If you remember a few weeks ago I wrote a rather extensive piece on Black Green Hexproof. I had worked on the deck for the MOCS prelims and while I was paired against the decks that I built Hexproof to do well against, I bombed out of the event. Sometimes you put in a lot of hard work and fail. The important part about failing is picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and realizing that it's a game, it's okay, someone has to lose, and that weekend it just happened to be me.



Not a big deal. Pick myself up, dust myself off and figure out where I went wrong. The idea behind Black Green Hexproof was simple. Make the Mono Black Control match up one that you wanted to face, and still have good game against Mono Blue Devotion. At the time those two decks were running rampant on MTGO. Recently they finished first and second at Grand Prix Breaking Bad...er. Albuquerque. Owen Turtenwald is a master, and winning his second Grand Prix in a row is no small feat. Beating another master in Sam Pardee, Owen and Sam showed that Mono Black and Mono Blue Devotion are still the top standard decks. Of course this same weekend Matt Costa won the Starcity Open with a new take on an old favorite, Jund Midrange. Outside of the Burn deck that has sprung up on MTGO ( Seriously, Toil and Trouble is in this deck and it is a thing of beauty.) my testing showed that I was a slight favorite in two of the three matchups that I cared about. Esper of course was problematic, but I tested well against all flavors of Mono Color Devotion, Mono Red Aggro, Kibler Black Green and Green White. Sometimes an early Desecration Demon would get there, sometimes Dreg Mangler would mangle faces. I was winning a lot more than I was losing.



Then things changed. MTGO lost Daily Events. They took down everything that I cared to play in and while I am glad they are coming back soon, I had two options to play. I'd play in queues, or drafts. I'm cash strapped at the moment, so drafts are out of the question. Two man queues however, are pretty perfect for what I want to do with magic since I am not on the QP grind anymore. They also stream well. I've been streaming every weekday (the weekends are for football!) for two hours in the morning before I put the finishing touches on the days content for PureMTGO.com.



The thing is I was losing my touch on magic. Since they took down daily events I was unable to study the metagame and make tweaks to the deck as I played it day by day. I also started to play a ton of Pauper. The huge blow came though as I went 1-4 in a stream with my beloved Hexproof deck. I had a pack to my name and needed a winning streak badly.



Around that same time we had a new writer come to the site and write about UG Devotion. To be honest, I had be bugging kriskurse for a while to write for us. He's a smart kid, and I met him at a local gaming store. He clearly wanted to get better at the game, and we would bounce deck ideas off of each other. I saw his article, watched his videos and was pretty impressed with his efforts. In fact the article got around 3000 hits. That's pretty remarkable stuff there!



Gage, as I'll call him from this point out is a talented young player that wants to get better, so I approached him with an idea. My idea would be very similar to what Starcity does. We would create an article series, call it PureMTGO Throwdown, and highlight our two decks in action. We worked out a time and schedule to record the matches, made a ton of videos but I was apprehensive about it. I did not want to talk so much about my deck and then get blown out. I kept losing though. It was driving me nuts. So I went through my past articles, saw my sideboarding guidelines, and realized something. Desecration Demon was coming out in a lot of matchups. That got the gears in my head spinning. Did that mean demon was not right in the deck? On top of that I was having mana issues, were the Mutavaults already too much for this two color deck to support? I poured over reddit comments on my deck, I looked at Kiblers Black Green for inspiration, and much like Miley Cyrus, I decided to take a wrecking ball to the entire thing.

Out went Demon. Mutavaults were cut. Ultimate Price was gone. Thoughtseize was discarded. The sideboard was revamped. I kept the core of the deck together, be good against Mono Blue and Mono Black Devotion, and have game against the other decks in the format in game one. I'd fix the Esper and Blue White matchup in the sideboard.



I started to win again. And win a lot. It's time to show off the new list. After the list is posted I will show the change log of what went out and what went in, for both the sideboard and main deck.



Change Log

Maindeck



Out: 4 Desecration Demon, 2 Ultimate Price, 2 Mutavault, 2 Thoughtseize

In: 3 Pack Rat, 2 Putrefy 2 Forest 2 Shadowborn Demon, 1 Reaper of the Wilds



Why did I make the maindeck changes? Demon was getting sided out in a majority of matchups. He was bad against Pack Rat, bad against Master of Waves, and not the best against other aggro decks. Ultimate Price came out because there has been a rise in artifacts seeing maindeck play. Mutavault was very stressful on the manabase, and still is, so it may get cut more. Thoughtseize came out because this is not the deck that wants four of them main due to the metagame, we already have plenty of reactive answers and I wanted to add more of those instead of proactive answers.



With those ten slots open I needed something resilient but could end the game quickly. Enter Pack Rat. An unanswered rat ends the game pretty quickly. Putrefy was a reddit suggestion. It hits the same things that Ultimate Price hit, and goes further. The extra mana to kill an artifact or a Boros Reckoner made this a no brainer. Shadowborn Demon is flying removal and plays well with our rat. Reaper of the Wilds is just too good to be a two of. It was time to bump that guy up.



Sideboard



Out: 2 Lifebane Zombie, 1 Mistcutter Hydra

In: 2 Fade into Antiquity, 1 Thoughtseize



Why did I make the sideboard changes? Lifebane Zombie was not pulling it's weight. It was there as a way to deal with Blood Baron, but it just was not good enough. I took out a Mistcutter Hydra because the blue matchup was good enough. Fade came into the board because I wanted answers to gods. The third Thoughtseize seemed to be a natural fit there.



The remaining questions I have about the deck require more testing. Deathrite Shaman is coming out in a lot of matchups and the Mutavaults may not be needed at all. Just may be greed on both counts there.



I've written 1400 words it's time to see the battle.



Preview Video



Match 1



Match 2



Match 3



Match 4



Match 5



Final Thoughts.



I hope you all enjoyed the game play videos. I also hope that this becomes a regular feature on MTGO, so if you want to take part in PureMTGO Throwdowns, send me a tweet or a message in game, or an email.



Finally, I want to share something with you all. As you all know, I've been very sick recently. I've made several lifestyle changes, because I'm fat, sick, and tired of not living a normal life. I am tracking my lifestyle changes to see how things are going, and exercising on a daily basis. I need motivation though, so it would help me a lot if you all would check out my blog that is devoted to living off of a plant based diet, exercise and ending my smoking habit. You can check it out here.



Anyways, rejoice daily events will be back soon, and MTGO will be more than queues again! Enjoy the game, and if you have any comments, questions, suggestions, or constructive criticism, please leave a comment below.



Until next time!



@Joshuaclaytor

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