"Hello BMoor,

This is a deck I am playing around with that I play online, but would like to start playing for fun at my local store in paper. My idea is to keep them creature free while trying to get more than one Underworld Dreams, Teferi's Puzzle Box, and Howling Mine out. What do you think I should do to it to make it perform better?

1 Beacon of Unrest
4 Cabal Coffers
4 Cabal Ritual
2 Consume Spirit
2 Corrupt
2 Dark Banishing
4 Diabolic Tutor
2 Echoing Decay
4 Howling Mine
4 Innocent Blood
1 Lethal Vapors
1 Panoptic Mirror
2 Persecute
1 Plague Wind
2 Sculpting Steel
22 Swamp
2 Teferi's Puzzle Box
4 Underworld Dreams

Thank you,

Chris, Sebastian, FL"

Underworld Dreams, what a frustrating card. Drawing a card at the beginning of your turn is like getting a little present, the anticipation, the revelation, the thrill, etc. But Underworld Dreams turns that blessing into a curse- while most decks want to draw as many cards as possible, Underworld Dreams makes that Tidings in their hand or that Archivist they just played look like dead weight. To maximize the Dreams, you need to force your opponent to draw as often as possible, something best left to Blue. But since you're running all Black, all Black is how it shall remain. All the better to kill creatures with.

So far, as far as creature kill goes, you've got Consume Spirit, Corrupt, Dark Banishing, Echoing Decay, Innocent Blood, Lethal Vapors, and Plague Wind. A total of 14 slots. This seems a bit excessive. First of all, take out Corrupt and Plague Wind. They're too expensive. Probably take out Consume Spirit too, that way you can drop Cabal Coffers. Cabal Coffers and Consume Spirit just feel like too much of a "Plan B", like the whole Underworld Dreams strategy is just there to monkey around for six turns until you get a Consume Spirit. Lethal Vapors is definitely nice in a deck like this, but the "skip your next turn" ability seems like it would benefit a player who was living in fear of the draw step. Since you've only got one, I won't add any more. Adding in two Hideous Laughter would help against armies of tokens, and increasing the count of Dark Banishing to four should be all the removal you'll need.

Now, for enhancing the Dreams itself. You need plenty of ways to make your opponent draw. The Puzzle Boxes are definitely your best bet here, with Howling Mine second best. Any additional copies of these you can get would be a great help. Another great option is Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, able to force a draw and give you one as well. And of course, with all this work conspiring to keep your opponent's hand as full as possible, Ebony Owl Netsuke would be a perfect fit.

What do you drop for all of these cards? Well, for starters, I'm not sure what Panoptic Mirror is doing in there. Mikokoro could easily take the place of a Swamp or two; with all those artifacts, you can afford to have a few lands produce colorless mana. Just no more than two copies of Mikokoro; it is Legendary, after all. Persecute can be powerful, but doesn't really support the deck's strategy. It can stay, but it can be dropped as well. It's up to you in the end.
So until next time, this is BMoor, sending you puzzling wishes and underworld dreams.