Much Abrew: Anti-Venom Mono-White Devotion (Historic)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer (or, since we're playing on Arena today, Verilax the Havenskin) is one of the most interesting cards from Spider-Man. The five-mana 5/5 not only prevents all damage dealt to it and converts it into +1/+1 counters, but it even reanimates something when it enters! The only problem with Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer is that it has five white mana symbols, which is a huge drawback for most decks. But this is actually an upside in our Mono-White Devotion deck since it means that once it hits the battlefield, it will make oodles of mana with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx! How good is Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer? Can it make Mono-White Devotion a thing? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Anti-Venom Mono-White Devotion
Discussion
- Record-wise, Anti-Venom Devotion was solid! We went 7-3 with the deck for a 70% win rate, which is great!
- I've always loved devotion decks. We've played a bunch of them in various colors and formats over the years. But traditionally, Mono-White Devotion is the worst devotion color because it's pretty bad at closing out the game, compared to other devotion colors, since there's no white Gray Merchant of Asphodel or Fanatic of Mogis. But I think this has changed in recent years thanks to Spider-Man and some other recent sets, which has me especially excited to try out Mono-White Devotion today!
- The main reason we're playing the deck today is Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer, which seems built to be good in Mono-White Devotion thanks to its seemingly endless white mana symbols. Weirdly, Anti-Venom is sort of free once we have Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx on the battlefield. We spend five to cast it, but its five mana symbols will immediately make five extra mana with Nykthos, which is already pretty busted. But Anti-Venom is even better than that because it can't be killed with damage (which makes our deck hilariously good against aggro, with both it and Phyrexian Vindicator wrecking red decks, or really any deck without hard removal) and also reanimates something when it enters. While we're not really a reanimator deck—we don't have ways to stock our graveyard—this doesn't really matter because by the time we cast Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer, we usually have something that has traded off in combat that we can get back.
- Speaking of Phyrexian Vindicator, the card is super swingy. It's pretty bad against decks with hard removal (mostly black decks), other than adding a lot of white mana symbols to the battlefield. But it's almost unbeatable against decks without hard removal thanks to its Screaming Nemesis–like ability, combined with preventing all damage dealt to it. Together with Anti-Venom, this leaves us with an almost unbeatable wall of hard-to-kill creatures against aggro decks.
- While Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer and Phyrexian Vindicator can win a lot of games on their own, we also have two dedicated finishers. One is the newly-added-to-Arena Iona, Shield of Emeria, which I'll probably do an entire video about in the future because I really love making people not play Magic. The big Angel can beat some decks on its own by preventing our opponent from casting spells of a color of our choice. It's literally game over against a mono-color deck, and it's still very good against multicolor decks if we name the color of our opponent's interaction. Meanwhile, Moonshaker Cavalry gives us a mono-white Craterhoof Behemoth. If we can build up a big board, it should just win us the game on the spot by pumping our team and giving everything flying. Together, these cards give us multiple ways to slam the door shut on the game, which is something white devotion was lacking in the past.
- The rest of the deck is mostly cheap interaction and card draw that adds white mana symbols to the battlefield. Wall of Omens and Enduring Innocence keep us churning through our deck. Skyclave Apparition, The Wandering Emperor, and Portable Hole give us white pip–heavy removal spells. And Chosen by Valgavoth (or With Great Power...) is just a one-of but at worst gives us a Fog, by preventing damage for a turn, and at best (for example, on an Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer) can lock our opponent out of killing us with damage forever!
- Rounding out the deck are White Orchid Phantom and Ephemerate. Together, these cards are our plan for beating Eldrazi, which is pretty popular in Historic. While I'm not sure it's enough, in theory, we can use the combo to blow up a bunch of lands, which might slow down the deck long enough for us to get Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx online and take over the game with our bombs. Plus, Ephemerate is really good with cards like Wall of Omens for more card draw or Skyclave Apparition for more removal. And in a pinch, it can save something like Iona, Shield of Emeria or Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer from removal.
- You probably noticed the UW dual lands in the mana base. Initially, the deck was purely mono-white, but I decided I needed some counterspells in the sideboard after playing against Esper Control a couple of times. This is why we're playing Hallowed Fountain and Meticulous Archive even though we don't have any blue cards in our main deck. As a bonus, the surveil land is also pretty solid with Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer since it gives us a way to mill a big reanimation target into our graveyard.
- Oh yeah, Wall of Omens deserves a shout-out. The card is actually pretty good against various creature decks, where a 0/4 blocker soaks up a ton of damage early in the game. Years ago, the two-drop was a staple in Modern control decks for the same reason. And it seems like Historic might be in a place where Wall of Omens is once again a good early-game option for decks trying to slow things down a bit.
- All in all, I actually think Mono-White Devotion is pretty good in Historic, and Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer is legitimately great in the deck! While we can occasionally get clunky draws where we end up with a bunch of expensive finishers and no Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to cast them, in general, the deck plays pretty smoothly thanks to all of the early-game card draw and has game in most matchups, with cards like Phyrexian Vindicator carrying against aggro, while our card draw helps us keep up with control and midrange! If you like making lots of mana and having huge turns or are just a fan of Anti-Venom, give the deck a shot!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. 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.
