Firstly I feel I should introduce myself. My name is Tyler Blum. I have been wanting to become a MTG writer for a very long time and now that I have something exciting to write about I feel I should get this part of my magic career kick started.
This past week I was fortunate enough to win GP Chicago! While the Wizards coverage team would have told you part of the story I felt like I should take this opportunity to fill in the gaps.
In preparation for this tournament I had decided that I was going to play UW [card]Planar Cleansing[/card] or Mono Black. I had played a lot of Mono Black in the past (I even won a PTQ with it) but I felt that with the resurgence of aggressive red decks I wanted to look elsewhere. Since white had the best anti red aggro sideboard card in [card]Archangel of Thune[/card], [card]Nyx-Fleece Ram[/card], and [card]Fiendslayer Paladin[/card], I was determined to play white and the only good white deck I could find was U/W Cleansing. Thursday before the GP I spent the whole evening on MTGO playing U/W Cleansing. I didn’t lose a match!
I boarded the plane to Chicago feeling really good about my chances with [card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card] on my side. My best friend/testing partner/voice of reason, Francis Toussaint flew with me. On the plane we attempted to play some games of U/W vs Mono Black. If anyone knows an effective way to play Magic on a plane please let me know? The trays are tiny and it’s very easy to accidently see your opponent’s hand. Despite both of us repeatedly casting Peek we managed to play a fair number of games. I got smashed. Wrecked. Embarrassed. Doubt began to creep in. I justified the losses and ignored the whispers in my mind telling me turn to a different deck.
At the hotel we met up with Jon Stern, Alexander Hayne, and Neal Oliver. Neal mentioned he was going to play Junk Midrange but he also had a backup Mono Black deck. He wanted to play some games vs U/W to test out the matchup. He declared it should be heavily in U/W’s favor. For the second time that day I was mangled. After Oliver was through giving me a lesson in humility. I sat there in silence and stared around the room. I was scared. I had flown a long way to play this tournament. Shuffling the U/W deck felt like holding a grenade with the pin long pulled. I was lost in my own world when a conversation coming from Alex Hayne drifted across the room.
He declared that he thought the [card]Planar Cleansing[/card] decks were not up to snuff. “If Reid Duke, one of the best players on the planet, went 2-3-2 with the deck, I think that says how good it is”. I felt like someone had slapped me. Who was I kidding? I needed a new deck. Thankfully Neal was bolstered by his results against me and lent me his copy of Mono Black. I then walked over to Jon Stern and we sat and built Mono Black from the ground up. This was our final list that we both played.
[deck title=Mono Black Devotion – Tyler Blum]
[Lands]
4 Mutavault
16 Swamp
2 Temple of Malady
4 Temple of Silence
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Desecration Demon
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
2 Lifebane Zombie
4 Nightveil Specter
4 Pack Rat
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
3 Bile Blight
1 Devour Flesh
4 Hero’s Downfall
4 Thoughtseize
4 Underworld Connections
[/Other Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Bile Blight
2 Doom Blade
4 Duress
2 Erebos, God of the Dead
2 Lifebane Zombie
4 Pharika’s Cure
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
Pretty standard but I will explain a few things that may be different. First things first. I decided that I wanted to beat the following decks in this order: Mono Black and its variants, Mono Blue, Revelation decks, Monsters, and Red decks. It’s super important that I chose, out of the major archetypes, red decks to be my worst matchup. This sets the stage for every other change.
6 Temples – Mono Black mirrors and matches against Revelation decks are determined in large part by finding specific high impact cards. Particularly post board the decks are setup so that they are super redundant with a select number of game defining cards. Scry lands give you a better chance of finding your [card]Underworld Connections[/card] and Erebos. These are the best cards in both the above matchups. If I have a better chance of finding them I have a better chance of winning.
The Removal – If you going to play 6 Temples you need to be able to counteract the tempo loss. This is where the [card]Bile Blight[/card]s come in. Since my [card]Pack Rat[/card]s are less powerful than other Mono Black decks I need to make sure that enemy [card]Pack Rat[/card]s don’t get me. 4 [card]Bile Blight[/card]s in the 75.
4 Pharika’s Cure – This does not look like a card for people who said the least important deck was Red Aggro. I stand by this. This is for Mono Blue. [card]Devour Flesh[/card] is such an underwhelming card in my opinion. People whine and cry about the Punisher mechanic making cards unplayable yet they sleeve up [card]Devour Flesh[/card]es without a second thought. I’ll take [card]Bile Blight[/card] and Cure any day. In a meta game as defined as Standard you can afford to run more powerful narrow answers.
I don’t like sideboard guides as sideboarding is rarely as rigid as people seem to think. However I am going to talk about one matchup that I think people should consider sideboarding differently.
I played Mono Blue Devotion six times in GP Chicago. I went 6-0. I lost 2 games total over those 6 rounds. My suggestion is this, on the play:
Out
[draft]
4 Underworld Connections
2 Lifebane Zombie
1 Devour Flesh
[/draft]
In
[draft]
4 Pharika’s Cure
1 Bile Blight
2 Doom Blade
[/draft]
Plan A on the play is [card]Pack Rat[/card]. Most games on the play with [card]Pack Rat[/card] will end up in a victory. I had an opponent open with turn one: [card]Cloudfin Raptor[/card], turn two [card]Cloudfin Raptor[/card], [card]Judge’s Familiar[/card], turn three [card]Hall of Triumph[/card], turn four [card]Judge’s Familiar[/card], [card]Tidebinder Mage[/card]. This is an insane draw! He lost. I had the play. I had a [card]Pack Rat[/card] and a [card]Mutavault[/card]. GG.
On the draw:
Out
[draft]
4 Pack Rat
2 Lifebane Zombie
1 Underworld Connections
[/draft]
In
[draft]
4 Pharika’s Cure
1 Bile Blight
2 Doom Blade
[/draft]
It may sound odd that your very best card on the play is one of your worst on the draw but this is the case. That extra turn breaks you in this tempo matchup. Instead I suggest becoming a control deck. DON’T TRY TO TEMPO A DECK WITH ONE DROP CREATURES BY CASTING 2 AND 3 DROP REMOVAL. It does not work. On the draw you have an extra card, leverage this advantage. The plan is to kill everything that moves, all of it. Find a window to land Connections and keep killing things until they die. Post board you run 16 removal spells! Thassa looks a lot less godly with a devotion of one. Also try to slow roll your Specters, [card]Domestication[/card] is a thing. I would never cast a Specter unless I had to or if I knew the coast was clear because of [card]Thoughtseize[/card]. I strongly recommend trying this plan. It worked for me and should work for you as well.
This is way longer then I thought it would be, I am going do this report in two parts in order to hit all the highlights. Join me again next week when I share how I got beat by a mulligan to 4, how my mentor and magic idol actively was cheering against me in the tournament, and I will share my thoughts on the future of Mono Black with M15 just in time for WMCQ and the Pro Tour!