Douchebag Black Lockdown

Let me ask you this...since you helped me understand the card better...why is The Rack rated lower?

If your opponent has 7 cards...looks like The Rack would do 4 damage and Black Vise would do 3 damage. Yet Black Vise is rated higher/better.

Black Vise is even banned in Legacy, but not The Rack...what gives?

I must be reading The Rack wrong...

The rack and black vise are exact opposites. and as such they actually compliment each other very well. :)

Black vise does damage based on how many cards you have over 4, whereas The Rack does damage based on how many cards you have fewer than 3. :)

Depending on which version of the card you are looking at the wording can be very confusing... :( which is why wording on cards is super important.

so, with The Rack, you want your opponent to have very many cards. so it can be a very good discard support card.

With black vise, the MORE cards you opponent has, the more damage it does. :) so it is an excellent card for control and lock decks.

Hope that makes more sense. :)

Black Vise is banned in Legacy...what about Iron Maiden or Ebony Owl Netsuke.
For this deck...what would you pick?

tough call. I like both. I like the owl because it is cheaper manawise, but I like iron maiden because it does exactly the same thing as black vise, just for 3 mana instead of 1. personally I would go with iron maiden for consistent damage, because the owl ONLY does damage to them if they have 7 or more cards in hand, which means that if they can get out even 1 card, even just a land, they stop taking damage.

Took out the Grindstone. That took the deck down 50 bucks. Now...what about Thoughtseize (i do not own any). I drop them, that is another 50 bucks.

I have them in for this...Thoughtseize and Duress lets me look at my opponent's hand. If I see an artifact/enchantment i take it out (because black has no enchantment hate), plus, it lets me know what sort of mana to cast with Chalice of the Void.

What could I do with replacing Thoughtseize? Do I just take Chalice out? For what, something that helps with a quicker lockdown? If I keep Chalice...do i add something like Blackmail in replace of Thoughtseize?

Maybe take out Chalice and Thoughtseize to run 8 discard spells, duress being 4. What would the other discard card be that best ensures I get to search for an artifact/enchantment. Cabal Therapy maybe is too tricky, maybe.

hmm... you might consider something like Lantern of Insight. it lets you see the top card of you opponents library at all times, and you can sac it and make them shuffle their deck as a last ditch effort to keep good cards out of their hand. you could also be a jerk and run gitaxian probe. which IS blue, but can be played with 2 life instead of U, since it is phyrexian mana. I shall keep thinking about other cards to fit that particular role though.

I immediately thought of Gitaxian Probe. But I wanted to try to keep it mono black (even though i would be paying the 2 life, not the blue mana). I stillmight consider it. For not, before i can test it, i went with Distress.

distress is good. oo, also, mire's toll might not be too bad in here either, considering the amount of swamps you will have.
also, I really like the combo with ophiomancer and contamination. very nice there. :)

Yep. And trying to stall them until i can get those two cards out.
It doesn't stop people from playing cards, but Evil Presence/Contaminated ground slows their mana base. Especially if they are playing multi-colored decks or cards that cost 2 of same mana like counterspell/sign in blood.

It goes without saying...if i play against a black deck...then i am toast. lol

well that's true. playing against black is pretty tough for this deck. which I think can be worked around with the right sideboard cards.

But other than that, if they don't have an alternate way to get mana, if they aren't running black... then they CAN'T play cards at all. :) which makes it a pretty gnarly combo/control deck. cheap, effective, and fairly fast as well.

I have a lock deck that can usually work a turn faster than this, and color isn't an issue... but it is way more expensive than this. way to go. :)

Edit: Sideboard card in question, to deal with black: Mana Web.

I have Mana Web. I was told, by a friend, that people get around it like this: they have 6 lands in play. They tap them all THEN they start to play spells. If that makes sense.

I mean, they just tap all their lands into their mana pool instead of tapping the lands to play spells. But then again, this is the same friend that told me burning inquiry/liliana's caress only did 2 points of life loss.

yeah... that does NOT get around it. :) any time a land is tapped for mana, regardless of whether it is being used right away or not, all other lands that produce the same kind of mana that land CAN produce become tapped. oh, and you count each land tapping as a separate act. you can't tap all of them at the same time. so sadly, as cool as that sounds... your friend doesn't know what they are talking about.

Also, if they tapped all their land and put the mana in their mana pool it would go away as soon as the next step in their turn started. each phase of a turn empties the entire mana pool before it starts. so it wouldn't really work anyways unless they were playing all of the cards at once.

Thanks. When it works, it is brutal.

doesn't matter. they still can't play spells.

I like Massacre better. Sure, it cost one more extra mana. However, if they are playing Plains, by chance...than it is brutal!