I'm going to build upon a deck listing I supplied in my Onslaught: Black Sun Rising article. It was okay, but not great; like a lot of my listings, it needed working on to improve it. Inspired by an email that was sent to me, I'm going to try and take the first steps in improving one of them. Here's the original listing:

Creatures: (22)
4 Festering Goblin
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Mesmeric Fiend
3 Undead Gladiator
2 Faceless Butcher
4 Grinning Demon
1 Shambling Swarm

Spells: (14)
4 Duress
4 Smother
3 Mutilate
3 Oversold Cemetery

Lands: (24)
3 Cabal Coffers
21 Swamp

Sideboard:
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
1 Faceless Butcher
4 Chainer's Edict
3 Entrails Feaster
2 Shambling Swarm
1 Mutilate

Okay, so that was the listing I drafted up after my preliminary testing; it's all right, but has some notable flaws. The largest one turned out to be a major oversight on my part. Robert Bonner was kind enough to enlighten me in an email (and make me feel like a bit of an idiot in the process).

Nantuko Husk! Now why should I feel like an idiot for missing this guy? The short version is that when Masques and Urza's Blocks were legal, I flew in the face of tradition by playing a five-colour deck in an environment dominated by Rishadan Ports and Dust Bowls.

What deck was this?

Well, Pattern of Rebirth of course - and what was one of the key cards in that deck? Phyrexian Ghoul.

Look familiar? Well Nantuko Husk is at its heart a reprint; it gains an extra creature type (insect) and looks a lot better than the Ghoul, but it is, in essence, the same card. I loved those Ghouls, killing people with these on turn 3 or 4 was so much fun (thanks to Academy Rector/Birds of Paradise/Saproling Burst and Pattern of Rebirth.)

But I digress. The point is I should have realized about the Husk; it's the kind of card I notice and often try to fit into any deck I can. So now I have a way to sacrifice the Nightmares in response to their comes-into-play abilities. I'm going to take a second to explain what that does and why it's effective; if you already know about the trick (which most of you should) then skip on ahead.

For this example we have the following situation. You have four swamps and a Nantuko Husk (summoned last turn); your opponent has a Wild Mongrel on the table. This turn, you've drawn a Faceless Butcher.

You cast it and it enters play with the comes into play trigger on the stack (targeting the Mongrel), before resolving that trigger you respond by sacrificing the Faceless Butcher to the Husk, putting it's leave play ability on the stack. The husk gets +2/+2 and the stack looks like this:

Top of Stack:

• When Faceless Butcher leaves play, return the removed card to play under its owner's control. - (This would be the target: - the Wild Mongrel)
• When Faceless Butcher comes into play, remove target creature other than Faceless Butcher from the game. - Targeting the Wild Mongrel.

The leaves play resolves first.... Returning nothing because we haven't removed the Wild Mongrel. Then the comes into play resolves (the Faceless Butcher isn't there anymore, but that doesn't matter; the trigger will still resolve) removing the Wild Mongrel from the game, and the pooch has no chance of returning (barring Living Wish or Death Wish.) Then we get to attack with our 4/4 Husk. (=

The other part we need is a way to recur our Nightmares; the Malevolent Awakening deck used (of course) Malevolent Awakening, but that's a very mana-intensive method and also requires the Awakening in play and a creature in the graveyard (so Awakening isn't much use on its own.) The listing at the top uses Oversold Cemetery and I feel this is the stronger card to use to return those Nightmares.

Anyway, we need to look at potential candidates for our deck and decide which ones to use and in what quantity. I'm going to give notes on each card to give you an idea as to why I chose each card over others.

Lets start building, we're going to be mono-Black in this build; the Tainted Lands do give the potential to play a second colour (Blue is the most likely candidate.) But making it mono is simple and a nice start point, why add another colour if it turns out you don't require it?

We will be using four Nantuko Husk and four Oversold Cemetery, as that's the core of this deck. All other choices are going to be made based on that core idea.

This is supposed to be a weenie deck, so we're not going any higher than four on the casting costs. We'll look at the candidates in order of converted mana costs. Not all of them will make the cut, but remember you can choose different cards if you disagree with my decisions or feel I've missed out on one (which has been known to happen.)

The Creatures:

One:
Accursed Centaur
Blood Pet
Festering Goblin
Putrid Imp
Zombie Cannibal

Two:
Crypt Creeper
Disciple of Malice
Foul Imp
Headhunter
Mesmeric Fiend
Nantuko Shade
Rotting Giant
Wretched Anurid

Three:
Cabal Archon
Crypt Rats
Ebonblade Reaper
Fledgling Imp
Gravegouger
Organ Grinder
Rotlung Reanimator
Slithery Stalker
Stronghold Assassin
Undead Gladiator

Four:
Balthor the Defiled
Braids, Cabal Minion
Eastern Paladin
Faceless Butcher
Filth
Grinning Demon
Ichorid
Mindslicer
Mortivore
Shambling Swarm
Western Paladin

And at 6cc is the possibility of Silent Specter (which I'm only considering because it has morph).

The Spells:

One:
Blackmail
Cabal Therapy
Duress
Ghastly Demise
Innocent Blood

Two:
Chain of Smog
Chainer's Edict
Smother
Strength of Lunacy
Zombie Infestation

Three:
Buried Alive
Dirge of Dread
Engineered Plague
Execute
Oppression
Rancid Earth

Four:
Diabolic Tutor
Mutilate
Persecute
Reprocess

We want four Nantuko Husks and four Oversold Cemeteries, so they go in straight away. First of all we're going to pick the creatures that we'll use. Nantuko Shade and Grinning Demon are no-brainers just due to the fact they are the best two black creatures in Standard right now, we'll use four of each.

Next we come to the nightmares, there are three on this list: We'll have four of the Butcher and the Fiend; it's just the 'Gouger that needs some thought. Graveyard removal is strong enough to use main deck in the current environment... But typically, you only want to remove the one card (and often at instant speed) this means that the Crypt Creeper would be a better choice (the Creeper was another card Rob Pointed reminded me about) - and at two mana, it's more aggressive. We really only have room for one more creature - and as this is an aggressive deck, I'm going to pick the excellent Wretched Anurid.

So we have 25 Creatures, this leaves 35 slots left; at least twenty of these will be Swamps; maybe less, as I'm thinking about using the new fetch lands in a mono colour deck. Why? Any kind of card that thins your lands in an aggressive deck has to be good.

The spell choices are simple; we need Oversold Cemetery and removal/discard. The Discard is best off being the excellent Duress; Blackmail isn't good enough and Cabal Therapy (although thematic) is not as strong as Duress. With the removal, we have a bit more choice; we can use Smother, Edict, Blood, Mutilate, or Demise alongside the Butchers. I used Smother first of all, as it kills 90% of the creatures in the environment.... But the small creatures aren't the problem. It's the fatties that ruin your day, so I wanted to use cards that could deal with them as well, this means that Chainer's Edict is back in main deck (which as increases the amount of removal spells as well). The other removal spell is going to be that great boardsweeper, Mutilate; this will deal with any problem creatures that crop up and allow us to punish other beatdown decks for over committing. Also Mutilate has obvious synergy with the Cemetery - and that has to be good!

Another route to take this deck down is a more controlling version using Diabolic Tutors, Silver Bullets, and maybe adding Green for more versatility. But that's a different kind of deck, more like the old Oath/Death decks (minus Survival) and I'm looking to create a beatdown deck. We could also use Infestation/Putrid Imp and go down the Pirates route, increase the amount of discard (with Blackmail and Therapy)....

Here's what I've ended up with:

Oversold Nightmares V1.1

Creatures: (24)
2 Crypt Creeper
3 Wretched Anurid
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Nantuko Husk
3 Grinning Demon
4 Faceless Butcher

Spells: (15)
4 Duress
4 Chainer's Edict
4 Oversold Cemetery
3 Mutilate

Land: (21)
4 Bloodstained Mire
17 Swamp

Or:

21 Swamp

Sideboard is always a tricky thing to recommend but I'd consider some of the following cards. Persecute, Engineered Plague (against Mobilization & Nest), Organ Grinder (Vs. Worship and COP: Black), Silent Specter, Smother, Mutilate, Undead Gladiator, Coffin Purge, and that crazy bird Braids. It's all down to what decks are popular in your area... I'd play the following right after rotation:

4 Braids, Cabal Minion
3 Smother
3 Engineered Plague
1 Mutilate
2 Persecute
2 Organ Grinder (or some other life loss card)

The land count is maybe one or two swamps short of what it should be, but it's hard to cut any of the spells - and I'm renowned for playing all too few lands and getting away with it. If you ever saw the listing of my old G/B deck, you'd understand.

Well, I guess that's it; I'd like to give a big thanks to Robert Bonner, who pointed out the Husk and other cards. He deserves credit for this, without the Husk I think this deck would never have the potential to become tier one. As it is I think we'll see variations of this deck for a quite a while.

I would like you people to make this deck a pet project and discuss it in StarCity's forums; with enough people working on it, we could generate a real winner here. So any input, ideas, or constructive criticism is much wanted and appreciated.

I think I'm right in saying Oversold Cemetery is one of the strongest cards in Onslaught.

-f3n
Contact: Styfen@Yahoo.com

P.S. - And yes, I have been testing this deck. I never give out a listing without having tried it out myself, and I'm going to continue to tune this deck over the month.