The Power of Mono-Black in Standard

The last time I was here I talked about limited, but today I will talk about constructed. More specifically, I will talk about Standard, the most popular format and, due to the new changes in Pro Tour formats for next year, probably the most important format to competitive players for the foreseeable future. Yes, I know they changed one PT to Modern, but we still have 4 PTs ahead of us that will feature Standard as the constructed format.

I am not here to talk specifically about the metagame or the format as a whole. The format has been almost the same since PT Theros. By the same I mean that since PT Theros we had a healthy diversity of decks but the 3 pillars of the format remained the same, i.e. Mono-Blue Devotion, UWx Control and Mono-Black Devotion variants. Other decks such as Jund Monsters, RW Burn, GW Aggro, and Jund Walkers made a strong appearance here and there mainly because the metagame at that specific point had a favorable configuration for them. I am here to talk about the Best Deck in the format and why you should play it until the last day possible. Naturally, I will talk about Mono-Black Devotion. And by Mono-Black, I truly mean MONO-Black. I do believe that the “pure” (or splashless if you like) version of Mono-Black Devotion is the best version of the deck and I will share my reasons and ideas with you. (Note that Owen Turtenwald recently published a couple of pieces on Channel Fireball here and here. I’d recommend reading them, as well!)

Well, I’ve been playing with MBD since PT Theros, and I considered and/or played with and against all the possible versions of the deck, with or without splash. I am not a MTGO grinder like others, but since I started playing with the deck there I’ve never had a better win rate at DEs than I did with MBD. I think I just went worse than 3-1 in two or three DEs out of 15. I also won some FNMs and local store tournaments with it. My last tournament with it was last weekend, at a M15 Game Day. The Game Day was a nice tournament because I got to play against some of the new decks that appeared at PT Magic 2015 and could see how the matchups were. For reference, this is my list and bellow the matchups I faced.

In the tournament I faced:
Round 1: Bye
Round 2: Mono-Blue Devotion (1-2)
Round 3: RW Burn (2-1)
Round 4: Jund Monsters (2-1)
Round 5: BW Aggro (2-0)

Top 8:
Quarterfinal: Jund Walkers (2-0)
Semifinal: Jund Walkers (2-0)
Final: Mono-Blue Devotion (2-0)

I will cover the principal matchups later but here you can see that, apparently, the Jund Walkers matchup is not as bad as the PT made a lot of people believe. Surprisingly, I did not play against GW Aggro or the mirror. I want also to point out a mistake I made in the sideboard. There is no Pithing Needle. In the hurry to leave home I forgot about it (I know, I know…). It should replace the Sign in Blood or one Doom Blade. I am not sure which one, but I probably would take one Doom Blade out. Aside from that mistake, I think this is the best list for the current metagame.

Ok, let’s discuss some of the deckbuilding and card choices. First, the more general questions.

Why NO splash and just ONE scry Land?

Well, now the whole format is well aware of Mono-Black. A lot of archetypes were designed exclusively with Mono-Black Devotion in mind. In other words, people are better equipped to deal with some strengths of our deck. For example, a Turn 2 Pack Rat on the play continues to give you some free wins, but it is much less frequent now. Before, in the beginning of the format, it was mainly a deckbuilding context, the decks were not built to handle that consistently. Nowadays, when a Turn 2 Pack Rat wins you the game, it is much more because of poor mulligan decisions and/or sideboarding. That being said, you want your deck to run as fast and consistently as possible. When I was playing with 4 scry lands, more often than I would like, I was sacrificing crucial early turn speed because of lands entering the battlefield tapped. It feels just miserable to untap with your Turn 2 Pack Rat in play and not be able to make a rat due to your tapped land. It is unacceptable to give them one more turn to find an answer to your Rat. The same for not being able to cast Underworld Connections on Turn 4 on an untapped land or not being able to curve out T1 Thoughtseize into T2 removal into T3 Nightveil Specter into T4 Desecration Demon. It was miserable on the play. On the draw? I would have to use a bad word here and that would not be polite. Let’s just say that was the reason you lost despite having a great hand.

Not splashing also reduces the amount of damage you take from your lands and that is huge considering that RW Burn and other Aggro decks are a significant part of the metagame.

The single Temple of Malady I am running? To be honest, that was more an attempt to misguide my opponents during sideboard, trying to pretend I had access to Abrupt Decay and Golgari Charm, than actually wanting the scry effect. I would not blame you for cutting it completely or for going up to 2 scry lands.

Why 25 lands and not 26?

Well, if you play 26 lands without scry lands you are likely to flood more, so I wanted to mitigate that a little. At the same time I wanted to “pre-sideboard” a little against the worse matchups, i.e. the Mirror, RW Burn, and UW Control. So I cut a land and added a single Duress maindeck. My reasoning was that if I were going to cut a land, I should not add an expensive spell to the deck, so Duress was perfect in the sense that it is cheap enough to allow me to interact even if I am slightly mana screwed. Another thing is that it increases the T1 discard into T2 Pack Rat draws, and Duress is a slightly better lategame topdeck against some matchups than a land is (unless that land is Mutavault, but in our case it is not). Finally, this change gave me another valuable sideboard slot!!!

Now let’s move on to some specific card choices:

Removal:

I went with 4 Hero’s Downfall, 3 Bile Blight and 3 Devour Flesh. Here I think you should always maindeck 10 removal spells, with 4 Hero’s Downfall being mandatory. Some of you may say “but the BW Midrange deck that team CFB: The Pantheon played at PT Magic 2015 had only 3 Hero’s Downfall; maybe that is the correct number!” And I would point that, yes, they played only 3 Hero’s Downfall, but they also played 2 Banishing Light. So, overall, they had 5 unconditional answers. Never play fewer than 4 Downfall in this deck.

As for the 3/3 split between Bile Blight and Devour Flesh, I think this configuration is the most reliable and solid to maindeck. Bile Blight is possibly the best-positioned removal right now in the format. It kills the two best creatures against Mono-Blue, i.e., Nightveil Specter and Master of Waves. It is what keeps Pack Rat fair in the mirror and Burning-Tree Emissary fair in Mono-Green Devotion, it kills Boros Reckoner and Fleecemane Lion and every other 1-drop or 2-drop played in Mono-Red aggro decks. Oh! It kills Mutavault, too!!! I just do not play the full set because it is not very good against Jund Monsters, Jund Walkers, and UWx Control. However, even in these matchups you can gain some value from Bile Blight because it is useful against Elspeth or Xenagos tokens. Generally, against Jund (any version) I like to use it soon to kill Elvish Mystic and not allow them to jump ahead on mana. This way you also make your Devour Flesh better.

As for Devour Flesh, well, you really can’t maindeck Doom Blade right now and Ultimate Price lost much of its appeal with the rise of GW Aggro and BW Midrange. Devour Flesh is ALWAYS solid, and that is what this deck needs. You will always hit something and it allows you to have that much needed early interaction. It is the only thing that kills a Turn 2 Sylvan Caryatid. People underestimate that, but believe me, that is really annoying for the Jund players. It is also an out to a resolved Blood Baron. And it is a nice insurance against Naya Hexproof if you face it (there are always people willing to play these non-interactive strategies). Not to mention that, sometimes it saves you against Burn. I am not saying that that should be your priority using the card, but having that option is always nice. As Brian Kibler once said, options win you games. I really like it, and unless the metagame changes drastically, I would not change these numbers.

Nightveil Specter over Lifebane Zombie maindeck:

Here I just think Nightveil is more consistent and better in the mirror, against UWx Control, RW Burn, and against aggro decks in general. It blocks much better than Lifebane Zombie. Don’t get me wrong here, I love the black Vendilion Clique; when it is good, it is insane. Feels REALLY good to strip away that Blood Baron, Obzedadt, Polukranos, or Brimaz. But that is not the case with the majority of the metagame right now. UWx Control and RW Burn ignore it completely while GW Aggro goes under it and Jund Walkers is designed to not be exposed to that 2-for-1.

Sideboard:

Well, I think the sideboard is pretty straightforward, especially Lifebane Zombie and Erebos. However, I will explain what specific matchups I had in my mind when I selected the other cards.

3 Duress: Those clearly were here for UWx Control and RW Burn. I brought all 3 against Jund Walkers and they were great, so now we have one more matchup to bring all of them. I bring 1 against the mirror sometimes.

4 Doom Blade: I thought GW Aggro was going to be very popular and I wanted to have the full set of the best removal against them. I think that, alongside Jund Monsters, GW Aggro is the only matchup where I side in all 4 Doom Blades. It is good against other decks (e.g., Mono-Blue), but you generally have better stuff to bring in, or do not have a lot to side out.

2 Drown in Sorrow: I really respect Mono-Red and other fast aggro decks, and I think everyone else should, too.

1 Sign in Blood: I just wanted a cheap card draw spell. Sometimes you want more card draw after Game 1 and sometimes you want some of this kind of effect but cannot afford Underworld Connections because it is clunky and slow. Also, sometimes you just leave them with 2 life and topdeck this!

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Now let’s talk about the most common matchups (For this section let’s “fix” my mistake and consider what I suggest being the ideal sideboard with 1 Pithing Needle in the place of 1 Doom Blade):

Mirror (this includes the versions that splash another color as well BW Midrange)

Basically, there are two crucial stages in the mirror. The Pack Rat stage and the Underworld Connections stage. The Pack Rat stage involves one of the players casting a Turn 2 Pack Rat and if the other player can’t remove the Rat in proper time, it is game over. Everybody knows that at this point. The difference now is that if the player facing the Rat does not have the answer right after the Rat enters play, he is not instantly defeated. He can still draw Bile Blight in time or he already has it and is looking to extract more value out of it. If the game progresses over this early Pack Rat stage, or if it did not happened in this particular game, then it is the Underworld Connections stage. Whoever cast the Connections first is heavily favored to win the game. It is with this stage context in mind that you have to sideboard. Pack Rat and Underworld Connections are cards that require different kinds of answers. You can discard or kill a Pack Rat, but the only way to get rid of Connections is through discard.

Sideboarding for the mirror is more complex than it seems. If you side in all your Duress to prevent Connections from seeing play, you can end up short in removal and lose to a T1 Discard into T2 Pack Rat draw. Another problem of boarding in too much discard here is that this is an attrition-based matchup, and discard spells are horrible topdecks late in the game. You can neutralize everything your opponent is doing in the beginning, but then they will topdeck gas and you will topdeck nothing. That is why I think that you have to present a certain amount of balance between discard, removal, and threats after sideboard. I usually board like this:

On the Play:

In:
2 – Erebos, God of the Dead
1 – Sign in Blood
Out:
2 – Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 – Devour Flesh

On the play I think you should be aggressive. The tempo advantage is yours, so force them to have the right pieces for interaction. I like to have access to Gray Merchant, but I dislike having him in my opening hand, as he does nothing, so that’s why I cut 2. If they are the version splashing white or BW Midrange, then I bring 3 Lifebane Zombie and 2 Erebos in and take out 1 Specter, 2 Gray Merchants, 1 Duress, and 1 Bile Blight.

On the Draw:

In:
2 – Erebos, God of the Dead
1 – Sign in Blood

Out:
2 – Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 – Pack Rat

On the draw you have the tempo disadvantage, so you have to present more interaction. I cut one Pack Rat because we are not going to win that race on the draw, so I prefer to have the removal ready (that’s why Devour Flesh stays on the draw). I do not touch the discard spells because I think 5 is the right number for this matchup. If they are the version splashing white or BW Midrange, then I bring 3 Lifebane Zombie, and 2 Erebos in and take out 1 Specter, 1 Pack Rat, 2 Gray Merchants, and 1 Bile Blight.

UWx Control

This match is tough Game 1, especially if they are the Detention Sphere version. However, it is winnable if you pressure them, time your discard well, and force them to cast small Revelations. After board it improves a lot and the philosophy is the same, but this time you can apply much more pressure backed by your discard spells.

In:
2 – Erebos, God of the Dead
1 – Sign in Blood
1 – Pithing Needle
3 – Duress
3 – Lifebane Zombie

Out:
3 – Bile Blight
3 – Devour Flesh
2 – Hero’s Downfall
2 – Gray Merchant of Asphodel

Mono-Blue Devotion

A lot of people say that we are not favored in this matchup, but I can’t see why. If you keep them from swarming the board and save one removal spell for what matters (Master of Waves), you are fine. If you have Turn 2 Pack Rat on the play, they can almost never win. Even if you don’t have the Pack Rat opener, Desecration Demon is pretty hard for them; that’s why you have to save removal for Master of Waves. The games that I lose are those where I do not have Pack Rat and draw too many Connections, or when they have Domestication for my specter Game 1. Domestication on Nightveil Specter is brutal for us, and that’s why I board out 3 Specters if I see Domestication Game 1.

In:
3 – Doom Blade
1 – Sign in Blood
3 – Lifebane Zombie

Out:
3 – Underworld Connections
1 – Duress
3 – Nightveil Specter

Jund Walkers

What I like the most about this matchup is that it finally gave one clear direction regarding Jund. When they were “Monsters” you had to have the same care concerning the right amount of extra discard and removal that you wanted to bring in. Now it is not a concern anymore, as all of their best cards are planeswalkers; you can just bring in all the extra discard and you are never wrong. In their attempt to render Lifebane Zombie useless, they actually made things easier for us. Not to mention that they are much slower due to the absence of Domri Rade. Now we don’t have to worry about their walkers coming online as soon as Turn 2. I think they lost a precious and fast card advantage and interaction engine at the same time. Good for us!!!

In:
1 – Pithing Needle
1 – Sign in Blood
3 – Duress
3 – Lifebane Zombie

Out:
3 – Bile Blight
3 – Devour Flesh
1 – Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 – Pack Rat (on the draw)
1 – Nightveil Specter (on the play)

RW Burn

This is by far our worst matchup and is always very close. Game 1 is very hard because we have so many cards that do damage to us. The problem is that we don’t have many things to bring in that really improve the matchup. Fortunately, this version runs Nightveil Specter, which is much better than Lifebane Zombie in this case, but we have so many bad cards in the main deck that we have to bring in some Zombies anyway. :/
In:
3 – Duress
2 – Lifebane Zombie
3 – Doom Blade

Out:
4 – Underworld Connections
3 – Hero’s Downfall
1 – Thoughtseize

GW Aggro

This is another matchup that can present a tough Game 1. If they are on the play and curve out, some things have to go really well for us in order to win the game, e.g., Turn 2 removal into Turn 3 Nightveil that can block something profitably into Turn 4 Desecration Demon that goes unanswered into Turn 5 Gray Merchant or more removal or another Demon. It is not easy. After board things get better because we bring extra efficient removal and Lifebanes.

In:
3 – Lifebane Zombie
3 – Doom Blade

Out:
4 – Underworld Connections
1 – Duress
1 – Pack Rat (on the draw)
1 – Thoughtseize (on the play)

Small Aggro

This is very similar to GW Aggro, but they are faster so if you are on the draw, things can be ugly. However, we have even better sideboard options as we can board in 2 Drown in Sorrow that is absolutely backbreaking for them and they can’t really play around it; otherwise we win with Rats, Demons, or both. Nightveil Specter is a great blocker too. Game 1 is bad, but overall I think we are favored because we respect the matchup enough in the sideboard.

In:
3 – Doom Blade (do not consider if it is against Mono-Black Aggro, bring 3 Lifebane Zombie instead, it is not ideal but at least it is a body)
2 – Drown in Sorrow

Out:
4 – Underworld Connections
1 – Duress

That is what I have for you today. I hope you have enjoyed it and that I could have explained well how the deck operates and why this is the best option to play until the fall rotation, when everything will change again. If you have any questions, suggestions or doubts, please let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading!
Until next time!
Rodolfo Maia