Seriously, who doesn’t love casting a Dark Ritual into Hypnotic Specter on turn one? While some of you may not have had this glorious experience, many OG players will be able to attest to just how amazing it is. With Premodern, you can now do this and more!
The Game plan
Sometimes you might want a turn one Phyrexian Arena to start drawing additional cards each turn. Maybe instead of having more cards, you want your opponent to have fewer cards, so you start out with a Bottomless Pit. It might just be safer to put out an Ensnaring Bridge on turn one and prevent your opponent from ever attacking you with their Akroma, Angel of Wrath or Phantom Nishoba. The possibilities are endless!
This deck’s plan is to prevent your opponent from carrying out their strategy while accruing card advantage so that you will eventually be able to kill them in the long game. This means the deck’s early plays are just as important as its late plays. You need to craft the game to your whims and ensure that your opponent is playing your game instead of theirs.
The early game
Pit Rack’s early plays are pretty self-explanatory: remove the good cards from your opponent’s hand or turbo out a powerful three-drop that will give you card advantage. With no Thoughtseize in Premodern, Pit Rack runs Duress backed up by Cabal Therapy for early hand interaction. Funeral Charm is also run in this deck, but giving your opponent the choice of what card to discard makes this very underpowered.
If your opponent’s deck is aggressive, Pit Rack protects itself with Innocent Blood, a powerful one-drop removal spell that answers Jackal Pups and Phyrexian Dreadnoughts alike. As mentioned earlier, you can always play out an Ensnaring Bridge, which can usually prevent you from dying as long as you have dumped your hand onto the board.
how do we win?
So how does the deck win? The name of the deck is derived from two cards. One of them is Bottomless Pit, which, as mentioned earlier, can deplete your opponent’s hand very quickly. The other is The Rack, an infamously dangerous card from Antiquities that has seen play in Modern, Legacy, and now Premodern as well.
The Rack is the quickest way to kill your opponent with this deck. After attacking your opponent’s hand in the first couple of turns, it is very likely that they will not have many cards left. This is where The Rack is at its best, dealing up to three damage a turn to your opponent. Having a Bottomless Pit and The Rack in play at the same time is almost always a death sentence for your opponent, hence the name of the deck.
This isn’t the only way that you can win with the deck. Pit Rack runs another infamous card from Tempest, Cursed Scroll. Pit Rack’s primary game plan is to play as many cards as fast as possible, turning on Ensnaring Bridge and removing as many of your opponent’s cards as possible.
This usually leaves you with only one card left in hand, which is where Cursed Scroll becomes powerful. You have to name a card, and then if your opponent chooses that card from your hand, you get to shock something. But if you only have one card in hand, your chances are shockingly 100%. In the late game, Cursed Scroll becomes a removal spell for pesky creatures as well as a win-con, which is just what this deck needs.
What happens if your opponent is able to remove The Rack as well as your Cursed Scroll? Well, I guess you can always swing with your Hypnotic Specters or Mishra’s Factories for lethal!
should I play this deck?
There are two types of players who I would recommend picking up this deck and playing with it. The first is newer players. This deck is usually only about $100-$150 to build, and the most expensive card in the deck is only $28 (Wasteland). Most of this deck consists of commons and uncommons that you probably have lying around in your bulk bins.
The second type of player is players who enjoy winning due to pure card advantage and controlling their opponent’s actions, better known as control players. I know this is surprising, as these days, control decks are notoriously known for being blue-white, but the best way to summarize this deck is that it’s a mono-black control deck. If you love long games where you are drawing multiple cards a turn and stopping your opponent from having any fun, this is the deck for you!
Check out this decklist that made the top eight of a Premodern event! The decklist can be found here.
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