Yet another Mono White Devotion deck of mine! This one tries to use as many double White mana casting cost creatures as possible to build Devotion that can be used to drop an early Elspeth, Sun's Champion or Wingmate Roc using Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Additionally the Devotion can turn on
Heliod, God of the Sun
for a big creature, or pump out some tokens with his activated ability.
I play tested this a few rounds against Ari Lax's Abzan Midrange deck he won Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir with and I won about half the games, so I'm pretty happy. Granted the deck wasn't being piloted by a pro, but then again, neither was mine! :) I'm really curious how it would do against the Jeskai deck.
During playtests it was missing the
Preeminent Captain
and I was frequently missing my 3 drops which I felt hurt me a lot. I'm still undecided on the Captain or
Fabled Hero
. Hero has two devotion but Captain can put all the creatures but the Roc in for free. 2 and 2 may be the correct answer, but I'll just have to do some more testing to see.
All in all I think it's a pretty strong Tier 2 deck and I'm almost as happy with it as I was with Celestial Hands
PLAY TEST UPDATE: Ok so after some decent play testing, I've decided on some changes.
I am removing
Heliod, God of the Sun
in favor of Hundred-Handed One and the
Preeminent Captain
in favor of
Fabled Hero
. While I am very much in love with the two cards I'm pulling out, I think these changes are for the better.
Unless I have another soldier in my hand and can safely attack with
Preeminent Captain
,
Fabled Hero
is strictly better in my deck. He has Double Strike vs First Strike and can get bigger if targeted with
Ajani's Presence
or Gods Willing, not to mention an extra White mana symbol for devotion to help power out an early 5 or 6 drop.
While removing
Heliod, God of the Sun
kind of removes some of the bang from the Devotion theme, I think the Hundred-Handed One is better suited for the deck and current Standard environment. There are just too many times when Heliod does nothing for me, whereas Hundred-Handed One is always a creature. In addition, once Monstrous he can stall up almost any board.
Mantis Rider
won't want to block him and if he's Monstrous he can block, kill, and survive two attacking
Mantis Rider
. He can block Siege Rhino when he hits the board and kill him when Monstrous. On top of that he provides two White mana symbols for powering out an Elspeth or Roc if I'm short on mana.
Another change is swapping out 2 Wingmate Roc in favor of 2 Avacyn, Guardian Angel. Basically I just really, really love this card and want it to be good, but I think in this case I can rationalize it pretty well. Mainly, if I can't activate Raid, she's strictly better than Wingmate Roc. She has a higher power, Vigilance, adds 3 mana for Devotion (helpful for activating Monstrous on Hundred-Handed One), and can protect me or my creatures with her activated abilities. I'm thinking against a late game stall she can probably provide an edge.
LAST SECOND UPDATE: I was watching GP Los Angeles coverage 2 hours before Game Day Khans of Tarkir and realized my deck should really have
Devouring Light
in it, so out came the two main deck and two sideboard
Suspension Field
.
