Topic: Devotion is annoying

Is it just me, or are devotion decks ruining the fun of this game? Like I guess I could join in and buy a bunchy of overpriced Nightveil spectors and Master of Waves, but it just seems ridiculous and pretty much limiting the decks to "Devotion or Esper Control"

Just curious what everyone else's thoughts are

Josh

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Re: Devotion is annoying

My stance on it is if you know how to beat it, then they're your best match up.

If you're devoted to net decking, then you're probably going to have to stick with mono blue / black or esper, but if you're johnny enough to find a way to beat em (And ways do exist), then you have that option. Personally I love the devotion decks. They were really innovative, and a nice refreshment over what we had pre-pro tour.

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Re: Devotion is annoying

I don't know about you, but my Selesnya aggro came in second at my last FNM.  Devotion is its own worst enemy, really.  Mirror matches tend to weed them out early on, and I've been able to overcome Mono Black Devotion before with my deck.  It's not easy, mind you, but it's not terribly difficult, either.

Re: Devotion is annoying

If anything, as DarrenM said, they've made it REALLY easy to plan for the meta you're going against.  With practically everyone clinging to three or four decks, you can make a really tight deck and your SB will be just bonkers.

For Mono-Blue Devotion, it's a friggin glass cannon.  If you can deal with two cards (Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea), the deck is incredibly weak.  Last I checked, Slaughter Games is still a card... that and ANY color other than red has an easy time dealing with Master.  Even red will happily run in this matchup as it's quite easy to keep their devotion count down AND Anger of the Gods can easily deal with both the elemental tokens AND any other devotion generating creatures.

For Mono-Black Devotion, it's a bit more resilient deck than the Mono-Blue version, but even it is still really reliant on a few specific cards.  The biggest threats come from Desecration Demon (admittedly not the easiest threat to deal with on its own) and Gray Merchant of Asphodel (although it would seem newer iterations are coming out focusing more on Pack Rat).  Yet, again there are a wealth of ways to beat this.  Craig Wescoe actually just did an article yesterday pointing out how aggro decks are well suited to beat Mono-Black (http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=11460), as it is quite slow to setup much of the time and will end up actually hurting itself quite a bit - making the aggro job easier than it might normally be.  Having played a variant of mono-black before it was such a thing, I can say that without access to Underworld Connections or Erebos, God of the Dead to give you added card draw, it's really not all that powerful.  So essentially, if you can outrun it, you win.  Alternately, if you can deny them life gain (see Skullcrack), you win.  Lastly, if you can deny them card advantage (see Naturalize, Destructive Revelry, Sundering Growth, Fade into Antiquity, Detention Sphere), you have a good chance of winning too.

For the Green Devotion (the Gruul Midrange that was in the PT Top 8), if you run Pithing Needle in the SB or Slaughter Games, name Garruk, Caller of Beasts - congrats... it's hosed.

So to that end, none of the devotion decks are all that "unbeatable."  Keep in mind that they're good decks, definitely tier 1, hence why everyone is flocking to them.  BUT, they've made your job easy in some respects as you know what you're going to run into round-after-round.  Think of this as the whole Delver period before the other sets hit.  I would put money down that Born of the Gods will have answers to devotion centric decks.  So to that end, be patient.  Standard is still very much sorting itself out as Theros has only been out what, a month?  Junk Rites did the exact same thing and everyone figured out solutions to it quickly enough...  So consider this a challenge to refine your deck brewing skills... have some fun with it

Re: Devotion is annoying

They have a pretty big weakness in needing to commit a lot to the table early to function well. I feel that the most important thing to keep in mind is that they all have some card advantage engine to refill their hand and keep their devotion going. Cut that off and the game will be much easier to win. Bident of Thassa, Underworld Connections and Garruk, Caller of Beasts all come to mind.