Dis-card is awesome!

I seem to have been writing about the news a lot recently, so I want to get back to talking about a deck. This deck, called "Discard Cage", is one I conceptualized a long time ago, but only recently built. Here's the decklist:

Creatures:
4 x Guul Draz Specter
3 x Nyxathid

Spells:
4 x Duress
2 x Liliana Vess
4 x Megrim
4 x Quest for the Nihil Stone
4 x Lightning Bolt
4 x Burning Inquiry
4 x Blightning
4 x Terminate

23 Lands 




Basically what this deck does is get Quest for the Nihil Stone into play, destroys the opponent's hand, and then grinds their life total away while your opponent is forced to only top deck. If your opponent doesn't play what's in their hand, it is simply becomes fuel for megrim. If they do play that card they drew and have no hand, Quest for Nihil Stone deals them 5 damage, Guul Draz Specter is a 5/5 flier for 2BB, and Nyxathid is a 7/7 for 1BB. If they manage to stick a creature, Terminate and Lightning Bolt clear it off quickly. If they aren't playing any creatures, Lightning Bolt also doubles as cheap direct damage.

I played this game a couple times against Mark. I played against UW Control twice, Goblins once, and Soldiers twice. I went 0-5. I learned a lot about the deck in those 5 games though, staring with Mind Spring sucks for me. However, I also found that Megrim and Burning Inquiry can be very dead draws. I had originally included Burning Inquiry so that a late draw of Quest for Nihil Stone would immediatly get juiced. On the second game vs UW control, I had:

Turn 1: Swamp, Quest for Nihil Stone
Turn 2: Mountain, Quest for Nihil Stone, Burning Inquiry

So I had 2 Quests ready to go by the end of my second turn. However, aside from that and Megrim there isn't anything that actually happens by my opponent discarding cards. It's when they have no cards that my deck turns on. Also, when I burned my entire hand, Burning Inquiry was the epitome of a dead draw as it basically read, "Mill yourself 3". Even when I had it early game, it only messed with my hand, so unless I had a hand of land (which shouldn't happen if you know how to mulligan) it was worse for me than it helped. Basically, I decided it has to go.

I also realized that I could soon start topdecking all the time myself, so I needed card drawing. The only card drawing in BR is sign in blood, so in it goes. Another card that I was less than pleased with was Nyxathid. It was basically just a large body for cheap. However he doesn't do anything else. It was killed in various ways from burn spells to draw spells. Also, Guul Draz Specter was often a Hypnotic Specter that just cost one mana more. With that all in mind, heres the changes I made:

-4 Burning Inquiry
-1 Lightning Bolt
-1 Nyxathid
-1 Guul Draz Specter
-1 Megrim

+3 Sign in Blood
+2 Hypnotic Specter
+3 Inquisition of Kozelik

I also want to include a couple Mind Shatters in the sideboard to go against Mind Spring.

It was at this time that I realized that there was almost no reason to have red in the deck. Heres a list of all the red cards in the deck (and a card it can be replaced with):

Blightning (Mind Rot)
Lightning Bolt (Doom Blade)
Terminate (Hideos End)

3 cards taking up 11 slots with fairly replacable effects don't seem to be that important to me. Also, now that this is mono-black, the first thing I thought of was Vampires. The only reason why vampires can get you is the card Mind Sludge. Mind Sludge is also almost always better than Mind Shatter in a mono-back deck, so I can take that out of my sideboard. So now, what can I replace these with?

-4 Blightning
-3 Lightning Bolt
-4 Terminate

+2 Hypnotic Specter
+1 Sign in Blood
+2 Tendrils of Corruption
+4 Doom Blade
+2 Haunting Echoes

Hypnotic Specter: I need more dudes, and he is quite excellent
Sign in Blood: More card drawing makes me happy
Tendrils of Corruption: Great removal for mono-black and also plays great defense with the bonus life
Doom Blade: I need removal to replace Terminate
Haunting Echoes: I almost put in Sadistic Sacrament to effectively discard cards before this ever hits play, but I think will be much more effective. If they discard 5 cards with different names, that could be up to 20 cards removed for 3BB!

After all these changes, here is the current decklist:

Creatures:
3 x Guul Draz Specter
4 x Hypnotic Specter
2 x Nyxathid

Instant/Sorcery:
4 x Doom Blade
4 x Duress
2 x Haunting Echoes
3 x Inquisition of Kozilek
4 x Sign in Blood
2 x Tendrils of Corruption

Enchantment:
3 x Megrim
4 x Quest for the Nihil Stone

Planeswalker:
2 x Liliana Vess

Land:
4 x Evolving Wilds
4 x Terramorphic Expanse
15 x Swamp


I think this build will do better overall, so I played against my own Enchanting Angels deck. The angels deck wound up winning, but thats what typically happens when your opening hand is Luminarch Ascension, 3x Oblivion Ring, 2x Plains, Emeria the Sky Ruin (and then drawing Wall of Omens). Despite that, the discard deck able to almost come back by quickly destroying white's deck with Duress and Inquisition of Kozelik.

Overall, I really like this deck and think it has a lot of potential. As I become more familiar with it, I expect it will make many more appearnaces in this blog.