When the Mystic is answered or the opponent takes the monarch, the deck falls back to trading cards one at a time. Kill the creature that connected, then take the title back with a second Thorn of the Black Rose or with a hit from a flying Baleful Strix or Bird, and flash back Plunder the Trollshaws to rebuild the hand. Campfire gains back the life spent on Snuff Out over the course of a long game and, when the library runs low, shuffles the graveyard back in so the answers and the finishers can be drawn a second time.

The monarch is the first thing that can go wrong, because it cuts both ways: any creature that deals combat damage to you takes the title for its controller, so fliers, haste attackers, and boards too wide to block turn Thorn of the Black Rose into an extra card per turn for the opponent. The second is speed. More than a third of the lands enter tapped and Counterspell needs two blue sources on the second turn, so several cheap threats in the first two turns, especially on the play, force the removal to trade from behind, and every Snuff Out paid for with life makes a race against direct damage harder to win.

Lórien Revealed

Two cards in one. Early it is a land: for one mana it cycles for any card with the Island type, which includes Contaminated Aquifer and Ice Tunnel but not Seat of the Synod or Bojuka Bog. Until you control a land with the Swamp type, cycle it for Contaminated Aquifer rather than a basic Island, because the dual supplies black mana and switches on the free mode of Snuff Out in one card. Late it is the deck's biggest refill: five mana to draw three is the spell you cast on an empty board the turn after Thorn of the Black Rose resolves.

Plunder the Trollshaws

A two-mana instant that draws a card, with a four-mana flashback from the graveyard that draws two. The first cast is a cheap way to keep land drops coming while holding up mana, and the second is the refill you reach for after a removal-heavy exchange has emptied the hand. Both halves are instants, so with Murmuring Mystic in play each one is a Bird made at the end of the opponent's turn.

Trinket Mage

A three-mana 2/2 that searches up any artifact with mana value one or less, which turns it into whichever cheap artifact the game calls for: Campfire against direct damage, Nihil Spellbomb against a graveyard, Viridian Longbow against a board of small creatures, Sewer-veillance Cam for a later draw. Seat of the Synod is an artifact card with mana value zero, so the Mage also finds a land drop when you are stuck on mana.

Viridian Longbow

One mana to cast and three to equip at sorcery speed, so it is slow, but once it is on a creature that creature taps to deal 1 damage to any target every turn. On a one-toughness board that is a removal spell each turn; on Baleful Strix or Thorn of the Black Rose the deathtouch makes that one point destroy any creature it touches. In a stalled game it also chips the opponent's life total one point at a time, which is the only direct damage the main deck has.

Tithing Blade

A two-mana artifact that makes the opponent sacrifice a creature of their choice as it enters. It gets around hexproof and black creatures, which the targeted removal cannot touch, and it is at its best when the opponent has exactly one creature; against a spare token it does nothing worth two mana. Later, with five mana spare, craft it by exiling a creature card from your graveyard and it returns as Consuming Sepulcher, draining the opponent for 1 at each of your upkeeps, a slow clock that closes a board stall without ever attacking.

Campfire

A one-mana artifact that pays one mana and taps to gain 2 life, repeatably, which is the deck's way of recovering the life it spends on free copies of Snuff Out. Against a deck pointing damage at your face it turns one spare mana each turn into 2 life to blunt their burn. Its other ability matters only in the longest games: exile it and the graveyard is shuffled back into the library, so you do not deck before the Birds finish and the spent removal comes back around.

Bonder's Ornament

A three-mana mana rock that taps for any color, which covers the light black count in the mana base, and a draw engine for four mana and a tap once there is nothing better to do with the turn. Only players who control one draw from the second ability, so in practice it is you alone. It is the mana sink that turns a flood into cards, and it should be cast on an empty turn rather than one where Counterspell needs to stay up.

Sewer-veillance Cam

A one-mana artifact with flash that taps or untaps a creature when it enters and again when it leaves. Flash it in at the beginning of the opponent's combat to tap the one attacker that would otherwise take the monarch, and later pay four mana to sacrifice it for two cards, which fires the leave trigger a second time. It is a Trinket Mage target that does a little of everything: a blocker's worth of defense now, a refill later.

Counterspell

The hard counter that the whole mana base is built around, and the reason the deck wants two blue sources untapped from the second turn on. It stops the spells the removal cannot handle, and it protects Murmuring Mystic and Thorn of the Black Rose from the removal spell that would undo the game. With the Mystic out, every Counterspell is also a Bird.

Lose Focus

A two-mana counter that works unless the opponent pays two more, which on the early turns is a hard counter and in the late game is a tax. Replicate lets you pay one extra blue per copy to counter several spells at once or to stack two taxes on one spell, which is how it stays relevant when the opponent has mana to spare. The copies are created on the stack rather than cast, so Murmuring Mystic makes one Bird for the original only.

Dispel

One mana to counter an instant. Its job is winning the fight over the spell that matters: the opposing counter aimed at Thorn of the Black Rose, the instant-speed removal aimed at Murmuring Mystic, the burn spell that would take the last points of life. Against a deck with few instants it is the first card to come out.

Snuff Out

Printed at four mana, but almost always cast for free by paying 4 life while you control a land with the Swamp type, which means Swamp, Contaminated Aquifer, or Ice Tunnel; Bojuka Bog taps for black but does not count. It destroys any nonblack creature and is the only answer the deck can cast with no mana open, so it is what protects a turn spent entirely on Thorn of the Black Rose, Murmuring Mystic, or a full Lórien Revealed. Spend Cut Down and Cast Down while you have mana to spare and save Snuff Out for the turn you tap out; firing it first because it is free leaves that turn undefended and costs life the other removal would not have.

Cast Down

Two mana to destroy any nonlegendary creature, which makes it the least restricted removal in the deck: black creatures, big creatures, and anything else the cheaper spells cannot reach. Hold it for the creature that neither Cut Down nor Snuff Out can target, and use the narrower spells on everything else.

Cut Down

One mana to destroy a creature whose power plus toughness is five or less: a 2/3 or 3/2 dies, a 3/3 does not. It is the removal spell that costs the least of your turn, so it is the one to cast alongside a land drop and Preordain, or to leave up beside Counterspell on three lands. Check the total before you point it, since a pump effect in response makes the target illegal and the spell does nothing.

Suffocating Fumes

A three-mana instant that gives every creature the opponent controls -1/-1 until end of turn and leaves your own creatures alone, so it clears a board of one-toughness creatures or tokens without touching Baleful Strix or the Birds. Cast after blockers are declared it also shrinks whatever is in combat. When the opponent has no one-toughness creatures, it cycles for two mana rather than sitting dead in hand.

Bojuka Bog

A black source that exiles the opponent's graveyard as it enters, which is one-shot graveyard hate that costs no card. Against a deck that leans on its graveyard, hold it until the graveyard is worth exiling rather than playing it as an early land drop, since a second Bog or Nihil Spellbomb is the only way to do it again. It enters tapped, it lacks the Swamp type that Snuff Out checks for, and Lórien Revealed cannot find it, so against everyone else it is simply the deck's worst land.

Nihil Spellbomb

One mana, then tap and sacrifice it to exile the opponent's graveyard, and pay one black mana as it hits your graveyard to draw a card. It is the Trinket Mage target against graveyard decks and sits on the battlefield as a threat until the moment the graveyard matters, which is usually in response to the spell or ability that would use it. Against a deck that ignores its graveyard it cracks for a card and nothing more.

Vs. Control. Against other control decks you are the beatdown, which sounds strange for a deck with only ten creatures but follows from the engine: both decks have inevitability, and the one that resolves its card engine first wins the long game, so you take the initiative and make them have the answer. Removal is mostly dead, which leaves the whole game as a fight over Thorn of the Black Rose and Murmuring Mystic. The defining play is forcing the counter fight on your terms: cast the engine piece when their counter mana is tapped or when you hold Dispel or a replicated Lose Focus to win the exchange, then keep Baleful Strix attacking so it can take the monarch back if it ever changes hands.

Vs. Combo. Against combo you are again the beatdown, because a high-inevitability deck that gives a combo deck unlimited time eventually loses to the one spell it cannot counter. Deploy Baleful Strix and Thorn of the Black Rose as pressure rather than as blockers, since nothing is attacking you, and hold Counterspell, Lose Focus, and Dispel for the spell that starts the combination, not for the setup around it. The defining play is treating Bojuka Bog and Nihil Spellbomb as counterspells against a graveyard-based combination: play Bojuka Bog on your own turn and save Nihil Spellbomb to exile the graveyard in response to the spell that would use it, which is the moment the opponent has already committed their turn.