Last month's wither deck was a huge success thanks to all of your suggestions! I rarely have a deck perform so well in my meta that I don't need to spend a few months tinkering with it to get it -just- right. Because of that, I'm already itching to make my next deck in this set challenge series my friends and I are currently doing. Today's deck is my attempt to build around Dark Ritual and black ramp. Before I go into the deck, I wanted to point out some important deck building restrictions, facts about my meta, and the inspiration behind my deck that drives why my deck is the way it is currently.
Meta Considerations
All decks MUST be legal in any format. Formats are defined as: Vintage, Legacy, Modern, Pioneer, Block Constructed, any Standard format (Two years worth of sets), or any Extended format (Four years worth of sets).
We use a tier system in order to separate decks into a "Fun" category and a "Serious" category. This deck aims to be a part of the "Serious" category.
Games typically have between 3 and 7 players. On very rare occasions there may be more than 7 players, but 7 players should be considered the maximum for purposes of constructing this deck.
Personal Deck Building Restrictions
I am only allowing myself to put one copy of any legendary card in my deck. Different legendary cards are acceptable as long as there is only one copy of each.
I must be able to theoretically hard cast any card in my deck.
I am currently targeting a Vintage or Legacy legality for this deck.
My friends and I are currently building decks using a very loose theme. We pick a set we like, and then we pick a card from that set and build around that card. The set I chose today is Tempest, and the card from Tempest that I chose was the classic: Dark Ritual. Tempest is chock full of powerful, build around cards so it was really hard to choose which direction to go in. But the more I looked at the set, the more I felt drawn to building a deck around one of the most powerful cards ever printed. Even more challenging for me was finding a way to take advantage of Dark Ritual in a way that allowed me to give my deck a "Dark Ritual" identity rather than just relying on it being a good card that goes in most Mono-B decks. This deck will be used at the highest tier of games that we have, so no card is off the table as an include assuming it meets the above restrictions (As you will see, my current build is very much Vintage legality.)
The Deck
Now that all of that is out of the way, below is my current draft of the deck:
When pondering about how I wanted to build this deck, I meandered down two schools of thought: I either wanted to drop the best 3 or 4 drops on T1 and try to dominate the game from there, or I wanted to make the best use of gratuitous amounts of black mana. In the end, I decided to go with the latter as I already had a mono-B reanimator deck that was looking to drop even nastier creatures on T1. My meta has adjusted to be ready for scary T1 creatures, and I wanted to make sure this new deck had a bit of its own personality rather than just trying to do what my reanimator deck is doing in a different way. (Despite all appearances from my last three decks, I consider myself a white mage. Maybe my next deck will be white?)
The idea is simple: Ramp like there's no tomorrow. Ramp until you can't ramp any more. Then, get to a point where you can storm off and/or kill the entire table with a well placed Exsanguinate/Torment of Hailfire. I decided to split my two win cons 2/2 rather than go all in on Exsanguinate just in case I get hit with an Unmoored Ego/Meddling Mage or similar effect before I can go off. I might be a little too "all in" on this theme, and it might not work in practice, but what ever happens, I want to make sure I'm having the most fun I can with Dark Ritual.
Please let me know what you think, and give me any suggestions to improve the deck!
I play 26 lands including 2x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in my 4x Cabal Coffers lists. You never want to miss your land drops even at 10+ and mana screw is one of the easiest ways to lose games for these durdly Ramp shells.
You have too much expensive ramp. I wouldn't mess with Crypt Ghast and K'rrick but you don't also need 12x Magus, Market and Revenant. That's overkill. I would cut a fair amount of it even if it was just for cheaper ramp like Expedition Map, Jet Medallion, Thought Vessel or any of the myriad of other 2 CMC rocks. Mind Stone, Everflowing Chalice, Fellwar Stone, there's no shortage of things to choose from and you don't need seventeen 4-6 mana ramp spells.
As much as I love Bubbling Muck in EDH I wouldn't play it in this deck. You have no land untappers or card draw and you already have 4x Dark Ritual for burst ramp. The deck needs more cards that "do things" as opposed to ramping and these are easy cuts IMO.
I'd also like to see some card draw. Phyrexian Arena and Underworld Connections are good examples of cards that fill that 3 CMC gap in your build, do wonderful things with Gary, are fantastic to Dark Ritual into play on turn 1 and keep you gassed-up for the entire game. If you're only drawing 1 card per turn in your Dark Ritual + Crypt Ghast deck you'll be topdecking from turn 5 onward so it behooves to play at least 4 cheap draw engines to ensure a steady stream of cards.
How many of the 12x 5CMC+ sources would you suggest I cut? After looking at your suggestions I went down to 5 (1 Revenant, 2 Magus & 2 Black Market) and I also took out the Bubbling Mucks. The problem I'm finding now is to fit in enough cheap Artifact Ramp, Removal, and Card Draw without going too low on creatures. We do have a non-insignificant number of aggro decks in our meta that tend to focus on players that don't have any blockers.
I figure while Vilis is slow, and Dread Presence isn't nearly as good as Phyrexian Arena, Dread Presence will give me an extra body, and Vilis will synergize well with K'rrick and other things I'm trying to do in this deck. Also, I won't be able to run a second Urborg since it's legendary and I'll still need to decide what to drop to add two more basic swamps. I'd also love to put in more than just the single Toxic Deluge, but the list is starting to get a little tight unless I cut creatures. I'm also starting to have second thoughts about Aetherflux Reservoir. I'm not sure that I can really get the full value on that card unless I'm going off with YawgWill or Bolas's Citadel, at which point it strikes me as a bit of a win-more card.
I wouldn't advise playing more than four 5+ CMC ramp spells. Personally I tend to play 0 because I prefer Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Expedition Map + Crypt Ghast + K'rrick, Son of Yawgmoth and don't feel that additional ramp is needed. FWIW I prefer Nirkana Revenant over Magus of the Coffers and Black Market. Magus I only play in decks that untap effects such as Sword of the Paruns for infinite damge X spells. He's too slow, vulnerable and weak otherwise. Black Market and Revel in Riches I only play in Control decks filled with mass removal so that I can actually fuel them. Your deck doesn't have any removal so when you jam a Market on turn 5 and untap it doesn't actually do anything unless the table helps you out. Which they shouldn't do.
Dread Presence is a blocker, removal and card draw so he pull triple duty. Seems solid!
I don't play Aetherflux Reservoir outside of combo decks and/or EDH. When I cast Exsanguinate the next thing that I want to cast is either another Exsanguinate or a Torment of Hailfire. Why kill one person when you can kill all of them? Cutting it seems fine to me.
I always play 2x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in my 4x Cabal Coffers decks even though it's legendary and even though I always play cards like Expedition Map, Vampiric Tutor and Demonic Tutor. I want to draw at least 1 every game without fail so I'm more than happy to risk drawing a second "useless" copy because the mana advantage that the first provides me more than offsets the cost. I use the term "useless" loosely since you better believe that I cast the second copy as a "Lotus Petal" of sorts when I need an extra mana source to jam my key spells. I know that I can be stubborn and wrong about things but having played MBC for 17 years this is something that I don't budge on when I'm building and playing the deck myself. Always 26 and always 2 Urborgs. I'm sick of losing to screw and/or not drawing at least 1 Urborg in my games.
One thing that I should say is that I highly recommend trying 2x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and 4x Expedition Map for a couple of games if you've never done so. Assuming a turn 1 Map, turn 2 Crack or even a turn 3 Map + crack you can reliably assemble Coffers + Urborg by turn 4 at which point you're already producing at least 5 mana. Granted, that extra mana is often wasted on turn 4 since you're typically playing Crypt Ghast but it saves you 2 life if you're going for K'rrick. If you do have Crypt Ghast and a 1-2 drop in hand then you can cast your Ghast and follow it up with either a 2 drop or a 1 drop + Extort, possibly more if your 1 drop is Dark Ritual. Next turn you're untapping with 7 mana (or more if your Ghast/K'rrick survived) which is enough to cast your 6-7 CMC bombs. Because of this I find that I don't need to rely on expensive 5+ CMC ramp spells like Magus, Market or Revenant because my lands are already doing the heavy-lifting for me. If you have a second Urborg and 2 more Maps (or even just 2 more Maps) give them a go because I think you'll have similar experiences to me and realize just how anemic the expensive ramp are by comparison to the mighty 1 CMC Expedition Map. Bonus points if you also have access to things like Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Sol Ring, Vampiric Tutor and Demonic Tutor .
Last month's wither deck was a huge success thanks to all of your suggestions! I rarely have a deck perform so well in my meta that I don't need to spend a few months tinkering with it to get it -just- right. Because of that, I'm already itching to make my next deck in this set challenge series my friends and I are currently doing. Today's deck is my attempt to build around Dark Ritual and black ramp. Before I go into the deck, I wanted to point out some important deck building restrictions, facts about my meta, and the inspiration behind my deck that drives why my deck is the way it is currently.
Meta Considerations
Personal Deck Building Restrictions
Deck Inspiration
My friends and I are currently building decks using a very loose theme. We pick a set we like, and then we pick a card from that set and build around that card. The set I chose today is Tempest, and the card from Tempest that I chose was the classic: Dark Ritual. Tempest is chock full of powerful, build around cards so it was really hard to choose which direction to go in. But the more I looked at the set, the more I felt drawn to building a deck around one of the most powerful cards ever printed. Even more challenging for me was finding a way to take advantage of Dark Ritual in a way that allowed me to give my deck a "Dark Ritual" identity rather than just relying on it being a good card that goes in most Mono-B decks. This deck will be used at the highest tier of games that we have, so no card is off the table as an include assuming it meets the above restrictions (As you will see, my current build is very much Vintage legality.)
The Deck
Now that all of that is out of the way, below is my current draft of the deck:
15 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Witch's Cottage
1 Aetherflux Reservoir
4 Black Market
1 Bolas's Citadel
2 Bubbling Muck
4 Crypt Ghast
4 Dark Ritual
2 Exsanguinate
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
4 Magus of the Coffers
4 Nirkana Revenant
2 Torment of Hailfire
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Yawgmoth's Will
When pondering about how I wanted to build this deck, I meandered down two schools of thought: I either wanted to drop the best 3 or 4 drops on T1 and try to dominate the game from there, or I wanted to make the best use of gratuitous amounts of black mana. In the end, I decided to go with the latter as I already had a mono-B reanimator deck that was looking to drop even nastier creatures on T1. My meta has adjusted to be ready for scary T1 creatures, and I wanted to make sure this new deck had a bit of its own personality rather than just trying to do what my reanimator deck is doing in a different way. (Despite all appearances from my last three decks, I consider myself a white mage. Maybe my next deck will be white?)
The idea is simple: Ramp like there's no tomorrow. Ramp until you can't ramp any more. Then, get to a point where you can storm off and/or kill the entire table with a well placed Exsanguinate/Torment of Hailfire. I decided to split my two win cons 2/2 rather than go all in on Exsanguinate just in case I get hit with an Unmoored Ego/Meddling Mage or similar effect before I can go off. I might be a little too "all in" on this theme, and it might not work in practice, but what ever happens, I want to make sure I'm having the most fun I can with Dark Ritual.
Please let me know what you think, and give me any suggestions to improve the deck!
Thanks!
You have too much expensive ramp. I wouldn't mess with Crypt Ghast and K'rrick but you don't also need 12x Magus, Market and Revenant. That's overkill. I would cut a fair amount of it even if it was just for cheaper ramp like Expedition Map, Jet Medallion, Thought Vessel or any of the myriad of other 2 CMC rocks. Mind Stone, Everflowing Chalice, Fellwar Stone, there's no shortage of things to choose from and you don't need seventeen 4-6 mana ramp spells.
As much as I love Bubbling Muck in EDH I wouldn't play it in this deck. You have no land untappers or card draw and you already have 4x Dark Ritual for burst ramp. The deck needs more cards that "do things" as opposed to ramping and these are easy cuts IMO.
I'd like to see is more interaction. Liliana's Triumph, Mire in Misery, Oath of Liliana, Toxic Deluge, Damnation, Languish, Mutilate, Pestilence, Massacre, Curtains' Call on and on and on. My concern is that people will kill your creatures and then you while facing very little resistance which is why you need some better ways of protecting yourself. Black has no shortage of good removal so you may as well jam 4-8 copies of something.
I'd also like to see some card draw. Phyrexian Arena and Underworld Connections are good examples of cards that fill that 3 CMC gap in your build, do wonderful things with Gary, are fantastic to Dark Ritual into play on turn 1 and keep you gassed-up for the entire game. If you're only drawing 1 card per turn in your Dark Ritual + Crypt Ghast deck you'll be topdecking from turn 5 onward so it behooves to play at least 4 cheap draw engines to ensure a steady stream of cards.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
How many of the 12x 5CMC+ sources would you suggest I cut? After looking at your suggestions I went down to 5 (1 Revenant, 2 Magus & 2 Black Market) and I also took out the Bubbling Mucks. The problem I'm finding now is to fit in enough cheap Artifact Ramp, Removal, and Card Draw without going too low on creatures. We do have a non-insignificant number of aggro decks in our meta that tend to focus on players that don't have any blockers.
For the nine cards I went down, I put in:
4x Dread Presence
1x Vilis, Broker of Blood
1x Toxic Deluge
2x Everflowing Chalice
1x Sol Ring
I figure while Vilis is slow, and Dread Presence isn't nearly as good as Phyrexian Arena, Dread Presence will give me an extra body, and Vilis will synergize well with K'rrick and other things I'm trying to do in this deck. Also, I won't be able to run a second Urborg since it's legendary and I'll still need to decide what to drop to add two more basic swamps. I'd also love to put in more than just the single Toxic Deluge, but the list is starting to get a little tight unless I cut creatures. I'm also starting to have second thoughts about Aetherflux Reservoir. I'm not sure that I can really get the full value on that card unless I'm going off with YawgWill or Bolas's Citadel, at which point it strikes me as a bit of a win-more card.
Dread Presence is a blocker, removal and card draw so he pull triple duty. Seems solid!
I don't play Aetherflux Reservoir outside of combo decks and/or EDH. When I cast Exsanguinate the next thing that I want to cast is either another Exsanguinate or a Torment of Hailfire. Why kill one person when you can kill all of them? Cutting it seems fine to me.
I always play 2x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in my 4x Cabal Coffers decks even though it's legendary and even though I always play cards like Expedition Map, Vampiric Tutor and Demonic Tutor. I want to draw at least 1 every game without fail so I'm more than happy to risk drawing a second "useless" copy because the mana advantage that the first provides me more than offsets the cost. I use the term "useless" loosely since you better believe that I cast the second copy as a "Lotus Petal" of sorts when I need an extra mana source to jam my key spells. I know that I can be stubborn and wrong about things but having played MBC for 17 years this is something that I don't budge on when I'm building and playing the deck myself. Always 26 and always 2 Urborgs. I'm sick of losing to screw and/or not drawing at least 1 Urborg in my games.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
But otherwise speeding up your getting to big mana is a nice fast lane to endgame...
My meta: 3 or 4 player free for all, anything goes but boring games or broken decks cause a vote to end that game.