Normally I like to keep my personal MTG experiences as merely examples here.  Because I'm fairly certain nobody really cares how my own games went, unless they involved spanking new cards.  However, this past Friday I grew a wild hair and decided to try something new to me.  Something I hope for your sake is worth reading about.  I decided to try and navigate one mono-colored deck through a MTG Online Standard format tournament.  A look over any Top 8 deck list will tell you this is not as easy as it might sound.  Of course, life isn't worth living without a few challenges.  Here I present a run-down of my preparation and results.

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Choosing a color was easy.  The obvious choice was red, but I didn't like the idea of playing a watered-down version of Red Deck Wins, sans Keldon Marauders and Seething Songs.  Besides, it often comes down to luck of the draw with red and that's not my cup-o-tea.  The second mono-precedent was blue, but I lack the Cryptic Commands to make a viable blue deck.  Mono-green is laughable (even Elves now that Volcanic Fallout is in every side-board) and mono-white has too many foils.  My choice was Black, it had to be Black.  Oh, and if it seems like my reasoning for excluding the other colors was a rationalization for using my favorite, well I'm pleading the fifth.

Black offers a chance to play with some of my favorite underrated cards in standard right now.  Cards like Canker Abomination, Infest, and Sygg River Cutthroat went right in.  I decided on heavy creature removal with lots of big fatties as a finish move.  Within that build two slots were reserved for Liliana Vess because you can't do mono-black without her.

[caption id="attachment_1979" align="alignleft" width="172" caption=". . . with my favorite planeswalker"][/caption]

Match 1 vs. White/Blue Control -  This was a bad match-up for me.  The basic premise was to lock me down with Glen Elendra Archmage, and revive her with Reveillarks.  Spot removal doesn't work to well against counter-magic or Reveillarks.  I managed one victory with a swarm of Shriekmaws, but the match wasn't too close.  Not a great way to start a tournament.

Match 2 vs. Mono-Red Burn - After winning the roll and choosing to play first, the initial game went easily for me.  After I destroyed a couple last chance Ghitu Encampments my opponent scooped.  The next game was a different story.  Reactionary magic can be useless if red gets ahead of you quick enough.  Three straight Boggart Ram-Gangs opening the game was too much for me to recover from.  The final game against my mono-colored compatriot was very, very close.  I'm still kicking myself for two poor plays that cost me the match.  Now I'm 0-2 and thinking this whole thing was a bad idea.

Match 3 vs Blightning Discard - To play an effective discard deck you need something to follow up with someting if your opponent lands something big.  Didn't happen here, in either game.  A virtual walk in the park for my big black creatures.  I'm off the schnide! Just when I thought I was out. . . they pull me back in!

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Match 4 vs Bant Aggro - A perfect match-up for me.  Lots of small and medium sized creatures being picked off by my spot removal.  Nekrataals and Shriekmaws allowed me to keep card advantage and my opponent ran out of ammo in both games.  Side-boarding anti-creature spells only slowed the second game down for the opposition, and I walked away with an easy 2-0 match win.

Match 5 vs Cruel Control - The premise of my next opponent's deck was to control the game until he was able to Cruel Ultimatum me once, twice, or even thrice.  A strategy that worked perfectly in game one.  I can't take too much credit for what happened in the next two games, but I will say Demigod of Revenge is amazing.  Simply amazing.  After a stumbling start,  I had won three matches in a row.

Match 6 vs Merfolk - A glance at the standings told me I still had a chance to make the Top 8.  However I needed to win, and catch a few breaks.  The tribal aggro deck I faced here was pretty vanilla.  My foe had splashed some white for Path to Exile, and used some light control.  Neither was enough to stop my creatures, or multiple Infests used to sweep their board.  Admittedly I had been lucky in my opponent draws the past few matches.  Sparse counter-magic and heavy creature reliance meant easy pickings for my deck.

Unfortunately I did not make the Top 8 playoffs.  I lost the tie-breaker for sixth place because my opponent's win percentage was too low.  Bummer, but it was still worth my time.  In fact, if I can resolve some of the issues I had (dealing with counterspells, and cards returning from the graveyard) there may be a second tournament in mono-black's future.  You never know.