Dese Cards, Dis Card; discard.

Hah, was expecting that the appearance of Dark Deal would spring up all kinds of variations of a Waste Not -deck. Several of the decks seem to be running Murderous Cut AND Empty the Pits, which strikes to me as a bit inconvenient, especially when there's plenty of non-delve removal being played anyway. Otherwise I suppose it's mostly a matter of preference which cards to use and how many of each, as long as there's a set of Waste Not. My version is trying to keep it simple and consistent with simply disrupting the opponent's early game while whittling down their life total before the bomb(s), at which point they shouldn't really have any effective answers to turn the table with.

Yeah, I tried a pre- FRF Waste Not, but the Dark Deal just screams "play me". And my initial builds did run both the Cut and the Pits, but I'm moving away from the Pits because Bile Blight is all over the format. I was looking at it for a turn 3 play after Waste Not on 2 and DD on 3 with 2 land discards... it would be good for 3 Zombies... and if you hit any creatures on the discard, you could be swinging for 8-10 on turn 4..... unless you get hit with the Bile Blight... I've also been trying to find cards that can really benefit from the mana boost after a Dark Deal w\ Waste Not... aka the Soul Flayer, Endless Obedience, Necro Fiend...

I like the Dictate of Erebos, but I don't know if there's enough creatures in your build to really make it worth it. I've also tried the Skullhunter, but so far he's proven underwhelming. And I think that a 3 cmc discard spell should always get 2 cards. Have you done any testing? Do you often have the Hunter on the table when you cast the Diplomacy? Do you ever trigger raid?

I think the only way this deck will be able to work consistantly is to have more than one purpose to play some of the cards. For example, you can't have Dark Deal in the deck to only interact with Waste Not, it's just not efficent as a stand alone card and it'll just sit in your hand as you hope to draw it's partner in crime. Not really sure what those other cards are yet... Chasm Skulker, Fate Unraveler, other delve cards... those are the ones I'm working with right now but still not sure on the build.

The deck's purely on planning stage right now, haven't tried playing Waste Not in a long while. Getting it as tuned as possible while working on other decks and getting around to actually testing, heh.

Skullhunter might be more of a sideboard option (as it originally was). I figured I should easily get the raid from a zombie attack, thus getting another discard and another creature for the opponent to deal with for 2 mana. Of course, it stops being as viable if the opponent isn't running many creatures, limiting my odds of getting early zombies.

Diplomacy of the Wastes I think should be pretty good even without the extra value from having a warrior present; while it's 3 mana, with Waste not it's automatically extra value for that mana plus you get to pick what's being removed. That in between of Thoughtseize, Despise and Dark Deal should give you pretty damn good control over what your opponent gets to play, and the few creatures that you might have to let through you can deal with the removal available.

Main problem I suppose is that there isn't a definite wincon as is. Whittling down opponent's life total is one solution, while keeping them from playing anything useful, and then there's Liliana (though not very solid). Sideboard is showing some of the ideas I've been playing with, and probably the most obvious solution would be to go UB and add Ashiok, but for now I'm trying to stay mono black.