8Rack is a mono-black control deck in Modern. It uses a large number of discard spells like Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek and Raven's Crime to empty out the opponent's hand and force them to throw away cards before they get the opportunity to use them. After this, the deck utilizes The Rack to deal continuous amounts of damage. The card Shrieking Affliction is used as additional copies of The Rack, giving the deck its Name. As the deck often has very few cards in hand itself, it employs Ensnaring Bridge as creature control.
Mono Black Infect[ | ]
Mono-Black Infect, sometimes also called Mono-Black Control is a variant of 8Rack. It also employs a heavy discard theme in order to disrupt the opponent. However, rather than attempting to whittle down the opponent to 0 cards and win through The Rack and Shrieking Affliction, it employs creatures with Infect. The biggest threat here is Phyrexian Crusader, who has protection from many popular removal spells such as Path to Exile and Lightning Bolt, and is also immune to spells like Doom Blade and Victim of Night thanks to it being a black Zombie. It also often plays well against many green creatures thanks to the combination of first strike and Infect.
The deck also draws a lot of power from pumping up its infect creatures with Runechanter's Pike. It also is able to use Funeral Charm in four different ways: A one-time discard spell, killing opponents creatures, pumping up an unblocked infect creature, or making an infect creature unblockable if Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is on the table.
8-Wake[ | ]
8-Wake is an XLN standard variant of 8rack, but instead of using The Rack and Shrieking Affliction, it uses discard punishers like Fell Specter or the namesake Raiders' Wake to hit them for near lethal damage.