Decklist: Monoblack Tribal Horrors

My earlier Off-Brand Tribal post mentioned tribal decks that have no overt strategy to gel it together, but rather more subtle cues that let us build something cohesive if we pick up on them. This is one of those decks.

I wasn't sure what I was going to end up with when I started building this deck. I wanted to build a tribal deck that no one had thought of before, and eventually settled on Horrors. There didn't seem to be anything linking them all together, but after playtesting it a little bit I stumbled on a card that cracked the deck wide open: Minion Reflector.

While this seems like an odd card to rally a deck around, I found that what my Horrors wanted to do most was to either enter the battlefield, attack, or die, and the Reflector provided me with an extra immediate opportunity to do all three. Let's take a look at the deck, and I'll explain more afterwards.

Horrors

2x Abyssal Gatekeeper
3x Fleshwrither
2x Faceless Butcher
2x Infectious Horror
2x Creakwood Liege
4x Phyrexian Obliterator
2x Mindslicer
2x Nihilith
4x Laquatus's Champion
2x Void Maw

Spells

3x Minion Reflector
2x Door of Destinies
2x Grave Pact
2x Gravestorm
3x Skullclamp
2x Skulltap
2x Smallpox
4x Dark Ritual
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Demonic Tutor

Lands

3x Cabal Coffers
4x Crypt of Agadeem
2x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
16x Swamp

As you can see, you can get a lot of interesting interactions with the Reflector. Abyssal Gatekeeper will cost everyone an extra creature (the actual creature can be sacrificed to its token's effect, causing everyone else to lose two creatures), while Fleshwrither will let you tutor an extra creature, provided you have enough mana. Laquatus's Champion also lets us set up an alpha-strike against an opponent, temporarily draining a total of 12 life before even attacking. And of course, I don't need to explain the love affair between the Reflector and Grave Pact.

I ran this deck a number of years ago, so I've had to make a few adjustments, most notably adding the ridiculous Phyrexian Obliterator which hadn't been printed yet. Looking back at the list, there is some room for tweaking; upping the Fleshwrithers to four and bringing the risky Mindslicer down to a one-of might allow for more of a toolbox build with cards like Slum Reaper and Hell's Caretaker as singletons (they can both replace the weakest link that is Nihilith).

The finer workings of the brew are in your hands. Although it does help that the creature type has some pretty useful cards available (Obliterator, Fleshwrither, Liege), this is a good example of a tribal deck with little-to-no inherent synergy that can be made to work once we find the right card for it. I've got a few more tribal decklists to post in the coming days, so don't go too far!