Dark Monolith Moment

Edit: Maybe this deck is harder to pilot than I thought since some others seem to have difficulty with it while I'm still going on winning streaks. So with that, I thought I'd add some tips.

1. First, this is a control deck mainly, meaning that the early game is about minimizing losses while establishing a strong power base. You want early hands with quarrys and culls. Sandstorm Titan, while a good card, is primarily used AS A CONTROL CARD, not as a beat stick. This deck doesn't have many units (12 no including Moment or market cards) and your first units are usually killed immediately what with all the kill spells around. Your main focus early is to play as many spells as possible - seek powers, search spells, and (well timed) kill spells. Often I will use a search spell to continue to get power until I'm up to 6 or 7, depending on the game. Because of this, you aren't wasting the early game because later you have moment of creating, which isn't always an easy answer late into the game. Also, the lives of your merchants rarely matter - it's okay to kill them with stray into shadow if you end up ahead.

2. Because this is a control deck, the better you know your opponents' decks, the better you are going to fare because you have a large and varied toolkit and lots of search options. Against most other control match-ups, the combo of monolith and moment, which currently no one sees coming because this is an off meta deck, should deal at least 12 damage to their face, if not more by the time you play it. Sometimes you will want to put off playing moment because you have more spells you can play first.

3. Sea of Teeth is a good card when you play a deck that you know plays a lot of relics, especially high cost ones out of the range of banish, or if they don't play many sweepers (creating 5 blockers is great) Our deck only plays one relic - Etched Monolith. Know your opponents' deck first and if you anticipate them having an important relic before you can kill them, get Sea of Teeth before you grab Etched Monolith as otherwise it can be embarrassing.

4. Be patient. You don't have to kill every unit they put down immediately. If you have stray into shadow in your opening hand, you can probably take some damage before sweeping the board later on. In Cold Blood, against and justice based deck, should be reserved, if at all possible, for merchants and high power/annoying revenge units. Stray into shadow can also disrupt void strategies.

5. Lumen Reclaimer is often better than adjudicator's gavel because there is no answer to it. If an FJS deck or a Vara-void deck is low on cards and just poised to start bringing things back, this card will wreck their day. I've gotten a number of instant concedes when I've played this at the right time.

6. Vara's choice is best used either as an anti-aggro spell - removing cards from their hand early so they run out of gas, or to remove a blocker to set up a win. Most other times, this is not your go to market card.

I hope this advice helps anyone wanting to try this deck. This is a pet deck of mine, meaning that, as of right now, I don't believe it's Tier 1, probably not Tier 2 (though it has it's days), but I'm hoping FTS will get some love especially in the next set.

So far this has been helping me climb back into Masters, so hopefully that trend continues. Either way, a very fun deck to play.

I'd love to see others come up with Monolith Moment decks, as I think it's an idea with a lot of potential.