Pro Tour Thunder Junction was wildly entertaining, even if one third of the playing field was Esper Midrange, and another good portion of it was Domain Ramp. The games were action-packed and I even found myself at times cheering for an Azorius Control Deck to win it all. Ultimately, Yuta Takahashi fell in the finals to his teammate, Yoshihiko Ikawa. Both are phenomenal Magic Players and have been doing this for decades. We were not deprived of any opportunity for good action from some of the world's best. There were some unique decks that made it, as the Four-Color Legends build was pretty good - and ultimately made it's case for being tier one. Although we have seen the deck before, it always felt like not enough people took it seriously. Another relevant deck we saw over the weekend was the Caustic Bronco combo deck. It was a pretty well-put together Orzhov midrange deck with some fun combos. I was happy to see that there was one Mono Black Deck. It used a lot of the cards that I like from the new set, and many that I enjoy from older sets. Although Pedro San Segundo qualified for day two, they were unable to get a top eight qualification, but the deck still held it's own in the constructed portion of the event. Given the fact that it didn't bomb in the Pro Tour, and that I have had great success with it on the ladder, we are gonna check out some gameplay from the Mono Black Pro Tour OTJ Deck today!
Doing Crimes with New Cards
Kaervek is a powerhouse in this deck. We have a lot of cheap spells to recast from the graveyard, and many of them involve committing crimes, thus synergizing further with the rest of our deck. He is slowly turning into one of those creatures that is an auto-remove due to how much he can sway the outcome of a game. The good news is that we have a few other creatures in the deck that also demand removal almost to the same degree.
Other than a Thoughtseize in Pioneer, I can't think of many turn one plays that are better than this. It just sets up everything. Every time one of our creatures other than Bloodletter of Aclazotz hit the board, this card guarantees that we will be committing a crime. If that wasn't enough, we are also forcing our opponent to discard a card! Then we can mill them and make them lose a life when our legendary creatures hit the board.
Although he is only committing a crime when hitting the board with our turn one enchantment on the board, Vadmir rapidly grows into a creature that is difficult to block and can gain us life. He once again demands removal, and even with just one counter on him, he is out of Cut Down territory, and will force the opponent to use direct removal that they would rather use on our higher mana cost creatures. Even though he might be removed, thats ok. We can very easily recast him with Kaervek!
These cards really get the engine running, but of course our removal spells invole crime as well. We also have some of the new spree cards in Insatiable Avarice and Rush of Dread . These cards can both be sprees, and of course Dread allows us to play the one turn kill combo in the deck as well. You can really start to stack up win conditions with this deck, and they start as early as turn two.
Gameplay
This deck naturally was very easy for me to play. It fit my play style well. The only adjustment that had to be made was accepting that we don't have to assemble our combo to win every time. It has so many different ways to win, it allows us to find our lines of victory each time without sitting there and wishing that we had our combo pieces. Victory often comes naturally with the deck. Sideboarding feels pretty simple, but I do believe that another Graveyard Trespasser would be a good idea. I also think that Parasitic Grasp could be swapped out for another Bitter Triumph, but I acknowledge in a tournament setting, grasp is often a valuable card as a one-of in sideboards.
In the gameplay seen here, we are able to beat an Azorius Tempo deck that actually looked to stifle our combo, and out-tempo us to the point that we fell behind. The constant value that every spell provides to us made it too much for the opponent to deal with, and we were able to easily defeat them. In both games, the we were able to resolve the Dread Combo for lethal. Sideboarding wasn't too difficult, we just needed the other Long Goodbye, and our Duress spells.
In our next match seen here, we face the Golgari Midrange Deck that Reid Duke brought to the Pro Tour. This deck performed very well in constructed, and we were able to defeat it pretty handily. Game one we were able to resolve the combo. Gisa, The Hellraiser , feels really god on the play, but on the draw I often prefer to bring in Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal for some extra life gain - and I especially like to bring it in when we are up against midrange, because it is a good grindy card. Usually on the draw, I also board out a couple of Insatiable Avarice because it can sometimes feel too slow, and while you are on your back foot early in the game, you would much rather resolve a Kaervek over an Avarice on turn three. In game two, the opponent was able to play a lot of answers for our spells, and it definitely turned into more of a grind. They were able to exile our graveyard, get rid of enchantments and start the race on life total. In an odd turn of events, we actually used the minus two loyalty ability on Liliana of the Veil to commit a crime on our opponent, which triggered Kaervek and it appeared that we would start to turn things around after being behind on life total. Our opponent realized this and promptly scooped it up. I have had a lot of opponents concede to this deck, and it feels like many people don't want to play against it. It is incredible resilient, and has so many threats that it truly is overwhelming to deal with. I have a lot of fun playing this list, and I hope you do too!
