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Much Abrew About Nothing: Mono-Red Devotion (Modern)


Hello, everyone! Welcome to the new and improved Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week, we had two Instant Deck Techs that battled it out for the title of most popular and the opportunity to be made into videos: Mono-Red Devotion in Modern and Oops! All Spells! in Legacy. In the end, Mono-Red Devotion came out on top, but there was a lot of confusion about exactly how the voting process works. So today, before we get to the videos, I wanted to take a minute to talk about the Instant Deck Tech voting. 

First off, I always say "the most popular deck of the week" will get made into videos. Well, the Much Abrew About Nothing week runs from Wednesday through the following Tuesday because I need a bit of lead time to record and edit the videos. So, one "week" of videos is Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday; then, whichever video is most popular on Wednesday night "wins" for the week. Second, the voting itself is complicated. Basically, I look at how many views, likes, comments, and subscriptions each video gets. On most weeks, we have one Instant Deck Tech that is clearly the winner, but every once in a while, things become a bit muddled, and in situations where the numbers of views, likes, and subscriptions are similar, I tend to use the number of comments as the tiebreaker. Anyway, hopefully this clears up the confusion. 

Let's get to the videos, but first a quick reminder. If you enjoy the Much Abrew About Nothing series and the other video content on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish YouTube Channel to keep up on all the latest and greatest.

Mono-Red Devotion: Instant Deck Tech

Mono-Red Devotion vs. WB Enchantments

Mono-Red Devotion vs. Grixis Delver

Mono-Red Devotion vs. Affinity

Mono-Red Devotion vs. 8 Rack

Mono-Red Devotion vs. Esper Control

Mono-Red Devotion Wrap Up

Thoughts

  • First off, this deck is infuriating. The amount of variance is literally off the chart. When the deck is good, it's really good, but when the deck is bad, it's incredibly bad. 
  • Most of the variance comes from Leyline of Lightning and Leyline of Punishment. Both of these cards do nothing, or close to nothing, with the exception of adding Red mana symbols to power up Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx on Turn 3, which means that they are horrible if we don't have a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, when we don't have them in our opening hand, and when we draw them at any point in the game. The one time they are not horrible is when we have one or two in our opening hand, along with two Mountains, one Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, and one or two big threats. In these scenarios, they are legitimately great. 
  • Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is the single most important card in the deck. When we have one, we are favored to win, but when we don't, we often struggle to do anything relevant and tend to be too slow to compete. 
  • Figure of Destiny and Kargan Dragonlord are perfect examples of the importance of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. When we have a copy of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, we generate enough mana to level them up super fast and win the game. When we don't have a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, they are underpowered and super slow. 
  • Heading into the matches, I thought that Chancellor of the Forge would be horrible. The 1/1 Goblin is hardly ever relevant, and we don't usually have enough creatures to abuse the "make a 1/1 Goblin token for each creature you control" enters the battlefield ability. In the end, it was slightly better than I thought, but I still think that there has to be something better to play in the slot. I'm just not 100% sure what. 
  • Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon are still great ways to steal a game, and there is probably an argument that some number should be in the main deck. 
  • All in all, we went 3-2 with the deck, but none of the matches were close. We either absolutely crushed the opponent or got crushed. While I think Mono-Red Devotion is fun, unique, and interesting, I have a hard time imagining tournament success, simply because the insane amount of variance is going to cause at least a couple of match losses over the course of a fifteen-round event. 

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's Much Abrew About Nothing deck by liking, subscribing, and commenting on Instant Deck Tech videos! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive, or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.



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