Blue black control is a deck that focuses on utilizing discard spells and counter spells to control the tempo and pace of each turn. The deck has 12 discard spells and 10 counter spells, with the goal of emphasizing discard more depending on the initial draw. UB decks can focus on Psychatog or pack a lot of card draw to overwhelm opponents with 1-1 spells.
The Dimir control deck guide for the Standard format, fully updated for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Standard and the April 2022 ranked season, offers a 60-card deck list that aims to slow opponents’ tempo, maintain card advantage, remove/counter all opponents’ cards, and remove/counter all their opponents’s. Discard cards and effects cause opponents to discard or exile cards from their hand, depriving them of resources before they can play them.
Discard effects allow opponents to choose which card to discard, and decks can bring this out of the board as a catch-all discard spell against white-blue control for just one mana with no downside apart from the card type. Some decks may use blue/black discard, instant, Dark Ritual foil, Perplex, Wheel and Deal, Sorcery, Laquatus’s Creativity, Wistful Thinking, and Enchantment.
When Miasma Demon enters, players can discard any number of cards. This can be done by drawing a card, then discarding a card, and tapping. When another creature is controlled, players can choose a nonland card from it, discarding that card, and losing two life.
In summary, blue black control is a powerful deck that combines the best of both black and blue cards to control the tempo and pace of each turn.
📹 How Will You Win If I Counter All Your Spells? | $80 Budget Magic
How good is Mono-Blue Flash in Duskmourn Standard on a budget with Enduring Curiosity to draw us tons of cards? Let’s find out …
📹 MTG – Modern Mono Black Control – 8 Rack Discard Deck With Liliana – Magic: The Gathering
Deck lists: $30 Budget: https://archidekt.com/decks/2754004#8_Rack_-_Budget_ Template “Solid” Version: …
I was trying to return to Magic in 2015 and I found this article. My first step on Magic was in 1998 when I was 8 years old and I stopped in 2005. I usually played with Mono Black control since than, and I was looking for a Mono Black option to play with in Modern and this deck was the right option, thank you! I love this deck.
Just wanted to say thanks for this article. I used it as one of my guides to building my own 8-Rack deck to get my feet wet in Modern. This is very reminiscent of a deck I built and enjoyed when Stronghold was new. It ran Ensnaring Bridge and Bottomless Pit among other things, so this is right up my alley. Haven’t gotten a chance to play it yet because there’s very little Modern action in my area, but I’ve seen a few people play it casually so I know I’ll get a chance to bust it out at some point.
Great article, I love how you present the budget options. Two observations (completely subjective): I don’t think Liliana of the Veil will be reprinted any time soon; I’m not convinced that the new block structure will make things more expensive. We will still have four expansion sets per year. Each set will have a shorter lifespan, but prices should compensate for this.
Dimir Mill 😀 I’m still perfecting mine, but it’s just about done. Similar to your 8-Rack, it focuses on controlling what your opponent does via creature removal, and discarding. With fog bank and wall of frost for defense, and counter and removal spells, the only thing your opponent can do is to watch in horror as their library slowly whittles away…
I’ve been wanting to build this for a long time now, but the cost of a single card has been the entirety of my deck building budget. Nice to see a budget version that is more in reach. What would you recommend as budget friendly suggestions for the sideboard? As well as suggestions for what to swap out as needed. I’ve already got playsets of Thoughtseize, Pack Rat, and Mutavault. As well as a couple Urborg’s.
Can you give us some tips and tricks on keeping an eye on pricewatch? You mention certain cards that are expected to rise or drop in price, with causes like standard rotation. I do not expect a guide that covers everything completely, but there are probably some patterns to look out for, know what I mean? Loving your articles man, keep it up!
I run Pox in Legacy and you can still play a fairly competitive mono-black Pox build in Legacy for around $60. And the best part, most of the cards in this article are in the budget Legacy version. Being an avid as well as rabid control player I recommend pox for Legacy and this would be a good starting point for a budget Legacy build.
First of all I want to thank you for the hard work you’ve done putting these articles together, my wife and I just love them. We are fairly new to magic, we’ve only been playing for a couple of months, but we have the basics down. I’ve even attended a Friday night magic and did fairly well. My wife loves the vampire cards I used to make her lifelink deck. So I was wondering if you can make a article of your suggestion for a vampire themed deck.
Lol racks now cost $10 a pop, or $4 if you buy the “less fancy” version (that I like just fine). Shame that it costs $16 per Thoughtseize and $23 per Inquisition of Kozilek right now. Still, I tried the deck, and I ended up loving it. This has actually become my favorite deck, even above U/R Delver/Pyro. However, Ensnaring Bridge and Liliana of the Veil still need reprints desperately.
I actually use lilliana Vess she is expensive but I dont like to discard and for removal I run 4 damnations the only other new cards I have is painful quandary it is expensive to play at five but I always get there i do rn a play set and it slows down my opponent sooooo much and creature just one a vampire that lets me gain three life for every card an opponnent discards. this deck is soooo much fun just beware againts another control deck they might be able to cancel everything you play .
My take on 8 rack Lands 20 swamps 1 leechridden swamp Spells 2 doomblade (1b) 2 fatal push (b) 2 walk the plank (bb) 2 wrench mind (bb) 3 sign in blood (bb) 2 smallpox (bb) 3 inquisition of kozilek (b) 3 raven’s crime (b) 4 funeral charm (b) 1 victim of night (bb) 1 torment of hellfire (Xbb) Enchantments 4 shrieking affliction (b) 3 torment of scarabs (3b) Artifacts 4 the rack 1 elixir of immortality Planeswalkers 2 liliana vess (3bb) Sideboard 4 treasure map 3 acoursed witch (3b) 2 sword-point diplomacy (2b) 1 sign in blood (bb) 1 raven’s crime (b) 1 inquisitioin of kozilek (b)
Get your Blackmail copies today. Their price has been climbing lately alongside this deck’s popularity. Also, in my opinion, Wastenot is a little awkward as a mainboard for this deck. Against RDW, Affinity, Fish, and other quick low CMC decks, it sort of becomes a dead card. Of course, you could combo it with the Dakmor/Raven’s Crime function, but it’s a fairly limited set up. Overall, this deck is simply a blast to play. This article is spot on with the budget options. As long as you can drop your Racks and Snares, then you can beat just about any Top Tier deck at your local shop. It feels satisfyingly evil to lock out your opponent. Personally, I’m working on getting my Liliana playsets. The best prices I can find are 4 for $200. Yikes! Great vid. Love your website!
Is this the new “Megrim/Bottomless Pit” deck from Rath Block? Is Ensnaring bridge legal in modern? I’m returning, haven’t played since the 90s. Ensnaring Bridge I see hasn’t been reprinted since 8th edition… Neither has Bottomless Pit, from the same set (stronghold) can anyone explain this? Thanks!!
Can I get another opinion on my own personal budget 8 rack deck? The list is- 4 augur of skull 4 blackmail 4 bojuka bog 4 dakmor salvage 2 duress 2 languish 4 ravens crime 4 shrieking affliction 2 small pox 1 smother 4 the rack 4 underworld dreams 4 victim of the night 4 wrench mind 12 swamps 1 Liliana of the veil (happen to have one I opened in a innistrad pack a while ago) Total cost (w/ Liliana): $136 Total cost (w/out Liliana): $46
Thank you for this article; it got me interested in Modern! I’m planning to build a set with physical cards, but until they come in I’m playing with one on MTGO which I got for 10ish dollars. (Admittedly, I had to replace The Rack with Liliana’s Caress because, well, The Racks would have put me above ten dollars!)
As a person who has played casual/kitchen table, EDH, & modern for a long time I don’t feel like these articles are any new information to me, but I find myself listening to these articles multiple times each! I think the largest value I get from these is the really nice budget minded view point. PLEASE make this kind of article a long term staple of your website! (along with product reviews & accessory reviews. LOVING both of those genres of articles you do, too!)
The trouble with magic is that it really is about who spends the most money. If you are playing multi-color you need to spend 200-300 on your lands just not risk losing to mana screw. If you play mono color to avoid this, like Tolarian Acadamy suggests, you lose access to 90% of the decks available: if you value choice in deck building that makes me lose interest instantly. Even mono colored decks are a money game. Discard is crippled without Lilinia or bridge. As a former play I can no longer justify dropping $100 on a casual deck and finding I can’t even play on even terms with everyone.
This was the first tiered deck I built for modern. I traded for Liliana and bought her at 60$ (now she’s up to 120 some places). The deck really taught me how to “read the meta” and taught me how other decks worked and thought (since I got see their hands). Great deck. I think it might be time to think about bringing in some number of bridges again (despite tom ross’ success without them) and moving away from the attrition style to a “value” killer build (kill planewalkers, turn off abilities, bust enchantments). We will see. Anyway, can’t recommend the deck enough if you really want to “learn” magic.
You put together some really awesome decks, Oh great elder of The Gathering. But I was wondering, because you put together such good decks, which I am looking into buying of course, have you ever thought of selling your own decks to make the money back you’ve spent at all? Or even Tolarian College merchandise such as Card Sleeves? Also, I think what would be really great to see from you In a article is you playing a game of Magic The Gathering, and possibly doing commentary over it to walk us through how you used your cards and such.
I’m testing Geralf’s Messenger as a playset in this deck. I have a weakness for zombies and it can be pretty great with Smallpox. Play the Messenger turn three, target opponent loses 2 life. Next turn, sac it with Smallpox, trigger its Undying having opponent lose 2 more life. Might not seem that great but with the other combos, yeah, can do some damage.
So Professor….Billy here. I was wondering what you have come to think about Waste Not in this deck. I tried it out myself but didn’t find it worked well. I have no Liliana of the Veil, but do run a playset of Damnation (Planar Chaos was my favorite set, so already had those on hand) and I also run a set of Liliana’s Caress.
Having played MTG for a while, I wondered if certain decks in the known standard meta could transform into a reasonable modern deck, fiscal constraints being the main reason… E.g., what can I do with Sultai Reanimator or Temur Ascendancy to evolve it into modern, with paying an arm, a leg, and a few other body parts? Kind regards
I was thinking of building this deck, although not owning 4 ensnaring bridges, I was thinking of adding 4 Lingering Souls instead. I do have the fetches and godless shrine to make this happen, and has some synergies with Lili. Do you think this could be a good idea, or splashing a second colour isn’t what the deck was made for? Thanks a lot for the article!
finally, someone giving Blackmail some love, it’s always been underrated, to the point of always wondering why so many people scoff at it. Obviously first or 2nd turn it’s not that great, but after that, it’s outstanding as they almost certainly have 3 or less cards if you have played any discard on them since the start.
thanks for the great deck idea! I think one more card would make this deck a lot better thought. a play set of pyhrexian obliterator’s to stop other creatures from attacking you unless the person playing against you wants to remove permanents! its going to make the deck $100 more expensive but its going to stop most creature based deck or at least put them in a bad situation.
This being a low tier deck…. it is expected that the coverage for this deck is quite minimal, but I kinda wish there are places for me to get more information, cause I feel like there are some experimentations that could be done to fix the deck to become higher tier. I dunno… i just feel like 8 Racks is low tier cause not enough people care enough about it.
i was messing with this deck a bit and for newer players who might want to have a few more creatures on the field you could add vampires to replace some of the pricier cards i would recommend bloodgast so if you discard him you could just bring him back and he can be a chump for days vampire nighthawk because flying deathtouch and lifelink for 3 is badass nocturnis to pump vampires and maybe antwon the rune sage just to clear the board a bit so even if your opponet gets out big bad guys they die because there not vampires
man i love your idea of this deck. i tried doing a blue spin on this deck by putting mind funeral and land destruction, people use fetch lands all the time so what better way to windle down their land count in the deck and other cards that they cant combo from then add tectonic edge to get rid of their lands they got in play. 🙂
So I’m unsure if this is a good alternative to ensnaring bridge but noetic scales seems like a good substitute. It will also allow you to get rid of their threats that do happen to get through a bit more permanently. The only real downside i see is it may slow down the damage off of the rack and shrieking affliction.
So i have hard time finding wrench mind. I know it’s cheap but nobody has this card here, and I would have to pay for international shipment, but is Mind Rot good replacement? I don’t like it too much because it’s mana cost is 3 instead of 2 but seems nice. Anyone has some experience playing with it?
Waste Not is a very awkward card to pass judgment on. I currently run it in this deck as a three-of, but it’s so high-variance that I can’t decide whether or not it’s worth keeping. When you get it early, it completely over performs and just outright wins you the game. When you get it late in the game or when your opponent is top-decking, it’s just absolutely horrid. I’m curious to see how it does in Modern and, due to Hymn to Tourach, Legacy as well. I don’t think it has a place in Standard right now, but we are moving deeper into spoiler season, so who knows what’ll happen.
May I ask you something? What is the big deal about thoughtsize? There are other cards, think off duress, who arent so bad… I saw that you used is as a cheap replace for thoughtsize, but it is an pretty expensive card (just because of extrmely lucky boosters I do have a playset) but why would I use them, when I play for of them Im losing 8 lifepoints, its pretty destructive for me either?