Legacy: Mono Black Helm - Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

Greetings from the Shadows, my Legacy friends! Today we're going to talk about Combo, Prison, Disruption, all at once! Today's deck is the latest version of Red Prison's ugly old cousin, Black Prison.

While the title of the main Stompy deck of the format changed hands between Red Prison and White Initiative, in the corners of the format, the Mono Black version played quietly there, without making any noise. At first, it was the Curses deck, carried by the player Reeplcheep and Curse of Misfortunes.

Then the deck incorporated Urza's Saga, discarded Urza's Saga and now reached its final form with the presence of Dauthi Voidwalker and Orcish Bowmasters. Because of Dauthi, the deck started to be called Black Void and on June 25th, it placed 2 players in the top 32 of a 209 player event, 1 of them in the top 4!

Okay, but what does this deck do? Black Void looks like Lego with plenty of separate blocks that fit and play well together. In the center, we have the combo of Helm of Obedience and Leyline of the Void or Dauthi Voidwalker: the way the rules work, if you activate the Helm for at least 1 mana with either of those two black cards in play, your opponent's cards never touch your graveyard, so X's condition is never met. In short, the entire deck is exiled at once.

In addition to being part of the combo and often going in for free via your starting hand, a Leyline in play is practically an instant win against a variety of decks such as Reanimator, Cephalid Breakfast, Dredge or Oops, and greatly disrupts the game plan of a few others, like Delver, decks with Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, or decks with Life from the Loam.

From here, we move on to the secondary combo: Karn, the Great Creator.

The colorless Planeswalker is a true Swiss army knife in this deck – it serves to find the Helm of Obedience for the main combo, it's a combo in its own right with both Mycosynth Lattice and Liquimetal Coating and still offers a veritable arsenal of answers to all kinds of situations.

Then we have the third block of cards: Disruption!

Grief and Thoughtseize are among the best cards in the format to screw up your opponent's hand, and the deck even has a tertiary combo involving your graveyard negation and discard cards: play Ill-Gotten Gains with Leyline of the Void or Dauthi Voidwalker in play exiles all cards from your opponent's hand and returns 3 from your Graveyard back to yours. Remembering that creatures discarded when Dauthi is in play can be potential reinforcements for your team!

Following the line of spoiling your opponent's game, we have the presence of Opposition Agent, an extremely strong card, but which for a long time did not have a home.

Well now it has, and it's out there to spoil things like Fetch Lands, the third chapter of Urza's Saga, Natural Order, Infernal Tutor, the first stage of Undercity, and, the icing on the cake: win instantly against Doomsday.

We also have a duo to make your opponent question their draw spells: Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and the new darling Orcish Bowmasters.

Both put enormous pressure on some of the format's most popular cards like Brainstorm and Ponder, not to mention numerous other draw effects, and must be dealt with ASAP, or they threaten to load the game themselves.

Finally, we have a traditional Stompy - Sol Lands deck mana base (Ancient Tomb and City of Traitors) and Chrome Mox to which we've added Dark Ritual for really explosive turns– with a Leyline in the starting hand, 5 mana is enough for the Helm of Obedience to win on turn 1.

We also have Agadeem's Awakening which is a land that can either be imprinted on Chrome Mox, can pay the alternative cost of Grief and eventually be cast in games that drag on to generate extra resources – for 5 mana an Orc or a Dauthi returns, for 6 you can add an Agent to reanimate targets, and for 7, Grief and Sheoldred join the list.

As for the rest of the lands, Takenuma, Abandoned Mire is basically a Swamp that generates resources if topdecked later and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth helps alleviate the damage generated by Ancient Tomb, in addition to allowing your Sol Lands to tap for black mana.

This is a deck that benefits greatly from environments where you know what your opponents are using due to the Leyline of the Void factor – knowing that the enchantment can automatically win Game 1 against some archetypes makes it easier to keep hands with it.

In an unknown environment, Leyline can be maintained if the rest of the hand is reasonable, because in addition to the chance of it being a bomb against most archetypes, it already represents half of the combo with Helm of Obedience. Not having it in hand doesn't mean having to go after it if the offered hand has a good game plan like a quick Karn, the Great Creator with backup discard or an Opposition Agent on turn 1 to lock a Fetch Land.

Unlike most other Stompy, Black Void has the resources to make a Leyline bought later and has Dauthi Voidwalker as a backup for Elmo's combo.

Because of Karn, almost all of his Sideboard is taken up by cards that he can fetch, which leaves space limited to wider range cards like Orcish Bowmasters, Plague Engineer or Fatal Push. Fortunately, you don't need to waste sideboard space with Graveyard Hate because your main deck is already a graveyard deck nightmare!

As for Karn's toolbox, the top 3 targets are the fourth Helm of Obedience to close Leyline's combo, Mycosynth Lattice when you can protect Karn to end the game, or Liquimetal Coating to destroy one opponent's land per turn when you don't have the resources to afford Lattice.

In the remaining slots, Chalice of the Void and Trinisphere are to hold combo decks or even crash Delver's game; Tormod's Crypt for those cases where you don't have the Leyline and need to stop the opponent's graveyard; Ensnaring Bridge and Wurmcoil Engine are meant to deal with aggressive decks.

The Filigree Sylex and Pithing Needle offer answers to things your deck isn't initially prepared for, like problematic Enchantments or Planeswalkers; and Vault of Whispers allows Karn to find land for the next turn, a situation that happens particularly often when you need to sacrifice your City of Traitors to cast it.

UR Delver

Although it's not apparent, Leyline of the Void is actually good against them, basically nullifying the existence of Murktide Regent and disabling Dragon's Rage Channeler's Delirium.

Daze can cause us problems since the deck has a lot of 4 cost cards, and they have Wasteland, but our discards serve to open the way.

This is an opponent where Orcish Bowmasters do some damage, so after the side, you increase their number and take some of the slower cards. Plague Engineer for Humans deals with early forms of Delver of Secrets and Dragon's Rage Channeler.

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Reanimator

If you open from Leyline of the Void in game 1, there's not much they can do. If that's not what happens, you'll fight over discards, and it may be necessary for Karn, the Great Creator to find a Tormod's Crypt or an Ensnaring Bridge to save your skin.

On the play, Dauthi Voidwalker before they can use Entomb or a discard to put their pets in the graveyard may also resolve the game. On the post-side, I choose to add the artifacts because they end up being slow to search in Karn and you will probably go after other cards, but they can be very efficient if they come in the starting hand.

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Blue-White Control (UW, Bant, Jeskai, 4CC

Your deck has a lot of dangerous stuff for them, like Karn, Orcs and Sheoldred, in addition to the combo itself. This is an opponent where resolving Ill-Gotten Gains with one of the graveyard exiles is fatal.

Post-side, I trade some Agents for more Orcs, since there's not much they ambush besides Fetch Lands, except in the case of Bant lists that run Green Sun's Zenith and Natural Order, then you can side 1 Helm of Obedience and 1 Chrome Mox instead.

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Painter

Your deck has a lot of speed bumps in their way: Leyline and Dauthi stand in the way of victory via Goblin Welder and Goblin Engineer, Opposition Agent deals with Urza's Saga and the aforementioned Engineer and Karn, the Great Creator blocks not only their combo, but also a good part of their mana sources.

However, sometimes they just kill you with Saga Construct tokens. Orcs aren't very useful here - although they kill Welder, they don't have draw effects to generate value.

IN

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Stompy (Red Prison, RG, RW and W Initiative)

Except for Touch the Spirit Realm, they have no response to Helm's combo, which is something because outside that situation, Leyline is an absolutely dead card in this game. Unlike most Stompy, your deck is vulnerable, albeit slightly, to Chalice of the Void to 1.

In the white versions, Anointed Peacekeeper hinders the combo too much. Two-color lists are particularly vulnerable to discards, as these decks often bet on lists with close to 30 mana sources and few threats that they try to fit in on the first turn. Like the Painter, they usually don't have targets for the Orcs, so they clear the way for the Engineers on the side.

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Sneak n'Show

This is the foe that Dauthi Voidwalker's second ability shines against, discarding an Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Archon of Cruelty with Dauthi in play is brutal.

They'll try to navigate your discards, and a quick Show and Tell before you can deal with their hand should end the game - unless you use their spell to put a Helm of Obedience in play, preferably with a Leyline or a Dauthi to end the game.

Post-side, extra Orcs to try and pressure with your discards - if you remove combo pieces from their hand, they have to use more cantrips to resupply and that makes the Orcs bigger.

IN:

OUT:

After a long time in the shadows, the Mono Black version of Stompy decks has earned a place in the sun, now it remains to be seen if, now that it's a visible member of the Meta, it can hold up to the pressure. So far, the prospects are good.

Until next time!