Much Abrew: Devoted to Clive (Pioneer)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! This week, we're heading to Pioneer to play one of my favorite archetypes, which got a massive upgrade with Final Fantasy, in Mono-Red Devotion! The plan of making tons of mana with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, dumping our hand of cards with tons of red mana symbols, and eventually winning with Fanatic of Mogis has been around forever. But Mono-Red Devotion had one huge problem: it didn't have any card advantage, so you'd have games where you would dump your hand of random dorks but never find a way to close out the game. Final Fantasy fixed this with Clive, Ifrit's Dominant, which is an absurd source of card advantage in Mono-Red Devotion, drawing us cards equal to our devotion to red, which is often eight, 10, or more! A single Clive should draw us into what we need to win the game, and if it doesn't, it will probably find another Clive so we can draw more cards the following turn! Can Clive, Ifrit's Dominant make Mono-Red Devotion a real deck in Pioneer? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Devoted to Clive
Wrap-Up
- Record-wise, Devoted to Clive was solid. We went 6-3 with the deck and managed to climb to Diamond on Magic Arena. While the deck can still be inconsistent sometimes (the games where we draw Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx are much different than the ones where we don't), it is also super explosive and powerful!
- Clive, Ifrit's Dominant was as good as I expected it to be. It really does solve the biggest problem with the deck, and as we saw time and time again, we were highly likely to win the game when we resolved a Clive. Sure, we had some games where our opponent died before we even cast Clive, but we also had some games where we almost certainly would have lost if we hadn't top-decked a Clive. As weird as it sounds, our deck is so good at making mana that flipping Clive, Ifrit's Dominant is actually a realistic possibility, which is pretty hilarious.
- As far as the rest of the deck, it's mostly about adding red mana symbols to the battlefield to power up our devotion cards. We're overloaded with two- and three-drops with double or triple red mana symbols. Burning-Tree Emissary is the most explosive of the bunch—we can make an absurd amount of mana on Turn 3 if we ever draw a hand with multiple and a Nykthos—although Eidolon of the Great Revel was also super important against decks like Prowess and Lotus Field that sling a lot of cheap spells.
- As far as actually winning the game, our most common plan is to build a big board, draw a bunch of cards with Clive, and then play a Fanatic of Mogis or two to burn our opponent out out of the game directly, although we can also just haste up our team with Enduring Courage and win with combat damage. Enduring Courage also allows us to play and flip Clive, Ifrit's Dominant in the same turn, which is super powerful.
- So, should you play Devoted to Clive in Pioneer? If you are a fan of Red Devotion decks, I think the answer is yes! Clive is amazing in the deck, and I've always found the archetype super fun to play. Yes, consistency can be a concern, but the deck is so explosive and has such huge turns that it quickly makes up for the bad games.
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.
