Standard Mono-Black Discard Deck and Sideboard Guide

Hey all, Strickles here with another deck guide, for a fun standard deck. This deck came together as I was testing various decks featuring Hostile Investigator, and after trying every Black two-color combination, decided to try a dedicated discard deck in Mono-Black to good success. Let’s dive right into the deck!

Key Cards and Gameplan

The main star of the deck is Hostile Investigator. Coming down on turn four, making your opponent discard a card, making a Clue, and being a good sized body makes Hostile Investigator fine on its own, but in our deck it can easily make a Clue almost every turn as we continue to make our opponent discard cards.

There are also several other times where an opponent’s own cards or effects cause them to discard a card, such as activating a Blood token, or Channeling a land, which will also trigger our Hostile Investigator and give us a Clue. While creating a Clue is not even close to as good as just drawing a card, the Clues created by Hostile Investigator do slowly allow us to keep the cards coming so that we don’t run out of interaction or threats, which is usually a problem that dedicated discard decks suffer from.

If you have been playing Standard recently, you are familiar with Preacher of the Schism and Deep-Cavern Bat as staple Black Midrange creatures. Preacher of the Schism is hard to kill, blocks well, draws cards to snowball advantages when you are up on life, creates lifelink blockers to help against aggressive strategies when you are down on life, and is overall just a great card.

Deep-Cavern Bat helps us disrupt the opponents curve or removal, all while chipping in for Lifelink damage. All of our other discard effects in the maindeck allows the opponent to choose which card they discard, so Deep-Cavern Bat is especially valuable as it gives us the information of what the opponent has in hand and can temporarily delay their strategy or protect our more expensive creatures from removal or counterspells.

Tinybones, the Pickpocket has also gained a lot of popularity in Standard, as it lets you turn your removal spells into card advantage. One of the best scenarios with Tinybones, the Pickpocket involves getting it into play on turn one, and then on your turn two casting Cut Down on an opposing one drop, attacking in, and then casting that one drop from the opponents graveyard. Another great line is killing a two drop or three drop at the end of your opponent’s turn two or turn three and then attacking in and casting it.

Regardless, Tinybones, the Pickpocket is a must-answer threat and Deathtouch allows it to attack in against any opposing creature and at least trade 1-for-1. It is especially good in our deck because of how many cards we make our opponents discard, there is almost always going to be goodies in the graveyard for us to cast.

Kaervek, the Punisher, also fresh from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, is a nice value engine for recurring discard spells, removal spells, and even creatures as long as you are committing crimes, which we have an easy time doing with our various removal spells, Tinybones Joins Up triggers, Deep-Cavern Bat triggers, Hostile Investigator triggers, and more. Kaervek, the Punisher gives the deck another nice source of card advantage, that can help us clean up the board by turning one removal spell into two, or even recasting threats that the opponent had previously removed.

Lastly, we have two copies of The Raven Man, which makes us Flying attackers when we make our opponent discard cards, as well as being a source of discard in the late game. The Raven Man is a bit expensive to utilize and the 1/1 Flying Bird tokens he makes can’t block which means he is only good when we are on offense. If there was a card that I wasn’t 100% in the deck so far it would be The Raven Man, but I think it is also nice to have another two mana creature that rewards us for causing our opponents to discard cards.

We also have one Sheoldred, the Apocalypse to occasionally show up and close out the game for us. It is possible that we want one more copy of her as she is weakest when the opponent immediately removes her, but when your opponent has already discarded a lot of cards she is more likely to live for several turns.

Moving onto the discard, we have two one mana enchantments that get us started. Tinybones Joins Up, new from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, forces our opponent to discard a card, but also gives us a crime whenever we play a legendary creature by targeting the opponent to lose a life and mill a card. This is key with the aforementioned Kaervek, the Punisher, as when Kaervek enters the battlefield and triggers Tinybones Joins Up, a crime is committed right away, allowing Kaervek to cast a card from our graveyard right away if we have the mana.

Hopeless Nightmare also causes our opponent to discard a card and take 2 damage, but also can be sacrificed to let us scry 2 later in the game. Getting Hopeless Nightmare into the graveyard is also nice because then we can cast it again with Kaervek later on. I have a four Hopeless Nightmare-two Tinybones Joins Up split right now because we don’t play enough legendary creatures to get consistent value out of Tinybones Joins Up, but the damage and scry from Hopeless Nightmare helps us close out the game against ramp and control decks, and find more relevant cards against midrange decks.

Liliana of the Veil serves as a source of discard, removal, and a must answer planeswalker as it is almost impossible to come back from a Liliana of the Veil ultimate. When we have Hostile Investigator in play, Liliana’s plus 1 will also give us a clue, and her minus 2 does target the opponent meaning it is committing a crime if we have a Kaervek in play.

Liliana is very strong in our deck but I’ve only got her at two copies because while she shines against control and ramp, she is not very good against Boros Convoke and other aggressive strategies that have no problem emptying their hand and playing all of their cards off the top of their deck.

Rounding out our main deck is a nice suite of removal to help us delay our opponent’s clock while we grind their hand down. Cut Down and Go for the Throat are Standard staples that help control the board early and late, and one copy of Shoot the Sheriff helps us up our removal count while allowing us to take out the occasional artifact creatures that Go for the Throat can’t target.

Our mana base is pretty straight forward, mostly swamps, with two Takenuma, Abandoned Mire, which when channeled while we have a Hostile Investigator in play while give us a clue since channel is discarding the card, two Mirrex to help us grind out control decks, and two Field of Ruin to answer opposing creature lands and Mirrex. It is possible we could want something like Mishra’s Foundry over Mirrex, but we don’t want too many colorless lands as we need a lot of black mana.

Matchups and Sideboard Guide

The sideboard is pretty straightforward with this deck, so let’s go over it matchup by matchup.

Against Boros Convoke

In	Out
+4 Glistening Deluge	-2 Liliana of the Veil
	-2 The Raven Man

Liliana of the Veil and The Raven Man are both very low impact cards against Boros Convoke and Glistening Deluge lets us clean up all but their biggest creatures which we can then pick off with our targeted removal.

Our Tinybones, the Pickpocket and Deep-Cavern Bat do die to Glistening Deluge, so it is totally fine to trade them off early before casting Glistening Deluge.

Against Domain Ramp

In	Out
+2 Extract the Truth	-3 Cut Down
+2 Insatiable Avarice	-2 Go for the Throat
+4 Duress	-3 Tinybones, the Pickpocket

Extract the Truth can take out a resolved Up the Beanstalk or Leyline Binding, while the discard mode can take those cards before they come into play as well as an Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Archangel of Wrath if need be. Duress gives us more answers to Leyline Binding and sweepers like Depopulate and Sunfall, while Insatiable Avarice lets us refuel after we have spent the early turns attacking their hand.

Meanwhile, Cut Down has almost no targets against the opponent, and we want to trim down on Go for the Throat as they have few targets for it so we usually only want to draw one of the effects in a game. Tinybones, the Pickpocket will almost never get to snag a permanent from the opponent’s graveyard as the permanents they play have a very high mana cost, so we cut it here.

Against Midrange (Esper Midrange, Dimir Midrange, Rakdos Midrange, etc)

In	Out
+2 Insatiable Avarice	-2 The Raven Man
+1 Blot Out	-1 Hopeless Nightmare

We want Insatiable Avarice to refill our hand with cards, and Blot Out if we think they are on Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal, as it is our best answer to the card. The Raven Man is just our lowest quality card so it comes out, and since these games usually come down to top decks trimming a Hopeless Nightmare is fine.

You can also bring in Extract the Truth against Esper to answer Wedding Announcement, but I don’t think it is always necessary.

Against Aggro (Mono-Red Aggro, Gruul Prowess, etc)

In	Out
+4 Duress	-2 Liliana of the Veil
	-2 The Raven Man

Our maindeck is decently set up for these matchups as we play plenty of removal and force them to run out of cards early. However, Duress can help us take problematic cards like Monstrous Rage, while The Raven Man and Liliana of the Veil just fail to impact the board in a meaningful way.

Against Temur Land Combo

In	Out
+2 Extract the Truth	-2 Cut Down
+2 Unlicensed Hearse	-2 Go for the Throat

We want Unlicensed Hearse to take out their sacrifice lands from the graveyard, and Extract the Truth can take out any of their creatures as well as Virtue of Strength before they get value with it.

Cut Down doesn’t have many targets but it can occasionally take out an Aftermath Analyst before it activates, and while Nissa, Resurgent Animist is important to remove, they have no other threats outside of her, so we don’t want too many removal spells getting stuck in our hand.

Against Azorius Control

In	Out
+2 Insatiable Avarice	-2 Cut Down
+4 Duress	-3 Go for the Throat
+1 Unlicensed Hearse	-2 Tinybones, the Pickpocket

Similar to against Domain Ramp, we want more disruption in the form of Duress to take out sweepers and counterspells, Insatiable Avarice to refill our hand, and one Unlicensed Hearse as a difficult to answer threat that can exile their copies of Memory Deluge before they have a chance to flash them back.

We want to trim down on our removal while leaving in a few copies to answer creature lands and any creatures they bring in from the sideboard, and Tinybones, the Pickpocket is also going to struggle to find permanent cards to cast from their graveyard.

Wrapping Up

Everyone has a plan until they are missing half their hand! This is a fun deck, attacking the format from a different angle that most of your opponents on the ladder won’t be prepared for, while still playing like the black midrange decks that you are familiar with. I hope you enjoy this deck and as always best of luck in your games!