Back to the Drawing Board: Devoted to Standard II

by rayjinn

Born of the gods has been in standard for over a week now. With little changes to the format, players are looking more for slight improvements to their pre-BNG decks. A big complaint was that the Mono-blue Devotion deck got nothing in BNG, I for one disagree.

In my first edition of "Devoted to Standard" I've talked about the value of adding a color to Mono-blue Devotion and fixing troublesome matchups. (the article can be found Here.) I'm doing a follow up on that article because we now have access to Temple of Enlightenment which gives us reliable white mana and a new set of tools.



Finally! The second source of UW mana.



Let me start with the elephant in the room. Yes, the Temple of Enlightenment has also improved our weakest matchup UW control. This deck is a real predator and we are their favorite snack. Between Supreme Verdicts and +1 -ing their Jace, Architect of Thought, they will use spot removal to break our devotion and then casually slam down an Elspeth, Sun's Champion or Archangel of Thune. The Soldier of the Pantheon in their sideboard is quite annoying too since it nullifies our two drops. Oh! Did I mention that they also play Detention Sphere?

And then there's this second elephant. Well it's more of a rat really. It's Mono-black Devotion. Their gains from Born of the Gods is just one card: Bile Blight, which is pretty good against us to be fair. In the past some Mono-black Devotion would have a hard time removing our Nightveil Specter. They would sometimes hold an awkward combination of Doom Blade and Ultimate Price and not be able to remove the specter. Those days are over unfortunately. Traditionally, Mono-blue devotion is a good race for any army of Pack Rats depending on who draws first. The Desecration Demon can be trouble if you don't have a Rapid Hybridization or Master of Waves for it. Their Nightveil Specter and sometimes Lifebane Zombies are great Domestication targets or a pain in the butt to bypass. The hardest challenge when facing the Mono-black Devotion deck is to not run out of gas. Underworld Connections will draw into so much removal and discard, that your plan of attack will be heavily interrupted.

The "Tech"

I like Mono-blue Devotion because it wins against R/G monsters and Mono-red. These decks will make a huge march into standard after Born of the Gods and will overrun Mono-black Devotion and UW control.

Apart from the before mentioned UW and Mono-black Devotion, I think Mono-blue is the best deck in standard after BNG if you add some solutions to the sideboard. Let's take look at some of the improvements when you have access to white mana.

"The List"

In the list you will notice two other cards as one-offs. They do not impact troublesome matchups but they have their use. Realmwright is in the deck as a one-drop, replacing a Judge's Familiar. Realmwright allows your manabase a little more flexibility. If you don't have a white source, you can turn your lands into Plains with it. If you do have the one white source you need, you can turn your Mutavaults and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx into blue mana producing lands to get a turn three Nightveil Specter with a Mutavault in play. There's only one Realmwright in the deck because drawing two wouldn't make any sense.



Ephara, God of the Polis is the third Bident of Thassa and looks like a better card to grind out the heavy removal matches. Before BNG Jace, Architect of Thought had that role. I keep saying that Jace isn't good enough in the deck and I'm very happy with a replacement for that slot. It's another point of devotion that can't easily be removed. The upside of Ephara, God of the Polis is that the creature doesn't have to live and connect in combat to gain card advantage. If you're living in the dream of win-more-lalaland, you can even use Aetherling and Ephara to draw a card every turn.

When to play this deck

I can see this deck becoming huge when you're playing field consist of R/G Monsters, Mono-black Devotion and Red deck wins.

Key signals for taking up the deck is when a red deck makes top8 in a recent important standard event. People will overplay those decks due to budgetary reasons. But you might as well start playing UW devotion before then to get some experience with it.

Well, that's it for now. I hope you like the improvements to an already proven archetype. As always if you feel blasphemized by the changes, speak your mind in the comments. The chances of me agreeing with you are worse than winning the lottery, but it's fun to read them.

All jokes aside, I love your comments and words of appreciation.

Until next time, thanks for reading "Back to the drawing board"

Rayjinn on MTGO