Introduction:

Bearing a strong resemblence to the Pioneer version, this build drops some of the less impactful stuff like Davriel and the sometimes-1-of Tegrid for Bankbusters and more Lilianas.

Main Deck:

Gameplan is to attrition your way to both players being hellbent then using some combination of Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Reckoner Bankbuster, Waste Not or Liliana, Waker of the Dead to shove the opposition into a trashcan. 

Special shoutout to Geier Reach Sanitarium which feels downright unfair after we've riped our opponent's hand apart with Seizes and the multiple Liliana variants and/or spot removed all the little dorks they managed to empty their hand casting.

The 2x Liliana's Triumph might seem cute, but if you've ever caused a discard-in-your-draw-step in a format younger than Modern, you'll be addicted too. They're decent 1-for-1's as a floor so there's only so bad they can be. Trade for Hopeless Nightmare or your spot removal of choice if it bothers you.

Sideboard:

Locked in: 2x Invoke Despair, 2x Go Blank, 2x Ritual of Soot, 1x Pithing Needle, 1x Unlicensed Hearse

• Ritual kills just about everything swarm-style (ie. Goblins) and Collected Company decks play.
• Invoke versus grindy mirrors, control, enchantments or anywhere card advantage matters.
• Pithing vs artifacts, planeswalkers or Maze's End.
• Go Blank vs non-creature decks or dredge.
• Hearse for dredge or any graveyard shenanigans.

The other slots are flexible; pick stuff that helps answer what you don't want to lose to.

Cards To Stay Away From:

Extinction Event Not the sweeper you need it to be in Historic since the decks that get under you cast 1- AND 2-cost dorks. Thankfully there's no Delve and not much Affinity forcing you to need to kill above 3 CMC often. Your spot removal works perfectly well against the decks where they bother to have 4+ CMC. The best arguement for it is MonoGreen (bc all their nonsense happens to be Odd), but we're such a dog in that matchup anyway it's tough for me to see where the win percentage increase comes from as opposed to other cards that could be put into the 75.

Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage Not a fan of this guy. Doesn't effect the board, never does as much damage as you'd want, the one guaranteed discard isn't enough for 3 mana. Black has been spoiled for choice in the 3 slot for a while now so go pick any of those over this dude.

Duress Odd as it may seem. A dead card more often than I like. Strangely not very good in the sideboard either since you've got so much other hand-disruption going they'll have no hand before either of you know it. Probably essential to have in Pioneer, but in Historic I've opted towards more spot removal in place of this one.

The Matchups:

TL;DR, if they're fair and play like Richard Garfield intended then we have a decent shot.

If they're filthy degenerates taking advantage of WotC's numerous gameplay design mistakes, less decent shot.

Ahhh~ Truly nothing says Magic: The Gathering like mandatory stack-interaction gameplay (ie. Emergent Ultimatum, Goblin Charbelcher, Muxus, Goblin Grandee), removal-check gameplay (ie. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse) or 1-card-casts that completely overturn the game-state you've worked towards for X>3 turns (ie. Farewell, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon).

Aggro:

Those rare few decks that bother trying to kill you by using the most interesting phase of the entire rules engine: The Attack Step.

• Wizards: >55% match. They're threat light and don't have a lot of reach... It's such a good pairing that, so long has you have one more removal spell than they have creatures, you can pretty much do anything you want with sideboarding and it'll be correct.
• Burn: 50-55% matchup. We drain their hand quickly and have a bit of lifegain, but unless you have Shelly out on a clear board before you hit low single digit life, they'll probably win the topdeck war eventually so hustle to get her out there.
  • {OUT} -4x Seizes. Maybe a Big Lily.
  • {IN} Sweepers. Anything to do with us gaining life.
• Dredge: 45-50% matchup. Their nut draws are brutal and we're not a very fast deck so they often have time to rebuild, but we do have tools to fight back.
  • {OUT} Sign in Blood. Bankbuster. -3x sacrifice removal. Maybe -1x Big Lily.
  • {IN} Sweepers. Go Blanks. Anything that interacts with the graveyard.
• Fish: >55% matchup. Merfolk is a synergistic deck. We love synergistic decks since they allow for interaction to pick them apart. The counter magic is annoying, as can drawing Seizes post-board after Turn4, but overall it's cruise control.
  • {OUT} -2x Go Blank, -2x Cling.
  • {IN} Sweepers. Extra finisher(s).
• Mill: <45% matchup. Unless they're the Rogues variant, it's a rough matchup. They're a better engineered form of Burn deck against us. None of our interaction is especially good and we don't have a particularly fast clock so boils down to getting lucky. Basically keep any instant speed removal and try to keep the creature-based sources of mill off the board as best as possible, that's all we can really do.
  • {OUT} -1x Bankbuster. -1x Sign in Blood.
  • {IN} +2x Go Blanks. Hearse?

Aggro-Combo:

Those decks that "Beat down" but hinge around some sort of finisher that only counter-magic can truly nullify.

• Mono-Green Nykthos: <45% matchup. Karn, the Great Creator and Storm the Festival are what put the game out of reach for us. Gameplan is to disrupt them and hope to stick a threat quick enough to kill them. Unless they stumble for any reason though, it's rough.
  • {OUT} -2x Cling, -2x Liliana, trim up to -4x Waste Not depending on how heavy you've come prepared.
  • {IN} +3|4x slots going to Needle, Cage effects, Necromentia, or Go Blank. Fill the rest in with threats that'll end the game.
  • SIDEBAR: In Pioneer, BG Midrange has a much better time dealing with MonoGreen bc it has access to Abrupt Decay and Glissa Sunslayer. As such, if I was going to take this Waste Not deck that cannot play those cards into a competitive environment, I would take my lessons from there and shift my sideboard more towards (definitely) Extinction Event and Noxious Grasp; (maybe) The End, Misery's Shadow or +1x Invoke Despair.
• Goblins: 45-50% matchup. Muxus, Goblin Grandee. Did they reach 6 mana and have the skill to draw this WotC mistake? Then congrats, you just lost to a spell based finisher. Other than that, the matchup's fine. See creature, kill creature; cast Sheoldred, win game.
  • {OUT} -2x Go Blank, -2x Cling.
  • {IN} Sweepers. Cage effects.
• White/GW Lifegain: 50-50 to >55% matchup depending on the build. Collected Company is the only card that keeps the door open for them. Otherwise the plan is kill everything and win late.
  • {OUT} -2x Go Blank, -2x Cling.
  • {IN} Sweepers, Grasp or anything else that kills dorks.

Midrange:

• Rakdos: >55% matchup. It feels so great to play against a Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki/Crucias, Titan of the Waves deck with Waste Not. We do to them what they do to other decks, so just play the long game and attrition them out. They use the red for consistency focused cards rather than attrition focused. Problem for them is that it's card-filtering they do, not card-advantage or selection, so once they're hellbent they have trouble getting out. Just don't underestimate the power of individually strong cards grouped together, if allowed to build up a critical mass we'll be the ones getting buried.
  • {OUT} -4x Seizes. -2x Go Blank. (It's all about board control so take out anything that isn't card advantage or removal)
  • {IN} Sweepers. Invoke. Threats.
• Jund: 45-50% matchup. Generally they're Rakdos + Green for more 2-for-1s, and it's those that are the core problem for us. Depends on the build obviously, but they tend to be the only deck in the format grinds as hard as we do, while packing the low-to-the-ground threats that'll happily drive through any hole they just punched open. We have a cleaner mana base though so we can get way more utility out of lands, but that's small consolation. Keep an eye out for the man-lands as those can dig them out of places you'd least expect.
  • {OUT/IN} Same struggle for the board as Rakdos. Jund is just better at card advantage than Rakdos.
• Gates: 45-50% matchup. Yes, it's arguably Combo or Ramp or Cheeseburger, I'm putting it here bc I think it sits between all those... aka is in the middle of the range. Maze's End is the alpha and omega for us. Contemporary iterations have thankfully cut Arboreal Grazer so our sacrifice removal is still solid, but that land-based alternate win condition they can pretty easily fish out of their deck will always be looming. We're the beatdown so only keep hands with a finisher or two and pedal to the metal.
  • {OUT} -4x Push. -2x Cling.
  • {IN} Needle. Go Blanks. Grasp. Invoke. Threats.

Control:

• UW Control: 50-55% matchup. Annoying as sh*t to play against since it takes these mouthbreathers minutes to figure out whether they want to counter something or not but unless they've managed to stick a Teferi, Hero of Dominaria the gameplan of discard and having multiple threat axes will carry the day. Magic isn't as hard as they make it seem, just keep jamming any castable spell and eventually something will get through. Think of every spell we cast as having "2-3 mana: Opponent may discard an instant to counter this spell" so sequence accordingly. Just be sure not to overextend. They mustn't be allowed to get anything more than a 1-for-1 off their sweepers. Oh, and Farewell is a stupid mistake of a card that'll reset Shelly, the enchantments and any Clings we might have going so it might take a man-land and/or Big Lily to properly close things out, protect those/don't discard them yourself. Concede if you can't get The Villain offline in 1-2 turns and save yourself the 20 minutes it would otherwise take your troglodyte of an opponent to accomplish anything.
  • {OUT} -4x Push. -2x PWK.
  • {IN} Go Blank, Grasp, Invoke, maybe 1x Needle for Tef.

Combo:

• Kethis Combo: 50-50% matchup. The more sacrifice based removal really bites us here compared to targeted spot removal. If either the field or the graveyard can be kept under control it's not too bad, but they come out of the gates fast so aggressively mulligan for the early turns.
  • {OUT} -2x Lily's Triump. -1x Bankbuster. -1x Big Lily. Maybe -1|2x Waste Not.
  • {IN} Go Blank, Hearse, Grasp, Needle, Cage effects, low # of sweepers.
• Artifacts/MUD: 45-50% matchup. Arguable about it being "combo" but they sometimes play Paradox Engine + The One Ring. And Ugin, the Spirit Dragon aka Eugene is a one-card combo IMO, so yeah. Another rough one because our interaction lines up poorly. We're the beatdown again which is always awkward, but needs must so aggressive mulliganing and speed is the name of the game.
  • {OUT} -4x Pushs. -1x Sign in Blood.
  • {IN} Go Blank, Needles, maybe +1x Cage effect.