Topic: How to beat Mono Black Devotion

Hey guys!

So At my local FNM, there's 3 guys that have been winning with mono black devotion for the last few events. No one there has any clue on how to stop it. I'm wondering if you guys would happen to know how to shut it down?

Also, I was considering making the deck for myself (If ya can't beat em, join em, right?), and would like the same question answered for the mirror match.

Thanks!

Last edited by DarrenM (2013-10-24 21:31:25)

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Re: How to beat Mono Black Devotion

So Mono-Black Devotion is far more resilient than Mono-Blue Devotion, but there are still numerous ways to beat it (again, I piloted a version at Gameday). 

First off, very aggressive decks are actually quite well suited against it.  Many of its avenues of play require the payment of some amount of life (think Thoughtseize, Underworld Connections, Erebos, God of the Dead) making the job easier for a deck that is fast enough to punish them for reducing their life total.  To this end, red deck wins, Selesnya/Boros/mono-white aggro are all actually not half bad.  Sure, they have spot removal, but no board wipes, so their ability to deal with 3-4 creatures is considerably reduced.

Second, the deck can beat control, but it has some trouble.  Specifically, if you can manage to get Elspeth, Sun's Champion into play and keep her there, she will simply beat the deck.  With no way to deal with repeat instances of the tokens, it has a hard time.  But more generally, it's a pretty predictable deck, so it should be relatively easy to pick out what to counter/remove and what not to.  Mind you, the threats are pretty diverse, so even an unattended Pack Rat can take over the game.

Third, remember that black has ZERO enchantment or artifact hate, so to that end, Assemble the Legion or even Detention Sphere will really screw them up.

Fourth, you REALLY need to disrupt their card advantage.  This means dealing with Underworld Connections and to a lesser degree, Erebos.  If they cannot draw additional cards, well, odds are you can beat them when they run out of removal or otherwise stop drawing gas.

The one thing I can say is that if you plan to just join them, I would suggest adding some added flavor to the build and diverging a bit to catch them off guard.  For instance, I personally enjoyed running a list with 4x Pack Rat, 3x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, 3x Whip of Erebos, and 2x Abhorrent Overlord - the last one of which could easily win mirror games for you.

Anywhom, it's a good deck, easily more flexible and capable than Mono-Blue Devotion, but by no means unbeatable.

Re: How to beat Mono Black Devotion

Well, the reason that i'm leaning towards playing it is that in testing, It's won pretty much every match up. Due to some limits on cards on hand, I'm not using thoughtseize, erebos, the 4th lifebane, or any nightveil specters. Instead, I put in 4 copies of Rakdos Shredfreak to provide some more defence against the early 1 drop decks, 2 Blood scriveners to help out when I'm dropping my hand to rats, and a larger removal package than most decks of this type. I'm trying out disciple of phenax SB to act as a late game thoughtseize, and provide 2 more devotion, and that seems to be doing very well against control decks. I may try out the overlord, but I don't really think that its necessary because I've already Gary'd for 12 the turn before I can play it.

Thanks for the advice though, it's really appreciated. I'll definitely be changing up my list a lot with this new info.

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Re: How to beat Mono Black Devotion

DarrenM wrote:

Well, the reason that i'm leaning towards playing it is that in testing, It's won pretty much every match up. Due to some limits on cards on hand, I'm not using thoughtseize, erebos, the 4th lifebane, or any nightveil specters. Instead, I put in 4 copies of Rakdos Shredfreak to provide some more defence against the early 1 drop decks, 2 Blood scriveners to help out when I'm dropping my hand to rats, and a larger removal package than most decks of this type. I'm trying out disciple of phenax SB to act as a late game thoughtseize, and provide 2 more devotion, and that seems to be doing very well against control decks. I may try out the overlord, but I don't really think that its necessary because I've already Gary'd for 12 the turn before I can play it.

Thanks for the advice though, it's really appreciated. I'll definitely be changing up my list a lot with this new info.

The point behind Overlord is that you drop it via Pack Rat and then reanimate it with Whip, swing for 6 in the air, gain 6 life, and then it exiles, leaving you with 6 harpies all for four mana.  Trust me when I say that it simply wins games... it can also affect the mirror, as you can tap down their Desecration Demons with the harpies and swing in for fatal flying.

I actually didn't even run Lifebane Zombie, as it's really not that big of a deal.  You have removal to deal with Green/White and while those devotion are useful, you get it from everywhere else too...

Again, it's a good matchup in the current meta - hence why it's winning things outright all over the place.  But in the same respect, that'd mean four people at your FNM will be running essentially the same deck... sounds pretty dull to me.