Mono-Black Cabal Coffers: Win on Milk, Easy and Relaxed

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Before We Start

This should be the first deck tech I’ve written for a deck I’ve never built myself. As usual, let me briefly explain why I’m writing this.

If you’ve been following the tournament scene, you probably know Modern has recently been blown apart by Orcish Bowmasters, so my Murktide got turned into a total idiot: at least 10 proactive draw effects in the main deck, plus eight creatures that get pinged to death by Bowmasters if cast naked, and casting Murktide can even get you pinged to death by a scammed-in Fury. It was too hard for me.
Later I also tested Death’s Shadow, but it didn’t feel like I imagined; maybe I’m just not yet able to handle that kind of deck.

Anyway, here is my Modern journey over the past half year:

A month before LTR released, I built Murktide, feeling that no single card or deck that could kill Murktide would appear in the short term.
LTR printed Bowmasters, which pinged Murktide into an idiot.
Before PT Barcelona, Bowmasters and Rings were everywhere.
If you can’t beat them, join them: I also built a Rakdos Scam deck.
I hadn’t practiced Scam enough and still got pinged all over my head.
At 11 PM the night before the 紙牌屋 MITQ, I made a last-minute decision to play Mono-Black Cabal Coffers the next day.

And that’s how it turned out. In the end I was lucky enough to finish as runner-up at the 紙牌屋 MITQ with Mono-Black Coffers and got the qualification.

For a detailed tournament report, see the post on my personal fan page.

Deck List

Deck link

First, the deck’s core: Cabal Coffers.
It produces mana from the many Swamps, but on its own it doesn’t feel that strong: the card can’t produce mana by itself, and it has no land type.
So here another card to pair with it comes in:

This card makes every land on the battlefield a Swamp, in other words every land can tap for black, and every land is seen by Coffers, making Coffers produce a bit more black.
This becomes our mana-burst engine, and we crush the opponent with a huge amount of mana. You can basically think of it as a slower version of Creativity.

Creatures

For creatures, naturally there are four Orcish Bowmasters, the best black creature, no explanation needed.
Also two Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, which pair with The One Ring to gain life.
Finally I chose three Swampcycling Troll of Khazad-dûm to serve as extra lands, and in the mid to late game, when mana is sufficient, they can be slammed down as creatures.

Karn, the Great Creator and His Toolbox

Since we’ve called it a slower Creativity, bringing a little Karn to fetch a toolbox from the sideboard should be fine, right?
And since we mentioned the toolbox, let me write about it here too.

Karn’s Toolbox

The toolbox contents and their functions are:
Engineered Explosives: sweeps tokens, especially for playing against Rhinos.
Tormod’s Crypt: graveyard hate, bj4.
Walking Ballista: an extra win condition. When you have so much mana you don’t know what to do with it, picking up Ballista and throwing it at the opponent’s face is never wrong.
The Stone Brain: an important cut in some matchups. For example against control, cutting Counterspell first takes a lot of pressure off.
Liquimetal Coating: Karn + Liquimetal Coating blows up lands. Fun game!
Ensnaring Bridge: you folks with the oversized stuff (like Murktide) don’t come over herrrrre.
The One Ring: the overpowered Ring. Putting one in the sideboard for Karn to find is surely no problem, right?
Wurmcoil Engine: a card for holding the board, though after playing a whole day of matches last time I don’t think I ever fetched it.
Cityscape Leveler: a board wipe on cast and on attack. Although it gives the opponent a Powerstone token, with Karn around it should be fine, right?
Sundering Titan: for playing against four-color/five-color players. I hear you have lots of basic land types?

Spells

The spells are all pretty much the same, almost all removal, apart from four Thoughtseize, two Beseech the Mirror, and one Damnation for the Mirror to find.

Artifacts

Here I chose two Talismans as a small bit of acceleration, while also providing artifacts so that Beseech the Mirror can bargain, search the library, and cast the card directly. Choosing different colors is for the sideboard’s explosives, which may need a third color of mana to blow up three-mana things.
Only three The One Ring is so that one can sit in the sideboard.

Lands

For lands, we put in a total of seven land-destruction lands (three Demolition Field + four Field of Ruin) to disrupt the opponent’s mana fixing. Modern decks rarely run more than three basic lands, not to mention that some opponents fetch a basic first to take less pain early, while some very greedy players play almost no basics at all. That’s when Field of Ruin is our good friend: blow up whatever, feel great, I’m not missing a land and you are.

Sideboard

Besides the Karn’s Toolbox mentioned earlier, there are five free slots. Some people choose four graveyard hate cards (four Leyline of the Void or four Dauthi Voidwalker) plus one Chalice of the Void, but the original owner of the deck I borrowed found Chalice a burden: kept in the sideboard, by the time you can fetch it the opponent has usually already finished their cascade, and brought in from the main it feels hard to draw, and there isn’t spare room for two or three copies.
As for Dauthi, he felt it wasn’t very useful and was just being greedy about extra value while exiling cards from graveyards; and Leyline of the Void was passed over because he doesn’t like gambling (he considers any Leyline a gamble).
The reason it later became the combination of Surgical Extraction and Warping Wail is that I figured we can counter the cascade spell and then clean up with Surgical Extraction by hand, and in most matchups Surgical Extraction is more useful, so it ended up as it is now. And since the main deck has seven land-destruction lands + two Talismans, you basically don’t need to worry about being unable to produce that bit of colorless mana.

Match Up

Apart from losing two cards in one turn against Scam, there are almost no difficult matchups. Thanks to the large amount of mana, plenty of resources if you play correctly, and the land destruction, we are favored against most decks in the environment, but this is also the deck’s biggest weakness: without drawing key cards, there’s almost no ability to come back.

I won’t go into opening hands: as long as you have lands and plays you can basically keep, just don’t keep hands like two The One Ring, one Sheoldred, and four lands.
Sideboarding is also mindless: in matchups where you need to cut key cards (control, mirrors, cascade) bring in Surgical Extraction, in matchups with cascade bring in the counters, and if Fatal Push is too useless you can take it out for Wurmcoil Engine.
If you run the version with LotV or Dauthi, bring them in when you need graveyard hate, and that’s that.

As for why I say this matchup is “winning on milk”? Note that the milk I mean is life gain: rely on Sheoldred and gain life with all your might!

Alright, though I say that, this deck actually has quite a few small details worth mentioning, for example:

When Sheoldred is on the battlefield, we can use The Stone Brain to cut a card in their hand, which forces the opponent to draw an extra card and lose two more life.
Karn’s [-2] can pick up artifacts from exile (remember Karn can fetch from exile). When you want to reuse some artifacts in the graveyard, you can fetch the sideboard Tormod’s Crypt to exile your own graveyard.
When Ballista is hit by Leyline Binding, keep one counter on it instead of removing them all, so it goes to exile and Karn can fetch it back.
Surgical Extraction can be cast during the opponent’s draw step, letting you see one extra card in hand.
Liquimetal Coating can, when you have Karn on the battlefield, turn a land (or planeswalker) into an artifact during the opponent’s upkeep, so their abilities can’t be activated in their main phase.
Warping Wail can be used to make a token, which can be sacrificed for one mana or used to let Beseech the Mirror bargain.
Using Karn’s [+1] to turn the Ring into a creature gives you a blocker, or a creature to attack with.

Anyway, this is a deck with lots of small details; playing and watching more (~~and getting abused more~~) helps a lot.

Also, thanks to its quite high margin for error (like miscounting attacks and blocks, and using March of Wretched Sorrow to gain a few extra life), its quite high resource volume (Ring draws Ring draws Ring, so juicy and satisfying), and the Mirror/Karn toolbox (even if you kept the wrong thing you have a chance to fix it), you still have a chance to win even after misplaying, and the punishment isn’t as severe as in other Modern decks. That makes it the MITQ deck I recommend most.

This deck can also splash blue: adding another Minamo, School at Water’s Edge lets you untap the Ring repeatedly, losing life once to draw twice, super profitable.
You can also add some counters such as Spell Pierce, but splashing blue means you can’t bring that many land-destruction lands, because your own color fixing could get wrecked, and you can only bring fetch lands and shock lands that are sure to have a way to fix colors.

Conclusion

Mono-Black Cabal Coffers is a deck you’ll really want to build after playing it once. Since borrowing it from a friend and playing it into a qualifier, I’m now seriously considering moving the extra pieces on the scam side out and swapping in four Rings and the Karn toolbox.
Before LTR the version would also run Invoke Despair, but since adding three Swampcycling, four Bowmasters, and three Rings, there’s really no room left for such things…
Anyway, I’ve also now gotten four SLD Showdown Death’s Shadow, so for upcoming MITQs I’ll probably only go if I wake up with free time + have mushroom needs + am not hit by an attack of laziness, w
I’m still looking for what to play at the MIT #4 Modern Open. I’m still considering borrowing this one, though the deck’s owner may need to move some pieces over to Pioneer.

Finally, I hope everyone can win qualifications at the upcoming MITQs!