Scramble City

The nice thing about monochrome decks is that I don't have to run them through analysis to find out where the mana ratios might be off. It's all black, all the time for Trypticon, so I just went straight to the first round of cuts and additions:

Subtract
1 Bojuka Bog

4 Dark Ritual

1 Mindslaver

2 Promise of Power

Add

2 Beseech the Queen

3 Read the Bones

1 Swamp

2 Languish

I began to goldfish with this.

The upside: I draw a lot of cards. The downside: I would still have dead cards.

I didn't want to cut Sorin Markov because planeswalkers are powerful effects and create problems for opponents. They almost always evoke the Hexdrinker rule. But at six mana, Sorin just didn't have enough support for the effect. Setting an opponent's life to 10 doesn't mean much when your goal is to attack with a 20/20.

I also cut the Skull Fractures and two Mire's Toll for four Duress. Duress is the stronger spell, especially on turn one, and is going to be far more useful than a flashbacked Skull Fracture. Mire's Toll can show up anytime after turn 2 and be pretty useful so cutting down to two is alright. 

In addition, I found I was drawing too many Aether Snaps. At five mana, it's a necessary evil since it can duplicate the effect of Vampire Hexmage. But I don't want to see it in my opening hand, so I'll need to cut that, too.

This part is frustrating, creatively. I need to add three cards and the first place I look is at Planeswalkers. There's no reason not to: as I said, they almost always evoke the Hexdrinker rule (my opponents hate it, so I should definitely run it).

Why even look into instants, enchantments or creatures that might support the deck?

I settled on Davriel, Rouge Shadowmage and it just feels lazy. Yes, it plays into the discard control element. Yes, it comes down well on the curve. Yes, it chips away at an opponent's life total.

But is having a card that should just automatically go in engaging to me as a deckbuilder? No, not much. There's nothing really innovative happening, no choices to really make, and that's a bummer to me.