While the Standard format metagame in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering features a bevy of multicolored midrange brews, as well as a smorgasbord of creature-based aggro decks (looking at you Monored), Monoblack Midrange is still a viable option thanks to a combination of board control, 🍌quick creature beats and one of the most omnipresent creatures in the entire format: Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.

There are myriad options for running the Monoblack Midrange deck in standard, though🍰 it must be noted that it isn’t as consistent 👍as it used to be thanks to the banning of Invoke Despair and The Meathook Massacre. It’s still quite fun to play and can be torture to play against, which is exactly what black is all about in MTG. Let’s dive in.

Sample Decklist

Key Cards

Virtue of Persistence // Lochthwain Scorn

This adventure card will likely be your win condition in this deck. Since most of the deck revolves around sending creatures to your opponent’s graveyard, Virtue allows you to bring the biggest threats back under your control. Conversely, if playing against a less creature-heavy deck, simply return your Preacher of the Schism followed by Sheoldred, the Apocalypse to play and reap the immediate benefits.

If that wasn’t enough, the adventure part of the card is yet another removal spell that also gains you a sliver of life – both of 🎃which are perfect for this deck.

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse

This omnipresent legendary creature can serve as an alternate win condition, and its generally oppressive nature means that your opponent will have to prioritize removing it all costs – even if that means trading multiple creature for it, using two burn spells on it or generally making bad plays in order to get it out of the way. By the time they do that, your board state will likely have pulled ahead.

The two-life loss your opponents will take when they draw a card, in particular, will add up quickly depending on what deck you’re playing against.

Preacher of the Schism

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Lost Caverns of Ixalan's Preacher of the Schism brings a beefy body (2/4) paired with a useful keyword ability in deathtouch. While that wouldn’t be overly exciting by itself, the Preacher’s abilities make it one of the most useful cards in the deck against almost any archetype.

If you’re behind on the board (via a lower life total), it gives you an incredibly useful lifelinking 1/1. If you’re ahead (via a higher life total), you get to draw a card and lose a life. An incredibly backbreaking move is to attack when your life total is the same as your opponent, giving you both boons at the same time!

Playi♏ng this on turn three and following up with Sheoldred on turn four can be potentially catastrophic for your opponent – though be careful of running into sweepers like Depopulate, Sunfall, Burn Down the House or our next card…

Deadly Cover-Up

This card serves as a critical sweeper against go-wide decks like ๊Boros Convoke, Azorius Soldiers, or, perhaps more importantly, Monored Aggro (though its five-mana costing cos𒁏t might sometimes be too slow against this archetype).

In addition to destroying all creatures, this card allows you to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:collect evidence 6 (quite easy to do in this deck) in order to exile a card from your opponent’s graveyard and then search their graveyard, hand and library and exile those cards. This trigger should usually be aimed at your foe’s most important card or its win condition.

This spell's bonus effect is not limited to nonland cards, so if you’re trying to knock out an annoying Mishra’s Fa🎐ctory or even want to completely annihilate a foe’s basic land base, Deadly Cover-Up allows you to do that꧒.

Blast Zone

Speaking of useful lands, this card can serve as a totally backbreaking stealth board wipe if played correctly. One weakness of this deck is that cannot hit enchantments or artifacts very well, but Bl🐽ast Zone makes that possible.

Sure, it can be a bit mana-intensive, but since you’re mostly going to be playing removal spells on your opponent’s turn, investing a few mana here and there into this card is always a good idea if your foe is done making moves on their turn.

Removal

The main crux of this deck is removing any and all creatures your opponent throws down. St🐷arting with the ever-useful Cut Down and moving on exile spells like Anoint with Affliction, this deck gives you myriad options for keeping your opponent’s board free of any threats.

Once your foe’s graveyard is full of goodies, pop down a Virtue of Persistence and profit from their downfall. It’s just that easy sometimes.

If your♔ opponent plays an exile spell on a creature you’d rather have in your graveyard for recursion (like from Virtue of Persistence or♛ one of the modes of Gix’s Command), simply use one of your own removal spells on that card so you can get it right back from your ‘yard later on.

How To Play Monoblack Midrange

When looking at this decklist, it might immediately register as more of a control deck rather than a midrange one. That’s certainly valid, as a whopping 22 cards (not counting Blast Zone) in this deck are straight-up removal cards – many of which are only single-target options. However, while this deck is usually content to wait for your opponent to act and then respond to their plays (the mark of what makes a control deck), this deck can be more proactive in the right matchups.

If your opponent hasn’t played anything by turn three and you’re pretty sure you’re not up against a true control deck, you can feel confident tossing down a Preacher of the Schism. If you follow that up with ౠa Sheoldred and your foe doesn’t have an immediate answer, they could already be well behind on the board only a few turns in.

Beyond that, though, always be content to be patient with this deck. Since you only have eight creatures in the deck (not including the vampire tokens created by Sorin, the Mirthless and Preacher), it should be rare that you have to worry about playing a creature just to have a board presence. There are exceptions, of course, but 💯isn’t that how Magic works?

It isn’t unusual for this deck to simply toss off some single-target removal spells at will in the early game, then wait until your foe has committed to a big board full of threats. 🍒That’s when the new addition of Deadly Cover-Up becomes a game-changer.

Not only will you have plenty of targets in your graveyard for collecting evidence, but Cover-Up should find plenty of exiling fodder in your foe’s ꧅graveyard to help tꦍhin out the best threats from their library, hand and graveyard.

While this deck might lack the top end board wipes of past recent iterations (wherefore art thou Invoke Despair and Meathook), the new a෴ddition of Deadly Cover-Up and the spicy inclusion of Malicious Eclipse provide extremely useful mid-game and early game board-clearing options, respectively. Combine that with the plethora of single-target removal spells in this deck along with Sheoldred and Preacher, and you have the makings of a top-flight deck on your hands. Just watch out for counterspells.