Much Abrew About Nothing: Demonic Tentacles
Hello everyone! Welcome to the new and improved Much Abrew About Nothing. We've started doing Instant Deck Techs every day on the YouTube channel, with the idea being that whichever deck is most popular will get made into videos each week! I decided that the easiest way to feature the winning deck would be to play the matches under the Much Abrew About Nothing banner. This change does not mean we'll only see Instant Deck Tech decks on Much Abrew, but it does mean we'll be getting an episode of Much Abrew About Nothing at least once each week on Sunday nights! This weeks winner? UB Demonic Pact ("Demonic Tentacles") in Standard!
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Demonic Tentacles: Instant Deck Tech
Demonic Tentacles vs Naya Superfriends
Demonic Tentacles vs GB Aristocrats
Demonic Tentacles vs Abzan Seasons
Demonic Tentacles Wrap Up
Thoughts
- First off, the deck is quite spicy and has game in a lot of matchups. Having a bunch of main deck discard helps against control and ample removal gives us a shot against aggro. While I don't think we auto-win any matchup, it feels like we have a shot against pretty much everything except for Goggles Ramp.
- The actual combo of Crush of Tentacles to bounce Demonic Pact (with Dark Petition holding everything together) is very strong in the late game. While I'm not sure it's quite as unbeatable as the Dark Petition/Seasons Past loop, it's almost always going to get the job done.
- There are a couple of problems with Demonic Pact. First, it can be pretty slow. Against aggro and faster midrange decks it's really hard to tap out on turn four for an enchantment that doesn't do anything until the following upkeep. Second, Nahiri, the Harbinger is on the rise in Standard, and Demonic Pact matches up incredibly poorly with the planeswalker. Spending four mana for a Demonic Pact only to have the opponent play a Nahiri, the Harbinger is really, really bad, especially considering that the Nahiri, the Harbinger stays around with enough loyalty to exile our next Demonic Pact as well.
- For me, there were two big questions for this deck. First, is playing Demonic Pact and Crush of Tentacles better than playing a straightforward UB Control deck with creatures or planeswalkers as the finisher? Second, since this deck operates in a space very similar to the Esper Superfriends list that's been gaining in popularity recently, is there a good reason to play Demonic Tentacles over Esper Superfriends? I don't have a very good answer to either of these questions. In a lot of ways Demonic Pact feels like a planeswalkers with the upside of not dying to creature beats or burn spells, but the downside of randomly killing you when things go wrong. Either way, Demonic Tentacles is certainly more interesting than Esper Superfriends, and it is good enough to win games, so I think it's worth testing out if your interested in the archetype and enjoy control decks with sweet combo finishes.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. Make sure to tune in all next week for more Instant Deck Techs and vote for your favorite by liking, subscribing, and commenting on the videos page on the YouTube channel. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter at SaffronOlive, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.