I lumped them together because they have a similar premise, I did not lump them together as an archetype. If there were reading comprehension issues it is on your end. I can quote myself if you really want to, but I will save that. I don't see any reason to make you look like a fool.
I never stated they were all part of the same archetype. You apparently missed that part.
Devotion decks all around make control decks better because it is an easy match up to attack.
What makes Esper and UW soft to mono black is completely high value cards like Sphinx's Revelations and Supreme Verdict that are just shred to bits in the face of Duress and Thoughtseize.
That does not make Esper any less attractive at all, in fact it looks even more attractive with all the devotion running around and the ability to completely configure your was through Mono Black Devotion.
UB Control is a good example of a control deck poised to do well against a field of devotion because it runs less high value cards and focuses much more on card redundancy which makes pin point removal a lot weaker.
These Devotion decks are pushing out so many other decks that ironically, Devotion is going to be what tears itself apart once a control configuration situates itself and then we get to go back to square one.
The problem with Devotion is that it is a mechanic that can stretch across all colors and brings with it mechanical inbreeding as well, which drastically increases the odds of a number of strategies being able to find some way to exploit a universal weakness.
It really is only a matter of time until Devotion either eats itself or a Control deck sweeps the rug out. That is unless SCG starts handing out byes again, in which case inbreeding a great way to invite yourself into a winning circle every weekend as we had fun watching during the reign of the original Caw-Blade... I mean, they were running Gideon Jura in the mainboard to combat the mirror at a time when running GJ was a death sentence against the rest of the field.
Read your bolded parts. You are quite literally lumping "devotion decks" into a single archetype for the purposes of expressing good/poor matchups against a specific deck. It's pretty simple dude. I've been saying the whole time that playing against something like Mono-black requires a far different set of hate cards than something like mono-U, i.e. doom blade is awesome against mono-u, and worthless against mono-black.
It's not personal at all - just realize that your terminology is vague and unhelpful for discussing strategy. "Lumping devotion together" is a terrible mindset, because devotion as a mechanic spreads across extremely different archetypes. You can't necessarily stop a gray merchant from having a large trigger when mono-black has 2-4 black, non-creature permanents on the board. Master of Waves is a solid card, but the Bident and Thassa are often the real backbreakers against control. Are you starting to see what I'm talking about?
I think it is called that because it sounds cool, plus it gives a "unique" vibe. Mono blue aggro? yeah whatevs. Mono blue devotion? woooot cool!! Mono black control? ok. Mono black devotion? Badass! I mean Look at Esper Control. Does it use mechanics from esper the shard? Nope. It only has the colors.
I have no problem with the names of the deck. Kamahl was referring to ALL devotion decks in an earlier post in terms of making the meta easier for control, which is false.
Mono Black is definitely a devotion deck. Something tells me you never played the deck or played against ist.
Gray Merchant is the KEY card of the deck.
Legit, is there a reading comprehension issue on these forums? You could call mono-black devotion "flying monkey balls" for all I care. You and kamahl seem to have a weird hang-up regarding a deck name. Re-read my posts. I'm not referring to the name of the decks at all. I'm referring to their archetypes. Let me say that again- ARCHETYPES. I honestly don't know how you can read my post and get "razorgore thinks devotion decks don't use devotion cards" out of it....
Take out Gary the Traveling Insurance Salesman and Mono Black would be a lot worse.
Take out Master of Waves and Mono Blue becomes a sub par deck.
Take out Arbor Colossus or Polukranos and RG diminishes in power level.
Take out Mogis and Red becomes far too slow to represent itself.
They all feed off Devotion and they are all cards that help the list because of a Devotion factor and they are all a key element of their respective decks. Devotion is what makes these decks effective at what they do because they have cards that are designed to work with the mechanic.
If you take out Shrine in most of these decks, they open themselves up to a number of crippling game states.
Calling them Devotion Decks is quite accurate.
You completely missed the point. You can't lump Mono-black, Mono-blue, mono-green, and mono-red together in terms of archetypes simply because they have "devotion" cards in the deck. That's asinine. It's akin to calling 2 or 3 color decks "shock" decks because they all run shocklands.
It's true that the decks in question are often running cards with powerful devotion mechanics, but mono-red is still at it's heart an aggro deck with reach. Mono-blue is an aggro-tempo deck similar to merfolk lists of the past. Mono-black is a classic control list. Referencing and quantifying all of those lists as a single "devotion" archetype is idiotic, because each deck requires discrete reactions from other decks. Mono-U falls prey to supreme verdict while mono-black and mono-red can shrug it off. Mono-red can't deal with a desecration demon while mono-u has answers for days against that card. It's a simple case of lazy generalizations.
I think its a major error to simply call all of these mono-color lists "devotion", precisely because it leads to the logical fallacies you are making in your post. Mono black is very much a control list that plays rather similar to the UB control lists from the ZEN-SOM standard, i.e. picking apart a hand, controlling the early game, then finishing the game with hard to answer threats. Mono red and mono blue are both aggro decks, but beyond the low curve of each list, there's hardly any overlap to each deck in terms of answering threats. This is evidenced by the fact that Esper control has, simultaneously, a great matchup against mono blue and a terrible matchup against mono red.
Put simply, the devotion mechanic is a home run in terms of playability and unique archetypes, but its hardly a homogenized threat.
This thing hasn't peaked yet. I would be willing to put some stakes on the assumption that at least one color gets a real-deal X spell (aside from revelation) to make use of potential mana surges.
More likely we get a fat creature that gives something like gruul devotion a way to punish decks lacking in sweepers.
As a one-off exception at mythic rare. For some reason, Wizards seems to genuinely believe that new players can't understand multicolor.
As someone who has had to walk newbies through MtG, it's definitely a tricky concept at first, though moreso for hybrid cards than true multi-colored cards. Honestly, some of the theros mechanics are very difficult for new players to grasp, especially since bestow essentially goes against all the traditional understanding of how auras work.
With that said, I'm still hopeful we see baleful strix find it's way into the modern card pool sometime within the next year. It really is the centerpiece towards making Tezz AoB viable.
Undercosted beaters are the end-game. Stormbreath, Demon, Polu, and reaper all present some level of resilience to removal against the field.
The card pool is small enough that we just have to accept a couple of poor game 1 matchups. I certainly wish the manabase and the card pool allowed us to heavily stack an archetype into our favor, but I find is acceptable enough with my current iteration in that it has favorable game 1s against other midrange, GW aggro, RDW, and UW control. Unfavorable game 1s are against mono-U, esper control, and boros weenie/burn. Nothing is unwinnable, and that's better in my mind than trying to play mono-U and hoping you skate around every deck with supreme verdict.
I think you are right about Domri from that perspective. But if that is the case then Domri isn't worth playing. At a certain threshold Domri really isn't worth playing. There are better 3 mana removal spells. It's the awkwardness of the 2-4 that is doing this and is the whole reason there is even a desire for that much removal.
It's this same awkwardness which makes G1 against Blue Devotion such a pain I find. I haven't really figured out how to beat that deck G1. Postboard with sweepers is trivial but I can't afford to play them main. This whole creature based Domri concept might just not work in a world of devotion. Once you cross a certain threshold into removal you might as well just be playing Jund Midrange.
Domri still serves a valid purpose for any deck still running 22+ creatures maindeck. He's card draw, he's removal, and he's a clock for control. He's a mainboard all-star, simply because there are very few board states that make him a dead card (even though he often comes out against pure aggro). More to the point, I don't see a single card in the sideboard that I would rather have maindeck over domri.
Removal is extremely important against mono-U devotion. If you can curve out on them, they don't stand a chance against a Descration Demon or Polukranos. Doom blade efficiently answers Master of Waves, and Thassa can be dealt with through any level of board control.
How on earth have people forgotten about Thrull Parasite? Dude has a relevant anti-counter ability, along with extort. Try him out, you would be surprised at how well he functions in that list.
I really don't like Sire of Insanity in a meta filled with Smiters, Fanatics, Master of Waves, and mizzum mortars. He simply can't take over an existing board, though if esper/UW control ever get super saturated, he could be a decent sideboard option.
The curve for this list seems high. Not that it's super high just where it is dense. Typically even with these many mana sources you need about 16 threat cards with cmc less than 4 (ie. not counting removal).. You have 13. Basically for consistencies sake the about 3 of those 4+ drops could afford to shave a bit of cmc. It's very important to play more 2 and 3's. That's why I play Varolz. I'd rather play more 4 and 5 drops too obviously but as I said certain constraints. Mind you, you play Ooze so that's a trade for Varolz. But no Mangler seems like a large void. I also play Satyr which gives me some room on my 3's if I need to although I generally think of it as a 5 drop curve wise.
The way your list plays out Varolz wouldn't be good for you. You don't have enough cheap creatures. Varolz is very good against non-proactive midrange decks both aggro and control as long as you play a certain density of cheap creatures. I don't like playing a ton of cheap creatures but given the mana dorks are cheap and even with them you can't really avoid a certain number. Varolz is also not great where Ooze is heavily played. I realize that that describes most green decks, but most green decks (outside of Jund or Junk) aren't really packing much removal which means Ooze plays pretty dead most of the time in the one place where Varolz isn't very good. I was scared to play him at first (as you can read in my first post) just because the type of lists I was making early format were full of Ooze. As Devotion decks catch on more and in so control I think Ooze will have a hard time since it's almost useless in both of those places.
Not really understanding how you quantify something as a "threat" card. The goal of running a list with 8 mana dorks is to drop above-curve creatures at roughly the same pace as the aggro decks. As far as the manacost-curve of the maindeck goes, it's perfectly fine right now -
1 - 4
2 - 11
3 - 4
4 - 11
5 - 3
X - 3
Given the number of shocks, the 2 and 4 cmc slots are overloaded in order to make use of removal or bomby creatures without eating 4-6 damage just from shockland damage. Obviously, turn 2 Domri into turn 3 Demon/Reaper/Polu is a solid start, but sometimes it's just as good to play mystic on 1, removal spell on 2, fatty on 3, then see how the board plays out.
I also don't understand the comments about ooze. First off, he's amazing against RDW because he FORCES them to deal with it, otherwise your removal spells or chump blocks get added value. Secondly, he's a fantastic way to break stalemates against GW, mono-G, and Naya.
The Devotion decks are all extremely creature heavy, and Jund has access to some of the best removal options in standard right now. Ooze and removal go hand in hand, and forcing a critical mass of creatures just for Domri's +1 is detrimental to the deck. I'm running 24 creatures maindeck, and while it's not ideal, the deck is simply more powerful against the field by having certain non-creature spells in the maindeck.
I like the list, i would like to know how the world eater has been in your matches. I dont think i have enough mana producers to make him worth it, thats why i dont run him.
I agree with whip, its just THAT good
its nice to see some desecration demon love !
changes to my deck are not showing very much promise, so i will be reverting back to 4 elvish mystics and no sylvan carytids. they are great mana fixers and defenders, but it just seemed to slow the deck down tremendously for me, and most of the time i wished they were something else.
Also have been considering desecration demon as a 4 of, will test it later this week. This card is just a bomb. Sure its easy to hate against with the sac effect, but to be honest its still SO good even with the sac effect, because the opponent has to keep cards down that they are willing to get rid of.
Thing is, the demon sac trigger is actually quite difficult to work around for most decks. Only Mono-U and decks running a token walker like elspeth or xenagos can really lock it down for a significant period of time, and the rest of your jund shell can easily be tuned to force your opponent into making meaningful decisions based on the demon's presence on the board state.
The fact that he's an efficient answer for Advent of the Wurm, Stormbreath, AND Chandra's pheonix is why he's so good.
@Rutherjc - The mana intensity in your list makes me cringe. I already have issues with my own list, and it's been tuned so that it can reasonably hit double black by turn 4 and double red by turn 5. You have to max out on temple of abandon and your shocks, period. Otherwise you are simply increasing the odds of having unplayable cards in hand, which is certain death in this format.
Went 4-1 tonight with this list, beating RDW twice and GW aggro twice, while losing to mono-U devotion due to epic land screw. I'll discuss MVPs and dead cards below.
Obviously, against 5 straight aggro decks Rakdos' Return felt like a dead draw, but it honestly is a gamechanger against midrange and control, and it actually won me a game 1 against GW aggro when I was able to take out 3 cards before dropping a scavenging ooze and protecting the ooze from a selesnya charm.
Varolz is just a dead card right now. Even against control, I would rather have another Chandra or Stormbreath Dragon.
Whip of Erebos is such a beating against the aggro and midrange decks. I was lucky to draw into Whip when I needed it in 3 matches, and I feel extremely safe dropping Varolz or Rakdos Charm for a 2nd Whip. The best part is that no one sees it coming, and without other artifact/enchantment targets, it's going to stick around until they see it in action.
Given the meta dependence, I could see myself dropping a Rakdos Return to the sideboard for a 4th doom blade, and dropping ratchet bomb for the return. Ratchet bomb is solid, but I feel like there are enough slots dedicated to dealing with Mono-U devotion already.
Looking at the PT naya looks to be a pretty weak deck.
It doesn't have all the comboish power of the devotion lists so those matchups are all pretty poor untill you board in lots of removal. Looking at what top8'ed and what did reasonably well I think you either want to be playing lots of removal ie play a controllish deck OR play something devotion comboish like in this standard. Disrupt them heavily or use some more rampish/devotion synergies to go over the top.
Naya is just a goodstuff aggro deck which has trouble disrupting them which is not where i'd like to be if people start copying devotion lists. If you're going with the domri core you simply can't play much interactive stuff at which point you're probably better doing some GR rampish deck like mihara's. If on the other hand you make it more aggro without a domri core and more removal I think you might as well run monored, more stable and synergizes better with a large burn suite.
The trick is maindecking/sideboarding correctly against the Meta. You need to be comfortable with having a bad pre-board matchup against certain archetypes in order to ensure good percentages against more common archetypes.
Take the blue devotion lists right now. Overloading mortars is a solid play to maintain board dominance, but I can already see most naya lists choosing to run unflinching courage maindeck as a way to counter the impact of a master of waves + token army.
If the absolute worst case scenario forces us to become GW aggro splashing for domri, that's not even a bad option.
By all means, allow me to show you the error -
Read your bolded parts. You are quite literally lumping "devotion decks" into a single archetype for the purposes of expressing good/poor matchups against a specific deck. It's pretty simple dude. I've been saying the whole time that playing against something like Mono-black requires a far different set of hate cards than something like mono-U, i.e. doom blade is awesome against mono-u, and worthless against mono-black.
It's not personal at all - just realize that your terminology is vague and unhelpful for discussing strategy. "Lumping devotion together" is a terrible mindset, because devotion as a mechanic spreads across extremely different archetypes. You can't necessarily stop a gray merchant from having a large trigger when mono-black has 2-4 black, non-creature permanents on the board. Master of Waves is a solid card, but the Bident and Thassa are often the real backbreakers against control. Are you starting to see what I'm talking about?
Fair enough. I should have realized it's in the general standard forum to begin with...
I have no problem with the names of the deck. Kamahl was referring to ALL devotion decks in an earlier post in terms of making the meta easier for control, which is false.
Legit, is there a reading comprehension issue on these forums? You could call mono-black devotion "flying monkey balls" for all I care. You and kamahl seem to have a weird hang-up regarding a deck name. Re-read my posts. I'm not referring to the name of the decks at all. I'm referring to their archetypes. Let me say that again- ARCHETYPES. I honestly don't know how you can read my post and get "razorgore thinks devotion decks don't use devotion cards" out of it....
You completely missed the point. You can't lump Mono-black, Mono-blue, mono-green, and mono-red together in terms of archetypes simply because they have "devotion" cards in the deck. That's asinine. It's akin to calling 2 or 3 color decks "shock" decks because they all run shocklands.
It's true that the decks in question are often running cards with powerful devotion mechanics, but mono-red is still at it's heart an aggro deck with reach. Mono-blue is an aggro-tempo deck similar to merfolk lists of the past. Mono-black is a classic control list. Referencing and quantifying all of those lists as a single "devotion" archetype is idiotic, because each deck requires discrete reactions from other decks. Mono-U falls prey to supreme verdict while mono-black and mono-red can shrug it off. Mono-red can't deal with a desecration demon while mono-u has answers for days against that card. It's a simple case of lazy generalizations.
Put simply, the devotion mechanic is a home run in terms of playability and unique archetypes, but its hardly a homogenized threat.
More likely we get a fat creature that gives something like gruul devotion a way to punish decks lacking in sweepers.
As someone who has had to walk newbies through MtG, it's definitely a tricky concept at first, though moreso for hybrid cards than true multi-colored cards. Honestly, some of the theros mechanics are very difficult for new players to grasp, especially since bestow essentially goes against all the traditional understanding of how auras work.
With that said, I'm still hopeful we see baleful strix find it's way into the modern card pool sometime within the next year. It really is the centerpiece towards making Tezz AoB viable.
The card pool is small enough that we just have to accept a couple of poor game 1 matchups. I certainly wish the manabase and the card pool allowed us to heavily stack an archetype into our favor, but I find is acceptable enough with my current iteration in that it has favorable game 1s against other midrange, GW aggro, RDW, and UW control. Unfavorable game 1s are against mono-U, esper control, and boros weenie/burn. Nothing is unwinnable, and that's better in my mind than trying to play mono-U and hoping you skate around every deck with supreme verdict.
Domri still serves a valid purpose for any deck still running 22+ creatures maindeck. He's card draw, he's removal, and he's a clock for control. He's a mainboard all-star, simply because there are very few board states that make him a dead card (even though he often comes out against pure aggro). More to the point, I don't see a single card in the sideboard that I would rather have maindeck over domri.
Removal is extremely important against mono-U devotion. If you can curve out on them, they don't stand a chance against a Descration Demon or Polukranos. Doom blade efficiently answers Master of Waves, and Thassa can be dealt with through any level of board control.
I really don't like Sire of Insanity in a meta filled with Smiters, Fanatics, Master of Waves, and mizzum mortars. He simply can't take over an existing board, though if esper/UW control ever get super saturated, he could be a decent sideboard option.
Not really understanding how you quantify something as a "threat" card. The goal of running a list with 8 mana dorks is to drop above-curve creatures at roughly the same pace as the aggro decks. As far as the manacost-curve of the maindeck goes, it's perfectly fine right now -
1 - 4
2 - 11
3 - 4
4 - 11
5 - 3
X - 3
Given the number of shocks, the 2 and 4 cmc slots are overloaded in order to make use of removal or bomby creatures without eating 4-6 damage just from shockland damage. Obviously, turn 2 Domri into turn 3 Demon/Reaper/Polu is a solid start, but sometimes it's just as good to play mystic on 1, removal spell on 2, fatty on 3, then see how the board plays out.
I also don't understand the comments about ooze. First off, he's amazing against RDW because he FORCES them to deal with it, otherwise your removal spells or chump blocks get added value. Secondly, he's a fantastic way to break stalemates against GW, mono-G, and Naya.
The Devotion decks are all extremely creature heavy, and Jund has access to some of the best removal options in standard right now. Ooze and removal go hand in hand, and forcing a critical mass of creatures just for Domri's +1 is detrimental to the deck. I'm running 24 creatures maindeck, and while it's not ideal, the deck is simply more powerful against the field by having certain non-creature spells in the maindeck.
Thing is, the demon sac trigger is actually quite difficult to work around for most decks. Only Mono-U and decks running a token walker like elspeth or xenagos can really lock it down for a significant period of time, and the rest of your jund shell can easily be tuned to force your opponent into making meaningful decisions based on the demon's presence on the board state.
The fact that he's an efficient answer for Advent of the Wurm, Stormbreath, AND Chandra's pheonix is why he's so good.
@Rutherjc - The mana intensity in your list makes me cringe. I already have issues with my own list, and it's been tuned so that it can reasonably hit double black by turn 4 and double red by turn 5. You have to max out on temple of abandon and your shocks, period. Otherwise you are simply increasing the odds of having unplayable cards in hand, which is certain death in this format.
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Polukranos, World Eater
4 Desecration Demon
4 Reaper of the Wilds
3 Stormbreath Dragon
4 Forest
2 Swamp
4 Temple of Abandon
4 Blood Crypt
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Stomping Ground
2 Golgari Guildgate
3 Doom Blade
3 Rakdos's Return
2 Mizzium Mortars
2 Dreadbore
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Golgari Charm
1 Rakdos Charm
1 Gruul Charm
1 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
2 Duress
1 Ratchet Bomb
Obviously, against 5 straight aggro decks Rakdos' Return felt like a dead draw, but it honestly is a gamechanger against midrange and control, and it actually won me a game 1 against GW aggro when I was able to take out 3 cards before dropping a scavenging ooze and protecting the ooze from a selesnya charm.
Varolz is just a dead card right now. Even against control, I would rather have another Chandra or Stormbreath Dragon.
Whip of Erebos is such a beating against the aggro and midrange decks. I was lucky to draw into Whip when I needed it in 3 matches, and I feel extremely safe dropping Varolz or Rakdos Charm for a 2nd Whip. The best part is that no one sees it coming, and without other artifact/enchantment targets, it's going to stick around until they see it in action.
Given the meta dependence, I could see myself dropping a Rakdos Return to the sideboard for a 4th doom blade, and dropping ratchet bomb for the return. Ratchet bomb is solid, but I feel like there are enough slots dedicated to dealing with Mono-U devotion already.
The trick is maindecking/sideboarding correctly against the Meta. You need to be comfortable with having a bad pre-board matchup against certain archetypes in order to ensure good percentages against more common archetypes.
Take the blue devotion lists right now. Overloading mortars is a solid play to maintain board dominance, but I can already see most naya lists choosing to run unflinching courage maindeck as a way to counter the impact of a master of waves + token army.
If the absolute worst case scenario forces us to become GW aggro splashing for domri, that's not even a bad option.