Distress is a deck with a very fitting name, because if you meet this deck, you will surely feel a lot of distress. The deck uses cards like Underworld Dreams, Warp Artifact, Pestilence and Black Vise to slowly bleed out the opponent instead of beating down with creatures.
To be able to slowly bleed someone out the deck of course need to stop the opponent from doing his or her thing. This is usually accomplished by playing Sinkhole, Icy Manipulator, Nevinyrral's Disk, The Abyss, City in a Bottle and the above mentioned Pestilence.
The deck often also uses the card draw engine of Relic Barrier and Howling Mine as both cards also serves other purposes, like tapping down Mishra's Factory and dealing damage with Underworld Dreams.