Great piece, congrats with the great FNM run. I'm currently running mono blue devotion myself and playing without a single 1 drop in the deck. It runs well with 23 lands (inc. 1 Nykthos) but I was just curious to hear your view on how important 1 drops are.

Thanks for your comments RDJDenley!

1 drops in this format I feel don't accomplish enough to include. Hypnotic Siren is definitely an exception to this though just because of its flexibility.

Dropping it on turn 1 starts adding to devotion and against some of the slower decks can get in for a bunch of damage. In the mid - late game with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx you can steal something from your opponent or just give +1 +1 flying to one of your own dudes. This can happen as early as turn 5 and stealing something like a Stormbreath Dragon feels great.

The other blue one drops in comparison dont really fit in to what mono-blue is trying to accomplish.

I take your point on Hypnotic Siren in particular, due to the fact it runs as a T1 play or, as you said, a potential T5 Mind Control with benefits.

I'm just not a fan of running mono blue as an all out aggro deck as it is outpaced by many aggro decks currently, and with my meta in particular running heavy on mono red/ red black I find that it's difficult to run faster than them.

I'm actually running more of a counter-attacking style deck with 4 Wall of Frost and 4 Omenspeaker and running an Archetype of Imagination.

I do think Mono Blue devotion can re-establish itself, it just needs refining!

That's a fair call. I definitely think that both an aggro version and a more tempo version of mono-u can be viable.

A lot of the people at my LGS (at least the ones that I seem to continually get paired against) are playing greedy or durdly decks so taking a more aggressive approach seems to work out. That could change with the popularity of red aggro at the Pro Tour, but there's sideboard options to deal with it in game 2.

Omenspeaker is actually something that was suggested to me by someone else as well since it can block tokens for days and the scry helps set up Cloudform. Its certainly a less aggressive option, but if the meta shifts to be more aggro it will probably replace Frost Walker.

Excellent-looking deck, and I really enjoyed the synopsis of its performance.

I wonder if you might consider cutting Hall of Triumph in favour of Mirror Mockery. Mirror Mockery combined with Bident of Thassa can be absolutely brutal versus an opponent's Siege Rhino, or any creature with ETB effects. Mirror Mockery on your own Master of Waves also has huge potential, creating more tokens, and buffing +2/+2 for that turn while providing another pip of devotion for Thassa, God of the Sea.

Great shout Dr_Doom, I never caught that combo. haha!

Great evaluation there, I'm just about to shoot off to my local FNM, so will share my results on my return!

@Dr_Doom - Thanks for the comment! Mirror Mockery has been sitting in the back of my mind, but it seemed like it was a bit "cute" to be playing. Now that you mention the interaction between it and Bident of Thassa, it might actually be worth a slot or 2. Not sure that Hall of Triumph is the card to drop for it, may drop Thassa's Rebuff for it though.

@RDJDenley - Good luck!

Unfortunately, I was only able to play one game due to an unfortunate illness!

But it was versus a mono red Titan's Strength / burn deck. I learnt that Monastery Siege is an absolute brick wall in these match ups. So much so that I have added 3 to my SB.

On the topic of Mirror Mockery I have to admit that I tried it out and absolutely loved it. I managed to enchant my Master of Waves too, and it was frightening; more than worth a 2-of. I do want to try Clever Impersonator as an alternative, but I don't think it will work quite the same.

@RDJDenley - Sucks that you were sick =\

Monastery Siege is indeed very good against burn, while still being useful against control by improving your draws. Might end up adding this to the sideboard if more burn shows up.

You may be right about Mirror Mockery deserving 3 or 4 slots, I'm just not sure what I would drop for it as its almost a dead card vs control.

Clever Impersonator is pretty cool too. Handy for re-triggering any ETB effects or just copying something your opponent has.

I have noticed with this deck, that when faced with an extreme, be it control or aggro, we need to sideboard a lot of cards to deal with them.

It's become apparent to me how important it is to get the 60 right from the word go. Like I said before, I was running 4 Wall of Frost but quickly swapped them for 4 Cloudform as it made more sense to side in wall of frost against the Uber-Aggro, and have access to Cloudform as default.

I am still having so much trouble picking my 2 drops. Stratus Dancer hasn't performed for me as yet, Omenspeaker for me is an auto-includes it fundamentally sets up our Cloudform drops. Frost Walker is still in contention since Kiora, the Crashing Wave kept 'targeting' them to death! Mindreaver for me is still an option as I find that our main win-con is to overwhelm the board.I have also been looking into Jeskai Elder and Vaporkin

Honestly gents, it's so much trouble making decisions haha!

Hey man congrats on the wins! I'm taking mine to game day tomorrow, if you wanna have a look I've worked on it since Fate Reforged with the help of the tappedout community, my team members and a LGS worker, just click here.

The one drop topic seems to be something that interests a lot of commentators and yourself too. For my part, I've been playing 7 of them (4x Hypnotic Siren and 3x Gudul Lurker) which is more than double your numbers. Appart from putting more pressure by being more aggro, there's a stronger reasoning behind this. Just imagine the best opening you can have, it goes like this: Turn one 1-drop, turn two 2-drop, turn 3 thassa, turn 4 shorecrasher and swing with Thassa the 1-drop and the 2-drop, turn 5 Master of Waves.
The reason I run 7 one-drops is to increase my chances of hitting this crazy curve, but mostly to ensure Thassa gets active and master of waves nets the most elementals. This is mono-blue devotion. The format is so full of removal that by turn 4 one of the 1 or 2 drop gets removed the majority of the time, however Thassa is still active even if they remove one of the two! On the opposite, if you don't play a one drop and they remove your 2-drop forget about Thassa attacking on turn 4 or even 5.
If you take a look at MUD from Ravnica/Theros the curve is as simple as it can get: 8 1-drops, 8 2-drops, 8 3-drops, 4 4-drops, 4 pseudo-removal. This ensures consistency with getting Thassa active and netting the most out of Master of Waves! Finally on a side-note, Gudul Lurker can act as a fake Stratus Dancer (and trust me, it works)!

By not playing one drops and only one Hall of Triumph you seem less all in on the aggro/devotion and it looks like you want to get later in the game with Cloudform (which is untouchable devotion) and Mirror Mockery. Later in the game is nowhere I want to be with this deck, ramp, midrange and control decks start playing things I can't take care of effectively (plus you run not removal). Maybe your meta is more aggro than mine? My meta is full of control and ramp strategies and I want to end the games as quick as possible with a devoted Thassa.

1 drops are an interesting subject, for sure.

I must admit, the only 1 drop I would consider running, is Hypnotic Siren and that is purely due to the ability to dump mana into her and take a monster.

But I can understand the desire to hit a curve. As I have said before, I play aggo a lot of the time, and want to play a counter-attack style with Wall of Frost - but I am willing to test the Siren!

Thanks for the comments EssTea! Big fan of your list.

You bring up some very good points about 1-drops and lowering the curve on this deck in general and I think you may be right. I'm find since the recent changes that I'm having to mulligan a bit more (though this may just be varience).

There was a recent mono-u deck that came 3rd at SCG states which is a lot closer to the list you have seen here. Gudul Lurker in particular seems like another fun morph card to play with to mess around with my opponents. I still have mixed feelings on Silumgar Sorcerer since I know this deck can struggle with things like Siege Rhino and Sorin, Solemn Visitor, but Reality Shift and sideboard Disdainful Stroke might be the answer.

Definitely doing to be making some changes throughout the week before the next FNM. Mono-U is definitely competitive in this format but as RDJDenley mentioned in an earlier comment it needs to be refined a little bit to be a true top teir deck.

Best of luck at gameday!

Looks good, I need to test Silumgar Sorcerer some, seems like it could be pretty nice. I splashed white and added 2 Dragonlord Ojutai. Here's my list (still in early stages) Mono Blue Ojutai

Thanks BaceJeleren! I was definitely impressed with Silumgar Sorcerer vs the midrange decks and recommend playing at least 2.

I had a look at your deck and it looks pretty sweet. Splashing white for Dragonlord Ojutai is definitely not a bad idea. I'll leave on comment on your deck :)

It seems pretty good, mainly because the exploit is a may ability. A surprise flying blocker and 2 more devotion isn't bad, and sac-ing a Hypnotic Siren or Elemental token is even better. And yeah, sometimes you just play a Dragonlord Ojutai and win. It's that good.

Can we see the 5C aggro list I'm more interested in that honestly

I know there was a few people playing 5c aggro at my LGS but I'm not certain if they've posted their lists up. Happy to ask this Friday though GCDC1PSN!

I have something very close to this and its a great deck, it eats esper, and Cloudform is the real deal man!! Also do you really think Gudul Lurker is worth a spot?

After playing with Gudul Lurker, yeah I think its worth the spot. It's perfectly fine to drop it early and make sure you have enough devotion to drop Thassa, God of the Sea on turn 3 and attack with her on turn 4.

Being able to play mind games with your opponent by morphing it is amazing too.

Nice tech. I am really doing well with my Mono U. Two FNM 3:1s and its so good to play

Thanks for the comment Enthor!

I do love how viable this deck is and a lot of people still haven't caught on to it :)

Hey, nice work. I've been convinced there's real value in Cloudform and I've been hacking around with non-green devotion in general to great success, but this is super clean -- really well put together. Frost Walker is such a great card. The downside is really negligible. If only Crystalline Nautilus was BB!

Anyway, I've had Hall of Triumph in and out of a couple of devotion decks, and in the end it's ended up more out than in. I found that its colourless casting cost really bled off a lot of tempo when playing Nykthos. It's strictly speaking a bad card, but here I wonder if the extra cost and vulnerability of Paragon of Gathering Mists would be mitigated by the fact that it's a creature and can be manifested by Cloudform, plus gives you a pip of devotion. I'm not convinced, but sometimes bad cards find homes in good decks. Maybe you've already considered it.

+1