Machine Head

Black-red discard that doesn’t stop at emptying your hand — it then charges rent on the empty hand. The red splash buys Lightning Bolt, Terminate and Lavaborn Muse, which is what separates it from straight mono-black.

The first half is the disruption. Duress takes a noncreature, nonland card for {B}. Cabal Therapy names a card blind and takes every copy, then comes back later by sacrificing a creature. Ravenous Rats is a {1}{B} 1/1 that makes an opponent discard when it enters — a body and a card, and later a Cabal Therapy flashback cost.

Hypnotic Specter is a {1}{B}{B} 2/2 with flying, and it’s the card the deck is built to cast on turn one. Dark Ritual makes that happen off a single land; from turn two onward, every hit makes them discard a card at random. Nothing in the format recovers from an unanswered turn-one Hippie.

The second half punishes what’s left. The Rack costs {1}, picks an opponent as it enters, and deals damage equal to 3 minus their hand size at their upkeep. Lavaborn Muse is a {3}{R} 3/3 that deals 3 to any opponent with two or fewer cards in hand, at their upkeep. Cursed Scroll reveals a card at random from your hand and deals 2 if it matches the name you chose — with no cards left of your own, it never misses. Together they turn a stripped hand into a three-to-four turn clock without attacking at all.

Withered Wretch is a {B}{B} 2/2 that exiles a card from a graveyard for {1}, repeatedly. It’s the maindeck answer to Reanimator and Full English Breakfast and it also turns off Cabal Therapy and Call of the Herd flashbacks in fair matchups.

The bad matchups are the decks that want to be empty. Sligh and Goblins dump their hand by turn three, which makes The Rack and Lavaborn Muse dead cards, and they’re faster than a deck spending its first two turns on Duress. Enchantress is similar for a different reason — the discard doesn’t line up with a deck that draws four cards a turn. Engineered Plague and Dystopia come in against the tribal and green-white decks.

The same tcdecks label also covers a faster suicide-black build with Carnophage, Dauthi Horror and Reckless Charge, which shares the colors and almost nothing else.