Gary’s Back! Exploring Mono-Black Devotion In Theros Beyond Death Standard

Back when Theros was initially released, most players dismissed Mono-Black Devotion, since it seemed like the payoffs for committing heavily to black simply weren’t there. With blue, you had Master of Waves and Thessa, God of the Sea; with red, you had Purphoros, God of the Forge and Burning-Tree Emissary-fueled Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx turns. With black, what was your reward? Erebos, God of the Dead just didn’t seem good enough.

It was Kentarou Yamomoto who showed the world that Mono-Black Devotion was also a viable path when he Top 8’ed Pro Tour Theros with it. His devotion cards? One Erebos, God of the Dead; one Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx; and four Gray Merchant of Asphodel.

After its debut, the deck evolved and became one of the three pillars of Theros Standard, alongside Mono-Blue Devotion and Esper Control. Throughout the entirety of its existence, the main devotion card in the deck was always Gray Merchant of Asphodel — a card that has now been reprinted!

Gray Merchant is a card that serves many purposes in a deck — it can kill your opponent without ever needing an attack phase (especially in multiples) and it can gain enough life to give you time to stabilize. The one thing it doesn’t do is provide any sort of card advantage or win the game by itself. For example, if you trade all your resources one-for-one and your big finish is a Gray Merchant of Asphodel on an empty battlefield, that’s not going to take you very far. 

In Theros Standard, the key card to pair with Gray Merchant was Underworld Connections. Underworld Connections added to your devotion and gave you more cards at the cost of life, which is exactly what Gray Merchant needed, since it both wants you to have a lot of permanents and can gain your life back. For Gray Merchant to be a powerful card in this new Standard format, we need to pair it with a new Underworld Connections.

I don’t think we’re getting an Underworld Connections reprint (though one can hope), but luckily we have a card that serves a similar role in Standard — Bolas’s Citadel. Bolas’s Citadel has extremely strong synergy with Gray Merchant — it’s a powerful card to buy time towards, it adds triple devotion, and it helps turning life into cards at a great rate. If you have Bolas’s Citadel on the battlefield and you hit Gray Merchant off it, it’s at least going to be a free card, and at best it’s going to fuel many more cards that turn, potentially leading into a win right there and then if you hit a second Gray Merchant. 

Another card that will be essential to fueling Gray Merchant is Castle Locthwain. It’s certainly much pricier than Underworld Connections, both in terms of mana and life, but the ability to trade life for cards is very valuable when you have Gray Merchant in your deck, even if the rate isn’t the best.

Now that we have a card that both enables and makes good use of Gray Merchant’s ability, we can start building the surroundings to make sure we have enough devotion. Here’s a non-comprehensive list of cards that catch my eye with multiple black symbols in their mana costs:

Last time around, Mono-Black Devotion didn’t actually have a BB-costed two-drop, so it’s certainly not a requirement to have one, but it would be a nice complement to the deck (especially if we consider we’re very likely to get at least another playable card with devotion to black). Yarok’s Fenlurker isn’t the most powerful of cards, but if you’re looking for a reasonable effect that leaves behind two pips of devotion, then it will get the job done. It’s especially good with another double-black card, Rankle, Master of Pranks, since the discard adds up and it gives you a free body to sacrifice. 

That said, if we get a new black two-drop that only has one black symbol in it, that’s probably going to be an upgrade over the Fenlurker, as one devotion isn’t going to be enough to justify a meaningful downgrade in your creatures (the previous version of the deck played Pack Rat, for example).

Ayara can be a strong card, but it likely needs more support from your deck — you probably shouldn’t play it as a stand-alone three-drop like people played Nightveil Specter. Still, the life draining adds up, and it makes it much more likely that a Gray Merchant kills your opponent. I’m especially interested in this if you pair it with the Cauldron Familiar + Witch’s Oven combo, as the Cauldron Familiar is prime sacrificing fodder and triggers the enters-the-battlefield effect of Ayara repeatedly. 

This one is a no-brainer; the ability to get two devotion out of our removal spell is incredible and something the previous versions of Mono-Black Devotion didn’t have access to. I’d be surprised if there were any decks with Gray Merchant and without Murderous Rider. 

Blood Operative isn’t good enough right now, but I mention it because Theros Beyond Death is going to have escape, an ability that works from the graveyard. Given enough incentive to maindeck graveyard hate, Blood Operative can actually become a valid option as a three-drop. If you have your own Escape cards, using cards with surveil (such as Discovery // Dispersal) also becomes more appealing, and then Blood Operative can be returned. It might never become good enough, but it’s an interesting card to keep in mind. 

I would never maindeck Ashiok, Dream Render right now, but, similarly to Blood Operative, it’s a valid option if escape proves to be powerful enough, as it’s both hoser for their escape cards and enabler for yours.

If you have enough cheap creatures to reliably trigger spectacle, Spawn of Mayhem is a good three-drop to follow Gray Merchant. However, I would estimate that Spawn of Mayhem is a little too much on the aggressive side and the best Mono-Black Devotion decks are more hybrid in nature; I really want to play Bolas’s Citadel and I don’t see Citadel and Spawn of Mayhem in the same deck.

It’s not that aggro devotion can’t work. It’s just that, if you’re an aggressive deck with Gray Merchant, your opponent has a clear path to beating you (they kill all your creatures), whereas if you’re more of a hybrid deck, suddenly one-for-one’ing you over and over is not a winning strategy anymore, so if they play to beat Gray Merchant they’ll lose to the rest of your deck. It’s certainly possible that there are enough good aggressive black cards that an aggro version is doable, though. 

Oathsworn Knight is also another potential three-drop for more aggressive styles of Mono-Black Devotion — it has two black mana symbols and the fact that you have Gray Merchants in your deck means they can’t just take the damage forever. That said, Spawn of Mayhem is probably a better three-drop if you can enable it and are mono-black.

I love Rankle, and I think it combines pretty well with Gray Merchant, as both paying life to dig for cards and hitting them for chunks of damage is something you want to do when you’re about to drain them for a lot. The sacrifice ability is a bit counterproductive to establishing a lot of devotion on the battlefield, but you aren’t forced to use it and when you use it it’s still going to be good.

Of all the black hybrid cards we currently have, Deathless Knight is by far the best. It’s got a full four mana symbols and a reasonable body against a control deck, and a Gray Merchant deck will invariably have several ways of bringing it back if it dies — at least Gray Merchant itself and the lifelink from Murderous Rider, and potentially more. Having a couple of Deathless Knights could mean an almost infinite supply of black devotion for your Gray Merchants. 

Cavalier of Night is a great triple-devotion card, but it’s also another five-drop, which competes with Gray Merchant; ideally your devotion enablers come down earlier in the curve. That said, I can see a deck that plays some Cavaliers in addition to Gray Merchants. 

Doom Whisperer is also good with Gray Merchant (you can dig for more Gray Merchants and just chain them off), but it’s also a five-drop to compete with it.

Gray Merchant has a powerful enters-the-battlefield trigger, and as such it’s appealing to try to find ways to trigger it repeatedly. Theros Standard had Whip of Erebos and current Standard will have The Cauldron of Eternity. It’s obviously a much less powerful card overall, and you can’t just throw it into a deck with no concern for what else is in there, but it’s possible there is a deck built with The Cauldron of Eternity in mind and then this deck could want Gray Merchant, but it really has to be a dedicated self-mill deck for it to work, because if you cast Gray Merchant and it dies naturally (which is the most common play pattern), it doesn’t work with the Cauldron unless the Cauldron isn’t on the battlefield yet. 

There are also other ways to re-trigger Gray Merchant that aren’t permanents (and as such don’t add to your devotion). The three best ways seem to be Command the Dreadhorde, Blood for Bones, and Witch’s Cottage.

Command the Dreadhorde is potentially a very powerful combo with Gray Merchants, as it brings back the Merchants themselves and the other permanents to trigger them for very high amounts. It does take a lot of life to work with to start, but if you’ve cast Gray Merchants throughout the game, then maybe you have this life to spare. For example, imagine you cast Command the Dreadhorde and return two Gray Merchants of Asphodel and two Yarok’s Fenlurkers — it costs fourteen life to do that, but you’re going to end up draining for sixteen when all is said and done, so all it requires is that you’re able to afford the down payment. Add another two black mana symbols in there and your opponent is just dead.

The main issue with Command the Dreadhorde is that it costs the same as Bolas’s Citadel, so I think you basically need to choose one to play (though you could sideboard the other) and I believe Citadel is likely to be better, as all it requires is a lot of life, as opposed to a lot of life and previous setup. Citadel also does something when you’re at two life (at least it clears away lands and adds to devotion), and Command the Dreadhorde does nothing. 

The other option, Blood for Bones, is way less flashy, yet also acceptable. You get to reset a Gray Merchant trigger if it’s on the battlefield, and you potentially get another one in your hand as a bonus. 

Then, there’s Witch’s Cottage, which works extremely well with Bolas’s Citadel. Witch’s Cottage has been a somewhat underplayed card so far, as there’s been no deck for it, but I believe with Gray Merchant it might finally see the light of day.

So, in the end, how do we build the deck? Here are some options:

This is a “plain” Mono-Black Devotion deck; I’d like to have a secondary removal spell to complement Murderous Rider but right now there aren’t many good options, so you can rely on blocking with Blacklance Paragon.

Another option is an approach that incorporates the Cat-Oven combo:

This deck has fewer disruptive elements and is a bit worse at getting devotion, but its alternate plan with Cauldron Familiar, Witch’s Oven, and Midnight Reaper can be quite strong, and it’s overall cheaper, which makes Castle Locthwain a little better. 

Theros Standard showed us that Gray Merchant of Asphodel is already enough payoff to justify a Mono-Black Devotion deck even if there’s nothing else, but of course this doesn’t have to be the case. It’s very likely that we get both more devotion enablers and devotion payoff in Theros Beyond Death, and, if we do, I look forward to seeing what Gray Merchant can accomplish in this new format.