of Luxury
3x Noxious Gearhulk
3x Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
2x Kalitas Traitor of Ghet
3x Complete Disregard
3x Grasp of Darkness
3x Murder
Land (25)
2x Blighted Fen
23x Swamp
2x Yahenni's Expertise
3x Distended Mindbender
2x Fatal Push
3x Lost Legacy
3x Pick the Brain
1x Ruinous Path
1x Transgress the Mind
This is my take on mono black control for the Aether Revolt Format. I think this deck can become one of the top deck of the format after the banning, I just need a little help against aggro decks
Creatures I am using for are all effective in their own way. Gonti lets you steal one of my opponents cards from the top of their decks. I really like him, especially when you can steal a planeswalker from your opponent and play it against and win lol. Glint-Sleeve Siphoner is good early game card advantage and having menace is a plus. Noxious Gearhulk is a great removal and life gain and finally Demon of Dark Schemes is a game winner on its own.
As far for spells Its mostly hand removal with Harsh Scrutiny and Transgress the Mind then you have Live Fast to get more cards in your hand and then finally the rest are all removal. I don't know if I have too much removal but until now its been working pretty good. And finally Ob Nixilis take control of the field and more card value.
My sideboard is a work in progress. I'm not too good with sideboard so if anybody can guide me on the right track please do. But what I have right now, Yahenni's Expertise is really good against g/w tokens decks and other aggro decks. Fatal Push is also for those aggro decks. Lost Legacy i'm using it for combo decks. Pick the brain and the 4th Transgress the Mind I use it for combo and control decks. I also have the fourth Ruinous path for control and decks that uses many planeswalker and I have the Distended Mindbender because I really don't know what else to use.
All suggestions opinions criticisms are all welcome
I roll around an idea in my head for a list similar to yours. One thing I think your deck can make good use of is Panharmonicon. It makes your bomb creatures nuclear. It would take only slight changes to your deck too, little stuff like changing live fast to black puzzleknot, and stuff like that.
Bonus, you can then call it "Panhardemoncon"!!
Deck needs more card draw and targeted removal that can be cast on curve. You're also running far too many 6 CMC creatures that you will never be able to cast. Control will simply counter you every time you tap out for all that mana and aggro will run all over you before you even get started. You need a healthier balance between your creatures and your removal. Also, there is the question of which deck archetypes you expect to encounter. Are you looking to play this deck competitively in your local meta or do you plan on attending tournaments? I only ask because you're gonna need answers to protect yourself against the more popular decks like Jeskai Saheeli, BG Delirium, Mardu Vehicles, and the emerging control decks showing up. Going two colors may be a more viable option as well. Taking your list, I'd go with something like:
4 Evolving Wilds
2 Blighted Fen
19 Swamp
CREATURES
4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
3 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Demon of Dark Schemes
PLANESWALKERS
2 Ob Nixilis Reignited
INSTANTS AND SORCERIES
3 Harsh Scrutiny
3 Fatal Push
4 Grasp of Darkness
2 Transgress the Mind
4 Live Fast
2 Ruinous Path
2 Murder
2 To the Slaughter
2 Gonti's Machinations
2 Transgress the Mind
2 Essence Extraction
2 Complete Disregard
1 Ruinous Path
1 Lost Legacy
3 Yahenni's Expertise
2 Noxious Gearhulk
2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
As you can see, the deck does everything black is good at/wants to do, which is hand disruption, spot removal, and card draw. Although B got the least amount of E producing cards from the KLD Block, there's still plenty of E generation in this deck repeatedly draw off of Glint-Sleeve Siphoner and and power Demon of Dark Schemes. So much so that I don't believe it necessary to run Aether Hubs in the deck. After having made this deck, I think I may give it a go. It should be relatively cheap to build, and fun to play.
This is where the "strictly better" argument comes up, in which case, I disagree with you. Solvent is a card with a repeatable effect that can be cast (but not used) on curve. Adding to this, what creatures in the format do we really need to worry about being recurred? Ishkanah? Prized Amalgamation? These are threats that are easily answered. And it removes all of the card types you mentioned.
You missed, Universal Solvent isn't repeatable. You have to sacrifice it as part of the activation.
As far as exile, I'm not worried as much about recurrence, which is a thing, as I am about Indestructible.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of either card. 7 mana removal isn't where anyone wants to be. I was just stating that if you want to use 7 mana removal, Scour is better than Solvent.
LOL! You're right, I did read the card wrong! Definitely thought it was a repeatable effect, which is dumb once I think about it. Card would be too good and at rare value if it did. Taking it out of the deck post haste!
4 Evolving Wilds
2 Blighted Fen
19 Swamp
CREATURES
3 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner
3 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Demon of Dark Schemes
PLANESWALKERS
2 Ob Nixilis Reignited
INSTANTS AND SORCERIES
3 Harsh Scrutiny
4 Fatal Push
4 Grasp of Darkness
2 Transgress the Mind
4 Live Fast
2 Ruinous Path
2 Murder
2 To the Slaughter
2 Gonti's Machinations
2 Transgress the Mind
2 Essence Extraction
2 Complete Disregard
1 Ruinous Path
1 Lost Legacy
3 Yahenni's Expertise
2 Noxious Gearhulk
2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
NOTES
-Glad I went up +1 Fatal Push. It's always good to start your opening hand with any two-card combination of Push, Harsh Scrutiny, Grasp of Darkness, Transgress the Mind.
-Sorcery vs instant card draw changes how the deck plays considerably. As a control deck, we always want to be tapping out on our opponents turn. Succumb to Temptation allows us to do this. Live Fast does not. This is where it may be more viable to add U for card draw in the deck. Glimmer of Genius does everything we want to do, plus lets us see more cards. The same with Anticipate. And the good thing is that they aren't hard on the mana base and would be super easy to cast. Just a thought, but I haven't gotten enough testing in to make that decision. In any case, Temptation vs Fast feels like the difference between being pure control, and being control/midrange.
-I really love Demon of Dark Schemes. I got to use his E ability twice in one game and it's simply devastating should you manage to hate out via discard or kill your opponent's best creatures. Him plus Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is bonkers!!! I just watched D2 (The Mighty Ducks 2 film) again a week ago and inadvertently referred to them as the Bash Brothers (with Glint-Sleeve Siphoner being the little Bash Brother Kenny Wu or Julie Gaffney if you've seen D3).
-Glint-Sleeve Siphoner: I never cast this card as a Turn 2 play most of the time. You want to leave up mana to cast discard slash/kill spells 90-95% of the time. The card works better as a late game draw engine when you have more E to spare and your opponent has a very small hand/little to no creatures on the battle field.
EDIT: A few extra notes
I've been fooling around with a Grixis version of control as well. It's a combination of my Mono Black Control deck + Blue card draw + my RB/x Control deck listed here: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/deck-creation-standard/767797-rb-x-control
4 Aether Hub
CREATURES (7)
2 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
3 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Demon of Dark Schemes
PLANESWALKERS (2)
2 Ob Nixilis Reignited
INSTANTS AND SORCERIES (26)
3 Fatal Push
2 Transgress the Mind
4 Grasp of Darkness
2 Ruinous Path
3 Anticipate
4 Glimmer of Genius
4 Shock
4 Harnessed Lightning
3 Radiant Flames
2 Transgress the Mind
2 Murder
1 Lost Legacy
1 Ruinous Path
2 To the Slaughter
2 Noxious Gearhulk
2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
Deck is predominately RB with a splash of U. Haven't solidified the mana base yet. I know that Torrential Gearhulk is a better card to play than Goblin Dark-Dwellers because it has Flash and can recur ANY instant or sorcery in the graveyard. A) I don't own any of them and B)haven't tested the build out yet. Dwellers does have more evasion though...
4 Sea Gate Wreckage
4 Aether Hub
10 Swamp
4 Harsh Scrutiny
4 Collective Brutality
3 Fatal Push
3 Grasp of Darkness
4 Ruinous Path
4 Bearer of Silence
3 Matter Reshaper
1 Eternal Scourge
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
The basic idea is to go hard after the opponent's hand and creatures while applying pressure with efficient threats. The spells give you a bunch of 1-for-1s and then you pull ahead with the creatures and lands. It also tries to soften the sting of late game top decked discard by attaching it to useful effects.
Card choices:
Collective Brutality: Not the best removal, not the best discard, but usually good for one or the other. The flexibility pushes it ahead of Transgress the Mind for me.
Ruinous Path: A little expensive and slow, but I like having access to unconditional removal. Also gives a somewhat clean answer to Gideon. With six other instant speed removal available for Heart of Kiran duty I think it's worth it.
Sea Gate Wreckage: As the game goes long the discard cards get worse. I think it's important to have a card that gets better in the long game. I like it better than the card draw spells because it's an uncounterable repeatable effect.
Glint-Sleeve Siphoner: I like it a lot in energy aggro decks but here I don't think it's worth it. It's subject to a clean one for one to any removal spell and I'd rather not bend the deck to run more energy cards.
I feel like this kind of deck is in a pretty good place right now. If Ishkanah starts seeing more play it could get a little trickier.
Interesting take. I like your creature package and land choices, but think that you need to diversify your removal options:
-For starters, Transgress the Mind hits so. Many. More. Cards. When it comes to making your opponent discard cards. Collective Brutality is only good against Control if you're using it for it's discard. Also, Brutality requires you to discard a card in order to Escalate. You don't have any ability to recur those cards built into your deck at all, so you're wasting resources by doing this. The other modes on the card could be substituted with better, instant speed cards such as Essence Extraction and Dead Weight, a sorcery speed card that can kill smaller creatures AND weaken larger ones.
-Grasp of Darkness is the best removal spell in the format. You should be running a full set of these mainboard.
-I don't know what you're considering for you sideboard, but I feel like you could be running a few less Ruinous Path mainboard and move some to the side. It works best when used against planeswalkers, but there are other, faster ways to deal with them preemptively. Transgress being one option. Plus your creatures are of sufficient size to force damage through.
-Why only one Eternal Scourge?
-You need to figure out a way to make Fatal Push better in the deck. You don't have a reliable way to make use of it's revolt trigger unless one of your creatures dies.
Just going by what you have here so far, I'd run with:
4 Sea Gate Wreckage
4 Aether Hub
10 Swamp
3 Harsh Scrutiny
3 Fatal Push
2 Dead Weight
2 Transgress the Mind
4 Grasp of Darkness
2 Ruinous Path
2 Essence Extraction
4 Bearer of Silence
3 Matter Reshaper
1 Eternal Scourge
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
Again, this build is predicated on the suggestions I mentioned minus not knowing what ideas for your sideboard you're thinking about.
The issue I have with grasp is that the mana base isn't good enough to consistently have BB early. The spell is so good that I'll still run a couple but the full four is just asking for frustration. Ruinous Path doesn't have to come down as early and provides utility that Grasp doesn't. Essence Extraction feels more like a sideboard card to me. With copter gone it's not hitting anything relevant that Path doesn't.
Fatal Push is in my experience quite good even without revolt. Takes care of Heart of Kiran as well as most of Mardu and a bunch of the GB must-kills. Also Thing in the Ice if you still see those.
The Scourge is so that in incredibly grindy games the Scroungers never run out of fuel. I like Matter Reshaper better in general because it gives you the card advantage without any more mana investment. It's possible that it would be better to run the full set of Transgress along with Wasteland Strangler but that feels a little inconsistent to me without access to something like Relic of Progenitus.
I'm also not sure the top end is right. Reality Smasher is nice to close out games but it can be underwhelming. I'm tempted to try Ob Nixilis instead. It fits the removal blitz theme and provides card advantage in control matchups. It does feel worse against copycat where gouging out 5-point chunks of life is pretty clutch.
I will be responding by paragraph:
1) How specifically does Brutality work better against Mardu than running faster removal and/or cheaper discard?
2) Again, Grasp of Darkness is the BEST REMOVAL SPELL IN THE FORMAT! I guarantee you any deck list you look at that has B in it runs either a full compliment main, or 2-3 main and 1-2 side. You NEED to make room for this spell. I'd go down -2 Blighted Fen and add +2 Swamp. Just looking at your curve, it appears you need B mana early and C mana later, turn 3 and onwards. So this might work.
3) Push by itself is good on it's own, you're right. Fair enough.
4) I didn't think about that. It's great as a "1 of" and really good for what it does. Kudos!
5) Smasher is definitely your top end. the question is can you get there before you're out aggroed or controlled. Ob may work as a sideboard option, but your gameplan is to smash face a push damage through each turn. Honestly don't know what call you should/could make on this one.
I think Grasp's reputation as THE BEST removal is a carryover from the last standard. Grasp was freaking amazing against UW flash. It killed through selfless spirit, it killed through Avacyn, it killed Avacyn, it was perfect. The only cards anybody played that it didn't kill cleanly were Ishkanah and Emrakul. I've found it to be merely good in the current meta. It can't kill a Veteran Motorist-piloted Heart of Kiran and it can be hit or miss against GB (for example if your opponent goes snake -> Rishkar, or if you draw it the turn after they drop a gearhulk). It does kill Felidar Guardian at instant speed but it's not the kill everything card it used to be.
Frank Karsten wrote a nice article breaking down mana math. If you want to have one source of a color by turn three 90% of the time you want to have 12 sources in your deck. If you want to have two sources by turn two you need 20. If you want two by turn three the magic number is 19, two by turn four you need 18, two by turn five you want 16. One way to make it work would be to put in some number of Unknown Shores in place of the trick lands but it feels pretty underwhelming. At that point at least Complete Disregard takes care of Scrounger for good.
I tried running a 2/2 Smasher/Walker split and Ob Nix was pretty sweet as the top end of the kill everything package. The other one that I've played around with a bit is Distended Mindbender out of the side. Skysovereign might also be a nice sideboard card for some matchups.
4 Walking Ballista
4 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
3 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Ob Nixilis Reignited
4 Fatal Push
4 Grasp of Darkness
4 Transgress the Mind
2 Ruinous Path
2 Anguished Unmaking
4 Shambling Vent
4 Concealed Courtyard
2 Aether Hub
2 Blighted Fen
3 Flaying Tendrils
3 Essence Extraction
1 Perilous Predicament
1 Noxious Gearhulk
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
2 Anguished Unmaking
I'm not 100% on the numbers for the side-board, but they can be adjusted as others work on this.
4 Fatal Push
4 Grasp of Darkness
2 Transgress the Mind
3 Murder
2 Ruinous Path
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
2 Gifted Aetherborn
4 Eternal Scourge
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Mindwrack Demon
2 Noxious Gearhulk
2 Pacification Array
Planeswalkers 2
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
Land 25
25 swamp
C Long Live Eldrazi C
Well, to be fair, it's hard for any single color to play pure control on its own. Each color specializes in what it does best, but cant do everything on it's own. So we're forced to play creatures with effects that may exist outside of its color's wheelhouse. Ideally, midrange/control is the best way to do this.