Foundations Mono-Black Midrange

A Standard Mono-Black midrange deck that uses discard, removal, recursive creatures, and card advantage to grind out wins without spending rare or mythic wildcards.

Midnight Reaper draws a card every time a creature you control dies, so blocking with Reassembling Skeleton or losing Vampire Nighthawk to removal still replaces the lost creature with more cards. Reassembling Skeleton keeps coming back to block again, turning it into reliable defense. Phyrexian Arena provides steady card advantage, while Vampire Nighthawk lifelink offsets the life cost. Cut Down and Nowhere to Run clear early threats, and Murder, Hero's Downfall, Terror Tide, and Massacre Wurm handle larger boards.

Keep hands with two or three lands and early interaction such as Duress, Cut Down, or Murder. Mulligan hands with too many expensive spells or no way to affect the board before turn three.

Early: use Duress to strip key spells and cheap removal to survive aggressive starts. Mid: deploy Reassembling Skeleton, Midnight Reaper, and Vampire Nighthawk to build a board and generate value. Late: close with Massacre Wurm, Rottenmouth Viper, Enduring Tenacity, or Terror Tide, using Phyrexian Arena and Midnight Reaper to outlast the opponent.

The deck is midrange and not extremely fast, so it can struggle against explosive aggro starts when you miss early removal. It relies heavily on creatures dying, so exile-based removal and graveyard hate can hurt the grindy game plan. It also has limited ways to deal with enchantments and artifacts.