by Johnny Cycles, March 21st, 2025
Since the beginning, Mono Black has had access to spells that target an opponent’s life total directly. Drain Life first appeared in Alpha, after all. Of course, these spells are not really burn spells, the way Mono Red casts Lightning Bolt and the like, but they do a decent impression. So what happens if we build a deck around ways to lower our opponent’s life total without having to resort to combat? How about this?
Before I get to the decklist, let me briefly narrate this particular picture. My opponent is playing Liesa, Shroud of Dusk in an Orzhov Lifegain and Drain deck with a similar game plan as our own. He reached more than 100 life before I stabilized and turned the corner. At this point, I’ve whittled that total down to 42.
Our current combo pieces that allowed me to close out the game by casting Corrupt for 7 are the following:
Since Corrupt deals damage and gains us life, we get quite a few triggers. The first is 7 damage that is doubled thanks to Bloodletter of Aclazotz. Then, since we gain 7 life, our opponent will lose another 7 thanks to Enduring Tenacity. This is, of course, doubled thanks to Bloodletter. Repeat for Sanguine Bond. That’s 14 x 3, which = 42 and exactsies.
Here’s the deck:
Decklist – Mono Black Burn with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
| Sheoldred, the Apocalypse |
Creatures (17)
| Gray Merchant of Asphodel | |
| Ob Nixilis, the Fallen | |
| Titan Hunter | |
| Massacre Wurm | |
| Rottenmouth Viper | |
| Archon of Cruelty |
Artifacts (9)
| Basilisk Collar | |
| Expedition Map | |
| Shadowspear | |
| Arcane Signet | |
| Charcoal Diamond | |
| Jet Medallion | |
| Mind Stone | |
| Bontu’s Monument | |
| Relic of Legends |
Enchantments (11)
| Bloodchief Ascension | |
| Contaminated Ground | |
| The Meathook Massacre | |
| Midnight Snack | |
| Phyrexian Arena | |
| Tainted Remedy | |
| Underworld Dreams | |
| Exquisite Blood | |
| Polluted Bonds | |
| Sanguine Bond | |
| Palace Siege |
Instants (5)
| Consuming Corruption | |
| Go for the Throat | |
| Crypt Incursion | |
| Hagra Mauling (mfdc) | |
| Needlebite Trap |
Sorcery (19)
| Collective Brutality | |
| Damnable Pact | |
| Drain Life | |
| Exsanguinate | |
| Feed the Swarm | |
| Profane Command | |
| Sign in Blood | |
| Rush of Dread | |
| Sword-Point Diplomacy |
| Toxic Deluge | |
| Damnation | |
| Rankle’s Prank | |
| Blasphemous Edict | |
| Season of Loss | |
| Blood Tribute | |
| Corrupt | |
| Deadly Tempest | |
| Zof Consumption (mfdc) | |
| Peer into the Abyss |
Lands (40) with 2 mfdcs
| Takenuma, Abandoned Mire | |
| The Black Gate | |
| Thespian’s Stage | |
| Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth | |
| Urza’s Cave | |
| Urza’s Saga | |
| Zof Bloodbog (mfdc) | |
| Swamp (21) |
Deck Tech
Primary Game Plan
We are looking to lower our opponent’s life total to 0 in non-combat ways. In order to do this, we have a variety of angles of attack, from direct damage to draining when a creature dies to pinging whenever a land enters the battlefield to dealing damage to our opponent when they tap a land.
The centerpiece of our deck is our commander, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, who incentivizes us to pursue two separate strategies in our quest to burn our opponent out: lifegain that leads to an equivalent loss of life for our opponent; and forcing our opponent to draw a bunch of cards. That being said, I set out to make this a Mono Black Burn deck, so I’ve put just as much primacy on making room for cards that deal direct damage to our opponent. This, then, is the third chief strategy of our deck.
Before I continue with the ways we accomplish these separate lines of attack, let me say a couple of things. First, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse punishes something every player loves – drawing cards. Is she as obnoxious to play against as Smothering Tithe or Rhystic Study? You tell me, but I can see how a play group may not want to play against her in the command zone. That being said, she’s not in the top 100 commanders, according to edhrec.com or in any of the top decks, according to cedh-decklist-database.com. My point here is that while she may frustrate your play group, she does not enable truly broken strategies, making her a fair commander, in my mind.
Second, in my commander philosophy, I discuss my dislike of 2-card, I-win-the-game combos. You may have already noticed that I’ve gone against this principle in including the well-known Sanguine Bond–Exquisite Blood combo. What can I say? Rules are meant to be broken! The honest truth is that both individually synergize with our commander without the other one on the battlefield. Either half of this combo is triggered by our commander’s static abilities.
I will add also that I’m playing these cards as fairly as possible, insomuch as I’m not playing any way to tutor them up. I’m not interested in assembling this combo as fast and as efficiently as possible to win the game. But if we draw it naturally, I won’t not win with it.
Now, let’s get to my card choices!
Gain and Drain
These are the cards that drain our opponent’s life total each time we gain life. They will trigger each time we draw a card with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse on the battlefield. They will also trigger each time we resolve one of our many drain-and-gain (Drain Life) spells. What makes these cards unique and powerful is that they are static abilities attached to permanents, not one-time effects.
Enduring Tenacity – the best of these thanks to its pseudo-undying ability.
Sanguine Bond – the OG of this kind of card.
Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose – a fragile creature that comes with the additional upside of granting our team lifelink, which will double up any combat damage done to our opponent. Of note is that it’s a vampire, which synergizes with one of our big drain-and-gain cards, Blood Tribute.
Honorable Mention
Midnight Snack – a one-time effect that allows us to drain our opponent equal to the amount of life we’ve gained that turn, I see this functioning as the raised executioner’s axe. Our opponent will be forced to answer it or die. The raid trigger is gravy, really, but the Food tokens we get from this enchantment are another way we have of gaining life on our terms.
Notable Omissions
Defiant Bloodlord – offers us another such effect and, I’ll be honest, we are sort of light on this when I consider it a key component to our strategy. Should we include the 7-drop Vampire? Clearly, I think no. It’s just too much mana. Gain and drain is an important aspect of our deck, but it’s far from the only way we have of finishing off our opponent.
Starscape Cleric – there are a number of cards that ping our opponent for 1 whenever we gain life (Marauding Blight-Priest and Epicure of Blood). I’m not including them in part because I play them in my Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin deck. I won’t fault you for including them in a build like this, though. They synergize very well with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse.
Force Opponent to Draw Cards
The second part of our strategy is to lower our opponent’s life total via card draw. We don’t want this life loss to happen naturally on our opponent’s draw step. No, we want to kill our opponent by making them draw anywhere between 2 and 40 cards.
Damnable Pact – one of our best finishers, with Sheoldred on the battlefield, we get to triple the life loss per card from this spell.
Peer into the Abyss – this is our best finisher, unless the game has gone ridiculously long. Cards like this are why I play Commander. It’s an unusual effect that needs a lot of help to turn in to a positive. The art is also incredible.
Sign in Blood – what a great card for our deck! With our commander out, we can refill our hand and gain 2 life, or we can finish our opponent off with 6 damage to the face.
Burn Opponent Out
We play a variety of ways of dealing direct damage. I’ve divided them into categories. These are them!
Drain and Gain
These are the cards designed in the tradition of Drain Life. We syphon some amount of our opponent’s life total into our own. I’m also including those spells that deal damage before gaining us that much life for the sake of simplicity. These two things are not the same, of course, as draining effects get around damage prevention cards, as well as hexproof.
Archon of Cruelty – just because we are chiefly interested in winning without combat doesn’t mean we don’t play cards that facilitate our strategy via combat. This Modern all-star can single-handedly win us a game if left unchecked. It can also single-handedly trigger all of our life-gain-and-drain synergies.
Blood Tribute – first printed in Zendikar, this Commander reprint is one of our big bombs. Sure, it won’t ever kill our opponent by itself, but it can certainly get them in range of our other burn spells. We play four Vampires, not including Mutavault, that can let us pay the kicker.
Bloodchief Ascension – we don’t play ways to mill our opponent once we’ve gotten the three quest counters on this enchantment, but we don’t need to. We are happy to play this fairly and as a support piece for our many other ways to drain our opponent.
Bontu’s Monument – one of our many cards that pull double duty in our deck. We get some conditional ramp to go along with draining our opponent for 1 each time we cast a creature.
Collective Brutality – Thoughtseize is more efficient, but it’s the flexibility of this card that we’re after. Snagging an opponent’s answer while also triggering our life-gain-and-drain synergizes is as fun as it sounds!
Corrupt – six mana is no joke, particularly as there will be times when we can only get 4 or so damage out of it. Still, we want a critical mass of such effects and this one can win us games from nowhere with the right support (see picture above).
Drain Life – I still have memories of this card from seeing it as a kid in the 90s. I mostly remember thinking that the art was so, well, boring, compared to many Magic cards. The guy looks like he’s relaxing, more than anything. Sure, I see the white wisp coming from his body that suggests his life draining away, but it looks so peaceful that the art is in contradiction to what the card does. I also remember thinking, that’s too much text. I’m not reading that.
Dread Presence – what a busted Magic card. The flexibility it gives us is sweet, while its power level is absurd. Yes, we’re paying 4 mana for it and have to then make a land drop to trigger it, but on the right board, our opponent will struggle to stick creatures or lose to our snowballing card advantage. This card is one reason we’re playing fetch lands. With Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth out, we can tap them for until we find Dread Presence, or trigger it once when we put them on the battlefield and again when we fetch up a real Swamp.
Exsanguinate – a strictly better Drain Life in our deck (and possibly in general). Look at how simple and easy this spell is to read and understand compared to Drain Life.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel – another card we’re playing mostly fairly. We don’t have a bunch of graveyard recursion or ways to blink this Zombie to reliably trigger him more than once. Nor are we a dedicated devotion deck, though we play a lot of hard-to-deal-with permanents. More often than not, we’ll use Gary to finish off an opponent whose life total we’ve whittled away over several turns, rather than drain everyone for 40+.
Needlebite Trap – wow, seven mana is a lot! Still, the card fits our strategy. Would another removal spell or some more cheap card draw make our deck more consistent and competitive? Most definitely! Would we play this in any other deck, outside of a Trap Tribal brew? Nope! That, as much as its synergies, is why we’re including it.
Palace Siege – we’ll almost always choose Dragons, but Khans does give us some graveyard recursion in the right spot.
Polluted Bonds – why should our opponent get to play lands for free? Sure, this life loss will not be at our discretion, but if our opponent is skipping land drops to avoid the 4-point swing, we’re probably winning.
Starving Revenant – once we have descend 8 online, each card we draw drains our opponent 1.
Twilight Prophet – with the city’s blessing, we get to drain our opponent equal to the mana value of the top card of our library each turn. Alas, we don’t get to draw the card…just put it in our hand. I guess we can’t have it all.
Zof Consumption – look at that art! I can’t tell if those are giant mosquitoes or if that creature is just really small. Probably the former. And there’s blood coming out of its eye, while its mouth looks to be decaying. The gruesome nature of this reminds me of some of Magic‘s older cards.
Honorable Mention
These cards don’t technically drain, but they gain us life any time our opponent loses life, making them some of our most powerful combo pieces.
Bloodthirsty Conqueror – a 5/5 flying Vampire with deathtouch that also has an Exquisite Blood attached to it? Power creep if I’ve ever seen it! What a card!
Exquisite Blood – the OG of this effect.
Direct Damage/Drain
In support of our 2-pronged approach detailed above, we have a variety of ways to deal damage directly to our opponent without the benefit of gaining an equivalent amount of life. These are the cards that more closely fit the Mono Black Burn aspect of our deck. Sometimes this effect is universal, but we are almost always okay with losing life alongside our opponent, since we have so much lifegain built into the deck.
Deadly Tempest – a boardwipe that also drains our opponent. Pretty sweet synergies for us…
Profane Command – one of our finishers, this sorcery gives us a lot of flexibility. Our best play is to drain our opponent to within range of a lethal attack by unblockable creatures. The other two modes are fine, too. Note that this is one of our few ways to return Gray Merchant of Asphodel from our graveyard.
Rankle’s Prank – I made the mistake of not choosing all three modes once when I resolved this on turn 4 and life totals were about equal. Always have each player lose 4 life unless you are going to die because of it. Otherwise, casting this early can be devastating for an opponent who’s ramped and is about to deploy their bombs or who is leaning hard on one or two big, hard-to-answer creatures.
Rottenmouth Viper – this life loss is conditional, but if our opponent chooses to sacrifice nonland permanents instead of taking 4, we’re probably okay with that.
Rush of Dread – we’re mostly interested in the last mode of this card, but the other two are great, as well, if we can pay for them.
Season of Loss – at its worst, this card will be just a board wipe. At its best, we’ll use this to finish off an opponent with a low life total.
Sword-Point Diplomacy – it may be better to play a traditional card draw spell like Underworld Connections in this spot, but I want to stick to our theme of burning our opponent out. A 3-mana spell that can deal 9 damage makes this one of our most efficient burn spells.
Titan Hunter – another card we could cut in favor of a more traditional Mono Black spell, this Human Warrior is too perfect for our deck to leave out.
Unstoppable Slasher – takes out half of our opponent’s life total after combat damage is dealt. That’s some serious bang for your buck and one of the main reasons we’re playing The Black Gate.
Honorable Mention
Bloodletter of Aclazotz – this Vampire Demon doubles up our opponent’s life loss on our turn. So while it doesn’t deal damage directly like the other spells in this category, it’s one of our most powerful combo pieces that allows for our other cards to close out games extremely quickly.
Damage for Card Draw
Our commander incentivizes us to make our opponent draw a lot of cards. These are our other ways of punishing them for doing so. With any one of these and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, that’s a Lightning Bolt to the face per card. Any two plus Sheoldred, it’s Stoke the Flames.
Fate Unraveler – deals 1 damage per card drawn by our opponent.
Orcish Bowmasters – this Modern powerhouse is great in our deck, too!
Underworld Dreams – great for adding to our devotion, this enchantment pings our opponent 1 for each card they draw.
Making Land Drops
These are the ways we have of dealing damage with each land we play.
Iridescent Vinelasher – I won’t lie…I often eye this unimposing 1-drop when looking to make room for the latest hotness or more card draw. Is a 1-mana 1/2 really worth a slot in a format like Commander? I’m going with yes. The Lizard Assassin isn’t great on turn 1, but it’s pretty amazing on turn 3 or 4, when we can pay its offspring cost and start turning each of our land drops into a Shock.
Ob Nixilis, the Fallen – this 5-drop can close out games with a quickness with just a single fetchland.
Punish Opponent for Tapping Lands
Contaminated Ground – so I only have one such effect in the deck, but it’s one of my favorite budget cards. Sure, Field of Ruin is budget friendly and gets rid of problematic lands forever, but I like how this card does two things for us, which is what you want from cards in your 99. Dealing damage each time the land is tapped supports our burn plan, while we can also use it to color screw a greedy mana base or take out a powerful utility land.
Lifegain = Life Loss
Tainted Remedy – this will be a dead card in some match-ups, but when it’s relevant, it’s amazing. Still, it’s on the short list of first to be cut.
Creatures Dying
We play a handful of sweepers. Let’s get some burn out of killing all the things!
Massacre Wurm – only drains when a creature an opponent controls dies, but comes attached to a conditional sweeper and 6/5 body.
The Meathook Massacre – this one only drains when a creature we control dies, but also has some lifegain attached to it, as well as a boardwipe.
There are plenty of Blood Artist effects in the game that would give us more redundancy in this section, but I have two Aristocrat decks already. I’m not looking to make a Mono Black version of them. However, if you want to increase this kind of drain and gain for creatures dying, check out my Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin deck.
The Rest
The remainder of the deck is made up of mana rocks, a handful of utility artifacts, kill spells and sweepers, and card draw. I’ve put a primacy on cards that either gain us life or use our life as a resource to reduce the cost of an effect. Of note are the utility artifacts that grant creatures lifelink; the kill spells that gain us life; Toxic Deluge, which uses our life for a 3-mana sweeper; and Crypt Incursion, which gives us some graveyard hate and lifegain wrapped up in one.
A note on card draw
Phyrexian Arena is a Mono Black staple but really shines in our deck, given that our commander gains us life when we draw cards. In general, increasing the number of card draw spells and permanents like this one is a powerful way to strengthen the deck. Once we have something like Underworld Connections or Necrodominance on the battlefield, we’re suddenly gaining both cards and life.
Flex Spots
As usual, I’d begin by trimming one or two cards from each section, looking first at the section Burn Opponent Out. This section has the most cards (read, redundancy) of any of the main sections. Alternatively, you could decide to eschew completely forcing opponents to draw cards to make room for another package of cards.
Next, I would look at The Rest. What answers could we trim? What support cards are unnecessary? Here, I would consider cutting one sweeper and possibly Basilisk Collar.
Otherwise, Tainted Remedy and Iridescent Vinelasher are cards I could see replacing with more impactful one.
Needlebite Trap may just be too cute for its mana cost, even if we never want to pay full value for it.
Ideal Hand and Game Play
We’d love to have at least 3 lands, a mana rock, some direct damage, and one way of draining our opponent any time we gain life. We only play a few such cards and getting one online early can make a huge difference in the outcome. We don’t really want one of our ways of forcing our opponent to draw cards in our opening 7. We don’t want to give them more resources if they aren’t dying in the process and it’s unlikely we’ll be able to kill them with a turn 5 Damnable Pact.
Alternatively, we want to see any of our various ways of repeatedly draining our opponent in our opening hand.
Our task is a tall one when you think about burning an opponent out from 40 life. For this reason, having a sweeper to reset the board around turn 5 can be the difference in winning and losing.
From there, we want to chip away at our opponent by whatever means we’ve been able to establish, while assembling as many of our other combo pieces as possible. When able, we want to hold on to our burn spells like Corrupt until we have a boardstate that allows us to maximally punish our opponent (read kill).
There will be plenty of games where we get in damage via combat before we amass enough combo pieces or burn spells to go for lethal in a turn or two. But there will also be games where we take our beats while we find our pieces, begin regaining life, and turn the corner. Finally, there will be games where we can stall the board long enough and chip away at our opponent’s life total with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse until they’re in range of one big burn spell.
Your hand and draw will dictate which line to play and the fun and the challenge of this deck is choosing the right one.
Weaknesses
Being a combo deck, there will be times when we don’t find the correct pieces. We could get our gain-and-drain pieces online, but not find a way to reliably gain life. Or vice versa. Thankfully, we have a commander who supports our strategy, so as long as we’re able to untap with Sheoldred, our deck should function.
As I mentioned above, however, 40 life is a lot and most of our spells deal between 1 and 4 damage. Our big finishers almost all require a lot of mana, which means we have to survive to the late game. If we are up against an aggressive strategy and don’t find kill spells or sweepers, then we could spend our turns assembling our combo pieces but dying before stabilizing with them.
Finally, I can see Control strategies having enough answers to keep us in check. Countering a big Drain Life, for instance, or just keeping the board clean of our various enchantments and value creatures could be enough to hamstring us long enough to go over the top with their own finishers.
Conclusion
Mono Black Burn with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is a powerful and fun archetype with an extremely high ceiling. There is ample room for innovation, whether it’s pursuing more Blood Artist effects or more ways to draw cards, gain life, and punish our opponent that way. Furthermore, there are plenty of ways we could make the deck more or less competitive. Adding in tutors is an obvious way, but we could also find room for mana doublers that would allow us to cast massive Drain Life spells.
Overall, the deck has been a lot of fun to play. There is a temptation to streamline it with some of Mono Black’s best spells, but I think that would detract from our strategy and from our fun. I’m not looking to make a generically powerful Mono Black deck in Commander. Rather, I’ve tried to create a deck that primarily (and secondarily) wants to win outside of combat.
Sheoldred, the Apocalypse is a great facilitator of this strategy. So what do you think? Have I forgotten any Black burn spells? Any gain-and-drain effects? How would you build a Sheoldred deck? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading!
