Visions from Beyond- Embracing the Monochrome
Greetings readers!
This is Samuel Wells, back with more Visions From Beyond. Khans standard is kicking off now and deck speculation is at its peak right now. Most decks that I have seen speculation on are people trying to make the different wedges viable. Temur monsters, Mardu midrange and the like. All of this talk about these three color midrange and control has led to me wondering, will we see viable mono colored decks in standard this season. For the purposes of going more in depth I will exclude the red aggressive decks because they are already receiving extensive talk as one of the decks post rotation. I am interested in looking at the prospects and the plausibility of devotion once Khans of Tarkir comes out.
The three main devotion decks of this past standard were mono-green, mono-black, and mono-blue devotion lists. Each of these decks have been discussed to death and many people have declared that these decks will die as RTR rotates out. The only deck that people have seemed confident about it surviving rotation is mono-green devotion.
The speculation around mono-green is centered around two creatures that people have predicted to be the best in the next standard. These creatures being Sylvan Caryatid and Courser of Kruphix. The hype for Caryatid is more for the three color midrange decks that will be popping up in the coming standard, but it is still the best ramp spell, it buffs devotion, and it it still helps to block a lot of early threats. It is everything that people have been using it for and it is not just swept away by Supreme Verdict. Having a slower board wipe really helps cards like this because you get more time to set up and go off with the deck. The card that gets the biggest boost in the upcoming format is Courser of Kruphix. Courser’s interaction with fetchlands is ridiculous. The fetchlands end up not damaging when you have Courser on the battlefield. And you get to shuffle away cards that you don’t want to draw, because courser allows you to see the top of the deck, when you have a fetchland.
This pairing has already begun to see play in modern in some of the grindier control decks and I imagine that this could become an oppressive strategy in standard for the foreseeable future. Green devotion is one of the strategies that will look to use the innate power of these cards to dominate the format. The only major loss to this deck is the rotation of Burning Tree Emissary which allowed for the most busted of starts. Losing BTE may not be the worst loss though, because the deck will put in a more consistent card in the slot, and adding consistency to what is essentially a combo seems very strong. What I do see shifting are the splashes that this deck may use. Over the course of its life it has received a number of splashes to add more power and resources as the format called for. My guess is that green devotion will be splashing one color most often, but there is a chance that a mono green deck that just uses the fetches for the interaction with Courser may be enough. I would watch out for the deck to see a lot of testing and various brews in the near future because there is a real potential within this shell.
The other devotion decks have been called dead by a number of top players. Mono-blue is the one that people seem to immediately dismiss because when you look at the deck, it is reliant on the tempo and curving out. And most importantly it is looking to flood the board with blue mana symbols. Looking at the cardpool you notice a distinct lack of double mana symbols in the two drop slot and only one of the one drops that was being played in the devotion lists. The deck, on the surface, just seems to be losing too many cards to have the same power that it did. That is true, the deck is going to be weaker. It will not have the same unbeatable starts. That does not mean that it will not have the power though. I have defined mono-blue as Master of Waves, Thassa, and a pile of junk. Going by this logic, the deck should still exist. It will just be a different pile of junk. Whether or not you feel good about it, I imagine going one drop, two drop, Thassa, Master is still pretty unbeatable. This deck will be neutered but still has the core of the deck. The deck could be playable. It will depend on the power and popularity of the midrange decks. It didn’t have a good matchup at its strongest point and is getting worse, while the midrange decks are seemingly getting much stronger.
Mono-blue was certainly the more criticized deck, but mono-black has not avoided receiving scrutiny. Josh Utter-Leyton has in fact said the opposite, he imagines that mono-blue could survive rotation by the same logic that I laid out above. He does not mono-black surviving because he thinks the quality of cards that mono-black is losing is much more drastic. Well, what does mono-black lose? Pack Rat and Underworld Connections, arguably the two best cards in the deck and the engines that mono-black relied on to get the free wins. That is a big loss from the start. It is also losing Lifebane Zombie and Nightveil Spectre, two more cards that were huge in the early game for mono-black. It appears that Utter-Leyton is onto something. Mono-black is also slowing down drastically which is minor but does hurt it depending on the speed of the format. What really seems to kill the deck is that it is losing one of the key engines of Pack Rat plus Underworld Connections. When mono-black was able to chain these two cards it was so far ahead. Card advantage also seems to be disappearing. When a deck that relies on going one-for-for with the opponent until the game stalls out and then dropping a single threat to go the distance having a source of card advantage is necessary.
I do not see a replacement that can create the needed card advantage so the deck needs to maintain this game plan. My prediction for this deck moving forward is that is will be turning into a more proactive deck. It will attempt to turn the corner before the opponent has run out of gas and just be using a bigger and better threat. To do this I think it will have to become either a two or three color deck. As I outlined in my last article, I think mono-black will transform into a midrange rock type deck most likely becoming a Mardu deck using cards like Zurgo, Butcher of the Horde, and Crackling Doom. I could also see it becoming just black white and act as the highly consistent control deck and using Elspeth as the only wincon and the rest of the deck are responses. Finally I could see it becoming one of the Courser decks, because I reiterate, it will be one of the best strategies in the new format. I am not sure how to combat this strategy.
Overall, I do not think mono-color will die because it is not viable. There are still the tools available to make each deck powerful enough to compete. What could happen to these decks is that people will stray away from mono-color because of a tiredness of only playing one color. There is a general sense by players that we like to play more colors, it makes magic more interesting and each deck has more individuality just by the nature of the number of cards available to the deck builder to use. I feel confident saying that for this reason we will see a break from a deck only using one color, at least for a couple tournaments while people try to play with all of their new toys.
Thank for reading and I gotta say, it is good to be back.
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