Historic 101: Mono Black Devotion
We're going to party like Mono Black devotion never went out of style as we just got Phyrexian Obliterator and having the four pips to add to our devotion count will be huge as it'll make a Gray Merchant of Asphodel hit for six! Our only hopes are to try to dodge Yorion piles as they go way bigger than us. Here's the list we went with.
Gameplan
We're a midrange deck that is looking to curve out and ride the pressure of our early threats like Knight of the Ebon Legion with Gray Merchant of Asphodel being our closer. Although, some games we may not even need to use "Gary" as our sweet new defensive wall can close games out on its own...
With Phyrexian Obliterator aggro decks are now forced to find some way to interact or go so wide that you can sacrifice all your lands and just close the game. In order to prevent the latter from happening, we'll pack removal to slow them down as we have cards like Murderous Rider and Drag to the Underworld. Outside of interaction, aggro decks will have to stall for a while to build a board and the loss of tempo will swing the game heavily in our favor as we get ever closer to a Gary. With how aggressive the Gruul decks are, this is a welcomed addition to historic. Though Obliterator is probably one of our best cards in an aggro matchup, it is absolutely terrible against Teferi, Time Raveler and decks that have hard removal.
With how slow our deck is, it will be hard to stack up against Yorion decks but if we are to get there, it's going to be heavily reliant on Gray Merchant of Asphodel to close out the last bit of damage. I'm not sure how we can tune the deck to beat the Yorion decks in mono-black but this is the perfect deck to play when you expect to hit an aggro pocket somewhere on the ladder.
As for the other spells in the deck, I've left Pack Rat out of the main deck as it feels too slow and just isn't the powerhouse it used to be. In its place, I added Yarok's Fenlurker and Tymaret, Chosen From Death as they add more to our devotion and have more applications attacking our opponent's hand and graveyard. And what do we do once we've attacked our opponent's hand and stripped them of resources? We don't have Underworld Connections, but that's okay because we have something better...
With Phyrexian Arena we can continue to refuel our hand while also adding to devotion which is huge. Narset, Parter of Veils is a card that is currently in the meta so I haven't loaded the deck with a full play set and because Gruul and Obosh Red would gladly welcome the free damage but that could change as Historic will be bound for a big shakeup.
Conclusion
In the video, we got the right set of matches and only saw Yorion once. We got the five wins which is nice. Our deck definitely did work against all the aggro decks. Ratchet Bomb felt amazing and is still a card I think almost every deck can run a few copies of somewhere in their 75. I know I'm respecting aggro by not playing too many Phyrexian Arenas but I think that's incorrect as it's the only way we can keep up in the grindy matchups. I'd also like to add one more Bolas' Citadel in the sideboard. The updated list would probably look like this...
I think Noxious Grasp and Heartless Act's stock might've gone up as Winota is starting to get popular in Historic and it's essential we have a way to deal with Winota and all of their non-human threats immediately. If Haktos, the Unscarred proves to be difficult, we could start trying other removal spells like Erebos' Intervention to adjust the mana cost so it can meet the requirement to kill Haktos or just add more sweepers. Either way, Mono Black is a lot of fun and gaining Obliterator has been a blast. May you dodge all the Justice Strikes when you queue!
As always, thanks for watching. See ya at the next one!
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-Your Friendly Neighborhood AsianAvenger
Twitter: @TheAsianAvenger || Twitch: twitch.tv/TheAsianAvenger || Email: theasianavenger@mtggoldfish.com
