So I brought a MBD deck splash green to a local tournament tonight and did very poorly. I played Junk Midrange twice and rakdos Midrange once losing pretty badly. The one Junk match I got him to 1 life both games, the first game he ultimated his ajani and brought a ton of pressure on board, game 2 he had a second reaper of the wilds to block my lifebane zombie. Both matches I just felt a step behind every turn and couldn't answer the pressure. The first match he was very controlling with sin collectors, golgari charms, banishing lights, blood barons, elspeths. The second match was very creature heavy and he had a lot of difficult creatures to deal with including reaper of the wilds and voice of resurgence who negates devour flesh very hard.
Ironically I won my mirror match, first game I played well and just pressured him with pack rat and desecration demon. Game 2 he literally took every non-land card from my hand but then flooded out very hard and I rode pack rat to victory.
My first game was against bant control that didn't have sphinx's revelation and i crushed him out pretty hard.
The rakdos midrange i crushed him with 4 removal spells then rode desecration demon to victory and game 2 i misplayed badly and couldnt answer the combination of storm breath dragon, desecration demon, hero's downfall, dreadbore, and devour flesh. Game 3 his creatures were just much bigger than me, he drew enough removal and i drew 3 underworld connections.
Basically I'd like to know the overarching strategies going against the common archetypes of aggro, control, and midrange. Sideboarding has been very hard for me as most of the cards in the main seem relevant against most decks. My deck is very conventional, basically copying andrew tenjum's deck from Cincinnati. I don't really need deck advice since im doing nothing bold with MBD, I just need general advice and sideboarding tips.
Against Junk I brought in whip, erebos, duress. Ajani is very strong and elspeth is difficult to deal with. it seems like they can present strong threats while at the same time answering my most pertinent cards. Just seems very similar to mono black but just a stronger version of it.
Any advice from seasoned MBD players is appreciated. Or junk players that can honestly reveal the weakness in their deck because their doesnt seem to be any.
This is easier if we know your decklist. My advice is quite general and assumes a fairly standard list.
In general MBD plays a combination of strong removal, creatures that are strong on their own, repetetive card draw and some hand disruption. Don't be afraid of trading card-for card in aggro and midrange matchup, since you have more card-draw and will eventually win the attrition game. Be very wary of enabling 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 against yourself (i.e., don't go all in on packrat without having looked at your opponents hand with Thoughtseize, some form of backup or a secondary plan, or if you know your opponent isn't playing mass removal). Don't activate mutavault if your opponent is in a position to play removal. Against control it is more important to get Underworld Connections and Erebos to stick than any other spells; so play must-answer creatures like desecration demon etc. to bait out removal and counterspells. The deck is very resilient to mulligans, do not be afraid of going to 5 cards if you have to in order to hit land-drops. Only UW control and esper control in the current standard are slower than MBD; don't be in a rush, your deck does late game very well.
T1: Thoughtseize T2: Pack Rat is very strong in some matchups (G/R Monsters, most aggro decks), but weak in others (mirror, control, any game where the Thoughtseize revealed more than 1 piece of mass removal).
Finally, and this is true for magic in general, some matches are impossible to win. If you don't draw anything but land and your opponent draws perfect answers for example. Do not make too broad conclusions based on a single tournament.
Yeah my list is extremely conventional. The big 4 of's: Pack Rat, Desecration Demon, gray merchant, lifebane zombie, thoughtseize, hero's downfall, underworld connections with 2 abrupt decay, 3 devour flesh, 1 bile blight and 1 vraska.
I think my problem is I might be too aggressive, but it feels like when I have 1 removal spell and 3 creatures in my opening hand I'm suppose to be aggressive. I'm never sure when I'm suppose to invest in pack rat, like every card in the deck seems strong in most matchups so it's hard for me to tell what should I be discarding to pack rat. Often it's like I want to keep a removal spell and enough lands so my only options are discarding desecration demons, connections, gray merchants. Like should I make 2 rats so it's too much work to kill them off then start the control role?
I've been playing MBD most of this winter/spring and have tried out red, blue, and white splashes. Some general observations ( which may or may not be helpful, but ):
1.Everybody knows your deck. Mono Black is arguably the strongest and most versatile deck in Standard, and everyone's sideboards are full of their colors' hate cards for it. When you sideboard for game two, keep in mind that the Dark Betrayals, etc. Are being boarded in and change your deck accordingly.
2.Don't overextend with Pack Rat! Almost all of our early, easy wins are on the back of that card and everyone you're playing knows this. It can just as easily be a late-game win when we have plenty of lands and cards to discard to build them up rapidly.
3.Going on from that, aside from those early Pack Rat wins, you're the control deck much of the time. Against every flavor of agro, Blue Devotion, Boros Burn, even Green/Red or Jund Monsters, we are the Control deck, removing their threats while guarding our own or getting card advantage.
4.Pure Mono Black is going to do badly against any deck that mainboards a playset of Blood Baron of Vizkopa. The only thing we can do is Devour Flesh it. You can win, but it's an uphill battle.
Thoughts on the splashes:
Pure Mono Black: the fastest and most efficient. Weak to pro-Black creatures and has no enchantment removal, but if I had no clue about the meta I was stepping into, this would be my choice to play.
B/R : I don't feel that decline in overall speed is worth the two quite interesting sideboard options of Rakdos' Return and Slaughter Games.
B/U : My favorite splash against Control. Far//Away is excellent, and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver can win games and is easily underestimated. Notion Thief is a delightful Sphinx's Revelation hate card, and bothers a number of other decks besides.
B/W : The best against your fellow MBD players! Blood Baron is a Champ, and Elspeth can provide an interesting alternate finisher. So many of these lists are almost another deck entirely, not running devotion cards like Merchant or Erebos: there's an Orzhov Midrange thread that covers these variants quite well.
B/G : I've only played against this deck rather than played it, but I'm not entirely convinced that the green is worth it for just Abrupt Decay and Golgari Charm. Interesting, but as with all the splashes, I find it less consistent.
With Junk, I recommend maxing out on removal and destruction, they are definitely beatable, and the Archangel of Thune lynchpin is remarkably vulnerable to instant-speed removal.
Well I went for the green splash because I felt it shored up the only weakness being enchantments. I blew up a ton of banishing lights and courser of kruphixes last time. Often times its like getting a two mana instant underworld connections when they exile it. I just felt like they had stronger threats and more multilateral answers in addition to strong planeswalkers. Desecration demon seems like such a liability against decks with mana dorks. Even though the one game he just ignored the demon and kept up with his blood baron, preserving his mana dorks. He was definitely playing the control role which he seemed to do better than MBD could.
I think my problem is I might be too aggressive, but it feels like when I have 1 removal spell and 3 creatures in my opening hand I'm suppose to be aggressive. I'm never sure when I'm suppose to invest in pack rat, like every card in the deck seems strong in most matchups so it's hard for me to tell what should I be discarding to pack rat. Often it's like I want to keep a removal spell and enough lands so my only options are discarding desecration demons, connections, gray merchants. Like should I make 2 rats so it's too much work to kill them off then start the control role?
Well, you're a control deck with how much disruption and removal you pack (you're really only the beatdown against U/W/x Control decks), so it's correct to play from the angle of grinding them down before finishing them off. Sometimes you get the 1 removal, 3 creature hand, in which case you have to play your creatures for value rather than aggression. Aside from that, investing in Pack Rat is simply a measure of how likely they are to be able to clear out that investment. If they're running Supreme Verdict, Detention Sphere, Anger of the Gods, etc, then throwing everything into the rat is a poor idea. If they have little to no removal at all, then Pack Rat is likely going to be an unstoppable force. Pitching demons and Lifebanes is usually correct unless you need them for other specific purposes (like Lifebane's exile effect). Remember also that Mutavault pumps your rats, and even two rats plus Mutavault can overrun a deck in short order.
As far as Demon against a deck with mana dorks, it's not as bad as you think. Yes, they can tap the demon down for days, but their threat density is going to be lower as a result of all the mana dorks floating around. Killing their threats means that without a card advantage engine, they're going to be stuck on a board of Elvish Mystics and Sylvan Caryatids, and that's a good board state for you.
Also, if Blood Baron's a big part of your meta, the red splash offers Mizzium Mortars as an easy and fast way to kill it if Thoughtseize/Lifebane can't hit it.
I sided a Hall of Triumph that plays ridiculous. I've also gone back to the original Mono Black deck because Nightveil Specters are huge and with a Hall of Triumph, out of reach of burn.
I've also tested the Master of the Feast to great effect. It beats fast so that extra draw is almost irrelevant. Especially with the 2 Whip of Erebos I play (1m/1s).
I'm gonna splash blue for Notion Thief out of the sideboard.
But, as the last poster said, Black Devotion is a control deck.
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current decks: Modern - Bogle, Infect (hey, i'm new!) EDH - Prime Speaker Zegana, Reaper King Standard - MBD, G/b Devotion, Blue Devotion, Boros Burn, BG Dredge, W/G Aggro, Dimir Heroic
I've also played MBD for most of the season, in many of it's forms, and had a few suggestions as well:
MBD on it's own has too many weaknesses for decks to prey upon. As the previous poster mentioned, bringing pure mono black to a blind meta is sure to rack up a few wins, but I think overall is deals itself so much damage that you end up having a weakness to even a budget version of a fast aggro deck (and there are plenty of them right now). That said, here's my experience with the splashes. I'll start with yours.
Green - How everyone suddenly jumped on this bandwagon is beyond me. Courser, Abrupt Decay, Golgari Charm, Vraska - there is not a single green card I've seen in lists that I'd say I desperately needed in matches where it would have been clutch. Some of these effects are redundant: Decay and Charm hit enchantments, sure. The rest of the functions for it are covered by a phenomenal removal suite already available to us.
Red - Like the poster above, I'm not convinced Rakdos' Return and Slaughter Games SB make enough impact on matchups where the mono black SB doesn't already do well enough itself. Half our board used to/still is dedicated to control matchups, where those two cards really shine.
Blue - I spent a long, long time with this. Ashiok and Notion Thief are remarkable tools for R/G/x Monsters and Esper, but since Esper fell out of favor (I still don't know why that happened, either), I feel it's now a meta call to go this way. It doesn't do much to shore up the hyper aggro matchups, either, which is why I moved to splash white.
White - This is my current list. I've spent weeks tuning it. Athreos and Elspeth went in, then in the board, now out completely. I tinkered with Master of the Feast, decided I didn't like him, dropped him, and so on. It took me a while to get the SB right, but this list won Game Day today:
This was about as tuned to my play style as possible. I didn't go with the 4th Pack Rat or Thoughtseize, I don't use Ultimate Price, no 4th Mutavault, and I felt strong with 1 Obzedat, I felt even stronger with 2. Same story with Whip: I want to see these for the devotion, the lifegain, the graveyard recursion. Throughout 6 rounds today, I pulled every card from my sideboard at least once, so I feel that's a good sign. Crypt Incursion is a HOUSE against graveyard decks and especially hyper aggro, because Demon tap-downs and early removal can lead to a turn 5-6 Crypt Incursion that puts you completely out of their range (12-18 life gain is as good as gg for red even if you're at 3 when you cast it). Blood Baron stresses U/W/x control, as does Duress, Erebos and a well-timed Needle. Bant/Naya Hexproof falls to the high Devour Flesh count, and so on. I considered enchantment hate, which the whole list clearly lacks, but this is the most versatile deck in the format. It can be pure aggro, a touch of control, a reanimator, a midrange...you get the point. With so many ways to a finish, I'd rather not have an enchantment killer in my hand when I just want more gas to keep moving. (I also don't want to rely on digging for a 2-of with Connections to try and find it as an out, I'd just as soon get there first)
Green - How everyone suddenly jumped on this bandwagon is beyond me. Courser, Abrupt Decay, Golgari Charm, Vraska - there is not a single green card I've seen in lists that I'd say I desperately needed in matches where it would have been clutch. Some of these effects are redundant: Decay and Charm hit enchantments, sure. The rest of the functions for it are covered by a phenomenal removal suite already available to us.
Wait! What!? I thought Abrupt Decay was tha biggest and tha meanest card and the sole reason to splash green.
Green - How everyone suddenly jumped on this bandwagon is beyond me. Courser, Abrupt Decay, Golgari Charm, Vraska - there is not a single green card I've seen in lists that I'd say I desperately needed in matches where it would have been clutch. Some of these effects are redundant: Decay and Charm hit enchantments, sure. The rest of the functions for it are covered by a phenomenal removal suite already available to us.
Wait! What!? I thought Abrupt Decay was tha biggest and tha meanest card and the sole reason to splash green.
It's extremely versatile, sure. But I don't want to splash a color just for another kill spell. We have plenty.
The abrupt decay is really for the versatility to destroy enchantments in the mirror match and in the control match. Golgari charm is also a nice card for those matches or punching through an elspeth, or screwing up supreme verdict
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Ironically I won my mirror match, first game I played well and just pressured him with pack rat and desecration demon. Game 2 he literally took every non-land card from my hand but then flooded out very hard and I rode pack rat to victory.
My first game was against bant control that didn't have sphinx's revelation and i crushed him out pretty hard.
The rakdos midrange i crushed him with 4 removal spells then rode desecration demon to victory and game 2 i misplayed badly and couldnt answer the combination of storm breath dragon, desecration demon, hero's downfall, dreadbore, and devour flesh. Game 3 his creatures were just much bigger than me, he drew enough removal and i drew 3 underworld connections.
Basically I'd like to know the overarching strategies going against the common archetypes of aggro, control, and midrange. Sideboarding has been very hard for me as most of the cards in the main seem relevant against most decks. My deck is very conventional, basically copying andrew tenjum's deck from Cincinnati. I don't really need deck advice since im doing nothing bold with MBD, I just need general advice and sideboarding tips.
Against Junk I brought in whip, erebos, duress. Ajani is very strong and elspeth is difficult to deal with. it seems like they can present strong threats while at the same time answering my most pertinent cards. Just seems very similar to mono black but just a stronger version of it.
Any advice from seasoned MBD players is appreciated. Or junk players that can honestly reveal the weakness in their deck because their doesnt seem to be any.
T2: Pack Rat
In general MBD plays a combination of strong removal, creatures that are strong on their own, repetetive card draw and some hand disruption. Don't be afraid of trading card-for card in aggro and midrange matchup, since you have more card-draw and will eventually win the attrition game. Be very wary of enabling 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 against yourself (i.e., don't go all in on packrat without having looked at your opponents hand with Thoughtseize, some form of backup or a secondary plan, or if you know your opponent isn't playing mass removal). Don't activate mutavault if your opponent is in a position to play removal. Against control it is more important to get Underworld Connections and Erebos to stick than any other spells; so play must-answer creatures like desecration demon etc. to bait out removal and counterspells. The deck is very resilient to mulligans, do not be afraid of going to 5 cards if you have to in order to hit land-drops. Only UW control and esper control in the current standard are slower than MBD; don't be in a rush, your deck does late game very well.
T1: Thoughtseize T2: Pack Rat is very strong in some matchups (G/R Monsters, most aggro decks), but weak in others (mirror, control, any game where the Thoughtseize revealed more than 1 piece of mass removal).
Finally, and this is true for magic in general, some matches are impossible to win. If you don't draw anything but land and your opponent draws perfect answers for example. Do not make too broad conclusions based on a single tournament.
I think my problem is I might be too aggressive, but it feels like when I have 1 removal spell and 3 creatures in my opening hand I'm suppose to be aggressive. I'm never sure when I'm suppose to invest in pack rat, like every card in the deck seems strong in most matchups so it's hard for me to tell what should I be discarding to pack rat. Often it's like I want to keep a removal spell and enough lands so my only options are discarding desecration demons, connections, gray merchants. Like should I make 2 rats so it's too much work to kill them off then start the control role?
I've been playing MBD most of this winter/spring and have tried out red, blue, and white splashes. Some general observations ( which may or may not be helpful, but ):
1.Everybody knows your deck. Mono Black is arguably the strongest and most versatile deck in Standard, and everyone's sideboards are full of their colors' hate cards for it. When you sideboard for game two, keep in mind that the Dark Betrayals, etc. Are being boarded in and change your deck accordingly.
2.Don't overextend with Pack Rat! Almost all of our early, easy wins are on the back of that card and everyone you're playing knows this. It can just as easily be a late-game win when we have plenty of lands and cards to discard to build them up rapidly.
3.Going on from that, aside from those early Pack Rat wins, you're the control deck much of the time. Against every flavor of agro, Blue Devotion, Boros Burn, even Green/Red or Jund Monsters, we are the Control deck, removing their threats while guarding our own or getting card advantage.
4.Pure Mono Black is going to do badly against any deck that mainboards a playset of Blood Baron of Vizkopa. The only thing we can do is Devour Flesh it. You can win, but it's an uphill battle.
Thoughts on the splashes:
Pure Mono Black: the fastest and most efficient. Weak to pro-Black creatures and has no enchantment removal, but if I had no clue about the meta I was stepping into, this would be my choice to play.
B/R : I don't feel that decline in overall speed is worth the two quite interesting sideboard options of Rakdos' Return and Slaughter Games.
B/U : My favorite splash against Control. Far//Away is excellent, and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver can win games and is easily underestimated. Notion Thief is a delightful Sphinx's Revelation hate card, and bothers a number of other decks besides.
B/W : The best against your fellow MBD players! Blood Baron is a Champ, and Elspeth can provide an interesting alternate finisher. So many of these lists are almost another deck entirely, not running devotion cards like Merchant or Erebos: there's an Orzhov Midrange thread that covers these variants quite well.
B/G : I've only played against this deck rather than played it, but I'm not entirely convinced that the green is worth it for just Abrupt Decay and Golgari Charm. Interesting, but as with all the splashes, I find it less consistent.
With Junk, I recommend maxing out on removal and destruction, they are definitely beatable, and the Archangel of Thune lynchpin is remarkably vulnerable to instant-speed removal.
UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU's prison: blue is the new orange is the new black.
Mizzix Of The Izmagnus : wheels on fire... rolling down the road...
BSidisi, Undead VizierB: Bis zum Erbrechen
GTitiania, Protector Of ArgothG: Protecting Argoth, by blowing it up!
GYisan, The Wanderer BardG: Gradus Ad Elfball.
Duel EDH: Yisan & Titania.
In Progress: Grand Arbiter Augustin IV duel; Grenzo, Dungeon Warden Doomsday.
Well, you're a control deck with how much disruption and removal you pack (you're really only the beatdown against U/W/x Control decks), so it's correct to play from the angle of grinding them down before finishing them off. Sometimes you get the 1 removal, 3 creature hand, in which case you have to play your creatures for value rather than aggression. Aside from that, investing in Pack Rat is simply a measure of how likely they are to be able to clear out that investment. If they're running Supreme Verdict, Detention Sphere, Anger of the Gods, etc, then throwing everything into the rat is a poor idea. If they have little to no removal at all, then Pack Rat is likely going to be an unstoppable force. Pitching demons and Lifebanes is usually correct unless you need them for other specific purposes (like Lifebane's exile effect). Remember also that Mutavault pumps your rats, and even two rats plus Mutavault can overrun a deck in short order.
As far as Demon against a deck with mana dorks, it's not as bad as you think. Yes, they can tap the demon down for days, but their threat density is going to be lower as a result of all the mana dorks floating around. Killing their threats means that without a card advantage engine, they're going to be stuck on a board of Elvish Mystics and Sylvan Caryatids, and that's a good board state for you.
Also, if Blood Baron's a big part of your meta, the red splash offers Mizzium Mortars as an easy and fast way to kill it if Thoughtseize/Lifebane can't hit it.
I've also tested the Master of the Feast to great effect. It beats fast so that extra draw is almost irrelevant. Especially with the 2 Whip of Erebos I play (1m/1s).
I'm gonna splash blue for Notion Thief out of the sideboard.
But, as the last poster said, Black Devotion is a control deck.
Modern - Bogle, Infect (hey, i'm new!)
EDH - Prime Speaker Zegana, Reaper King
Standard - MBD, G/b Devotion, Blue Devotion, Boros Burn, BG Dredge, W/G Aggro, Dimir Heroic
ENCHANTMENT AGGRO!
MBD on it's own has too many weaknesses for decks to prey upon. As the previous poster mentioned, bringing pure mono black to a blind meta is sure to rack up a few wins, but I think overall is deals itself so much damage that you end up having a weakness to even a budget version of a fast aggro deck (and there are plenty of them right now). That said, here's my experience with the splashes. I'll start with yours.
Green - How everyone suddenly jumped on this bandwagon is beyond me. Courser, Abrupt Decay, Golgari Charm, Vraska - there is not a single green card I've seen in lists that I'd say I desperately needed in matches where it would have been clutch. Some of these effects are redundant: Decay and Charm hit enchantments, sure. The rest of the functions for it are covered by a phenomenal removal suite already available to us.
Red - Like the poster above, I'm not convinced Rakdos' Return and Slaughter Games SB make enough impact on matchups where the mono black SB doesn't already do well enough itself. Half our board used to/still is dedicated to control matchups, where those two cards really shine.
Blue - I spent a long, long time with this. Ashiok and Notion Thief are remarkable tools for R/G/x Monsters and Esper, but since Esper fell out of favor (I still don't know why that happened, either), I feel it's now a meta call to go this way. It doesn't do much to shore up the hyper aggro matchups, either, which is why I moved to splash white.
White - This is my current list. I've spent weeks tuning it. Athreos and Elspeth went in, then in the board, now out completely. I tinkered with Master of the Feast, decided I didn't like him, dropped him, and so on. It took me a while to get the SB right, but this list won Game Day today:
4 Desecration Demon
4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
4 Nightveil Specter
3 Pack Rat
2 Obzedat, Ghost Council
Spells:
3 Thoughtseize
4 Devour Flesh
4 Hero's Downfall
2 Bile Blight
2 Whip of Erebos
3 Underworld Connections
4 Godless Shrine
4 Temple of Silence
3 Mutavault
2 Mana Confluence
12 Swamp
3 Lifebane Zombie
2 Drown in Sorrow
2 Crypt Incursion
2 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
3 Duress
1 Pithing Needle
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Doom Blade
This was about as tuned to my play style as possible. I didn't go with the 4th Pack Rat or Thoughtseize, I don't use Ultimate Price, no 4th Mutavault, and I felt strong with 1 Obzedat, I felt even stronger with 2. Same story with Whip: I want to see these for the devotion, the lifegain, the graveyard recursion. Throughout 6 rounds today, I pulled every card from my sideboard at least once, so I feel that's a good sign. Crypt Incursion is a HOUSE against graveyard decks and especially hyper aggro, because Demon tap-downs and early removal can lead to a turn 5-6 Crypt Incursion that puts you completely out of their range (12-18 life gain is as good as gg for red even if you're at 3 when you cast it). Blood Baron stresses U/W/x control, as does Duress, Erebos and a well-timed Needle. Bant/Naya Hexproof falls to the high Devour Flesh count, and so on. I considered enchantment hate, which the whole list clearly lacks, but this is the most versatile deck in the format. It can be pure aggro, a touch of control, a reanimator, a midrange...you get the point. With so many ways to a finish, I'd rather not have an enchantment killer in my hand when I just want more gas to keep moving. (I also don't want to rely on digging for a 2-of with Connections to try and find it as an out, I'd just as soon get there first)
So, there's some more thoughts on it.
Wait! What!? I thought Abrupt Decay was tha biggest and tha meanest card and the sole reason to splash green.
It's extremely versatile, sure. But I don't want to splash a color just for another kill spell. We have plenty.