Have you ever stayed up until 1:00 AM brewing a deck for a PTQ that you have to wake up for four hours later and then drive three hours to? And then you get into bed but can’t fall asleep because you’re too excited about the deck that you get to play? So you get back out of bed, don’t even consider putting on pants, and get back to work on the deck. The next time you look at the clock, you see 3:07 AM staring back at you and run to bed, trying to fall asleep as fast as possible like it’s Christmas Eve and presents are awaiting you on the other side of consciousness.

Well, that was my Friday evening.

The funny thing is that this isn’t even an opportunity that should have been presented to me. But Mother Nature is still punishing me for challenging its might the first weekend of the year in Indianapolis. Look here M.N. It’s time to leave me alone. I just want to sit in the booth with PSulli and call some sweet games of Magic, okay?

So about this “brew” that I put together . . .

Jund Monsters

Cedric Phillips

Test deck on 02-17-2014

Standard

Creatures (26)

Planeswalkers (4)

4 Domri Rade

Lands (24)

Spells (6)

4 Mizzium Mortars
2 Dreadbore

Sideboard

I’m a regular Patrick Chapin, aren’t I? I took a stock G/R Monsters decklist, added some black cards, and got really excited about it. I’ve certainly never done anything like this before:

So what problems does adding black solve? A bunch of them actually.

Desecration Demon Is Very Large

Whenever I watch G/R Monsters play against Mono-Black Devotion, it always seems like the last card G/R Monsters wants to show up is a timely Desecration Demon. It’s huge, hard to kill, and changes the way you have to play the game. The answers are few and far between in red and green to kill a Desecration Demon, though they do exist in some fashion:

And while Plummet and Arbor Colossus do handle Desecration Demon in a perfect world, there are a lot of problems in relying on those cards to get the job done. I will ignore the “THOUGHTSEIZE DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUR!” argument because I’ve heard that enough, but the other hand disruption spells that Mono-Black Devotion has access to really do blow up your plans:

Duress is going to be coming in against you because it’s likely that your opponent will believe that your deck is a hybrid of G/R Monsters (which you are to be fair) or Tom Ross’ Jund deck, both of which have a high amount of cards that can be taken via Duress. Lifebane Zombie will also be joining the party because you have plenty of targets for it, it’s unblockable, and as we know from Gitaxian Probe information is crucial.

So why are Dreadbore and the singleton Ultimate Price better? In a word, versatility.

Dreadbore and Ultimate Price are going to be good at just about any point in the game against Mono-Black Devotion. If you happen to peel one of these off the top of your deck, you can point and click it at all of their non Nightveil Specter threats (a card I’m not even sure they want to be leaving in against this type of deck in the first place) and know that it’s going to die. Their mana cost is low enough to be able to interact with an early Pack Rat, and neither card is situational (Plummet text is the definition of situational) or needs to stay alive for a turn to get the job done (monstrosity on Arbor Colossus).

The other unique way that you can take care of Desecration Demon is with Domri Rade’s fight ability + Reaper of the Wilds after a deathtouch activation. That combo might seem like wishful thinking, but it isn’t as hard to set up as you think. And your reward of a dead 6/6 flier and a scry 1 is well worth it.

Master Of Waves Is A Real Jerk

Kent Ketter filled in for The Industry Standard last week after his finals appearance in Nashville, and after his loss to Eric Gray playing Mono-Blue Devotion, he said the following:

“Mono-Blue Devotion is a horrible matchup so accounting for that is a useless exercise.”

And while I believe that to be true for straight G/R due to once again a lack of options within those two colors, I’m inclined to believe that black can turn the matchup from hopeless to competitive. Dreadbore won’t solve the Master of Waves problem, but it does do cleanup on just about everything else Mono-Blue Devotion has to offer. As far as addressing Master of Waves goes, Polukranos, World Eater has always done a nice job of that as long as Rapid Hybridization or Cyclonic Rift isn’t involved, but the sideboard options are what I’m more excited about:

Here we see Ultimate Price rearing its ugly head again as an answer to a major problem, but it’s Golgari Charm that’s truly interesting. It’s -1/-1 mode trades with Master of Waves with the potential for even more, the ability to kill an enchantment means that Bident of Thassa is on lock (it isn’t a guarantee that your opponent will have it in their deck after sideboard of course), and the regeneration mode lets you both win in combat if it comes up. Which conveniently leads to my next point:

Having A Real Sideboard Is Really Nice

Compare the following two sideboards.

Sideboard #1:

Sideboard #2:

The first is what Ketter used to make the finals in Nashville while the second is what I used to scrub out of a PTQ, so if you’re just into results you can erase mine from your memory, copy and paste Kent’s, and move on with your life. But there are a few things worth noting here.

Every card that Kent has in his sideboard is one that I could play. As obvious as that may be, that’s actually a strength because I’m not losing out on anything by adding a color. You’ll see that I adopted Gruul Charm and Ruric Thar, the Unbowed from Ketter’s sideboard, but the rest of his cards aren’t any that I was terribly impressed with during deckbuilding. I’ve already covered Plummet and Arbor Colossus, two cards that feel like necessary evils at best. Unravel the Aether; Xenagos, the Reveler; Mistcutter Hydra; and Flesh // Blood are all fine cards, but I’m not especially excited to have access to any of them for 66% of my tournament.

I’ve always had a pretty strong philosophy about sideboard cards:

They need to have a large impact when drawn.
They need to have an effect on multiple matchups.
If they don’t have an effect on multiple matchups, their narrowness needs to be rewarded (think Engineered Plague against Goblins).

By adding black, I was able to check off all of those boxes. I’d say the lowest-impact cards in my sideboard are the two I’ve talked about the most, Dreadbore and Ultimate Price. Golgari Charm and Gruul Charm are always going to be high impact and have cross applications because they’re three cards in one. And while Xenagos, God of Revels; Rakdos’s Return; and Ruric Thar, the Unbowed are narrow, their impact against Sphinx’s Revelation decks is large, and ignoring Dissolve a single card doesn’t simply handle all three.

For example, Detention Sphere takes care of Xenagos, but they probably took some damage beforehand. It also takes care of Ruric Thar, but at a pretty heavy cost. And it does nothing about Rakdos’s Return, a card that has been talked about at length by numerous people recently but isn’t seeing a lot of play because it really doesn’t have a home.

In any given tournament, you play more games with your sideboard than without it. As such, you should have an awesome one, and I think adding black allows you to do that.

So you’re probably wondering how I did in the tournament. After winning my first round against G/R Monsters, I lost two very close matches to G/R Devotion and U/W Control with a small touch of black (I wouldn’t call it Esper Control given what I saw in our two very long games). No noise was made in my one PTQ of this Standard season, but I walked away from three rounds of competition with a very good feeling about what I brought to the table. Here’s what I took away from the tournament.

I got to see a staggering amount of cards per game. Between five scry lands, Courser of Kruphix, Domri Rade, and Reaper of the Wilds, I got to see far too many cards per game for a deck that doesn’t have a single card with the text “draw a card.” An aggressive deck doing that blew me away and means that I can construct the deck with more one-, two-, and three-ofs throughout the 75 moving forward because it’s very likely that I will see them in a given game.
Xenagos, God of Revels is a psychotic card. It makes everything unrealistically large and turns Ghor-Clam Rampager from a very good card to a great one. I don’t think you can play a ton of them because it’s a five-mana card that’s poor in multiples, but boy is the first one good.
Reaper of the Wilds is very well positioned in this format, and it impressed me every single time I played it. Dodging removal is easy to do right now without the hexproof activation given what decks are currently playing.
Courser of Kruphix didn’t blow me away, but that’s because my expectations were probably too high. One thing it did allow me to do was play twelve shock lands with almost no punishment whatsoever. That alone probably makes it more than good enough. I wouldn’t recommend cutting them or anything but to temper your expectations of the card.
I’m still deciding between 23 and 24 lands. Mana flood was an issue I was concerned about, but I built the deck with plenty of ways to take advantage of extra mana (monstrosity on Stormbreath Dragon and Polukranos, Reaper of the Wilds’ activated abilities, overloading Mizzium Mortars, large Rakdos’s Returns, enough lands to abuse Courser of Kruphix). I’m sticking with 24 right now while I familiarize myself more with the deck.
It’s nice not to care about a lot of the popular cards in the format. Archangel of Thune; Brimaz, King of Oreskos; and Desecration Demon are wildly popular cards that you have a lot of answers to.
Dreadbore is good for the exact same reasons as Hero’s Downfall while being a mana cheaper, which leads to the ability to play two spells in one turn more often. It was incredible for me all day long.

My current form of this deck needs work. I’ll be the first to admit that, as coming out with a perfect product after five hours of work isn’t even close to realistic. But I’m extremely confident that the concept is a good one and one that I’m intimately familiar with. It’s something I’ll be working on for the next few weeks on stream, and I’m excited to be excited about a deck that doesn’t involve Karn Liberated for once.

Don’t even think about Dreadboreing me.

So what’s next for me? Patrick Sullivan and I will be in St. Louis for the Open Series this weekend barring any weather problems. After that, we’ll be running it back in Atlanta before I head to Grand Prix Richmond to check out some sweet Modern action with Matthias Hunt and Patrick Chapin. As many of you know, Modern is my favorite format due to my unhealthy addiction to all things Tron related. But since I can’t be out there competing with my favorite nonbasic lands, I’m going to be sending one of you to do it for me.

[Editor’s Note: No, that isn’t a typo.]

Beginning today, you can enter a contest for me to fly you to Grand Prix Richmond to play in the tournament for me. I’ve got your airfare covered, and your entrance fee into the tournament will be taken care of by the good people at StarCityGames.com, where you’ll be given the VIP Package. The only thing you have to do is get a place to sleep. To find out more about places to go horizontal and the tournament in general, head this way.

Unfortunately, this contest is only available to those in the continental United States and Canada, but assuming this one gets some interest, I’ll see what I can do about opening up to those around the world if I ever do another one of these promotions again.

Entrance into the contest ends on Monday, February 24 at 11:59 PM PST. The drawing and announcing of the winner will take place on my stream on Tuesday, February 25 at 6:30 PM PST (at random of course). If you can’t tune in, I’ll be sure to tweet it, make it my Facebook status, Instagram it, Pinterest it, Google Plus+ it, put it on my Tumblr that will never exist, and make it my top friend on Myspace.

2014 has been a pretty crazy year in Magic already. Lots of things have changed. Most have stayed the same. I can’t put into words how much your support and loyalty has meant to me, and this is just one of the ways that I hope to give back.

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